Procurement Integration: Choose Best Of Breed Or One Large System?

Integration in Procurement!

Its an important strategic question that you need to consider.

We advocate best of breed – those systems tend to be more task oriented and more goal focused – they don’t have to appease other non-relevant users who could impact your view of the system.

So then if its best of breed why is it important to integrate your shiny new procurement system with any of your other legacy systems that you might have within your business enterprise

Master of None

If you choose best of breed eProcurement concepts then you will find you are limited to systems that are very good at what they do but perhaps not so good at sharing what they do with other systems this is the real issue and why some companies look for one integrated solution to handle all administrative tasks including HR, procurement, accounting, contract management, facilities management, fleet management, telecoms etc these are just some examples of the different activities that can be integrated into one system.

Many of the larger software companies will happily sell you a huge expensive system that is the typical jack-of-all-trades We had one client that received a quote from Oracle to buy their integrated solution for $5m and then spend a further $25m implementing it and they actually started to consider it until consultants from Eyvo were invited in to do an assessment and we said wait – there is a better way.

From a purchasing buyers perspective, using a huge integrated system can be challenging – there may be 20 different non-relevant screen to wade through with a deep menu system before you can actually start to raise a PO and even then you don’t get the facilities you need like punchout, on-line catalogs, multi-level approvals etc.

Whats good for the Executive Team doesn’t translate to the users

Often the CEO and the CIO of a large enterprise find it convenient to simply select one system to manage all of these administrative tasks in their business – but then neglect to think about the poor downstream users who have to actually use the products that is where an applications specialist like Eyvo come in – so what they think they are saving in convenience by having one system …they are losing money hand over fist in wasted in efficiency as the users grapple with the integrated approach to try to make it fit.

Quite often we find when we are called in to assist a new client that has been given SAP, Oracle Workday which are all great systems with the exception that they can be difficult and cumbersome to use for some organizations.

We normally suggest in these cases that the client takes our solution for the purchasing element of the tasks and we can then integrate into these larger systems.

Think its difficult? Not at all – all modern systems have advanced API’s to make it easy plus there are many specialist firms out there who integrate between On-Premises Solutions and SaaS or even between SaaS and SaaS.

If you are facing similar challenges with your corporate IT solutions and are having challenges obtaining a world class purchasing system to fit in with what you already have – then contact us now for a free consolation – we might already have a solution boxed and ready to go for you.