Sourcing Solutions

What are Sourcing solutions? 

e-Sourcing emerged as a term in the 1990s as Freemarket and others developed technical solutions to enable organizations to negotiate online. Since then, sourcing solutions have evolved to cover the many different flavors of what ‘sourcing’ entails. For example, they may or may not support different processes (e.g., strategic sourcing vs. tactical sourcing), have specialized capabilities for specific categories (e.g., direct materials) or functional needs (e.g., optimization).

Stepping back to a broader perspective, sourcing solutions offer a comprehensive approach to e-sourcing as a whole. They empower companies to define and implement specific tendering/sourcing processes across a wide range of spend categories and needs. In essence, they provide a technological platform for organizations to explore new and existing market opportunities for a variety of goods and services. 

The underlying capabilities include base-level supplier management, sourcing strategy support, demand management (intake), RFx (RFI/RFP/RFQ) creation, reverse auctions, bid response management, supplier collaboration (within a negotiation) and awarding. We will cover common features further in a later section. 

How Sourcing solutions factor into the S2P process

Sourcing is a crucial step within the broader source-to-pay (S2P) process. It is the foundation upon which the entire procurement process is built. Here’s how it fits in:

• Managing the need (and expectations): The S2P process starts with a business requirement for a good or a service, i.e., a sourcing request. But, sourcing can also be triggered from a value optimization opportunity like cost savings, risk reduction or milestones, e.g., contract renewals.
• Sourcing takes over/go to market: Procurement professionals identify potential suppliers through various methods, such as scouting and discovery, and solicit bids from them.
• Evaluation and selection: The sourcing team then evaluates the potential suppliers based on multiple factors (trade-offs) like price, quality, reliability, risk and past performance. Multiple tendering rounds may happen to align offerings with the needs and/or drive value up.
• Moving through S2P: Once a supplier is awarded, the S2P process can move to contract negotiation, purchase order release, receiving goods/services, invoice processing and finally payment.

As you can see, the entire process is kicked off by sourcing. There are no contracts to negotiate nor good to purchase or receive without first finding a product and supplier. 

Why Sourcing solutions are important

Sourcing solutions have become increasingly important tools for businesses of all sizes. These software platforms streamline and optimize the process of finding, evaluating and selecting suppliers.

Additionally, sourcing solutions provide valuable insights and data analytics that empower organizations to make sourcing decisions based on a bigger picture: market trends, supplier performance, risk, etc.

The key reasons why sourcing solutions are important for modern procurement practices are:

• Enhanced efficiency: Sourcing solutions can automate or streamline many manual tasks involved in traditional sourcing, especially when looking at RFx preparation and bid evaluations. This allows, among other things, organizations to increase the spend they manage.
• Improved decision-making: Sourcing solutions enable users to have more structured and richer data when analyzing bids and awarding, which can lead to better decisions when multiple trade-offs are at play.
• Increased value delivery:
  • Cost savings: By identifying the most competitive suppliers and optimizing negotiation, sourcing solutions can help businesses achieve cost savings.
  • Reduced risk: Sourcing solutions can help mitigate risks by making the sourcing process risk aware at different critical steps (supplier invitations, award, etc.).
• Increased visibility and transparency: Sourcing solutions offer real-time visibility into the entire sourcing process, allowing procurement teams to track progress and identify potential bottlenecks. Also, they increase the level of data that is shared with suppliers and taken into account in cross-functional decision making.

• Improved compliance: Sourcing solutions can help ensure compliance with regulations and company policies.
• Best practices: Sourcing solutions help to capture, share and preserve valuable knowledge (tribal knowledge) that might otherwise be lost when employees leave the organization. Also, digital knowledge can be updated instantly and made available to users.

How do I know my organization is ready for a Sourcing solution?

Some signs that it’s time to step in with a sourcing solution might be:

1. Your sourcing process is slow, time-consuming, manual or prone to errors.
2. You lack visibility into your organization’s spending and sourcing activities.
3. You struggle to manage contract renewals, there is a lot of maverick buying or you cannot address all incoming requests. 
4. You need to identify incremental cost-saving opportunities and increase the amount of spend under management.
5. Your procurement team lacks the expertise or resources to manage (complex) sourcing activities or you are faced with a high employee turnover and a loss of expertise and know-how.
6. Your organization experiences organic or external growth and needs help managing the increase in volume of sourcing activities.
7. Your organization needs to better collaborate internally and with suppliers to improve internal alignment on sourcing decisions and to improve supplier-led innovation.

