Zycus Solutions

Supplier Relationship Management

In the age of manual, homegrown, consultant driven spend analysis, supplier data was key to determining what we now know as 'the low hanging fruits'. Procurement executives in large enterprises were happy in the know that all their suppliers, or most of them, were at least visible to them. This was no mean finding, considering that suppliers ranged from 15,000-20,000 and above for organizations with spend upwards of USD 1 billion. Moreover, grouping of suppliers by category was also achieved to some extent. Supplier names, groups, prices all available in a collection of smart spreadsheets with pivot tables for effect for the CPO. The effect was immediate savings. Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) had truly arrived. Or had it? Supplier Performance Management was on the way. Or was it?

Things were looking up on the payables side as well. Sourcing solutions mushroomed and were delivered by a host of consultants to eager enterprises - reverse auctions, eRFX were happening and there were others who promised procure-to-pay solutions. It made sense then. You knew your suppliers and you knew how to minimize costs by buying your most important items/commodities/services in the most effective way. The CPO was empowered.

Soon, it was time for the next sourcing wave. And it was time for the next killer app - spend data. It was time when supplier relationship management began getting hampered and ceased showing results because of the quality of data driving it. Supplier data was severely limited for enterprises that had geographical spread and multiple languages to contend with. It was severely inadequate for those that had multiple instances of ERP, Legacy systems and were trying to migrate/consolidate and those that were trying to route their purchase through expensive eProcurement systems such as those of Oracle, Ariba or SAP. Worse, the savings emerging from the sourcing initiatives earlier had suddenly slackened and ROI concerns and billable hours had cropped up for enterprises employing sourcing consultants. Worse still, the reports that shone through earlier were really not showing any way ahead bar a maze of distinctly inaccurate information in disguise. The CPO was clueless.

Today, as we enter a defining phase in Strategic Sourcing - the one of Supplier Performance Management - it is universally acknowledged that Supplier Classification is not the way ahead to SRM. The burning issues are reducing maverick spend, comply with supplier contracts, ranking preferred suppliers by category, aggregating suppliers and rationalizing them on the basis of automated classification of item level spend data (drilled down 4-5 levels deep) that has been enriched (in any language, from any system, in any taxonomy), is accurate so that it shows up hotspots that may actually save millions of dollars.

Zycus' Spend Management Suite is a premier solution for the key to a strategic procurement infrastructure. Zycus Spend Management solutions are designed to ensure overall success of an organization's spend management program by helping sourcing professionals ANALYZE their spend deeper and wider, PLAN their sourcing strategies, and SOURCE easily and completely.

Zycus' Spend Management Suite presents procurement stakeholders the complete platform to build a 'savings pipeline' and implement the same - to reduce maverick spend, increase procurement compliance, rationalize suppliers, manage categories, track savings mandates and create a spend management infrastructure that facilitates strategic sourcing & Supplier Relationship Management. This solution is positioned to take your enterprise to the next generation of spend management that is transparent, automated & repeatable for year on year of savings.