Source: Oxford University
Executive Summary:
The software industry has invested heavily in the past ten
years on developing Internet based software to support commodity procurement.
Despite its critical impact on business performance there has been a much
smaller emphasis on new tools and processes to support high value, high risk
procurement transactions, although the area is now attracting more attention.
This paper takes a deeper look at this new segment and those processes and
tools which managers are using or plan to implement in meeting the growing
emphasis in this area.
Traditionally such sourcing incidents have been one-off
project based events requiring a great deal of flexibility to handle
specifications and evaluation largely outside the day to day procurement
activities of a firm. Sourcing for these strategic transactions have hence been
primarily process driven supported only by generic spreadsheets, email and
project management software. The assessment problems common to this space are
generally accepted to be too complex for a linear thinking computer model to
handle and thus it is generally the project manager or procurement director who
has the responsibility to determine the option with the best value and lowest
risk for their company.
Given the bespoke nature of such projects, tailored sourcing
tools have been largely unused, as of yet, within this space. That is changing
however as eSourcing solutions which have, to date, been focused on cost-based
strategic sourcing. Vendors of e-sourcing solutions have now begun to look at
the potential for specialized tools to meet the broader needs of procurement
professionals. This latest breed of procurement technology will likely focus on
those areas of decision support and evaluation which give procurement
professionals greater capacity to make an informed decision, reduce workloads
by automating processes, and maintain sufficient flexibility to accommodate any
sort of project or organizational process that may arise.
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