If any of the above describes your organization, it’s time to begin looking for a sourcing solution. 

Some factors to consider when beginning the journey are:

1. Business needs: What are your goals and objectives for implementing a sourcing solution, and what will be the scope (categories, geographies, etc.) of the implementation?
2. Change management: Is your organization prepared to undergo changes in processes and workflows that a new sourcing solution would bring?
3. Stakeholder buy-in: Do you have buy-in from key stakeholders like IT, finance, and executive leadership?
4. Supplier buy-in and adoption: Have you identified the suppliers you want to enroll and developed an adoption strategy to ensure they will use the sourcing solution?
5. Budget: Do you have the budget allocated for implementing and maintaining a new sourcing solution?
6. Integration: Can your existing systems integrate with a new sourcing solution, or do you have the resources to manage integration?
7. Process standardization: Is your current sourcing process (roles, steps, templates, supplier panels etc.) adopted across the organization, or are there many variations?
8. Support: How will support for internal users and suppliers be done?

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How Sourcing is done: Common features of Sourcing technology

Sourcing technologies enable companies to define and implement specified tendering/sourcing processes across simple and complex categories alike, starting with strategy development and ending with award decisions. 

The underlying technology components of sourcing technologies include base-level supplier management, RFI/RFP/RFQ creation, reverse auctions, bid response management, optimization, supplier collaboration (within a negotiation), template/knowledge management and category management. 

While the sourcing technology sector is highly fragmented, material differentiation exists in such areas as usability, suite linkages, opportunity detection, decision optimization and direct materials support.

Below are core components of sourcing technology that help manage data collection efforts, bid processes, analysis and sourcing projects:

• Supplier directory and portal: A basic directory of suppliers with the contact information necessary to invite suppliers to sourcing events. Each supplier needs a single entry point where its personnel can access the RFx and surveys directed to them, participate in competitive bidding events (including auctions), find information on the organization’s sourcing process, learn about award decisions and ask questions
• Information gathering and evaluation: Support for creation and scoring of weighted questions, often organized in questionnaires, to gather and evaluate information from suppliers.
• Pricing and cost-data gathering and evaluation via RFQ or RFP: Support for creation and organization of line items in order to gather and compare primarily pricing and cost information from suppliers.
• Reverse Auction: Support for online multi-party negotiations in the form of real-time submission and visualization of bids in a reverse format, meaning new bids should be lower than previous bids.
• Project Management: Workflow support for proprietary sourcing project models to ensure compliance to sourcing processes and collaboration.
• Reporting: Including an extensive collection of reports that allow the buyer to get all of the data they need in easily digestible chunks and, preferably, a powerful report builder that allows them to design their own optimized reports for each sourcing situation. It should also offer a means to export information to other reporting/analytical environments.

How technology supports Sourcing — Top 5 capabilities

These ‘Top 5’ critical digital capabilities stem from the Spend Matters TechMatch workbench — derived from a larger number of requirements scored in the SolutionMap solution benchmark.

The Top 5 capabilities are the highest-weighted critical capabilities that are central to the displayed solution market benchmark. They have been developed by Spend Matters team of analysts and refined by procurement users in tech-selection projects using our market-proven SolutionMap benchmarking dataset and associated TechMatch decision-making tool.

1. RFx modeling and creation

The ability to create sourcing events and configure them based on various organizational, category and process requirements.

The average sourcing solution supports the creation of RFxs from templates, from Excel via uploads, from scratch or from past events. Items can be organized into lots, but there are limited configuration options at the lot level. RFxs are configured as a single ‘object.’ Cost breakdown and questionnaires are also limited in terms of configuration and can only collect simple data entries. Sourcing automation is possible but limited to simple tasks like supplier invitations and bid acceptance but not awards.

Top performing solutions provide more guidance when creating RFxs by recommending content, templates to be used, suppliers to be invited and so on. They do so by using AI/ML to surface content and recommend specific actions, which extends their guidance beyond predefined rule-based workflows. An RFx can be configured in many different ways with settings at the item/question level to ensure that all elements required for decisions are collected. Leading vendors use such capabilities to provide sourcing automation for certain low-stakes goods or services.

2. Bidding and analysis

The capacity to enable suppliers to bid in the most appropriate way and to allow us to analyze/compare offers in various and detailed ways to ensure the right decision-making process (TCO, ESG, etc.).

