The Top Supplier Management Software Analysis Complications
Executive Summary
- Supplier management software analysis is often a process that just declares the company is ready for supplier management software.
- This article explains the top complications when trying to obtain an unbiased outcome.
Introduction
Procurement software analysis is fraught with complications. In this article, we cover these complications and how we surmount them.
Our References
See our references for this article and related articles at this link.
Complication #1: Selecting a Conflicted System Selection Advisor
This is normally not a mentioned item. However, there is a greater probability that the company will select a financially biased system selection advisor for their readiness assessment that has financial relationships that it does not disclose to you. This means that they will most often rig the software analysis to state that the company is ready for a supplier management system. And of course, if the software vendor recommends the advisor, then the advisor will simply recommend that specific vendor’s supplier management system. It is really just that simple.
Complication #2: Not Questioning The Assertions of Vendors and Consulting Firms
Supplier management systems was developed to extend the functionality of procurement software. Procurement software combines a database of vendors and a database of products with the ability to create purchasing documents and associated transactions. Furthermore, ERP systems have always been a liability in purchasing because procurement systems are inherently collaborative, and ERP systems tend to be more about sharing data within the company versus collaborating with customers, suppliers, contract manufacturers, etc.
Supplier management system can be partially covered by the major procurement applications, but it is often that case that these applications are rather light in the supplier management capabilities. Supplier management system means being able to control and perform a detailed analysis of one’s supplier, to able to organize, categorize, and check the history of supplier performance, all within the system.
Listening to Whom on Supplier Management Software?
Software Advice and G2Crowd have coverage of supplier management system. However, they mix in ERP systems like SAP S/4HANA and Microsoft Dynamics, and even warehouse management system which should not be in that category, most likely because of the influence of these vendors or because they are just sloppy. These types of companies use reviews from outside and there is not much evidence that they know that much about the software on which they write articles. G2Crowd even lists Quickbooks as a supplier management system. Remember, most of these online advisory websites like G2Crowd serve as marketing front ends for vendors and are compensated by generating leads.
And it’s not just the advisory firms. We reviewed all of the top articles according to Google on supplier management system, and they all fit into the pattern of repeating mindless assertions. There were no independent articles in the top results. These are the articles potential buyers are reading to determining if they should buy supplier management system for their company?
Complication #3: A New More Sophisticated Supplier Management Process
Most companies that buy supplier management system currently use a combination of an ERP system and spreadsheets to accomplish the task. This means that when looking for supplier management system, the options open up to greatly expand the functionality footprint. This means that unless a company does not already have an ERP system and is migrating from a customized system, the company will need to review its supplier management requirements again. This is because they may have been unnecessarily oversimplified just to make them fit into what the ERP system had to offer.
Conclusion
The software industry is designed to get customers “on the ramp” to implement systems and extract the most out of customers. In nearly all cases, the software analysis provided is just a fake process where the advisor states that the company is ready to move to a system. This is then followed by an exposition of the benefits of that software. This does not have to be the case, and there are many ways of changing this.
How We Do Things Differently
Our supplier management system analysis focuses on what the company is ready for and is not designed to simply onramp people to this software. And unlike all the software advisors, we are a true research entity, and we have no connection to any software vendor. Being dedicated to research means focusing on what is true and using evidence to draw conclusions.