We just wrapped up a blog series on contract management based on our new whitepaper, “The Why, What & How of Contract Management“. Starting today, we will shift our focus to strategic sourcing.
With businesses always on the brink of facing a new disruption, be it technological, natural disaster, political, economical, emerging economies, etc., the procurement landscape is highly volatile and complicated. Organizations today need a unique set of processes and technology for successfully carrying out a sourcing project and identifying savings opportunities.
Let’s understand the growing significance of strategic sourcing with the help of statistics. As per the Aberdeen Group study conducted in May 2012, strategic sourcing played a prominent to crucial role for 68% of the respondents. At 78% (crucial to prominent role), strategic sourcing is the life blood of procurement in best-in-class organizations as per the research carried out in 2013 by Aberdeen Group.
Another study by Hackett Group shows that 88% of the organizations cite strategic sourcing as a ‘major’ or ‘critical’ issue in 2013 as opposed to 71% in 2012.
With the kind of role that sourcing plays for organizations, it is necessary to leverage technology to extract higher benefits from the sourcing projects.
In the next blog we will prod further by discussing the driving forces behind sourcing automation.
