SOCIAL CONTRACTING: What’s up at Selectica? The perfect marriage between CLM and procurement.
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What’s up at Selectica? The perfect marriage between CLM and procurement. Written by Patrick Stakenas
It's no secret that industry analysts note enterprises worldwide are fraught with low adoption of legacy procurement software. As a result, one of the main problems Chief Procurement Officers (CPOs) face is the lack of visibility and control of transactions. Procurement needs technology vendors with vision who can deliver the ability to combat rogue buying and improve spend management and contract lifecycle management (CLM) with more functionalities. CPOs today want products and solutions with source-to-pay features that are easy to use, integrated with CLM. Both Gartner and Forrester indicate that demand for CLM is projected to grow 12% - 15% in 2015. Contributing to that growth are technology-enabled solutions integrated or linked to applications such as revenue management, pricing, project management, risk management, and e-procurement. Our strategy in acquiring b-pack is to create and deliver an extensible collaborative process with contract management at the center of procurement. Fully integrating both upstream and downstream functionality will produce an all-in-one suite that provides the tools to meet the demands of procurement. Our goal is to drive the procurement process, generating sound strategic sourcing and supplier management activities that will impact the bottom line. CLM, when integrated with procurement applications and applied across the organization, can
SOCIAL CONTRACTING: What’s up at Selectica? The perfect marriage between CLM and procurement.
Page 2 boost procurement’s contribution to the organization. It's no different than how CRM enhances the contributions and effectiveness of the sales and marketing functions or ERP collects and organizes data to facilitate efficient enterprise management. If you think about it, the role of procurement is to acquire products, goods, and services for the entire enterprise. These purchased items are crucial to run the business, enabling departments to meet their objectives and to achieve company business goals. CPOs want solutions that allow them to fulfill end-to-end upstream and downstream objectives. As a pioneer in CLM, we know the importance of contracts at the core of e-sourcing and e-procurement strategy. Our customers have told us how CLM helps optimize supply management by simplifying and automating the contract process. Enterprises today demand visibility into the key elements of the contracts, they want compliance from the supplier, and rapid time to value. By listening to the demands of the market and including a robust CLM as part of the procurement process, CPOs can consistently realize the full value of contracts, resulting in lower legal and financial risk along with improved profits. The net net: a procurement process to power the global market to ensure execution and operation of a profitable organization. This process demands collaboration, integration and deployment of technology between heterogeneous systems that drive the procurement lifecycle and allow procurement professionals to meet the needs of business. With the capabilities b-pack brings to the table, Selectica can provide the full suite of integrated CLM and procurement solutions to enable enterprises to successfully achieve their goals. To learn more about Selectica acquiring b-pack, read more here.