Accelerating a New Era of Strategic Sourcing

It’s been a challenging year for businesses everywhere, and the ability to quickly source and procure goods and supplies has been key to their resilience. In the blink of an eye, procurement teams across the globe pivoted to support remote operations and essential workforces, while managing unprecedented risks.

This year has also highlighted how procurement organizations equipped with agile, digitized sourcing technologies can be strategic powerhouses that drive business impact across their enterprises. 

One year ago, Workday acquired Scout RFP, a best-in-class strategic sourcing solution. As we continue our journey toward a holistic offering for source-to-pay and overall spend management, Scout RFP is now Workday Strategic Sourcing, reflecting Workday’s commitment to continue elevating and transforming the office of procurement.

Workday Strategic Sourcing: Driving Enterprise-Wide Impact

Leading procurement teams are using technology to stay tightly aligned with the business and with suppliers from anywhere. In the last year, the over 300 global businesses that rely on Workday Strategic Sourcing have significantly increased the number of projects and contracts managed with our solution.

In conversations with our customers, we’ve heard many examples of the business impact procurement is driving, for example:

• Immediate ROI. In a single reverse auction, a Chicago-based financial technology company saw 300% ROI just two hours into the auction.
• Measurable cost savings. A biotech company on the front lines of fighting the global pandemic saved over $86 million within the first five months of using Workday Strategic Sourcing. 
• Rapid launch. The California branch of a major insurance provider was up and running on the system in record time, launching its first sourcing event a mere eight days after signing its contract.
• Reduced cycle times. A large automotive distributor was able to use Workday’s automated tracking and reporting capabilities to cut its manual process times from 13 to three days. 

With Workday Strategic Sourcing, procurement teams are empowered to help deliver better business outcomes, strengthen their supplier relationships, more strategically manage spend, mitigate risk, and maximize key supplier and stakeholder engagement.

Elevating Strategic Sourcing Within the Enterprise

During this time of uncertainty, sourcing and procurement teams have been instrumental in helping retool businesses to support remote collaboration, protect essential workforces, maintain supply chains, and more. Over the past several years and especially in 2020, we have seen firsthand the procurement function’s elevation from a traditionally reactive and tactical organization to a strategic partner to the business. 

A Workday study conducted in partnership with Harvard Business Review found that 95% of surveyed executives reported disruption to their companies’ sourcing and supplier management process from the pandemic. As a result, 60% of respondents say the pandemic has fast-tracked plans to upgrade and automate sourcing and supplier management. 

Sourcing and procurement teams that are empowered with intuitive technology will be better positioned to:

• Proactively align with the business earlier in the spend cycle.
• Make data-driven decisions using automated tracking and analytics.
• Gain full visibility into suppliers and drive supplier performance.
• Effectively assess and mitigate risk for the business.
• Close the loop on sourcing and streamline the end-to-end source-to-pay process.

To stay ahead of the changing world of business, sourcing and procurement leaders must be able to collaborate with their teams, suppliers, and stakeholders. With Workday Strategic Sourcing, sourcing and procurement teams can operate using a connected system to drive strategic impact across the enterprise. 

Building a Seamless Source-to-Pay Solution

To be a truly agile organization, sourcing and procurement need full visibility into every step of the end-to-end sourcing process. In the past year, we have worked diligently to provide this visibility to all customers. Most notably, we rolled out a new homepage that allows users to easily track and manage their project milestones and tasks. Additionally, we’ve expanded the platform API and connector capabilities, helping customers ensure the integrity of their critical sourcing data and keeping their systems connected. 

This year in particular, we’ve heard that supplier relationship management is top of mind amidst current disruptions to supply chains, so we’re focusing on integrating Workday Strategic Sourcing and Workday Procurement to support a unified supplier master. Our customers’ feedback continues to shape the Workday Strategic Sourcing roadmap as we work towards further integration.

Organizations looking to stay ahead of the curve need an intuitive sourcing and supplier engagement system. For maximum business impact, sourcing and procurement leaders need a way to easily connect strategic sourcing initiatives with purchasing decisions. Over time, Workday customers can expect a seamless source-to-pay process that elevates and empowers the office of procurement. 

Workday Strategic Sourcing: Looking Forward

Over the past year, we’ve seen sourcing leaders grapple with and overcome many challenges—ones that have shined a spotlight on sourcing’s unique ability to guide and protect the business. Workday looks forward to helping our customers further elevate the office of procurement and drive value across the enterprise.  

To learn more about supplier and risk management, we invite you to join Workday’s upcoming webinar featuring Gilead Sciences and KeyBank on Dec. 8. Register now to save your spot.