dis·cov·er \dis-kə-vər\ verb: (1): to make known or visible; (2): to obtain sight or knowledge of for the first time;
On Monday, 46 or 47 of the 50 US States celebrated Columbus Day (Hawaii, South Dakota, Nevada, and according to some, California do not recognize this holiday) to commemorate Columbus’ discovery of landing in the New World. Spain celebrated this day which it calls Fiesta Nacional de España, yesterday. A variety of other countries in the Americas celebrate the 12th of October, Dia de la Raza, as an almost anti-Columbus Day. Canada ignored the debate completely by celebrating Thanksgiving on Monday.
Despite my surname and my years living in Boston’s North End, literally 300 yards from Christopher Columbus Park, it is pretty clear to me that Columbus did not “discover” America (counter to what most Americans of my generation or older were taught in elementary school), an area that had been populated by people for thousands of years. But, Columbus’ landing was significant: the time, energy, and resources that he invested in his voyages to the New World served as the major catalyst for the European exploration and subsequent colonization of much of the Americas that soon followed. For better or worse, it was an event that forever changed the world.
In the relatively new “world” that we call supply management, supplier discovery is one of the most underappreciated activities going. Supplier discovery or identification is that point in the sourcing process where the supply market is researched and a list of potentially qualified suppliers is identified. Now, I have managed enough sourcing projects to clearly see (and therefore, firmly believe) that the inclusion of more qualified suppliers to a bidding process has a direct correlation to better results. I have also worked with enough companies to understand the comfort borne of the status quo and what is perceived to be the path of least risk. These behaviors appear in the strong tendency to simply renew a contract with the incumbent and avoid sourcing altogether (“we’re already doing business with the best supplier” which is one of the dreaded “10 eSourcing Myths” ) or only invite the same suppliers, who participated the last time the category was sourced, to participate again. I would argue that maintaining the status quo may, in fact, be the riskiest thing you can do. Your smart rivals aren’t standing still.
Consider that while globalization, innovation, and competition have helped streamline and improve business performance, they’ve also helped increase business volatility and the complexity of supply management. One very real implication of these trends for sourcing and category teams is that supply markets shift – the most qualified suppliers one year may be laggards in the market just a few years later. In this environment, it becomes more critical than ever to have current knowledge of key supply markets, it becomes more critical than ever to do your diligence and perform sufficient supplier discovery. To top it all off, supplier discovery to identify a list of potentially qualified bidders isn’t even that difficult (again, we’re talking about initial supplier identification; the level of effort to qualify suppliers will depend on the category and a host of other factors) given the current capabilities of the top search engines and the content and search improvements being made to supplier networks (Sidebar: We expect to see several new offerings in this area next year from solution providers that clearly see the value in helping companies improve their supplier discovery results).
So, what’s holding you back? Maintaining the status quo is risky. Invest the time, energy, and resources in supplier discovery – what you find, may just change your world.
