2024 GLOBAL SRM RESEARCH REPORT
VALUE
40
41
The importance of clearly defining and articulating supplier management drivers and benefits within a documented business case and accompanying communications strategy cannot be emphasised enough. This will help the organisation define and track financial and non-financial benefits, but, equally as important, allow key stakeholders across the business to understand why supplier management is important and help embed the practices into ways of working. A lack of organisational alignment on supplier management benefits is common. Defining and clarifying what they are can be undertaken by engaging with key stakeholders across the business – understanding what is important to their business areas from a financial and non-financial perspective when interacting and collaborating with suppliers. The softer, non-financial benefits may be harder to track and measure, but are nevertheless important to recognise. Our results this year show that, while Leaders are ahead in terms of recognising these benefits, they still tend to focus on the financial elements. Bringing these benefits together in a clearly defined and documented business case is crucial to helping embed Supplier Management across the organisation, supported by an accompanying communications plan. We see that Leaders tend to have a business case in place, linked to benefits derived from the programme. Understanding what value to track and how to track it can help underpin and add momentum to progressing the other pillars of supplier management, and lock in support from stakeholders across the business and suppliers alike. Our theme this year is Return on Relationships – understanding what can be achieved through working collaboratively with strategic suppliers. Once organisations are able to fully define these areas of value, it provides direction and focus for driving these relationships towards strategic, mutually-beneficial outcomes.
The key opportunities to drive more value are: • Ensure supplier management objectives are aligned with the organisation’s strategic goals and direction.
• Develop a compelling business case for supplier management and ensure it drives the case for change by including a change management communications plan. • Recognise the other benefits that supplier management can bring outside of traditional cost savings, through looking at other financial and non-financial areas of value. “Organisations that fail to identify, recognise and communicate all financial and non-financial benefits linked to supplier management may struggle to build a compelling business case to support embedding the practice across their organisation.”
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