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What is e-Sourcing?
Introduction
In the last ten years e-Sourcing has moved from being a curiosity that was largely associated with one particular subset of its capabilities (reverse auctions) to a key back-bone of any progressive purchasing operation.
Components of Typical e-Sourcing Platforms
Platforms are typically comprised by the following elements:
More information on e-Sourcing tool selection
The Business Case for e-Sourcing
The benefits are substantial. As the capabilities of the technologies have developed and the price of accessing an e-Sourcing platform has fallen with greater competition and the advent of web-based "Software as a Service" (SaaS) models, business cases for e-Sourcing almost write themselves. So today the issue isn't about, whether purchasing teams should be using e-Sourcing. It's about ensuring the successful adoption of e-Sourcing so that it consistently delivers the value that its capable of delivering.
Where Next in the Technology Roadmap?
Moreover there are some interesting developments along the e-Sourcing technology roadmap known as "Collaborative Optimisation". e-Sourcing is increasingly moving from being focused on specifying something comprehensively for which suppliers can propose a price offer, towards a more collaborative model. This enables suppliers to propose alternatives to selected elements of customers' specifications, rather than simply quoting for what was asked for. This is known as "Expressive Bidding". The variety of options that this then presents needs some pretty clever analytical horsepower to resolve what the optimum solution is, and this is known as "Advanced Optimisation".
To learn what can be achieved with a low-cost e-Sourcing platform you may find the article; e-Sourcing Pilot - A Case Study informative.
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