The average solution offers suppliers simple means to enter their bids with basic response validations in the form of drop-downs, format checks for dates and email addresses, simple arithmetic operators, etc. The same applies to the feedback they can receive; it is limited to the ability to export reports to Excel that show the average bid/score and each supplier’s bid/score.

From an evaluation perspective, buyers can only score each response manually and only to individual weighted questions or elements, but they can compare offers in a side-by-side view.

Top performing vendors offer suppliers advanced AI/ML-based capabilities to prefill answers based on historical data and, in the absence of historical data, to give advanced price predictions based on the market and the particulars of the buying organization, supplier or individual. Suppliers can also get detailed feedback on how they perform compared to the competition. They can enter complex bids and price schemes using functions and market data. In addition, they can propose multiple alternatives and even entirely new products or services.

From an evaluation standpoint, these solutions support cross-functional processes where each participant only sees and scores they are supposed to see. Answers from stakeholders can be weighted and analyzed based on various criteria. Analysis and comparison can be on all, or just some, offers from all suppliers (including alternatives).

3. Category intelligence

The ability to provide outside-in intelligence to enhance the sourcing process to ensure that ‘money’ left on the table is minimized.

The average sourcing solution allows customers to collect and cement internal knowledge about categories by enabling users to enter information on categories and category strategies to ensure they are known and applied in sourcing events. In addition, they can build simple category-specific KPIs using the platform analytics ability.

Top-performing vendors go beyond this by providing their customers with outside-in intelligence on markets and categories. This intelligence covers data feeds for forecasts (price trends and history) and highly specific third-party sources for both opportunity identification and risk reduction.

Customers can use that knowledge to build their own category strategies and use external cost data to maintain commodity pricing and trends over time by category and item. Certain providers leverage their analytics capabilities and data model to support category strategization and also price management (vs. market/community price) processes.

4. Guided sourcing

The capacity to augment users by providing recommendations in terms of process and/or outcome.

The average solution includes some level of guidance that is mostly based on pre-defined rules to provide user support via rules-driven wizards while ensuring compliance with internal processes and best practices. Pricing guidance is based on differentials between prices in bids and historical/current prices.

Top performing vendors go beyond guidance about how an event should be built (cost model to be used, suppliers to be invited, etc.) and include recommendations about when an event should be launched and what outcome should be expected. The providers we have seen use community intelligence (based upon similar events from other users) and even ML/AI that can analyze supply/demand signals, market events and related cost changes (transportation, duties, etc.) and dynamically adjust pricing and category guidance in real time to identify unique or time-sensitive opportunities.

5. Project/program management

The ability to support collaboration (tasks, milestones, project/program-based sourcing) before, during and after sourcing events.

Sourcing often requires internal and external collaboration. It is especially true for complex goods and services or project/program-based procurement (customer projects, NPI, etc.).

The average sourcing solution supports the definition and management of projects, tasks and milestones at a high level. Tasks and milestones can be defined against projects by simply tagging stuff to a project ID/name, include dependencies and have their status and progress tracked. Sourcing events can be linked to a related project or program.

Top performing providers offer project management features similar to best-of-breed project/program management tools. Customers can create complete project workflows, manage and plan (and, when required, reallocate) associated resources. They can also drill down into specific projects by using interactive dashboards with customized formula-based KPIs. I have seen how these providers link projects/programs and all related RFx by, for example, pushing relevant details from the program (SOP, EOP, part numbers/description, multi-year program volumes) in sourcing events and feeding back the project/program with the outcome of the individual RFx (status, pricing, etc.).

Why selecting Sourcing technology can be difficult

Selecting any technology product can be difficult for a variety of reasons. Below are some of the most important factors you should consider when starting this journey:

• Market characteristics:
  • The sourcing technology sector is large, complex and fragmented, with a diverse range of vendors sometimes specializing in specific areas (public sector, SaaS spend, direct, electronics, etc.). This multitude of options can be overwhelming for procurement organizations looking to find the best fit for their specific needs. 
  • New features and functionalities are constantly emerging. Keeping pace with the evolving landscape and selecting a solution that can scale with future needs requires ongoing research and evaluation.
• Interoperability: Sourcing is at the crossroads of many other S2P activities, such as supplier management, contract management and ordering. In addition, sourcing depends on other processes like supplier management as the efficient and effective selection of suppliers and awarding requires data beyond price (performance, risk, etc.).
• Configuration management: Despite the fact that sourcing processes are well known and established, there are multiple variations, even with an organization. Therefore, the need to configure a solution to fit with potential specific requirements is often an important activity. And, not all solutions have the same degree of configurability nor the same approach to configuration management (self-service by customers, via support tickets, etc.).

