We all know that persuading suppliers to participate in e-procurement is in itself a change programme. Let’s face it; your supplier base is probably a mixed bag ranging from multi-national suppliers through to one-man bands, and convincing this range of suppliers to change the way they work is no mean feat.
Like anybody else Suppliers need a reason to participate and having someone dedicated to supplier change is essential. A good structured communication plan is essential, and engaging those suppliers at the correct time is vital, and timing that communication crucial. Suppliers can be keen, but if they don’t see the return in investment in orders being generated they become pretty well turned off.
Any organisation today needs to reduce expenditure, and buyers need to ensure that they are not increasing supplier costs of doing business with them, but ensuring that any changes they instigate offer some benefits.
One example I came across the other day was with a photographer who by doing business with their local authority was reluctantly faced with e-enablement, and the thought of having to raise electronic invoices was a complication he didn’t need. The outcome is that he has seen a month on month increase in cash flow and can actually sends the invoice from his blackberry whilst out on location, as he stated “brilliant – so quick and efficient”, and now takes just 20 minutes a month instead of a day.
Next time: We will look at rule 2 - make it easy for suppliers of all sizes and all levels of technical ability to generate and send you electronic invoices.
Thursday, 26 March 2009
Monday, 9 March 2009
The golden rules for getting suppliers to adopt eInvoicing - Introduction
They have recently introduced “Park by Phone” in my local town car parks. It sounds great. Pay for your parking by mobile phone, no need to carry change, receive an alarm 10 minutes before your time expires and pay for more time remotely.
Being curious about technology, I asked the traffic warden how she knew who had paid. She proceeded to show me how, on a mobile device, she could call up a list of anyone who had paid by phone in the car park we were in. The list revealed that no-one had paid by phone – everyone was still buying tickets at the machine. Not to be defeated she pulled up the list for a car park nearby where phone parking was “really popular”. The list revealed that only one person had paid by phone. Two car parks – capacity 400 – both full – only one person had paid by phone – hmmm!
How often have we seen ideas which are great on paper and which are executed crisply from a technological standpoint, fail because the really important link in the chain, the end-user, didn’t get it? Remember Hutchison’s Rabbit, a mobile revolution in the 1980s which withered on the vine because no-one used it? I am sure everyone reading this could think of as similar example.
This is a very current issue in e-procurement. Several companies have technology that does the job well on both the e-procurement and e-invoicing front. EGS is one of these. However the winners, particularly in the e-invoicing space, will be those companies who are able to get suppliers to join their eco-system. On the face of it the proposition is compelling for suppliers. No more paper invoices to create; invoices are received and processed instantly by buyers and payments are made faster. Surely suppliers should be beating a path to our door – but they aren’t. There are several reasons why not but one of those is that suppliers already have an invoicing method that works, so many see adopting e-invoicing as a cost.
We have spent a lot of time focusing our minds on this subject. We call it “supplier adoption” and it is a complex subject – too complex to tackle in a single blog entry. But complex or not, it is a nut that we must crack to be successful.
We have developed a list of “Golden Rules” that we believe we have to make work in order to maximize supplier adoption. In a series of blog entries of the next few weeks we will look at each of these rules in detail.
Next time: We will look at the first of these rules which examines selling the benefits of e-invoicing to suppliers.
Being curious about technology, I asked the traffic warden how she knew who had paid. She proceeded to show me how, on a mobile device, she could call up a list of anyone who had paid by phone in the car park we were in. The list revealed that no-one had paid by phone – everyone was still buying tickets at the machine. Not to be defeated she pulled up the list for a car park nearby where phone parking was “really popular”. The list revealed that only one person had paid by phone. Two car parks – capacity 400 – both full – only one person had paid by phone – hmmm!
How often have we seen ideas which are great on paper and which are executed crisply from a technological standpoint, fail because the really important link in the chain, the end-user, didn’t get it? Remember Hutchison’s Rabbit, a mobile revolution in the 1980s which withered on the vine because no-one used it? I am sure everyone reading this could think of as similar example.
This is a very current issue in e-procurement. Several companies have technology that does the job well on both the e-procurement and e-invoicing front. EGS is one of these. However the winners, particularly in the e-invoicing space, will be those companies who are able to get suppliers to join their eco-system. On the face of it the proposition is compelling for suppliers. No more paper invoices to create; invoices are received and processed instantly by buyers and payments are made faster. Surely suppliers should be beating a path to our door – but they aren’t. There are several reasons why not but one of those is that suppliers already have an invoicing method that works, so many see adopting e-invoicing as a cost.
We have spent a lot of time focusing our minds on this subject. We call it “supplier adoption” and it is a complex subject – too complex to tackle in a single blog entry. But complex or not, it is a nut that we must crack to be successful.
We have developed a list of “Golden Rules” that we believe we have to make work in order to maximize supplier adoption. In a series of blog entries of the next few weeks we will look at each of these rules in detail.
Next time: We will look at the first of these rules which examines selling the benefits of e-invoicing to suppliers.
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