Driving Adoption and Collaboration with Intuitive eSourcing Features

If your eSourcing tools increased adoption and collaboration, how much would that be worth?

Does your platform allow you to tag information before, during and after events?

Each sourcing event will typically contain massive amounts of meta data.

If your organization has the tools and training to tag it properly then you should be able to create dashboard reporting to meet the needs of every stakeholder in your company.

I like the terms “crosscut” and “slice and dice”.

The ability to look at your data from various angles allows you to turn it into information that will identity opportunities, issues and trends.

Here are some areas that I like to focus on in setting up the tagging within events:

A good opening question is: “What information is important to you to report on at the project level?”

Examples could be regions, departments, cost centers, divisions and stores. There is an almost unlimited number of ways you could tag the data so it is important to have a plan to hit the most important first.

After the client has run several events it is time to determine if they have the information they need to analyze the results.

A key feature that many systems don’t have is the ability to “back tag” the events. This allows you to add information like savings, awards to minority owned businesses and diverse suppliers. This feature is invaluable.

Once you review the client’s initial events, you can tweak the way they are tagging to meet their needs.

Have you ever thought: “I wish we had thought about adding that tag before we started the event.”

When you can back tag your events, you eliminate this issue. You are not changing or rewriting history but simply improving your ability to analyze the results.

As more and more events are completed, your database of information will grow and it is very likely that you will continue to refine the way you tag events.

The next step in the process is to set up dashboard reports.

The information that the analyst needs will be different in many cases from what the CPO or CFO needs.

Your system should allow you to customize reporting to meet the needs of all stakeholders.

Ideally, templates should be easy to create, modify and repurpose.

Reports should be able to be created with varying levels of security and visibility. I like the term public for everyone in the process and private for selected people.

The remarkable thing about these features is that your knowledge base will grow with each event. Your stakeholders will soon realize that you can give them access to information to run their business units more profitability. Once that happens their desire to collaborate will grow exponentially.

The ability to know that your group is producing verifiable savings and driving collaboration will make adoption the norm. How many organizations can say that?

If you want to explore a purchasing or procurement topic in greater detail, I invite you to request 30-minute discovery conversation. In my experience the next step will be apparent at the end of the call. I never assume that my recommendations will be right for everyone, so don’t expect a sales pitch. You can reach me at 973-936-9672.

Organizations of all sizes are reducing costs and increasing efficiency, without changing the way they conduct business. If you would like to know how, simply give me a call or send me an email with your contact information and the best time to reach you.

 

You Won’t Drift to Success©

Think about it.

Until Next Time, I Wish You Great Success in Your Business and in Your Life

Mike Jeffries