How can Supply Market Intelligence help Procurement for IT & Telecom Sector?

The IT & telecom industry has turned many crucial corners, and crossed various milestones since the rise of digitization, evolution of artificial intelligence (AI), development of machine learning (ML), and advent of industry 4.0. Demand has surged to unprecedented heights, and companies are struggling to keep pace with the vast requirements and requests in the market, requiring the employment of data-driven processes, strategic procurement, and supply market intelligence. As the industry continues to grow, procurement, sourcing, and supply chain managers repeatedly witness a growing need for data, analytics, automation, and digitization across departments, levels, and systems. Supply market intelligence helps companies assess and evaluate external factors that impact their growing organization and evolving business, and control the changes incurred by these factors. The data procured through this approach can help identify and mitigate risks, understand market and employee needs, find cost efficient strategies and alternatives, improve sourcing strategies, and promote a resilient supply chain. With the rapid evolution of the IT & telecom market, there have been major procurement trends transforming the industry, and utilizing data can support and improve the outcome of the same.

What is the Role of Supply Market Intelligence in Major Procurement Trends?

Risk Management: Expanding supply chains directly correlate to increasing complexities, more risks, higher impact, and severe consequences. As the IT & telecom industry expands at a rapid pace, companies are struggling to keep pace with constant evolution, increasing external influencers, major structural and operational changes, and other significant developments, Consequently, accounting for various challenges, consequences, and potential risks has become increasingly difficult. Supply market intelligence can help companies closely evaluate the market, study the nature, impact, severity, priority, and consequences of every change, strategy, decision, and goal that the organization acts upon, making risk management accessible, and achievable.

Talent Procurement: The rapid evolution of the IT & telecom field has made it a competitive and highly challenging market, and finding employees, teams, or suppliers that can keep pace with or have significant knowledge about the changing industry is difficult. Innovative technologies being discussed, planned, and introduced in the market leads to a need for constant learning, upskilling, and efficient management. Identifying the ideal partners, employees, or leaders with the right skillsets, business ethics, and knowledge is crucial to succeeding in these interesting but demanding times. Supply market intelligence provides companies with unparalleled insights into the changes in the market, enabling the development of clear expectations, requirements, and goals when partaking in the hiring, negotiating, or researching process.

Cost Reduction: Procurement is a department that scrutinizes every expense and requires chief procurement officers to continuously identify and leverage opportunities to mitigate unnecessary costs, find more cost-effective alternatives, and increase savings. However, the need to repeatedly update skillsets, knowledge bases, technologies, tools, resources, and supplies can lead to high expenses and major challenges for any company. Supply market intelligence provides companies with current and relevant information regarding present and upcoming changes or trends, allowing them time to prepare and make necessary preemptive adjustments, or develop robust strategies. This enables identifying the right cost-effective sources, reducing unnecessary losses, and successfully increasing savings through long-term planning.

Local Sourcing: While global sourcing has come to light in recent years, and companies are finding themselves in search of cheaper alternatives, the equivalence of prices and costs across emerging and developed markets has led to a slow rise in local sourcing in particular industries. Many resources, including labor, raw materials, and basic parts can now be acquired at similar prices within local areas, as compared to previous low-country sourcing. However, understanding the efficacy of this trend for various departments, categories, products and services is essential, and supply market intelligence helps achieve that. Differentiating between what can be locally sourced, and what should be globally sourced is difficult and can be appropriately done with the help of data.

Increasing Efficiency: There is always room for improvement and growth in a challenging, competitive, and highly demanded industry, and keeping pace with industry developments, market dynamics, major trends and opportunities, and consumers’ needs is highly imperative. In the IT & telecom industry, companies must understand their competitors’ strategies, identify novel technologies in the market, and stay abreast of their consumers’ evolving demands. Supply market intelligence helps companies develop a comprehensive understanding of their market, customers, competitors, suppliers, and other influential parties and factors. This knowledge, and making informed decisions can help significantly improve efficiency and overall performance.

Success Story

As the IT & telecom industry continues to grow, companies face the challenge of identifying, evaluating, and managing a plethora of factors that continuously impact the market and their business. The rapid changes can make it extremely difficult to account for every major external influence and prepare businesses for the same. Similarly struggling to keep pace with the evolving market, an IT & telecom service provider was unable to develop sustainable cost reduction, sourcing, and procurement strategies, and witnessed a decline in productivity and savings. To alleviate the impact of these challenges, the company partnered with SpendEdge and sought to gain a comprehensive understanding of their competitive and formidable market. Our experts closely evaluated the upcoming procurement trends, novel technologies, and profitable opportunities and provided the service provider with multiple recommendations based on data procured by employing supply market intelligence. Closely studying and understanding relevant information regarding the market helped the IT & telecom service provider identify their shortcomings, alter their strategies, adapt to the tumultuous and challenging nature of the industry, and mitigate various risks and challenges.