Yes, there are advantages in buying software from a known source, but those won’t outweigh the disadvantages if the product is deficient, or fails to keep pace with the market.Īn existing supplier’s product, such as SAP Ariba, or Oracle Procurement Cloud, may be the best choice for your organisation, but it should be a choice, after you have compared it with leading independent alternatives. That’s a dangerous strategy, often driven by people who are thinking more about their own short-term job security than about their current employer’s long-term success. For instance, one source told me “we didn’t choose Ariba, we chose SAP, and SAP chose Ariba”. While doing my research for The Forrester Wave™: eProcurement, Q2 2017, I was surprised and disappointed by how many companies I interviewed had bought an incumbent vendor’s eProcurement product without really looking at alternatives. Choosing new procurement software should be exactly that, a choice! Duncan Jones on why organisations should follow an eclectic, multi-sourcing strategy for their key business applications.

Ariba risk module