Source-to-Pay trends Chapter 3:
Guided behaviour is good behaviour

In Chapter 3 of our series of Source-to-Pay, Procurement and Finance trends to watch, we focus on how guided behaviour is good behaviour.

The term Guided “Buying" has been circulating for some time now, with many organisations having already adopted it; the art of directing users to the preferred, authorised suppliers, contracts and policies, and accurate pricing – in an easily consumed way. Search capabilities enable easy access to supplier content via electronic catalogues and/or websites to ‘guide’ an employee from a basic expression of need to products/services that satisfy that need from qualified suppliers.

After all, if it’s not easy for users to find what they need from the right supplier, chances are they’ll either simply use one they’re familiar with – who may not be authorised – or even worse, will just circumnavigate the system and go out directly to a new supplier. Adding new suppliers not only creates issues with supplier onboarding, it also creates issues by further expanding your tail end of spend and means a further supplier requiring evaluation, setting up and then managing.
 

Guided "Behaviour" goes beyond this, to not only directing or structuring the procurement decisions and actions of individuals or teams in an organisation, but to also align with best practices, policies, objectives, and strategic goals. Working in partnership with other departments, this might involve identifying the path to sourcing a supplier (including looking at current suppliers), purchasing approval workflows, negotiation tactics, and establishing commercial terms and contract. This behaviour is "guided" through tools, processes, and technology that encourage consistency, compliance, efficiency, and value generation in procurement activities, while reducing errors, ensuring compliance, and simplifying decision-making.
 
Guided behaviour in procurement is about ensuring that the actions and decisions made by Procurement professionals are aligned with organisational goals, supply chain and sourcing policies, ESG, best practices, legal standards, and efficiency metrics. This is achieved through structured processes, technology tools, training, compliance mechanisms.
 
 
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