Portals offer rapid ROI
Pulled from a recent feature on Line56.com it revealed positive feedback for Portals as a tool for collaboration to solve business problems. It quotes:
Return on investment: Portal-based composite applications that are designed to solve specific business problems can deliver rapid return on investment (ROI)--54 percent of customers surveyed report that initial deployments took fewer than six months. Customers cite benefits such as revenue growth, call center productivity improvements, stronger supplier partnerships, and increased customer retention and loyalty.
Click here to read the feature on Line56.com in full
Need a Supplier Portal to deliver stronger supplier partnerships?
Click here to get started.
Supplier Enablement – OPT IN or OPT OUT?
I was explaining to a customer some of the things that matter to a supplier when confronted with the decision to commit to trading electronically with a customer.
Usually the request (sometimes demand) comes from the customer and the expectation is that the supplier is gonna say; “Yes, I’ll do it”.
I was explaining that you need to have the view that some suppliers will OPT IN and some will OPT OUT. It is perfectly alright if the supplier chooses to Opt Out. Gulp!
Surprise, the suggestion that a supplier would Opt Out just hadn’t occurred to the customer. Accept it!
You have got to accept a supplier has a choice.
Here is a really useful piece of help if you have the task of taking a P2P, eProcurement or eInvoicing initiative to your supplier base:
The lesson that IMPAQ has learned is; supplier enablement results in suppliers electing to either to ‘opt in’ or ‘opt out’, getting to that point as quickly as possible is your primary objective.
Qualify your supplier early
Your purpose is to know if a supplier is going to work with you. By offering a choice – Opt In or Opt Out - you have a call to action on the supplier.
I need you by dd/mm to confirm your ‘opt in’ or ‘opt out’.Focus resources on Opt In
Then you can focus time and attention on those that want to participate rather than wasting time with those that can’t or won’t give you a decision.
Click here if you need some help?
English Local Authorities – eProcurement and their suppliers
The UK Public sector is making great strides in the use of eProcurement and here is an interesting report (April 2006) based on a survey commissioned by NePP.
NePP is the National eProcurement Project.
Local Authority expenditure has an estimated outturn for expenditure on goods and service of £29,412,000,000 in 2005/6.
Click here for source of this information.
If you are a supplier to local authorities it will inform you how, at a regional geographical level, local authorities are performing against the National Procurement Strategy.
Click here to access the report
The other reason you may, if you are a supplier, need to read this report (it is only 10 pages) is to understand how buyers are conducting their supplier analysis.
For example, one of the questions they ask is;
Have you put in place any strategies to limit over-dependency among your SME suppliers?Need some help to make sense of all this?
Click here
BASDA Members receive briefing on Zanzibar
IMPAQ hosted a meeting of BASDA members on Friday 16th June to present information about the Zanzibar Marketplace for the UK Public Sector.
The audience was primarily interested in the commercial opportunities for their businesses resulting from the availability of Zanzibar.
IMPAQ explained how BASDA members could generate license fee, services and maintenance revenues. For more information follow this link to contact
IMPAQ.
There was also a lively debate about the choice of XML standards for Zanzibar that has resulted in the implementation of cXML and the future implications of an on-going review for an Internationally Recognised Standard to include consideration of the Oasis UBL initiative.
For information about BASDA
click here
For information about Zanzibar
click here
What are you looking for?
I have just been alerted to a really useful web site that helps you to know those phrases and keywords that your prospective customers use in search engines that drive traffic to your web site.
I used it and searched on the phrases "supplier adoption" and "supplier enablement".
It appears that there are more than 16 x more pages listed in google with the phrase supplier adoption than supplier enablement.
However, more people are searching on "supplier enablement".
So my claim that supplier enablement is in its ascendancy is now proven.
Follow this link
NicheBOT and test your own phrases and keywords.
IMPAQ all you need to know about supplier enablement in one place.
Supplier Enablement - tipping point
There is growing evidence, some of it is available in previous posts in this supplier enablement blog, that we have reached a tipping point where we are all done talking about this and are now getting on with it!
I guess the dynamic now is; who is gonna pay as supplier enablement becomes a must do?
There are two camps:
- Those that maintain the supplier must pay - because their business model dictates that. That business model usually being the dictate of a provider to a buyer that is offering to deliver supplier connectivity. This is a valid business model particularly for those buyers that have purchasing power and are prepared to mandate suppliers to comply with their trading initiatives.
- Those that maintain the buyer will pay because it reduces the commitment the buyer would otherwise have to make to secure the participation of their suppliers. The approach being; without our suppliers' participation we don't get the full benefits and ROI on our investment. The incremental cost to us is not so high and we can always negotiate a cost recovery later when we have suppliers connected and they see the benefits in their business. We just get to where we need to be alot quicker than if we put the onus on our suppliers.
The economics for those that pay are:
The supplier pays a per transaction fee or a fixed fee per annum. In an ideal world the supplier would get to choose and that may be particularly important where there are a small number of low value transactions between a supplier and a customer.
The buyer accepts a cost to the business to support all their suppliers irrespective of the number of suppliers, the volume or value of transactions.
How is ROI computed?
Where a supplier pays they simply look at the impact on their gross margin for their costs and make an assessment as to whether that is affordable. That has to be tempered with a commercial assessment of the impact of not 'participating', as in; will I jeopardise my existing and future business with my customer?
For a buyer that is involved in a major investment and change program to roll-out electronic trading with suppliers there are a number of factors that need to be considered and perhaps the biggest of those is a risk assessement of the impact of suppliers choosing not to participate?
How many buyers do this?
The assumption is that suppliers will comply and if not we will bully them. That may work for some but not for all.
Does it matter any more as I have suggested we are at a tipping point?
It will be interesting to see which of the two 'pay' models becomes prevalant.
www.impaq.co.uk for more insight on how to deliver the participation of your suppliers.
Supplier Enablement – Software as a Service (SaaS)
One of the things that bother SMEs is the cost and complexity of investing in IT and there is good reason to believe the SaaS may provide a solution.
Read more at
FT.com Our view at IMPAQ is that SaaS provides the way to deliver supplier enablement.
More at
IMPAQ - delivering supplier enablement with SaaS.
Supplier Enablement - what have we learnt?
It is no longer about eProcurement, it is now all about supplier enablement. Source: eProcurement vendor.
Reminds me of a sign in a female office manager’s office that read; Don’t tell me I’m efficient, tell me I’m beautiful.
The benefits of eProcurement are well understood for the buyer but there is now acceptance that the full benefits are only accessible with suppliers’ participation.
So, would it be the case that; eProcurement is efficient and supplier enablement is beautiful?
More wisdom at
www.impaq.co.uk
