In the previous article, we highlighted Keelvar source voices (2021) Survey results showing that meeting the growing expectations of senior management is a major concern for supply professionals, along with managing supply chain disruptions that “keep them up at night”.
Environmental sustainability will be an increasing priority for companies with supply chains, but the need to address more pressing challenges has inevitably left sourcing teams with little ability to implement practices that can have a positive impact on the environment and sustainable sourcing today.
Undoubtedly, additional resources will be needed to manage all the ongoing disturbances. Encouragingly, our survey shows that there was at least some degree of recognition that sourcing professionals are unlikely to achieve top-tier goals without a strong team supporting them. Supply teams have seen their human resources grow, or at least remain stable, compared to those that have experienced a workforce decline in the past 12 months. But even for teams that experienced “slight” (18%) or “significant” (17%) growth, they can make better use of their time by offering digital solutions to help manage the scale of workloads.
Turn to technology
Recent challenges have been a wake-up call for Group C to accelerate the drive toward practices that improve business performance by enabling their supply teams to purchase smarter, lower business costs and identify potential barriers to achieving strategic goals ahead of any of them. competitors. But are the outsourcing teams ready for this, and how can buyers evaluate all these criteria to deliver the best prize?
One strongly confirmed answer, backed by many years of ROI examples in the case study, is to use e-outsourcing and optimization technology to more easily make better awarding decisions to suppliers based on total value, not just on the lowest bid. Fortunately, more teams are realizing that technical solutions are one of the best lines of defense in facing current and new challenges: 42% of survey respondents said updating sourcing technology has been a very important focus area for their organization in the past 12 months, and it’s great You hear just over 40% use such technology for at least half of their RFPs.
However, the overall pace of digital change is much slower than it should be. Nearly a quarter of survey respondents (23%) said they do not make use of electronic resource technology at all and instead rely mostly on manual processes or spreadsheets. With 44% citing internal processes and regulatory reasons as the primary barriers to broader adoption of electronic sourcing, the need for electronic sourcing to help sourcing meet C-suite’s business goals for 2022 is crystal clear.
With the new year approaching, it’s time to evaluate beneficial sourcing solutions on the market that can address many of the challenges revealed in this survey report, including Keelvar’s Sourcing Optimizer and Automation solutions. And because sourcing today is more than competing on cost—risk, capacity, reliability, and sustainability are all key factors—getting the right enabling solution will be critical to setting your team on the right track for what the fast-approaching future will bring.
Download the full report here
