As per yesterday’s post, figuring out your priority can be particularly painstaking because the maximum benefit is only realized when certain supporting systems are in the mix.
If we reverse our last post, you might well think that you need the following core modules to benefit from the indicated modules, and you might well be right.
Spend Analysis | –> | Product Management, Category Management |
e-Negotiation | –> | Spend Analysis, SSDO, Guided Buying |
SSDO | –> | Spend Analysis |
Contract Management | –> | Spend Analysis, Requirements Definition, Product Management |
Catalog Management | –> | Supplier Management, e-Negotiation, Guided Buying |
Purchase Order / Invoice Management | –> | SSDO, Guided Buying, Catalog Management, Supplier Management |
Supplier Management | –> | Opportunity Analysis, e-Negotiation |
Risk management | –> | Opportunity Analysis, Contract Management |
Product Management | –> | Contract Management, Guided Buying |
But something interesting falls out of this. You don’t really need anything to get started on supplier management, and the only thing you need to benefit from e-Negotiation is a way to make use of the data (be it spend analysis, optimization, category-management based guided buying, etc.). And when you start on your supplier management journey, it’s supplier information management (followed by data-backed supplier performance management).
What does this tell us? The starting point is a (set of) solution(s) that helps you get your supply management master data under control. After that, the primary buying categories, the market, the internal situation, and a host of other factors will need to be balanced to select your next (set of) priority(ies), but without data, you’re not going anywhere.