Supply Excellence — Top Supply Tips Continued: Start Simple

Top Supply Tips Continued: Start Simple

August 31st, 2007 · by Tim Minahan · No Comments · best practices, supply management

If you listen to purchasing blogs like this one, it would seem that supply management improvements are impossible without the use of advanced software. And why not? There is ample evidence from industry benchmarks (such as those from Aberdeen Group, Hackett Group, and CAPS) that use of strategic sourcing and supplier management software is a core to the success of the top-performing purchasing organizations. Yet, today’s submission to The 100 Greatest Supply Management Tips of All Time! contest offers some practical proof that you can drive supply management improvements by mastering the basics:

Start with the simple tools first: Get all of your sourcing professionals trained on Excel, Access, and PowerPoint. These are everyday tools which your team should be experts in using.

(Ironically, the tip was submitted by a purchasing executive at a financial institution that is well known for its use of business software, particularly to support purchasing operations.) Underlying this advice is the demographic gap that plagues the purchasing discipline today. Too many veteran supply managers are technology adverse, growing up in a time where manual negotiations and green-screen data entry systems passed as advanced purchasing techniques.

Future generations of purchasing professionals will not only be well versed in the above productivity tools, but they’ll also be experts in online negotiation and collaboration. And they will likely introduce new e-community approaches to supply management issues. (Sort of a Facebook for supplier management.)

Rate this tip here.

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