EBG recently hosted a webinar featuring Martin Casserdahl at OpusCapita sharing thoughts and ideas about how to manage buying of complex categories in eprocurement. This specific question was evident at EBGs spring summit Source 2 Pay Summit too where one question arose touching upon this topic:
How can an eprocurement system manage both those wanting the “Amazon” like experience (as in purchasing is not their expertise) and those for whom it is, i.e those wanting complex statistics, layers of information and direct linkage to other business critical systems?
The eprocurement market progress
Eprocurement systems have historically managed non complex categories of spend such as office supplies and IT and the business case has been at best a “nice to have” matter. What we are seeing is that eprocurement providers are increasingly addressing other type spend, they are offering more complex analytic tools as part of their ecosystem and the line between what has typically been indirect and direct spend is thinning.
Here you can view and listen to the recorded session with OpusCapita:
Live poll questions
During the webinar EBG presented live polls – a great way to learn from others joining.
Creating a business case for eprocurement
The first question was about challenges in creating a business case for eprocurement. It is evident it is challenging creating that business case, possibly considering what spend scope is presented. What can you include in your business case – how much of company spend?
What is the most problematic indirect spend category?
Services, services – again and again we are faced with the challenges services spend offer to all businesses. Taking into consideration that an increasing amount of spend probably consist of services – managing this category is of course more and more important.
How do you manage services spend?
Taking the challenges into account we thought it would be interesting to understand how those listening are managing that services spend. It seems there is no unified way to manage services spend.
How do you manage MRO (maintenance repair and operations)?
OpusCapita is taking a special interest in MRO spend as it exist in the twilight between direct and indirect spend. Even though MRO is not part of all company spend (and not among all who attended) the below results are too interesting, highlighting that also in this case there is not a one way to manage MRO spend.
A study by Deloitte suggest that efficient MRO operations can reduce procurement related costs by 8-15% (source: Deloitte – Smarter MRO). Taking that and an increased services spend into account we can probably see more interesting eprocurement business case reviews ahead.