Guided Buying has been around for several years, and it has been dominated in the market with products like Ariba Spend Management, but this comes with a significant price tag. This is often out of reach for smaller to mid-range organisations. With DX2 Purchase and Guided Buying, you can streamline and automate your purchasing process easily and very cost effectively.
What is Guided Buying?
Guided buying enables organisations to set up rules and processes so that operational staff are able to purchase products or services confidently knowing that they're adhering to organisational procurement policies or service level budget constraints.
For example; the procurement or finance department can guide employees to only purchase stationery from suppliers where there is an agreement in place. Or direct staff to purchase particular goods and services related to the location they're working in, i.e. Auckland or Christchurch could result in different suppliers for different goods.
So implementation of a Guided Buying solution has many benefits, however many of these solutions require extensive training, are complicated, and are not designed for the operational users. This can also lead to maverick spend.
Why is Guided Buying important?
In the research, “Maverick Spend” or "uncontrolled spend", represents at least 20% of all spend in an organisation.
In many cases this means that preferred pricing or bulk discount agreements and policies are not taken advantage of. This can also create delays in approvals and therefore bottlenecks in the process. There can also lead to the purchasing department or finance team being overloaded with queries from the end users on what/where to buy.
In a real life example of uncontrolled spend; many years ago, at a NZ Crown Enterprise, there were around 200 scientists who could issue a purchase order through manual purchase order books. Purchases by the scientists were never challenged and therefore there was little control over spend. An electronic procurement solution was put in. The Scientists were reluctant to move because of perceived loss of power and it took almost 5 years to rid the organisation of the manual purchase order books.
What is DX2 Guided Buying?
Olympics’ DX2 platform includes Guided Buying as part of it's DX2 Purchase module. This technology has been developed using experience from our industry proven Trader e-Commerce solution which has been used in New Zealand by Countdown and Australia by Woolworths, Dan Murphy, and BWS (Beer, Wines, Sprirts).
As a result of this experience, we have developed a user-friendly solution that’s easy to learn and engage with and this is essential for getting employees on board.
Guided buying can meet your policy requirements, as well as giving the end user confidence that they're buying within the policy guidelines.