How Spend Matters can help you select Sourcing technology

Spend Matters specializes in procurement technology diligence. In addition to projects and advisory, Spend Matters offers Insider, the only membership community and technology comparison and selection tool of its kind: access to Spend Matters SolutionMap vendor rankings dataset combined with independent, zero pay-to-play, brutally honest coverage of solution providers, market developments and trends affecting procurement, finance and supply chain. 

We can help you find a solution that:

• Can support the transition from manual (email, Excel, etc.) sourcing processes to 100% digital processes.
• Have the required configurability to be tailored to your specific needs and processes (in a self-service mode or via support, depending on your capabilities and preferences).
• Can address certain categories or all spend, including direct spend.
• Provides outside-in intelligence to enhance decision making processes.
• Enable users to deep dive in costs (TCO) and run various scenarios.
• Can augment your teams by providing guidance and insights at every step of the sourcing process.
• Enhance efficiencies by enabling automation and autonomous sourcing.

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Discover Sourcing vendors

These are the vendors we are covering today (or very soon). Visit their vendor directory pages on Spend Matters for a quick vendor overview, demographic information and relevant articles, including vendor analyses.

Vendor	Description
Archlet	Archlet is not a complete sourcing tool (e.g., it does not offer e-auction support) nor does it claim to be. Archlet augments existing sourcing applications. It offers a user-friendly sourcing solution and is a tool that enables optimization and scenario-based sourcing, key data-backed analytics and insights to drive quicker sourcing decisions.
Arkestro	Arkestro provides a predictive procurement orchestration platform that leverages data, behavioral science, game theory and machine learning to identify savings and optimal prices to accelerate sourcing processes in every category of addressable spend.
Corcentric	Corcentric has a comprehensive S2P offering that was born out of Corcentric’s various acquisitions over the last decade and can also complement through its services offering (advisory, managed services). Corcentric’s sourcing tool stands out for its capabilities for better decision-making, cost identification and strategic sourcing opportunities across various spend categories, including direct materials and services.
Coupa	Coupa is a leading S2P platform offering a user-friendly interface, automated sourcing processes and opportunities for cost savings based on its large user community and gathered community intelligence.
DeepStream	DeepStream is highly configurable so that all RFx processes can be created without having to venture outside the platform. In addition to automating e-sourcing, DeepStream helps customers define their procurement strategy and uses their strategic needs and market trends to drive best practice sourcing activities.
ebidtopay	ebidtopay follows a single-source-code approach with many configuration and customization options without the need for coding changes. Its sourcing capabilities cover category management, RFx management, e-auctions and savings management for direct and indirect spend.
Efficio	Efficio is a renowned sourcing consultancy known for its expertise in strategic sourcing and category management. Its sourcing solutions offer in-depth category insights, supplier performance analytics and strategic sourcing recommendations to optimize sourcing strategies across various spend categories, including direct materials and services.
Esker Sourcing	Esker Sourcing, formerly known as Market Dojo, offers a user-friendly sourcing solution with a focus on the European mid-market that has a robust sourcing engine and also includes category assessment capabilities (which is rare in the mid-market).
Fairmarkit	Fairmarkit specializes in AI-powered sourcing solutions that prioritize tail spend optimization. Its platform leverages artificial intelligence to analyze and optimize tail spend categories, driving cost savings, improved supplier relationships and enhanced sourcing efficiency in tail spend procurement activities.
GEP	GEP is more than a technology provider. It offers a full range of services, including market/category intelligence, supplier management services and BPO. Its natively integrated suite covers sourcing including category management, cost and should-cost modeling, opportunity identification and sourcing execution that can be used for indirect and direct spend.
Ivalua	Ivalua offers a natively integrated, intuitive and very flexible suite that includes sourcing. It has capabilities for all types of spend, including direct materials. Ivalua enables organizations to streamline sourcing, optimize supplier relationships,and better outcomes through cross-functional collaboration and cross-process fertilization and integration.
Jaggaer	Jaggaer is a sourcing technology provider known for its comprehensive sourcing suite covering all types of spend that it built over time through multiple acquisitions. Jaggaer’s platform also offers sophisticated direct materials sourcing capabilities. Its solution empowers organizations to drive strategic sourcing initiatives and optimize procurement processes.
Jiga	Jiga covers the sourcing (RFQ automation module) and ordering (PO collaboration and tracking modules) of manufactured parts. It enables and enhances these processes with capabilities related to supplier discovery in its network of vetted companies, extended collaboration on RFxs (including design of components) and orders (confirmation, tracking, etc.) and system orchestration with integrations.
K2 Sourcing	K2 is a provider of RFx and auction management software that serves the mid-market in North America. It has built a loyal customer base using only organic growth to fund its operations. This ‘steady as she goes’ mindset has resulted in a solution that provides strong support for key e-sourcing functionality and even some unique features that prove the vendor has years of experience collaborating with procurement organizations.
Keelvar	Keelvar is an innovative sourcing technology provider known for its AI-powered sourcing optimization capabilities. Leveraging artificial intelligence, Keelvar streamlines sourcing processes, enhances supplier collaborations and drives cost efficiencies by providing automated sourcing strategies and optimization algorithms for effective direct material procurement.
LevaData	LevaData’s solution focuses on cost optimization, NPI/NPD (new product introduction/development) and supply risk. It continuously enhances its deep data management capabilities (suppliers/manufacturers monitored in the platform, data on parts) to cover more categories beyond electronics, where it started. It means that the platform constantly monitors every known data attribute at the part level to detect opportunities. LevaData taps into a broader range of research, public information, partner sources and news sources to inform the trends and predictions relevant to customers.
