Want a piece of a multi-billion dollar sales pie? The one served up by the tens of thousands of buyers who make the purchases for Fortune 500 companies and huge government organizations? Then it's time to connect to the world of e-procurement.
It used to be complicated, difficult, and horribly expensive to play the e-procurement connection game. But as Bob Dylan said, "The times, they are a changin'".
What is e-procurement, why does this challenge exist in the first place?
E-Procurement systems are vastly complex, enormously expensive software applications that allow large organizations to ensure that buyers make all their purchases in the same way.
This has several benefits,including:
Saves buyers time and effort
Allows management to control purchasing budgets and eliminate maverick spending
Allows purchasing to interface with other systems within the company including inventory control, shipping and receiving, and accounting
While these systems are a great boon to the company that invests in them, they create a problem for vendors like you and the buyers who need your products and services. That's because e-Procurement systems are internal to the company.
That means that buyers now have a daunting task; get supplier information - like products, prices, and ordering methods -- into their e-procurement system.
That also means the suppliers who want to do business with a company that uses an e-procurement system have to find a way to 'plug in' to their system.
That's exactly why the businesses that have already figured out how to do that are the ones who get the lion's share of these enormous sales. Just take a look at these supply categories and the companies who dominate them:
Office Products: Staples, Office Max, Office Depot
Industrial supplies: Grainger, MSC, HD Supply, Snap-On, Fastenal, IDG
Laboratory equipment and supplies: Fisher Scientific, VWR, Perkin Elmer
Computer equipment and supplies: CDW-G, Apple, Dell, TechDepot, Sharp, PCMall, Lenovo, SHI
Furniture: Steelcase
Follow their lead: There's a reason these companies have dominated for decades. But the good news is that you can level the playing field.
What do all these success stories have in common?
You guessed it; they all connect to the e-procurement of big customers and government organizations.
You see, until recently only businesses with vast technical resources and deep pockets (i.e., giant supply companies) could connect to these complex e-procurement systems.
There a number of companies that are offering these type of connections for far less than they used to be. When you're choosing what company to use make sure you're able to do 3 important things:
Ease of use - you can set up your connection with a simple online wizard. You don't want to have to involve IT guys if you don't need to.
Flexibility - Your setup needs to be adaptable to all the needs of any e-procurement system without having to create multiple separate sites that are not connected to one core central set of data.
An important note: Every e-procurement system out there (and there are dozens) uses a different protocol or language,so if you want to connect to more than one system, you need that flexibility.
Affordability - Because of the fancy terminology that can be used, don't let price stop you from expanding your busines. There are solutions that exist that are very affordable and are a fraction of the cost that other technology companies charge.
But no matter who you use, if you want to compete in today's market, you need to get connected. The sooner you do, the quicker your sales will grow.
No comments:
Post a Comment