*The below is intended for businesses optimizing their stack & spend from vendors.
With the continuing proliferation of new tech plus the sheer magnitude of the amount of apps, tools, software, and vendors; having the best stack and tools for your real business is a real challenge. And the landscape continues to get more crowded with hundreds of newly funded providers each year. Determining which vendors are going to be around and whom to partner with for the long-term can be a daunting task.
But what’s the danger of using legacy tools?
- Productivity losses
- Antiquated service delivery
- Gaps in functional competencies
Not sure how your stack and spend compares?
There are a number of resources from online marketplaces, benchmarking communities, to associations, to functional experts and sourcing advisors that can provide data comparisons and a short-list of recommendations.
- Online marketplaces for price and product comparisons (TEC, com (Gartner), G2Crowd, and many more), Vendor RFP templates, Vendor Reviews, and much more
- Benchmarking communities (Industry benchmarking from ProfitsCents subsidiary to SageWorks, SaaS from ProfitWell and Baremetrics, SLI for IT services / MSP, Saratoga Benchmarking (PWC subsidiary) for HR Metrics and many more benchmarking communities)
- Associations: AA-ISP.org, AICPA, SHRM, etc.
- Sourcing advisors (email ERGO for a list of sourcing advisors for your industry and situation
The benefits of a third-party vendor sourcing advisory goes beyond vendor evaluation and selection and commonly includes sourcing advisory, vendor negotiation, and change enablement services. Sourcing advisors bring the following benefits:
- Holistic approach
- The ROI impact is determined upfront
- Deal support to ensure you get the best deal
- Industry pre configured solutions
- Change enablement support services
- Benchmarks to document the value, ensure transparency, maximize resources, and eliminate waste
The most common sourcing trigger inflection points for business is that they have outgrown their startup/small business solution, but need to determine whether to pursue an industry or enterprise solution/vendor/partner. As businesses emerge from small business to industry leaders their complexity demands a greater spend on tools and vendors. The most common trigger reasons for using a sourcing advisor include:
- Leadership Change
- Funding
- Expansion
- Acquisition
- Workforce is greater than 50 employees
- Revenue growth is stagnant in the single digits
- Profitability is below double digits
- Management span of control has grown beyond the founders
- The business lacks scalability
List of sourcing advisors available upon request.