mdf commerce	mdf commerce is a solution provider with sourcing and e-procurement capabilities for the US and Canadian public sectors. New sourcing events, called solicitations, can be created in the tool following a structured, multi-step process to gather and define requirements (from a content perspective and process perspective). As required in the public sectors, events based on one or two envelopes and the related cross-functional factual evaluation processes that can factor in multiple technical and commercial weighted criteria.
Medius	Medius is a modular S2P suite covering the mid-market in Europe that customers mainly use for indirect spend and to benefit from suite-level integrations and especially the strong integration of sourcing with other upstream/downstream processes.
MeRLIN	MeRLIN is a suite provider focused on direct materials. Its sourcing module covers tools for project management, supplier discovery and supply chain optimization to drive cost efficiencies and enhance sourcing outcomes.
MESH	MESH is only a few years old and focuses on direct materials to enable manufacturers to centralize and streamline their strategic sourcing, digital procurement and supplier management. Its sourcing engine is well suited for manufacturers (material management, deep cost breakdowns and support for CAD/CAM files).
Onventis	Onventis serves the European mid-market (with a focus on German speaking countries). It has been incrementally building and expanding its S2P suite and offers a supplier network. The solution has robust capabilities for indirect and direct.
Part Analytics	Part Analytics is a sourcing solution for direct materials that focuses on analyzing bills of materials to help identify savings opportunities and drive compliance. It leverages a wealth of data on electronic assemblies to identify savings opportunities and risks by providing users with a view of cost, risk and technical information.
Proactis	Proactis is a provider with a robust S2P product when compared to other vendors in the European middle market. Its capabilities cover standard and, in many cases, complex business scenarios. From a sourcing perspective, customers can leverage the solution to manage and potentially automate single and multi-stage sourcing events while ensuring compliance with regulations. These templates can encompass all necessary steps, tasks and approval workflows.
Procurence	Procurence’s Meercat is primarily and historically a supplier management solution that provides robust capabilities to manage suppliers of direct materials that is particularly well-suited for customers that have deep and complex requirements for SPM/SQM (supplier performance/quality management). It is expanding to address sourcing with a focus on direct spend.
ProcurePort	ProcurePort offers a strategic sourcing solution with a focus on configuring and managing RFx and auction processes. The vendor started as a reverse auction platform, later adding support for RFx creation and adjacent capabilities for contract and supplier information management (SIM). ProcurePort customers are US-based companies including both larger manufacturers and small companies. In addition, ProcurePort offers managed services for reverse auction management and spend analysis
Promena	Promena offers solutions for e-sourcing and e-auctions, spend analysis, supplier management and e-procurement. It is fully owned and operated under the umbrella of a procurement BPO firm. It is continuously growing its functional coverage and partner network to become a S2C suite for small and mid-size businesses in its local market (Turkey) and beyond.
Raindrop	Raindrop is a flexible, easy-to-use and fully integrated S2P suite designed for small to medium-sized enterprises. It is scalable and modular, so customers can acquire and deploy modules based on their particular business needs and can scale further. Raindrop offers RFx and reverse auction capabilities and offers some support for BOM-based sourcing within the system.
Supplios	Supplios targets the manufacturing industry (specifically discrete manufacturing, such as automotive), including many industry-specific workflows spread across the highly complex long-running supplier/manufacturer lifecycle. The solution has a user-friendly interface and enables self-service configuration. It covers supplier management and direct materials sourcing (except e-auctions) from scratch, and intake (sourcing request) and templates are provided in the platform.
QAD	QAD is a provider that has a broad offering (including an ERP). It acquired Germany-based Allocation Network in January 2021 to build its sourcing capabilities. The company focuses on direct spend for manufacturers and industrial companies with a sourcing module that supports all types of sourcing events, from the simplest to the most complex. Customers can create detailed cost modeling to deep dive into cost/value elements and drivers to compare offers with a total cost of ownership approach and even includes bonuses/penalties on top of suppliers’ quotes.
RFP360 (a Responsive company)	RFP360, now part of RFPIO and called Responsive, specializes in sourcing solutions that automate and streamline RFP processes. With a focus on RFP management, bid evaluation and supplier negotiations, RFP360 enhances sourcing efficiency, drives cost savings and simplifies RFx management for effective sourcing outcomes across various spend categories.
SAP Ariba	SAP Ariba is a leading S2P suites platform known for its comprehensive capabilities in multiple verticals and for all spend. Its sourcing offering covers all the expected functional blocks (RFx, e-auction, savings management, project/program management, etc.). The company recently launched a category management module that it will continue to enhance.
Simfoni	Simfoni, which started with just a spend analytics offering, now offers two core platforms: Spend Intelligence and Spend Automation. Spend Automation is its new procurement support platform with vendor management, basic quick-sourcing and a contract repository on the upstream buy-side and catalog hosting, order management, central marketplace access, invoice automation, rebates management and some underlying workflow support on the downstream procurement side. It also includes a BuyDesk staffed by category experts to augment sourcing capability wherever needed within the organization.
VORTAL	VORTAL offers a comprehensive sourcing platform with a specialization in tail spend optimization. VORTAL’s sourcing solution focuses on cost reduction opportunities, supplier negotiations and auction management for tail spend categories. It enhances sourcing efficiency, drives cost savings and streamlines supplier interactions in tail spend procurement activities.
Zumen	Zumen is a complete direct material procurement lifecycle execution platform for teams involved in new product launches and the continuous optimization of existing products. All the NPD and purchasing activities are centralized in a single, transparent recording system that integrates easily with their ERP, product and engineering tools. The no-code platform is extensively configurable to match customer requirements and includes an integration framework to connect the solution with other systems.

