Imagine two settings for having an important conversation with a loved one.
The content of the discussion is the same both times. But one setting is a table for two in a quiet, peaceful restaurant. The other is in a grocery store where you weave through aisle blockers, dodge poorly steered shopping carts and bite your lip as you withhold advice from that parent whose kid very much and very loudly wants Sponge Bob Square Pants candy.
Which conversation will be more productive?
Spend Matters crunched data from the 2013 Global Manufacturing Outlook by KPMG, spotting trends that surprised Spend Matters due to all-to-often cluttered communication between companies and suppliers.
"Spend Matters crunched data from the 2013 Global Manufacturing Outlook by KPMG":
"They surprised us because far too few companies are ready to seize the opportunity to take advantage of these trends and observations as a result of the immaturity of their procurement organizations when it comes to partnering with suppliers," Spend Matters wrote on its website.
The KPMG survey found, for example, that companies are starting to see suppliers as a source for ideas and a partner for innovation. But very few procurement organizations are set up for clean conversations with suppliers.
Talks that are key to companies' futures, in other words, are being held in the crowded supermarket aisle, not that quiet table -- if they're being held at all.
Procurement software from Essent helps promotional products distributors and suppliers communicate.
PunchOutNow and
OrderTrax provide straightforward, consistent, and integrated systems so distributors and suppliers can collaborate without distraction.
"Essent talks with our customers and performs extensive market research to identify and understand trends," Essent President & CEO Eric Alessi said, "and we develop innovative technology and techniques to leverage these trends allowing our customers to gain efficiency and profitability. Integration with enterprise customers, like the Fortune 2000, through eProcurement and advanced EDI are striking examples of how we can create tight, intimidate, long-lasting relationships between trading partners."
Essent systems and integration technology provides the environment necessary to create and maintain profitable business relationships. Essent clears the aisles, straightens shopping cart wheels and leaves that loud kid at home.
"Genuinely closer working relationships between suppliers and other partners will be critical to maximizing their responsiveness to changes in the market," the KPMG survey found, according to Spend Matters, "More effective and efficient collaboration enables firms to optimize inventory, logistics, and other operational costs.”
To which Spend Matters asks, "Isn’t that what those operations and supply chain folks should be doing already?" With Essent, suppliers and distributors can easily do just that.