As digital disruption sweeps across all industries, print managers, distributors and marketing outsource providers will continue to face unprecedented competitive pressures as they transcend the boundaries between marketing and procurement.

Online technologies have created and opened new channels for you and your customers to interact, but these new channels are upending traditional business models and driving rapid change because you’re no longer just a service provider, but an extension of your client’s procurement department.

As business leaders, we all recognize that we need to be more agile and efficient than ever before to survive and thrive, but the emphasis on procurement and its relating disciplines is creating pressure on us to deliver against a totally new value proposition – one that places significant emphasis on cost reductions, guaranteed savings and performance benchmarks.

This is why more companies are looking to online technologies to help them retain a competitive advantage and deliver services that are aligned with our current and future customers.

Until recently marketing procurement hasn’t commanded the same level of attention nor investment, and because of this, most of us have for the most part neglected investment in any real form of eProcurement tools, other than using email or staying with tired old applications that have long forgotten what effective and efficient procurement is.

So, what am I, a marketing services provider or a procurement company?

The uniqueness of the marketing procurement industry is that you’re actually both, and as such you need online tools that can support your need to keep marketing departments informed and procurement confident that you are aligned with their procurement policies and controls.

But first, you need to understand that sourcing is a very different task to that ordering. We all order from catalogs every day and most of you research catalogs each day on behalf of your clients to find the various products.

Sourcing requires a different set of tools and users who understand the nuances of your supply chain.

Online sourcing applications automate repeatable tasks and eliminate duplicated data entry points, they equip your stakeholders with real-time access to quote requests, insights into supplier responses, online collaboration tools, automated project status updates and instant access to analytics.

They can transform how your buyers interact with suppliers and clients by serving as a platform for new levels of collaboration and information sharing and improve day to day operations through improved decision making.

This leads to improved margins, greater levels of productivity within your team, savings that can be passed onto your clients and suppliers that are getting access to the right quote and job data at the right time.

Let’s consider a typical buyer within a distributor or print management business, someone within your team who is responsible for buying on behalf of your clients.

Via a dashboard on his or her desktop, laptop or mobile device, she has real-time visibility of all information relating to quote requests, jobs and orders, which suppliers have been engaged, any change orders or variations that need to be approved. He can upload and access artwork directly into the digital job file and collaborate instantly with suppliers to ensure everything remains on track.

An innovative online procurement and sourcing tool will help your team in the following:

Being able to draw on this vast array of data helps your team through the buying and project management process and choose the best and right approach for each of your clients.

Each of us faces our own individual challenges today, where do we want to be in the future, for some it’s fine to remain with the same processes and tools, for others, it’s time to think hard about what you want your organization to be in the future.

Maybe it’s time to touch base with sourceit, we’ve been helping print managers, print & promotional distributors and marketing outsource providers transition their procurement processes and change the conversations they have with their clients.

Why not drop me a line today and begin a discussion: alan.paul@sourceithq.com

About Sourceithq Pty Ltd

Sourceit is a fast-growing provider of an affordable request for quote (RFQ) and job management software delivered via cloud-based Software-as-a-Services (SaaS) platform. Sourceit empowers buyers by simplifying the sourcing and procurement process by providing a simple yet powerful solution to help buyers identify the best quote from their preferred suppliers.

Sourceit offers three different products for buyers:

• Market – a specialized procurement and job management application for marketing service providers
• Catalog – an inventory management and on-demand product/service ordering application
• RFQ – a simple request for quote software for general products and services