Emerging Best Practices Documented In Multi-Year Study

Compiled ByDeborah Austin Top-performing companies have one-third fewer vendors than average firms, allowing tighter integration of their supply chains. This is one of the key findings by Hackett Benchmarking & Research, which uses empirical data to document procurement best-practices developments. Other top findings include:

• Firms conducting greater than 20% of their procurement transactions online have reduced transaction processing costs by nearly one-third -- as percent of spend -- versus those conducting less than 5% online.
• Between average and top procurement organizations, there is a procurement cost difference of 25% as percent of spend.
• This year, 17% of companies have transaction processing staff reporting directly to business operations rather than separate purchasing departments -- up from 8% in 1998.

Hackett Benchmarking is part of Answerthink Inc., a Miami-based provider of technology-enabled business transformation solutions.