It is easy for an ambitious procurement leader to decide that enterprise spend management – driven by procurement is a good thing for a corporation. It is also relatively easy to persuade top corporate executives to buy in to the idea. After all, what corporate leader would not jump at the chance to save millions – sometimes billions – in unnecessary spending?

Much less simple, however, is the challenge of converting a complex corporate entity from a culture of independent – often undisciplined or unscientific – spend decision making to one in which most people will,

• Spend each corporate dollar as carefully as they would their own
• Be fully cognizant of the methods and techniques that lead consistently to the best sourcing and procurement decisions
• Be equipped, ready, and willing to use the tools that generate the best procurement decisions, and
• Sincerely believe that collaborating to promote corporate profitability through disciplined spending and consistently executed sourcing and procurement processes is the correct – and only – way to behave

A common lament among procurement leaders is that winning genuine acceptance, adoption, and support from spend stakeholders is far and away their greatest challenge. In this context, the term spend stakeholder includes P+L owners, department budget owners, the hundreds – sometimes thousands – of day-to-day spend decision makers, suppliers, and even personnel within their own procurement organizations. With this in mind, Zycus, a global leader in procurement technology solutions, has recently fielded a broad study aimed at defining which tactics and strategies are most effective for persuading people in complex corporate enterprises to collaborate actively in strategic sourcing and spend management initiatives, comply with strategic supply contracts, participate in supplier performance management endeavors, and adopt and use preferred procurement processes and technologies.