Zycus in association with Ardent Partners release the annual report on the state of strategic sourcing

PRINCETON, NJ, November 3, 2015 – Zycus, a leading provider of source-to-pay procurement solutions, in association with Ardent Partners, announced the release of the annual report on the state of strategic sourcing, authored by Andrew Bartolini, Chief Research Officer at Ardent Partners.

This latest report titled “The State of Strategic Sourcing 2015: The Four Pillars of Sourcing Success,” talks about:

• Current landscape – Sourcing pressures and challenges faced by sourcing leaders.
• Four Pillars of Sourcing Success – Critical sub-process areas that comprise strategic sourcing.
• Best Practices – Strategies and techniques used by best-in-class sourcing organizations to outperform their competitors.

Furthermore, the report reveals how a majority of CPOs and sourcing leaders need to enhance and optimize their relationships with other departments where they need to build and exert influence – for the good of procurement and the enterprise.

Ardent Partners analyzed the performance of 330+ sourcing and procurement teams and used “savings realized last year” and “percentage of spend sourced” as two key variables to determine maturity levels. They compared strategic sourcing capabilities and other factors, like process automation adoption, between best-in-class and all other sourcing teams.

Best-in-Class sourcing succeed in the consistent execution of their sourcing projects by taking a holistic approach to the entire sourcing process and leveraging process automation tools across it.” says report author, Andrew Bartolini. “Best-in-Class sourcing also requires teams to be able to blend traditional sourcing approaches with more robust category strategies, more penetrating views of supply markets, and deeper collaborative ties with suppliers.”