AMR Research on Spend Management's First Decade
If the number of recent top billings on AMR Research's homepage are any indication, Spend Management is clearly capturing the headlines these days. I chuckle at this given Bruce Richardson's historic distancing from the subject (while not an opponent of Spend Management, I'd argue he's never taken it seriously enough). Regardless, perhaps things are changing inside AMR. Earlier last week, Mickey North Rizza's dispatch from Procuri's Empower event was AMR's lead story. Today, AMR is again featuring a lead story by Mickey on a similar topic: the growth, trials, and tribulations of Spend Management in the past decade.
Kudos to AMR for given such play to a topic near and dear to all of us who consider Spend Management a powerful force not only transforming procurement and operations organizations, but entire companies who embrace its core tenants. In her latest piece, Mickey sets the stage by noting that, "Procurement and sourcing or supply management (a.k.a. purchasing) was a back-room function, in 1996, manual and localized with one focus: order placement and fulfillment. Because emphasis was on the transactional requirements, the strategic sourcing, negotiations, and contract management were buried in the process. The opportunity was ripe for the automation of the end-to-end process." I strongly encourage you to read the entire piece, as it won't be free on AMR's site for long.
- Jason Busch
Kudos to AMR for given such play to a topic near and dear to all of us who consider Spend Management a powerful force not only transforming procurement and operations organizations, but entire companies who embrace its core tenants. In her latest piece, Mickey sets the stage by noting that, "Procurement and sourcing or supply management (a.k.a. purchasing) was a back-room function, in 1996, manual and localized with one focus: order placement and fulfillment. Because emphasis was on the transactional requirements, the strategic sourcing, negotiations, and contract management were buried in the process. The opportunity was ripe for the automation of the end-to-end process." I strongly encourage you to read the entire piece, as it won't be free on AMR's site for long.
- Jason Busch
Maybe for some organizations back then it was this way, but there were enough progressive purchasing departments back then to avoid such a profound generalization.
There are still many purely tactical purchasing groups today. But I personally feel that the line of demarcation that separates purchasing that had that "one focus" to today's strategic purchasing and supply management was drawn several years before 1996.