Added by ariba, 31 weeks ago

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Procurement managers and executives
share their most important and
challenging priorities

In October 2006, Ariba completed a survey to determine the most important spend management priorities
and challenges that companies face today. Participants included more than 550 procurement professionals
representing a variety of industries, roles, company sizes and regions.
Nearly 80 percent of the participants represented companies with more than $1B in annual revenue. Over 75
percent of the participants were at the manager, director, and VP or CXO level. Companies headquartered in
the Americas represented 65 percent of the total respondents, Europe followed with 29 percent and the rest
representing Asia Pacific/India (6 percent) and Middle East/Africa (0.4 percent)
Main themes that emerged based on this market research are:
1. Delivering real, meaningful results: the number one focus – delivering measurable results
was ranked as the most important priority for the second consecutive year by a sizeable margin. This
shows that companies place a significant value on the results generated by spend management
initiatives and how it translates to profitability improvements. This also supports how spend
management is being viewed as a strategic initiative and key to their future success.
2. Spend analysis is the critical first step in the spend management journey – accessing and
analyzing spend data was ranked in the top three most important and most challenging priorities for
the second consecutive year. Companies that are serious about spend management recognize the
importance of understanding what is being purchased, from whom and how these purchases align
with the current organizational spend guidelines. Disparate data, inconsistencies in product
information and limited analytics capabilities make it one of the top challenges for companies today.
3. Gaining executive and user-level support is key for spend management success – building
internal commitment was ranked in the top five most important and challenging priorities for the
second consecutive year. As spend management evolves from a back-office function to a strategic
boardroom agenda item, there is still a great deal of education that needs to happen internally at
different levels to gain support in terms of investments and authority to succeed.
4. Companies are striving for more value, faster – multiple priorities related to speed and
efficiencies were rated as very challenging by companies. Establishing consistent, efficient
processes, completing projects faster and identifying opportunities faster were ranked in the
top ten most challenging priorities clearly identifying the need to gain more value, faster.
5. Extending functional and geographical coverage still a major challenge – most procurement
executives today are looking for ways and means to extend the boundaries of spend management
functionally and geographically to maximize its impact and reach. Extending coverage without
adding resources and supporting multiple business units and geographies moved up the
challenge scale compared to last year and were ranked in the top five challenges this year.

Questions or feedback? email jfogarty@ariba.com