30 Days Left to Get Your Supply Management Solution Budget In Order …

… unless, of course, you are a government / defense contractor and on the government fiscal year. But we’ll assume you’re not, and move forward.

There isn’t an organization in existence that has a complete Supply Management Solution platform, not even an organization in the Gartner Top 25 or the Hackett Group top 8% even though they are much, much closer than the average organization. Most (average) organizations only have part of the Source-to-Pay spectrum covered, and almost half don’t even have a modern solution at all.

And, as we have indicated previously, this cannot continue. But you can’t afford everything, and big bang implementations usually go up in a big bang. So you need to start by figuring out what you need first, what the average price point is for the solutions most likely to meet your need, and get that in the budget.

And that will require a good ROI argument, which needs to be a believable one. Which means you have to understand the full impact of the acquisition, implementation, and usage cost of a new purchase, as well as the time it will take to reach the ROI the solution will achieve. For example, while an optimization-backed sourcing platform will identify 10%+ savings on the top 30% of spend, delivering at least 3% to the bottom line, if the contracts are three years, it will take 3 years to realize the savings, and not all will materialize without a proper Procurement platform that insures the contract is properly executed.

Plus, when it comes to Sourcing platforms, even if you pay a monthly SaaS subscription, there will still be the integration costs with the current platforms (including ERP), the training costs for the intended users, any customization costs that result, and delayed ROI costs as it will take a few months to get all users on the platform, which means that it will take a few months before significant savings are identified, and a few more months before savings start to materialize.

The savings will materialize, and the ROI over the long term will be considerable, but the best way to get the necessary budget for a Sourcing, Procurement, SRM, or Analytics platform is to be honest about the cost and the time to significant ROI, which will typically be 6 months to 12 months, minimum, not the first 3 to 6 months like some vendors will promise. But there was a time company’s would take the long, 5 to 10 year, view, and if you take the long view, you will save Millions, maybe Billions (if you are a Fortune 100).

And that can be true of any best of breed (conglomerate) Sourcing, Procurement, SRM, or Analytics platform. So, get your well researched, well thought out, arguments.