Strong branding is the goal of every business and government agency. With strong branding comes client loyalty, close networking relationships, and longevity in the market. For businesses, branding is focused on profit and growing market share. For government agencies, the focus for branding is on sustainability, and stability over time.
In both business and government products and service offerings, the objective is to foster longevity so that the organization can provide for the market demand, regardless of the motive. Let’s take a look at how the procurement processes of a business or government agency can achieve longevity through digital migration and how e-procurement strengthens your brand.
e-Procurement
E-procurement is the umbrella term for a variety of digital solutions that handle traditional procurement processes either online or in the cloud. The term covers a host of processes from sourcing, tendering, payment and billing processes, RFP and reverse auction market setup, supplier management, spend analysis, and other strategic sourcing issues. Also, there are e-procurement platforms available on the market that handle a few or all of the above functionalities within a single platform.
Better competition in any industry comes from two places:
- New digital arenas that foster competition
- Big data
Creating Digital Arenas
There are new kinds of digital arenas opening up as a result of e-procurement. One example is how reverse auctioning leads to the creation of a unique marketplace where suppliers bid for buyer accounts based on monetary values but also value-added specifics that meet the needs of specific buyers. Traditionally these arenas existed in the larger industry but matching the right fit has always been clunky. Nowadays with e-procurement and digital reverse auctions, buyers can specify their needs on a more detailed level, provide a narrow RFP, drive cost-savings with their own RFP, and host the auction themselves without paying out or giving up control to a third party. This ability to create new and more specific arenas has expanded the market due to the low cost of entry caused the market to fit niche needs beyond what has been available traditionally. To put it simply, these arenas are creating stronger buyer/seller reinforcement by beginning with smarter relationships from the outset. Without limiting auctions to auctioneering experts, buyers can host niche auctions on an as-needed basis and the market demand matches the need more readily.
The ROI of Big Data
Big data is something new in the digital procurement field that can be done digitally instead of manually. Instead of leaning on analytics professionals and industry experts to offer recommendations, e-procurement software records and tracks all procurement-related activities. After running technical analytics on the records, an e-procurement solution can offer unique and real-time spend analysis that offers business recommendations rooted securely in facts and based off of real organizational activity unique to your company and not just generalized by industry. Big data takes the guesswork out of analytics and turns it into a regular and data-rich reporting mechanism for your organization’s strategic plan. Client loyalty is a natural outcome of implementing big data because big data intelligently seeks out win-win outcomes.
When combined, better competition and better analytics lead to increased flexibility as a business. Spend analytics, investment direction, and other large-scale business decisions become precise and free up remaining funds for your business to branch out in informed ways. Though there is an initial investment in e-procurement software, the ROI as a result of the functionality you gain has gotten more precise.
Longevity
With cost savings that are undeniable, increased flexibility at all stages of the e-procurement process, and more robust competition due to creating new and robust arenas for suppliers and buyers to vie for accounts, e-procurement delivers longevity. In short, the adoption of e-procurement practices in a single solution or on a multi-solution platform is a huge contributor to ROI and future-proofing your organization. With the future under control and investment in new technologies incorporated as a strategy of the organization, these digital e-procurement processes, in turn, make your brand stronger. In fact, if you aren’t engaging in e-procurement on at least some level, it is likely that your brand will be left behind. As almost all global industries are digitizing business process management, taking one or many steps in the direction of digital process management is the smart way to ensure that your organization will not only exist but be a competitive player in your industry today and for many years into the future.
To find out if you are ready to take steps towards digitization, request a demo of ProcurePort’s cloud-hosted e-procurement solution today.