TECHNOLOGY
TECHNOLOGY
State of Flux opinion
In the Governance section of this report we shared that just 26% of companies have effective risk management in place for more than 75% of key suppliers. While this can’t solely be blamed on technology functionality (or lack of it) it will certainly be a contributory factor along with process and people issues. The global risk landscape is becoming more and more complex and technology will become even more important to be able to access and share information as well as reporting. It appears that many organisations have resigned themselves to “adequate” being the best description they can hope for when it comes to IT support for supplier management. The proportion of respondents that report full IT enablement has remained static for a number of years. For too long resourceful people in procurement have been capturing data in spreadsheets and storing on shared drives; practices that would be unheard of in other functions such as sales, finance or HR. It’s time to rekindle the spark of ambition and use a compelling SRM value proposition to push the case for more investment in technology.
Many organisations focus on functionality when reviewing SRM technology, rather than how technology can help drive change and ultimately consistency of supplier management across the whole organisation. Functionality can still be aligned to organisational priorities. For example if risk management is the current focus then the technology solution needs to provide the optimum risk functionality to combine with change management, process and people development to achieve the required result.
78 STATE OF FLUX
2018 GLOBAL SRM RESEARCH REPORT
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