Global Enabled Supply And Demand Chain Series: Procurement

Overview: The article questions the state of procurement enablement in 2003. However, this is a more cryptic question than ever under the current economic conditions. This question has been posed for all the functional areas of Global Enabled Supply and Demand Chain model (Order/Demand Capture, Sourcing, Procurement, Fulfillment, Logistics, Payment, Customer Relationship Management, and Product Lifecycle Management). The article asserts about a telling analysis specifically about procurement enablement. An overwhelming majority of enterprises indicated that spending for SCM and procurement solutions this year will remain the same or be greater than 2002. However, the bulk of spending will come in the second half of this year. Solution providers are validating these findings with most indicating that their sales pipelines are the largest they have been in years. However, it is clear that some suppliers will not be able to hold out until spending loosens up in the Q3/Q4 time frame. This is truly a buyer's market. Procurement solution functionality has matured greatly over the past few years, addressing new enterprise requirements and spending categories, such as services. Early adopters and solution providers have also developed strategies to at least ease the hurdles to effective e-procurement deployment especially supplier enablement and content management. However, during that time, ERP suppliers have caught up, introducing feature-competitive offerings of their own. The article further suggests that this has put pressure on solution pricing.

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Format: HTML | Date: May 2003 | Pages: 1