A Webinar and More: Beyond the Basics of Supplier Connectivity and Enablement (Part 1)

Tomorrow (Wednesday) at 1:00 PM CT, I'll be leading a webinar titled: Beyond the Basics of Supplier Connectivity and Enablement. Much of the material is based on our past and current research in the P2P area including a recent whitepaper, A Foundational Look at P2P Technologies, which is part of our 2011 Compass series research program: P2P and Working Capital–Bridging Technology & Collaboration to Drive Savings and Cash. I hope my talk will be useful for those organizations just in the process of ramping up an eProcurement or broader P2P program, plus more sophisticated companies looking to bring more spend under effective management, and I've divided it into three sections: maximizing spend under management, supplier enablement and P2P success -- roadblocks to watch for and pros/cons of supplier enablement business models and networks. Join us if you can. The webinar is hosted by Rearden/Ketera, even though I'll be doing all the talking.

The second section, looking out for supplier enablement and P2P roadblocks, is one of the most useful (at least from our perspective based on years of analyzing systems success and failure in the area). I'm planning to examine how the seven following areas often limit overall P2P success in many deployments:

1. Catalog/content management -- beyond just managing a single (or handful) of supplier catalogs
2. Supplier enablement -- initial on-boarding and information capture
3. Search and usage -- deploying content so that users find it easily accessible to suit their purposes and drive compliance
4. Continuous data quality and maintenance -- ensuring high standards of data quality and integrity over time for supplier information and catalog content (as well as internal spend and contracts data)
5. Invoicing/EIPP -- Closing the compliance loop and driving working capital decisions and strategies
6. Connectivity/supplier networks -- beyond limited transactional interchange and interoperability
7. Compliance -- Designing and maintaining the system to support the buying behavior you want to see in the first place

We'll investigate each of these areas in more detail on Spend Matters as this post continues in various installments in the coming weeks, but I'll attempt to cover as much in-depth as I can on the webinar live tomorrow. In addition, look for additional commentary on the pros/cons of different supplier enablement business models and networks. It's a hot and opinionated topic, and I'll try to paint both perspectives (buyer vs. supplier-paid fees as well as new "free" models).

So join us tomorrow at 1:00 PM CT for Beyond the Basics of Supplier Connectivity and Enablement if you can.

Jason Busch