Procurement professionals must deal with more complex supply chain constraints than ever before. They are also under pressure to obtain components quickly and cost-effectively. We are seeing more and more of our customers looking for ways to increase frictionless digital interactions with their internal processes and the ways they interact with their suppliers, distributors and customers.
When we look at our interactions with procurement professionals who haven’t switched to digital solutions, we see that they spend most of their time on pricing and availability activities. Whether they come to DigiKey with immediate needs for production or want to win more business from their end customers, they spend a significant amount of time manually checking for the best prices and availability. This puts them at a disadvantage, with competitors benefitting from the data accuracy and efficiency of digital solutions.
In addition, implementing digital solutions allows for optimization in other supply chain interactions, such as ordering, order support, order management and invoicing.
Digital Pricing and Availability Benefits
We have seen that moving to digital solutions, like application program interfaces (APIs), can reduce the time it takes to gather pricing and availability data by as much as 90%. When we look at the typical journey of a business willing to be more digital with us, 95% of the time, they digitalize price and availability functions first.
By moving to digital solutions, procurement professionals can access product pricing and availability in real time. They can also secure pricing autonomously without waiting for someone on the other side to do it for them.
Digital solutions also offer increased data accuracy. Users can refresh data at any time, avoiding digital disruption and the need to redo everything manually. If price or lead times change, procurement professionals can access those changes instantly and optimize cashflow while preventing shortages.
How to Get Started
The first step is to determine the processes you would like to digitalize right now. While highlighting the immediate pain points of processes where manual tasks are required, consider what these will look like in the future. Sometimes, it is better to redesign processes with the long-term in mind rather than the short-term.
DigiKey offers a variety of self-service tools to support businesses during the planning and implementation of our digital solutions. In addition, we can help you develop and navigate partnerships with third-party software companies.
DigiKey listens to procurement professionals to optimize customer interactions. We constantly review solutions and evaluate new digital tools to provide the best user experience. We aim to allow customers to seamlessly integrate our information into their system and enable automation that broadens their capabilities and increases efficiency, accuracy and time to market.
Click here for more information on how to get started with DigiKey’s digital solutions.
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