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IBM Reflects on 2012, Looks Ahead to 2013

After passing the torch from 2012 to 2013, tech giant IBM (News - Alert) has considered some of the trends in 2012 to carry on and expand on in the new year. One highlight for IBM in 2012 was the acquisition of Emptoris and its suite of Strategic Supply Management and Contract Management solutions. The acquisition was the latest addition to IBM's Smarter Commerce initiative, which is designed to help companies better integrate and more effectively manage their entire value chain by automating and optimizing their buying, marketing, selling and service processes. It realizes that the sale is just one aspect of the customer experience.

With this acquisition, IBM builds on its capabilities in the procurement aspect of Smarter Commerce and extends it to a new line of c-suite executives – chief procurement officers.  Emptoris brings IBM Smarter Commerce a set of new, flexible and integrated solutions that help companies optimize supplier relationships and interactions across the supply chain to sustainably reduce costs, enhance supplier performance, mitigate risk and improve compliance.

The Emptoris acquisition also complements IBM's Supply Chain Management (SCM) Business Process Outsourcing capabilities within its Global Process Services organization. Supply chain management solutions from IBM deliver supply chain planning and execution capabilities across the extended enterprise, enabling companies to anticipate, control and react to demand and supply volatility within the supply chain.

According to IBM, some of the trends that are bringing procurement professionals to the c-suite include globalization and increasing risk and volatility. Globalization of the supply base is increasing supplier risk, and requiring new capabilities to manage suppliers in emerging markets.

In an environment where, on average, 50 percent of the value of a product comes from suppliers, managing supply chain costs and risks plays a critical role in the value chain and in meeting business objectives, whether that is mitigating risks, improving compliance or controlling costs and impacting the bottom line. 

As a result, organizations are increasingly looking to innovate around their supply management processes through automation and optimization. IBM Emptoris solutions help organizations with this effort by managing the end-to-end supply and contract processes to build a more adaptive supply organization.

The suite includes solutions for sourcing, contract management, spend analysis, supplier lifecycle management, services procurement and telecom expense management, which can be deployed individually or as a single cohesive platform.

IBM Emptoris solutions help companies drive improved performance, capture sustainable cost savings, mitigate varied risks, improve compliance and directly impact the bottom-line. Not convinced? They were recognized as leading solutions in the following research reports:

•       “Leader” in Gartner’s (News - Alert) Magic Quadrant: Strategic Sourcing Application Suites

•       “Leader” in The Forrester (News - Alert) Wave: eSourcing 

•       "Leader" in The Forrester Wave: Contract Life-Cycle Management

•       “Leader” in The Forrester Wave: Services Procurement

•       “Leader” in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Telecom Expense Management, 2012

As 2013 is now underway, IBM has a lot for us to look forward to. Early this year, IBM will announce version 10 of the IBM Emptoris Stategic Supply Management solution, which will include improved capabilities for supplier governance, risk and compliance, program management and orchestration and adoption, collaboration and productivity. Stay tuned!

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Edited by Amanda Ciccatelli