The recent economic turmoil not only forced many small and large companies in the private sector to rethink their cost management strategies, but also prompted governmental bodies and not-for profits to emphasize agility and be more efficient. With fewer tax dollars collected in the past year, governmental agencies - particularly those at the state and local level - have been hard pressed to “do more with less.” With this backdrop, it not surprising for public sectors to follow the lead of private companies in using advanced Sourcing and purchasing technologies hitherto available only to large organizations to drive down cost and improve efficiency.

For example, eGov Monitor recently published a case study on the Leeds Council Housing Organization, which leveraged On-Demand sourcing technology (full disclosure: it’s Ariba’s solution) to identify opportunities, save money and improve performance.

With the On-Demand deployment model, companies pay predictable fees to gets the results of efficient strategic sourcing and competitive bidding without worrying about managing software and hardware or stretching their already slim IT staffs to manage the technology infrastructure.

As taxpayers we would love our tax dollars used more efficiently and see more public sector and governmental agencies use the power of these new Procurement delivery platforms to achieve significant savings that can then be put to work in other areas. And the added intangible is that it also makes the Sourcing process more transparent.

Sundar Kamakshisundaram is a Senior Solutions Marketing Manager for Ariba, a global provider of spend and supply risk management solutions.