Cash is king, credit is scarce, and stubborn clouds of uncertainty refuse to dissipate. In this time, maintaining a strong balance sheet and an eye on cash flows is a prerequisite for business leaders seeking to master the twin near-term imperatives of viability and maneuverability.
Scrutiny on money flows outside the four walls of a company, [...]
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While there may be some early signs that the global economic recovery has begun, we’re not out of the woods just yet. The “Great Recession” has fundamentally changed the way businesses organize and measure success. and recalibrated supply markets, introducing new cost and operational risks that businesses cannot overlook. It has also created new state of normal for business — one in which supply volatility, capacity constraints, and global uncertainty will be commonplace and must be carefully managed.
The concept is now beginning to enter the broader public dialog. Recently, there have been multiple references to the New Normal in both the mainstream and business media:
European Spend Management professionals have been learning to cope with (and succeed in) the New Normal for some time. Examples are numerous:
To prosper in the New Normal with its reduced resources, increased reliance on partners, and lower tolerance for error, organizations need to be able to more rapidly respond to changing situations without the typical lead times and permanent investments. They will do this through on-demand access to the capabilities, technology and community they need to serve their customers that can scale with their needs.
Agility is the key to surviving the current downturn and thriving in the post-recession European business landscape.
Ted Kondis is Vice President of Services for Ariba’s European operations.
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The recent economic turmoil not only forced many small and large companies in the private sector to rethink their cost management strategies, but also prompted governmental bodies and not-for profits to emphasize agility and be more efficient. With fewer tax dollars collected in the past year, governmental agencies – particularly those at the state and local level – have been hard pressed to “do more with less.” With this backdrop, it not surprising for public sectors to follow the lead of private companies in using advanced Sourcing and purchasing technologies hitherto available only to large organizations to drive down cost and improve efficiency.
For example, eGov Monitor recently published a case study on the Leeds Council Housing Organization, which leveraged On-Demand sourcing technology (full disclosure: it’s Ariba’s solution) to identify opportunities, save money and improve performance.
With the On-Demand deployment model, companies pay predictable fees to gets the results of efficient strategic sourcing and competitive bidding without worrying about managing software and hardware or stretching their already slim IT staffs to manage the technology infrastructure.
As taxpayers we would love our tax dollars used more efficiently and see more public sector and governmental agencies use the power of these new Procurement delivery platforms to achieve significant savings that can then be put to work in other areas. And the added intangible is that it also makes the Sourcing process more transparent.
Sundar Kamakshisundaram is a Senior Solutions Marketing Manager for Ariba, a global provider of spend and supply risk management solutions.
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SaaS has been gaining traction partially due to it’s ability to help companies adapt to the new state of “normal” they will face as we emerge from the global recession. SaaS and the “cloud” computing model help contain costs, shorten implementation cycles and enable CIOs to focus on more strategic initiatives rather than expensive hardware and personnel management. And according to some reports, we can also add improved energy efficiency – along with the associated cost savings and sustainability benefits – to the list of potential benefits.
The Cloud Clinic covered the rise in SaaS applications as a means for companies to “green” up their operations and cut costs.
“One area in which cloud computing is proving particularly useful is the data center. With the ability to store data and apps online rather than on energy-guzzling servers, IT managers are able to scale down their equipment while scaling up their IT capabilities.”
Much of this energy and equipment cost reduction is a result of economies of scale. Most companies simply aren’t capable of taking their data center operations to the extremes – in terms of energy efficiency and capacity – that SaaS providers are naturally incentivized to do, simply to keep costs in line.
Google Apps is a perfect example of a cloud application provider who’s pushing the energy efficiency envelope. Here, they give a tour of one of their data centers, which achieves an energy efficiency rating the EPA didn’t expect companies to reach for several years.
My guess is that Google’s data center doesn’t look like the IT/server rooms in your own company. And although Google likely leads in this trend towards lean, green energy efficiency, other providers in the cloud will certainly follow. Will your own company do so, with their in-house application servers? Not likely – at least not to that extreme.
Although deployment times for SaaS applications likely depend on the functional area, integration, migration, change management, etc., it’s possible that in some cases, they may be included in the must sought after category of “easy wins” for CSR initiatives. Add that in with decreased support and hardware costs and the cloud may become the new normal paradigm for cost conscious, green focused companies.
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Buyers typically focus on a few key objections to avoid the E-Sourcing process, even with its potential for savings and the promise of a condensed sourcing timeline:
“It will destroy my relationship with the supplier.”
“The service, quality and support my supplier currently delivers will suffer.”
“My supplier’s profitability will be depressed to the point of no return, [...]
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My visits with business executives and media mavens over the past few weeks involved heated discussions about the future role of the Chief Information Officer in this age of Software as a Service (SaaS). Public perception is that SaaS is in direct competition with the CIO, chipping away at the death grip this top IT [...]
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In this economy, one thing we can count on is that all organizations will be asked to do is stretch their budgets and increase productivity. And although an efficient procurement department is a net plus on the company’s bottom line, they won’t be immune from the calls to do more with less. So, how do [...]
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All too often, we have good intentions in life but aren’t quite sure how to put those intentions into action. The cynics among us (and are there any non-cynics left?) question whether petitions we’re asked to sign really mean what we’re told and whether or not donations end up going where they claim.
Enter the internet [...]
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Few would deny that spend management has taken hold and earned it’s place at the table in the C-Suite of large companies. But in the mid-market (<$2 billion in annual revenues), adoption of the principals and tools of the “big companies” has been slower to take hold. In fact, we recently conducted a survey of [...]
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It is curious that Microsoft President and CEO Steve Ballmer is touring the globe doing stump speeches not for Vista, but for how Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is changing the way businesses buy, use, and view enterprise applications. Even more curious are Ballmer’s predictions:
“In 10 years, we will see the desktop user experience being delivered 100% virtually [...]
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