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5 tips on buying procurement technology (Part 2) — Learn to walk before you run

12/06/2019 By

CORE
Modules

In my Spend Matters PRO series on five tips to think about before you invest in procurement technology, we covered the need to identify the root cause for why you want to invest in procurement technology. In this installment, we will look at the next two recommendations.

To recap the five tips are:

1. Identify business objectives
2. Don’t try to do everything at once
3. Focus on the basics first
4. Select a solution and vendor that meets your requirements
5. Review and redesign processes, and perhaps even your organization, as part of the preparation and implementation

In part 1 of this series we discussed the importance of identifying the real underlying business objectives to why you need to invest in procurement technology. This can be done by deploying the five “Whys” method. In today’s complex, confusing market it is important to identify your business’ key needs. In Part 3 we will review the last two tips, ensuring that you choose the right vendor and further, that everything gets implemented properly. In today’s complex, confusing market it is important to identify your business’ key needs, as discussed in the previous post. However, you also need to decide in which order to invest in and implement your new solution across departments or functions. This is obviously less of an issue if you are investing in a single solution or module. But, even in this case, it might make sense to start small, with a single business unit or country, if the change in process or way of doing business is significant.

It’s also important to make sure the basics are addressed before looking at some of the more advanced features that vendors like to market.

You might be thinking: “But I haven’t even invested in anything yet?!?”

Well, if you don’t consider these points before you do invest, you are more than likely to over-invest, both in the number of modules in the near term but likely also in the number of licenses (or allowed spend, whatever metric the vendor prices their solutions in). So let’s look at this in more detail.

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