Calculating the return on investment of a project, managing performance and action plans: these are the two priority themes of purchasing departments, when it comes to automating the processes of the function. This is in any case the result of the consultation launched at the beginning of January by Acxias, ahead of the second session of the Workshops of the Club des Acteurs de la Digitalisation des Achats. In both cases, more than 95% of the thirty or so purchasing managers who responded indicated that they were "very interested" or "interested" in the subject.
Depending on the scope of the project (functionalities, geographies, volumes, categories, number of users, etc.) and the purchasing organization in place, these two issues are often difficult to understand alone. Hence the importance of sharing experiences and good practices during collaborative brainstorming workshops.
The percentage of favorable responses reached 87% on three other themes: managing spending and contractual compliance, controlling purchasing standards and data, Accelerate the deployment of e-procurement.
Very different themes, but also at the heart of the main challenges to be met by the function to gain efficiency. Equally crucial, the Implementation of an e-sourcing solution and theContract Management Optimization were of little interest to respondents. "These questions are still probably only relevant to the most mature procurement organizations in terms of digitalization of processes, in search of additional optimization levers," says Bertrand Gabriel, director of Acxias.
For others, the priority is still often put on managing transaction flows and controlling costs." Finally, despite the new regulatory constraints, just over half of respondents say they are interested in Dematerialization of invoices.