Strategic Sourcing Europe

If yes, you should read “Making E-sourcing Strategic”. An Aberdeen’s 2002 global research report on e-Sourcing, to help professional buyers adopting best practices in e-Sourcing. It includes E-sourcing provider profiles.

Purpose of the Report

This report is intended to help procurement professionals, corporate
executives, IT managers, consultants, and relevant e-sourcing application
and service providers achieve the following:
- Examine the role of e-sourcing within the context of larger strategic sourcing, supply chain, and corporate objectives
- Understand the attributes of an effective e-sourcing solution and the segmentation, size, and direction of the e-sourcing market;
- Benchmark strategies for selecting, deploying, and utilizing e-sourcing technologies and services, generally and on a geo-graphic and industry-specific basis;
- Quantify the benefits and challenges of deploying e-sourcing technologies and services across the enterprise; and
- Differentiate between the solutions and business models of key vendors providing e-sourcing applications and services.

Defining E-sourcing

Aberdeen defines e-sourcing as the use of Web-based applications,
decision-support tools, and associated services to identify, evaluate,
negotiate, and configure purchases and supplier relationships that
will effectively support supply chain and other business operations.

Distinguishing components of e-sourcing solutions include some or
all of the following capabilities:
- Online negotiations enabled by request for proposal (RFP), re-quest
for quote (RFQ), request for information (RFI), and re-verse
auction capabilities
- Collaboration tools that support cross-functional sourcing and
interaction with suppliers
- Project management capabilities that establish, administer, and
monitor sourcing processes
- Document management functionality that supports the ex-change,
modification, and recovery of sourcing-related documents

Read the Making E-sourcing Strategic report