Cost & Spend Management For Purchasing Managers

Whoever wants to increase their understanding of spend management is in for a treat. Spend Matters Navigator, which appears to be an amalgamation of purchasing and supply management Web content searchable in a single portal, was just announced by Jason Busch over at the Spend Matters blog. It is pretty cool, and I've already played around with it a little.

This new tool for researching purchases has a lot to recommend it. I especially appreciate the ability to drill down using different criteria, such as process, technology, etc.

For this tool, I personally have one VERY BIG hope. There is a lot of both in cyberspace, so I hope it will be simpler for professionals in purchasing to distinguish between good and bad advice.

Spend Matters Navigator appears to let you browse blogs and other resources by topic and practically view them side by side. I think this will make it easier for purchasing professionals to distinguish between credible literature and information that just looks good on paper (or pixels). You can easily locate Spend Management resources, additional content, and both the good and bad that will enable you to determine which information is generally accepted and which is not. You'll find both the good and the bad.

I commend Jason and his group of people. Moreover, I urge you to use Spend Matters Navigator yourself.

On-Demand Spend Management Solutions 

The discussion surrounding "on-demand" expenditure management solutions appears to be picking up steam.

On-demand enterprise spend management solutions are essentially purchasing-related systems that are hosted by the software provider. This eliminates the hassle, delay, and expense of installing and maintaining the software on-premises, which is the core concept behind on-demand enterprise spend management solutions.

This strategy, which was utilized back in the late 1990s and early 2000s and was known as the Application Service Provider model, is one of the peculiar aspects of the situation. And this model appeared to be a complete and utter failure.

In the beginning, Elcom, a company that provides solutions for spending management, advocated for this model. Elcom endured significant challenges, but the company managed to persevere and now appears to be an active participant in the market. However, it appears that things are closing in on completing a full circle in this particular approach to utilizing solutions for spend management.

When I worked for a different company, we experimented with using a hosted model for our eProcurement system. This was many years ago. After that, we ultimately brought it inside to install on our own servers, which required us to bring it in.

The software providers appeared to be competent in their respective fields, but their hosting services were a disgrace. Some providers of spend management solutions formed partnerships with other organizations' data centers in order to offer hosting services; however, it appeared that all of those data centres had inadequate funding and were on the verge of going bankrupt.

Today, after a number of years have passed, it would appear that solution providers are looking back at this model. However, we can only hope that they are wiser!

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