As we enter into a new year following a long global recession that appears to be ebbing, many companies are beginning to position themselves for growth through selective technology investments.
One of the biggest upticks has been creating more buyer choice by employing hosted catalogues. In past this wasn’t always the case because interfaces weren’t particularly user-friendly and e-catalogues suffered from non-standardized data, which, in turn, meant low supplier adoption, limited product choices and selections.
So what’s changed?
- Firstly, search technology is much, much better now and end users are able to quickly find what they want with faster and more productive searches. Buyers can simplify searches and shop within a multi-supplier catalogue of complex goods and services.
- Secondly and maybe the most important is that buyers have less religion now thanks to new UNSPSC (Universal Standard Products and Services Classification) standards. With better clarification of standards, hosted catalogue solutions allow buyers to focus on a category management approach instead of worrying about constantly recreating and updating catalogue content.
- Thirdly, hosted e-catalogue systems can now be seamlessly integrated with financial and ERP systems, which not only increase efficiency and better utilize resources (reducing re-to-order cycle times from 8 days to less than 1, for example) but reduce costs and improve margins. In other words, it allows companies to get to new categories of spend because of enhanced visibility into patterns and history.
After hitting bottom for the past year, many forward-thinking companies are giving careful consideration to how they use their resources and control maverick spend. That’s what makes e-catalogues an attractive option. Now they can easily scale their business whether they need 200 catalogues or 2000 with accurate and up-to-date product data everywhere along the complete delivery chain.
