In this series we have been reviewing sourcing today, the primary phases and sub-steps, and how they look strategic on the surface but often hide a lot of tactical work underneath. Moreover, sometimes “strategic” is simply a decision that is entirely based on the results of a sophisticated analysis that can be encoded in a very complex rule.
What does all this mean? It means that systems can do more of the work and with next generation sourcing systems, the strategic decisions will be made by expert buyers who know the market in ways designers of systems can’t. Expert buyers who can identify external stimuli that occur, and impact, the market once every five to ten years (that a new system wouldn’t know). Expert buyers who can better judge the impact of a new supplier on the market that the system doesn’t have the history on. Expert buyers who know the best way to handle unexpected demands or change requests in a negotiation process.
Strategic will change from data gathering to data analysis to knowledge evaluation where the analyst first learns to analyze the data gathered to better train and correct the system to knowledge evaluation where the analyst learns to identify the gaps in the analysis or the weightings that need to change. It’s going to become primarily an intelligence exercise, not an analysis exercise. Computers can do considerably more analysis and number crunching than we can in an exponentially smaller amount of time. As a result, more and more analysis will be given to the computers, and more and more intelligence will be expected of the user.
And the entire sourcing process will be affect. How much? In the beginning, more and more of each step, and then of each phase will be automated. But then, in the longer term, the sourcing process will change and adapt to one that is more suitable for the knowledge-based endeavour that it is. What will this look like? Time will tell, but we have our ideas. And we will address them in at a future time.