Supplier Enablement

Supplier Enablement - bring it on

I've often referred to the Aberdeen Group as a good source for research on what's going on in the world of procurement. I see that Forrester has produced an excellent piece of work that looks at the Spend Management market opportunity.

With my remit of talking about supplier enablement I'm interested in who's doing it and who is planning to do it.

Forrester's research show that among the global businesses (>20,000 employees globally) when asked the question: Will your company purchase procurement or sourcing software in 2007?

The results were for Europe:

9% don't know?
33% are not using!!!
23% are using but will not purchase or upgrade in 2007
7% will be first time purchasers
21% will perform a minor upgrade
7% will perform a major upgrade

The significant outcome is that the don't know, not using and first time purchasers represent 49%. The will not purchase or upgrade in 2007 suggest they are in an early phase of implementation, possibly a pilot in a small area of the business, so adding in that 23%, we have 72%, the majority group. This majority group will not be driving supplier enablement in the way that a business would in an aggressive roll out of an application across the enterprise.

Conclusion: supplier enablement is not yet a mainstream activity.

Any other evidence to corroborate this?

Forrester report that there are 250,000 suppliers connected to the 5 leading supplier networks. That is a tiny number of suppliers.

That's why I say it is time to bring it on.

Click here if you are a buyer and need to know about supplier enablement.

Click here if you are a supplier and want to plan forward.

Labels: europe, global business, procurement, spend management, supplier enablement

posted by FrankB @ Tuesday, May 01, 2007