Search for the Best Results and Buy Smarter

Bits and Splits/Adobe Stock

One of the foundational rules of sales is that if customers don’t know the product or can’t see it on the shelf when they shop, they’re never going to buy it.

As a result, distribution systems are critical for any business. A supplier can have the best product or service in the world, but if it never appears somewhere the end user can become aware of it, it will never be purchased. Hence the importance of what logistics professionals call “the last mile” in physical supply chains — the final leg of the transportation journey that delivers a product or service to the consumer.

最后一英里的概念也适用于企业购买。卓越的采购过程和系统必须确保购买的最终用户可以找到最适合其需求的产品或服务，并遵守公司的政策和目标。这需要超越仅仅是一系列以前谈判的内部目录，意味着为员工订购商品。采购中的数字转型可以帮助公司解决最后一英里并解锁业务价值。

In this final article of this series, we discuss this digital transformation and explain how organizations can enable systems to help end users know what to buy and how to easily purchase it.

RELATED WEBINAR:Transforming Procurement in Real-Time

Buying Smarter

It’s fair to say that spend control processes have always been part of procurement’s DNA, and some organizations are hesitant to give up that control in favor of greater stakeholder flexibility. But this is an outdated way of thinking.

Perhaps more important than spend control or spend management is buying smarter. In most cases buying smarter is not about just pricing. Rather, price is often just one element of a broader purchasing equation that evaluates the overall impact to the organization beyond just the amount paid to a supplier. One supplier may offer what appears to be a lower cost. But that number may not factor in additional costs such as logistics and shipping, or factor in known risk related to a supplier that has problems with delays, or frequently has packing errors resulting in returned goods.

购买更智能是关于通过分析和比较所有购买选项来保护用户和业务的最高价值;确保您选择的选项与您公司的合同，政策和业务规则保持一致;剩余在您的业务部门的既定预算范围内;当然，履行用户的业务需求。

然而，购买更智能的最重要元素是能够搜索和找到所有可行的选择，并通过适当的信息来补充它们，以比较和分析潜在的购买。支持此功能的核心要求是具有100％的准确实时数据。

寻找最佳结果

In procurement, the last mile means delivering negotiated content, and potentially broader market data, to the end-user’s screen — usually within an e-marketplace (e-store) connected to an end-to-end e-procurement solution. The effectiveness of the e-marketplace largely depends on how easily the user can apply keywords, filters or specific data to search between all available catalogs (internal, external and public) and bring the results from the search into a screen that presents key data in real-time for analysis and comparison.

The effectiveness of this process will depend on how the purchasing data is stored or accessed, how current it is, how many attributes and supporting details are available and how well they are displayed in a consumable format. This allows for comparison shopping in a competitive environment.

但是，还有另一个能力来帮助用户在搜索过程中找到最佳结果：指导用户朝着最佳采购选项的系统，如通过可确保在决策过程中优先考虑的采购函数的采购功能。这是配置工作流程和业务规则的能力进入混音的地方，以允许在强制执行政策和业务规则的环境中购物。

在今天的市场中，电子采购解决方案具有不同水平的逐步更高的搜索能力。这些包括：

• 那些只搜索内部的人，或者有时被称为托管目录
• 那些可以在外部目录中搜索的人（通常在供应商自己的网站上），但不是直接来自市场。用户需要知道是否在电子采购中或“打出”到供应商网站的产品或服务，如果是的话，哪一个。然后，用户必须转到供应商的在线商店以运行搜索，然后将所选产品或服务带回电子采购，以完成申请过程。这被称为1级打液。
• 那些可以从电子采购系统内的外部供应商目录中存储一些信息的人。这通常被称为2级打液。电子采购搜索引擎可以在用户搜索中找到这些产品或服务，可以与其他产品进行比较。这种方法有几个缺点，因为存储此信息需要不断更新以避免在处理订单时避免差异，但用户仍然必须转到外部站点以验证价格，并且许多供应商根本不支持2级打孔。
• 那些可以从某些外部供应商网站访问的实时数据，并可以同时在内部和外部目录中搜索，可以访问提供它的供应商的数据。这需要不同类型的集成过程来确保实时数据更新，并要求供应商合作启用它。
• Those that can search for products and services across any internal or external catalog or marketplace (without requiring any type of integration or commercial agreement). These search processes work in a similar way to Level 1 and Level 2 punch-outs, but the difference is that since there is no need for a commercial agreement nor an integration, the search capability must be able to bring the required procurement data into the requisitioning process.

自我评估

Smart buying can be a controversial concept, especially when it’s absence would imply that the opposite type of buying is happening.

But if procurement sets aside concerns of the occasional ruffled feather, a candid dialogue can occur within an organization. The concept of buying smarter introduces the possibilities that e-procurement solutions offer to organizations. This includes a transformed experience where purchases aremade with real-time data，所有可用的供应商选项在最佳的经济方面比较，所有风险都最大限度地减少，并且始终确保符合业务政策和规则的遵守情况。

As a self-assessment for the intelligence of their buying practices, procurement leaders can look for the following foundational pillars of an e-procurement approach.

• E-catalogs as a dynamic and integrated source of real-time data that enables all purchasing scenarios. Sometimes an integration within a supplier’s systems is required to assure real time data while purchasing. The e-catalog is a key part of any e-procurement solution and goes beyond a static list of items, prices and features of products and services.
• An e-marketplace (e-store) with an easy to use interface. All available sources a (e.g., internal or external catalogs, e-forms, lists, kits, bundles, templates, policies, etc.) are accessed by a powerful search engine. Search results are returned to a single interface that display alerts and real-time data to support the comparison of the results and to enable a good buying decision.
• Advanced requisitioning mechanisms with a real-time guided buying approach. A requisitioning process linked to e-catalogs and e-marketplaces enables procurement to bring more spend under management, while at the same time to guide users to a cost-optimized approach in a simplified manner (guided buying) and to enable compliance with internal policies and procedures (e.g., online help, workflows and business rules). This requisitioning process is normally integrated with other enterprise systems (e.g., IMS, WMS, CLM, SLM) to fulfill all requirements as part of a comprehensive digital transformation strategy.

Successful implementation of these principles will meet the challenge of the last mile in corporate procurement. To deliver a better buying experience fueled by modern search technologies, while at the same time driving business value by guiding employees to the right products and services is more than an advanced procurement strategy — it’s just plain smart.

Related: Free Webinar

Join Spend Matters’Xavier Olivera.along with a series of guests fromAquiireand theLDS Churchas they discuss the benefits of real-time data and how they and others areusing it to their advantage.

Register now for one or all of these quick-hit 15-minute webinars:

• PART ONE:通过实时数据，引导购买和合规性实现真正的购买控制
• PART TWO:How Real-time Data Transforms B2B Procurement Shopping and Supplier Management to Accelerate Savings
• 第三部分：User Adoption and Huge Savings through Real-Time Procurement Marketplace

View the webinar here.