They’re back. Following up on their best-selling book, Straight to the Bottom Line: An Executive’s Roadmap to World-Class Supply Management, co-authors Doug Smock and Robert Rudzki have released their much-anticipated sequel: On Demand Supply Management: World-Class Strategies, Practices, and Technology

In this latest collaboration, Smock and Rudzki team up with ex-P&G sourcing guru-turned consultant Stephen C. Rogers to examine the increasingly important role technology is playing in accelerating supply management transformation. The Cliff Notes on their take is that technology will support supply management in four areas:

1. Data integration across all functions, division, and companies (e.g., data transfer between sourcing and compliance engines, portals, and role-based dashboards)
2. Mathematics that allow deep analysis across those boundaries (e.g., optimization)
3. Economics that allow widespread e-tool use (e.g., On Demand/SaaS)
4. Technology applications that extend and integrate supply processes (e.g., full supply management suites and enterprise application integration)

The 300-plus-page tome is chock full of case studies on how leading supply management operations have leveraged technology to improve their spending analysis, strategic sourcing, contract management and supplier management operations. There is even an entire chapter dedicated to the increasingly important link between product development and supply management — and how technology is fostering this marriage.

My personal favorite chapter deals with best practices for supply management solution adoption, which has been a hot topic on Supply Excellence recently. The authors wisely argue that the age-old measure of return on investment (ROI) is wrong headed:

“A positive ROI does not necessarily equate to success — it only pays back the bill for the software,” write the authors, adding that a company can achieve complete ROI with only limited usage of an e-sourcing application. “Real excellence is driven by wide usage that embeds the technology into the psyche and work processes of the organization. That is real adoption and can drive ROI to incredible levels beyond any project’s economic justification target.”

The book points to application ease-of-use, training, services support, and metrics as key ingredients for adoption success. The book cites the example of how Sun Microsystems began its e-sourcing initiative relying heavily on its SaaS solution provider to fully manage and support online sourcin projects, but through continued usage and training has transitioned to a largely self-sufficient model. Sun used detailed measures and goals for “percent of events,” to track and encourage the transition to self-sufficiency. The goal, according to the book, was “to make e-sourcing an organizational core competency that embeds sourcing tools into everyday work process.”

Get your own copy of On Demand Supply Management here. I’d let you borrow mine, but it’s pretty dog-eared and highlighted now.