Procurement Magazine April 2021 | Page 74

DIGITAL PROCUREMENT

always understand what the full charter and potential of the procurement organisation is . So I think , for procurement leaders , it ' s important to make sure all stakeholders understand the benefits and are prepared to start thinking about the change .

“ The sooner you can have those conversations , the sooner you ' re going to be able to really think about what this project looks like , because it ' s never just about the technology , right ? It ' s about people , process and technology , and it ' s an opportunity to drive processes that are more effective because they ' re more connected ; you use the technology as a catalyst for that .”

Next Schanker details the need to evaluate different technology platforms . He explains that procurement leaders should not merely focus on the solutions completing individual functions as best as possible , but to “ focus on integrated processes , collaboration capabilities , community intelligence and the aspects of the platform you choose that will actually help you collaborate within your organisation - and also collaborate

“ There are lots of ways that BSM can help foster collaboration ,” says Schanker . “ One is that you can build collaboration tools . People think of online communities , forums and information sharing as separate and distinct from the software platforms that they use . But some BSM platforms have started to integrate that collaboration directly into the platform .”

Giving an example of this Schanker reflects on the events of the past year . “ When someone was doing a supplier risk assessment and realised they had to come up with a totally new questionnaire to check on supplier risk and controls around the pandemic , there were companies within Coupa that were sharing the pandemic questionnaires that they had come up with and they posted to the community . So when other people were trying to create their own , they could look to the community to see what other folks were doing and use that collaboration as an opportunity to learn from their peers , not just within their company , but across companies , because everyone was trying to figure these things out at the same time .”

Schanker also identifies another important piece of collaboration – sharing anonymised , aggregated data across companies . “ This is something that Coupa has really focused on for the entirety of its existence : the idea of being smarter together , and what could you do with this information in terms of benchmarks or in terms of prescriptive insights that would let you know what ' s happening ?

“ A simple example is as an individual company , my ability to assess the risk of my supplier base is limited to my interactions with those suppliers . But if you think about all the different companies that might be using Coupa , and that are all interacting with the same suppliers , that ' s a wealth of information that you could use to assess the risk and the performance of those suppliers if you could harness that in an anonymised and aggregated and safe way .”

74 April 2021