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By Zycus, a SaaS based provider of Spend Management Solutions
www.zycus.com

With changes in their environment many organizations are looking at changes in their sourcing applications and initiatives. Several organizations are unhappy with their current sourcing platforms and are looking at other alternatives. As with any other business software application, a fairly large number of eSourcing implementations end up in a fiasco. And when eSourcing programs fail, the primary reason is often a lack of user acceptance. After the initial euphoria and management push, sourcing professionals shun their eSourcing tools and go back to the traditional means of spreadsheets, emails and intranet applications. Consequently, eSourcing software is relegated to mere shelf ware in most of the organizations. And the main reason hitting user adoption is the over emphasis on functionalities and least attention on ensuring that the application is simple and easy to use. The available eSourcing tools are inherently complex and tedious, and user adoption has been a critical issue with almost all of them. Sourcing organizations often complain of the lack of user friendliness of the tool, which does little more than be a supplier portal. As a result adoption wanes, and users go back to using familiar tools like spreadsheets, databases or even just emails.

As the level of user adoption becomes one of the major criteria in the successful implementation of any eSourcing software two critical evaluation parameters emerge which can help eSourcing software providers gain wins in this market. These include ease of use at the product level and strong customer support and training at the service level. Thus it becomes essential that the newer offerings offered by vendors are not only easy to use and go into action with a minimum amount of training but are followed up by top level customer support not just during the implementation process but also after the solution is in place. This paper focuses on how and why user adoption is the key factor to achieve ROI from your eSourcing software.