eProcurement and Translation Gavin Wheeldon of Applied Language SolutionsBackground of eProcurement
The world of purchasing took a significant change with
introduction of eProcurement systems. Unbelievable ROI was promised and whole purchasing world was about to revolutionise, all for a mere few million investment.
This would be done by rationalising supply base to an absolute minimum and then ensuring no off contract buying was done by enforcing purchases through system. There were additional savings in reduction of administration from purchase orders through to invoice payment. A small problem
Then along came rather significant problem of supplier adoption onto these systems. Without a critical mass of spend there would be no real ROI. The problem came in that there were so many different proprietary systems including Oracle’s iProcurement, Ariba, Commerce One, SAP and a multitude of others that cost of supporting multiple catalogue formats was prohibitive for suppliers. Even worse was when services or configurable products were attempted to be catalogued. Punch Out
Then along came Punch out or Round Trip depending on which you prefer (This article will use punch out), however principle is same. This allows end users to browse a supplier’s website and bring back into system details of purchase, therefore allowing all same business rules and processes to be applied. This solved problems for configurable products, volatile pricing and some other key supply chain issues. Translation
The level of translation spend in a company is often underestimated and in most large organisations runs into many millions. It is estimated that through correct use of technology and consolidation of this spend savings of up to 60% can be achieved. Therefore benefits of adding this spend to eProcurement can far outweigh even larger spend categories.