Glossary

Term	Definition
BoM	A BoM (bill of materials) is a structured list of components, parts and materials required to manufacture a product or assembly. It provides detailed information on the components needed and their relationships.
Category Management (CatMan)	Category management in procurement is a strategic method (or discipline) that treats procurement categories as some sort of ‘business units’ rather than isolated purchases. It strategically orchestrates procurement activities based on specific spending categories, with a focus on adding value through ongoing analysis to anticipate trends, mitigate risks, and adapt to demands or supply changes. It strategically manages categories throughout their lifecycle involving long-term planning, market analysis and relationship-building with suppliers.
ERP	ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) refers to software systems used to manage and integrate core business processes, such as finance, human resources and supply chain management.
NPI/NPD	NPI stands for New Product Introduction, while NPD stands for New Product Development. These terms refer to the processes involved in bringing a new product to market, from initial ideation to final launch. NPI focuses on pre-optimizing and negotiating the best components for new products, while NPD involves the overall development and creation of new products.
PLM	PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) refers to software that helps companies track, manage and share product information throughout the entire product lifecycle.
RFQ/RFI/RFP	Requests for Information (RFI), Requests for Quotation (RFQ) and Requests for Proposal (RFP)
Sourcing Execution	Sourcing execution refers to the process of carrying out sourcing activities such as managing market approaches, running RFxs (development, execution, and award), conducting e-auctions and managing portfolio/performance in the context of procurement.
Strategic Sourcing	Strategic sourcing follows an event/process-based approach, focusing on immediate cost savings and supplier selection, negotiation and contract management. It aims at selecting the right suppliers and negotiating the best pricing to meet business objectives.
TCO	Total cost of ownership (TCO): The total cost associated with acquiring, owning and using a good or service, not just the initial purchase price.