Organisations continually need to find ways to cut back and optimise their spend. Today nearly all businesses understand that adopting e-procurement software, along with converting to e-invoices, brings the most savings whilst simultaneously modernising the procurement department.
So why is adoption still slow?
Challenges in e-procurement adoption
Even though e-procurement brings numerous benefits to the procurement function, the adoption rate is still a problem and a concern for some organisations. For a successful implementation and a fully developed e-procurement function, suppliers and buyers need to work together. This is where the most time, effort and resource is needed to make things effective.
For small and medium sized companies, supplier adoption is a more pressing matter. Integration between supply partners changes the principles of the organisation in a efficient way.
Resistance is another challenge most organisations are facing when talking about new technologies. Procurement officers are usually feeling comfortable with the traditional ways of making purchases. Due to the automation of the new process they may feel that they have less responsibilities and also have less control.
Change in the IT department
Change also needs to happen in the IT department. One of the ways this can be achieved is by actively trying to support other departments by putting in place cloud technologies that are quicker to implement and need significantly less support on the back end. As a result, this then frees up time for the IT department to spend looking at what’s going on in the market, understanding where the businesses problems are, who needs support and ultimately become more proactive. It’s a total transformation of IT in the business, from a tactical support driven environment to one of long-term strategy, innovation and much more influence. You can find out more about this subject by reading our whitepaper on ‘Moving to a Procurement Cloud’
Steps to increase supplier adoption
- Communicate with your suppliers – it is very important to know their issues and to find a solution to those problems. Acknowledge the fact that this is a partnership not a customer-vendor type relationship.
- Research the areas where you can make business adjustments for suppliers willing to use the portal – this type of strategy can increase supplier adoption and help you make savings. Adjusting billing terms with a few days can sometime make a big impact on a specific supplier, also offering some kind of a refund for achieving a certain goal you set, can be a good incentive.
- Offering a portal solution that has benefits for the suppliers can also improve supplier adoption – the more the solution can help the suppliers the more inclined to use it they will be, such as: greater visibility to changes in the orders, feedback on performance on the dashboard, quicker ways to get paid.
Supplier and user adoption is critical in maintaining a P2P solution. By devoting some time to better understand how your organisation can increase both user and supplier adoption you can provide the highest level of adoption possible for your procurement transformation programme.
If you are interested in understanding more about how to take advantage of your P2P solution, let’s have a chat!
Organisations continually need to find ways to cut back and optimise their spend. Today nearly all businesses understand that adopting e-procurement software, along with converting to e-invoices, brings the most savings whilst simultaneously modernising the procurement department.
So why is adoption still slow?
Challenges in e-procurement adoption
Even though e-procurement brings numerous benefits to the procurement function, the adoption rate is still a problem and a concern for some organisations. For a successful implementation and a fully developed e-procurement function, suppliers and buyers need to work together. This is where the most time, effort and resource is needed to make things effective.
For small and medium sized companies, supplier adoption is a more pressing matter. Integration between supply partners changes the principles of the organisation in a efficient way.
Resistance is another challenge most organisations are facing when talking about new technologies. Procurement officers are usually feeling comfortable with the traditional ways of making purchases. Due to the automation of the new process they may feel that they have less responsibilities and also have less control.
Change in the IT department
Change also needs to happen in the IT department. One of the ways this can be achieved is by actively trying to support other departments by putting in place cloud technologies that are quicker to implement and need significantly less support on the back end. As a result, this then frees up time for the IT department to spend looking at what’s going on in the market, understanding where the businesses problems are, who needs support and ultimately become more proactive. It’s a total transformation of IT in the business, from a tactical support driven environment to one of long-term strategy, innovation and much more influence. You can find out more about this subject by reading our whitepaper on ‘Moving to a Procurement Cloud’
Steps to increase supplier adoption
Supplier and user adoption is critical in maintaining a P2P solution. By devoting some time to better understand how your organisation can increase both user and supplier adoption you can provide the highest level of adoption possible for your procurement transformation programme.
If you are interested in understanding more about how to take advantage of your P2P solution, let’s have a chat!