INFORMATION & TECHNOLOGY
STATE OF FLUX
2014 GLOBAL SRM RESEARCH REPORT
154
Note: Percentages for this chart add up to more than 100% as respondents were given the opportunity to reflect more than one reporting approach being used.
Figure 5.11. Approaches to SRM reporting
OTHER (PLEASE SPECIFY) CREATE CUSTOM REPORTS FROM AN SRM SYSTEM UTILISE STANDARD REPORTS FROM AN SRM SYSTEM CREATE CUSTOM REPORTS FROM EXISTING SYSTEMS UTILISE STANDARD REPORTS FROM EXISTING SYSTEMS MANUALLY IN EXCEL
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
© 2014 State of Flux
REPORTING
Accurate and timely reporting is a vital component of effective SRM. It’s probably the activity that takes up most time, and while important, it can mean the time to work productively with the supplier and internal stakeholders is reduced. The overwhelming majority (81%) of respondents are currently using Excel spreadsheets to create reports. This high figure clearly illustrates the risk of creating an industry out of reporting. Less than a quarter of respondents are using any kind of standard reporting available from existing systems.
Reports do not contain the detail to be meaningful. Contract & Supplier Management Lead – UK local government
We get some reporting from the supplier side. Head of Category – leading UK food and beverage company
Manually from various sources of base data, presented in PowerPoint. Head of Vendor Management – global oil and gas company
Additional qualitative feedback from respondents provides more context:
Figure 5.12. Information and technology solution types
HOSTED SOFTWARE APPLICATION CLOUD SOFTWARE APPLICATION MAINFRAME SOFTWARE APPLICATION INTRANET SHAREPOINT DOCUMENTS STORED ON SHARED DRIVE
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%
© 2014 State of Flux
TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS
still using SharePoint or shared drives.
Where technology is used to support relationship management, it takes a number of different forms with only a small proportion utilising a cloud or hosted solution. We expect this to increase over the coming years, to address some of the SRM barriers highlighted and as software solutions improve further to meet respondents needs. The use of mainframe software applications is the only area to drop from last year, while the vast majority of companies are
Our research into the use of information and technology shows that maturity remains at a low level. Even the maturity of leaders is only assessed as developing. This is in part explained by the heavy reliance on SharePoint and shared drives, with only a handful implementing cloud based or hosted solutions.
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