Winning over internal customers

Winning over internal customers

How does the CPO continue to deliver value when frustrated business users “opt out” and turn to simpler but noncompliant means of getting what they need to run the business? Legacy “one size fits all” buying channel strategies, while effective at lowering procurement’s cost‑to‑serve, are limiting the procurement organization’s ability to adapt to the business’s evolving needs. The symptoms of the disjoint show up most readily in indicators like maverick indirect spend, which has now reached alarming levels in some organizations.

Outside the workplace, as individual consumers in the B2C marketplace, employees use their mobile devices to purchase goods and services on easy‑to‑use apps, track order status in real time, and receive rapid delivery. Those experiences today are designed for customer satisfaction. Back in the workplace, however, they face desktop procurement technology, with cumbersome functionality. For CPOs, the comparison is rarely favorable. So internal customers peel away, inexorably, transaction by transaction.

A new paradigm

Leading CPOs see opportunity in the virtuous circle of C/X evolution, where digital innovation drives increased e‑commerce convenience, which in turn drives ever‑higher consumer expectations, which in turn push businesses to introduce yet more customer benefits. Now, CPOs are in position to adaptively replicate the technology, processes, and behavioral assumptions of the B2C marketplaces, to the procurement organization’s benefit.

Explore in this paper:

• four ways to drive change and opportunity
• five guidelines for prioritizing investments
• nine characteristics of organizations likely to “win” in the race to build customer‑centric procurement models.

Learn more about making procurement a user-friendly function by delivering seamless experiences for your internal customers.