THE BUSINESS REVIEW FOR PROCUREMENT LEADERS
The emergence of customer relationship management, or CRM, in the late 1990s was based on the idea that customers typically “touch” a business at several points, and that having a clearer picture of these makes it possible to target them more effectively.
Supplier relationship management was seen as the corollary of CRM on the supply side. But it has had mixed results and proved a difficult concept to nail down, with software vendors using it to include just about anything to do with sourcing.
The problem it needs to solve is islands of supplier-related information, creating instead a single, holistic view of a trading relationship.
Such a perspective is more vital than ever with corporate governance and Sarbanes-Oxley high on the agenda, notes Alex Kleiner of Frictionless Commerce.
NTL, a British cable TV and telecoms firm, is using its SRM suite to manage those requirements and to improve the quality of its supplier relationships. A key measure it now tracks is the access it gets to supplier innovations.
So far, however, many companies appear to have started their SRM journeys only to stall part way. For SRM to become a core capability, more of those journeys must reach their destinations.
