While I will be sharing with you the on-demand link from this morning’s Zycus webinar (Driving P2Pay Beyond Implementation) as soon as it is available, I wanted to post the results of the three polls that were taken during the session.
Both Zycus VP of Corporate Development Richard Waugh and I were somewhat surprised by the results.
For example, in the first poll, sixty-seven percent of respondents indicated that their current e-procurement platform is ERP-based. What this means is that we have not progressed as far as we might have thought beyond the Gartner “postmodern” ERP era.
The upside of this is that there is still a tremendous amount of opportunity (and market share) out there to be had by P2P service providers and that no one vendor has emerged as a dominant force.
In the second poll, we posed the question; what went wrong with ERP-based purchasing?
While factors such as implementation timeline (14%), cost and lack of procurement involvement (both at 7%), were cited, an overwhelming sixty-nine percent had no answer. In other words, a significant majority had no idea as to why their e-procurement initiative hasn’t delivered.
The inherent risk here is that those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. This result would seem to suggest that there still exists a disconnect between present-day procurement professionals and those involved in the implementation and oversight of the organization’s e-procurement strategy.
In the third and final poll, we asked the question: Will P2P purchasing solutions avoid the ERP “Legacy” Trap?
The most telling response in this regard is the thirty-eight percent who indicated that they weren’t sure.
What this tells me is that these individuals represent the greatest opportunity for P2P conversion. The reason is that I see them as the bridge between the old ERP-era mindset (the 38% who said no, P2P will not avoid the legacy trap), and the emerging P2P mindset (represented by the 25% who believe that P2P is indeed the answer).
Suffice to say, this was perhaps one of the most energetic and engaging webinars I have done, so you will definitely want to tune in when the on-demand link is available.
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Procurement Insights 
colincram
August 24, 2017
I look forward to the link to the webinar. E-procurement systems too often fail to deliver expected benefits. Many businesses cases that I have seen focus on savings from the ‘doing’ of the procurement and are often unrealistic and unachievable, such as parts of people’s jobs. The main benefits should come from much better procurement and better use of the data produced by the e-procurement system. However, that requires investment in more capable people – which can be expensive and something that organisations are reluctant to do. The need for this extra investment can also be ignored by those businesses selling such systems as it might reduce the chance of a sale. Consequently, the potential benefits are often unrealized