CIO Dinner Party, Part 2 - The CPO Arrives, With a Party Platter of Ideas

The table has been set and the CIO has started to welcome his guests to the party. First to arrive is the Chief Procurement Officer (CPO). The CPO is an interesting role because it either sits at, or reports into, the C-suite, but also has day to day tactical issues that he or she must tackle. The number one issue facing all CPOs – for what seems like the end of time – is budget and spend management.

The CPO today needs to coordinate and work with HR, IT, legal, operations, and other stakeholders. Top of mind for every CPO is making sure anything acquired by the company is procured effectively, used to its fullest extent, retired when it needs to be, and remains within budget — while keeping stakeholders informed.

The CIO is thrilled to see the CPO arriving first. Not only can the CPO help with the current software budget and spend management, but he can also provide insight regarding how to approach Digital Transformation. As the organization shifts from transactional to transformational so must the thinking and planning of each member of the team. Deloitte’s recent global chief procurement officer survey backs up this trend as well: 75% of CPOs believe that procurement’s role in delivering digital strategy will increase in the future.

How Will a CPO Deliver on This Strategy?

Through the use of analytics. According to the Deloitte survey, analytics will have the biggest impact for over 65% of those in a procurement role. Further, according to a recent article by CPO Rising, one of the common traits that successful CPOs hold is the ability to understand what’s ahead for the future of his or her company. Through the use of analytics, the CPO can develop procurement strategies, optimize contracts, manage risk, and save costs.

This is where our services and proprietary platform can aid the CPO in understanding the bigger picture when it comes to the entire software portfolio. With over 30 years of expertise as a trusted advisor – and using a comprehensive set of analytics – SoftwareONE services can help customers in a number of ways. These include, determining a baseline of their current software environment, developing software procurement strategies, negotiating and optimizing contracts through benchmarking, and managing risk while realizing cost savings.

PyraCloud is a comprehensive software portfolio management solution helping procurement officers and their teams manage the overall software lifecycle from requirements to retirement. At the end of the day, PyraCloud pulls together the various data sets to help customers understand:

• Entitlement – What do they own and how can they use it?
• Inventory – What is installed? {through integration}
• Consumption – How well is software being utilized? {through integration}

By having a view into entitlement, inventory and consumption, customers can right size their environment, maximize their software investments, and reduce compliance risk.

How Does PyraCloud Help a CPO Realize this End Goal?

Let’s take a look…

• Simplify and automate the software procurement process – Establish a catalog of software options with negotiated pricing that organizations can access globally (as well as the ability to transact in local currency). Transact digitally but also leverage the SoftwareONE account team (click-to-chat) for special requests on software purchases. Create shopping lists or favorites for commonly ordered items to rapidly procure and provision resources for new employees.
• Drive a quote, order and invoice process – Establish a process for creating and approving quotes (advanced workflow – for amount of spend or software purchased). Also, track orders, shipments and invoices and view the history of past orders.
• Track and optimize License Agreements and assets – Maintain a central view of all software license agreements and assets helping manage the terms, entitlement, renewals and license key list.
• Track and optimize software distribution – Upload software media and track the distribution of software across the organization.
• Proactively manage the software portfolio – Set alerts and create and schedule reports to manage the overall software portfolio; stay current in regards to renewals, spend by business unit, and order history.

These are just a few of the benefits a procurement officer can realize with PyraCloud. The platform, at its core, helps procurement officers manage the overall budget and spend of the software portfolio.

As we stated above the CPOs number one concern is cost containment and with SoftwareONE’s services and its PyraCloud platform, he or she can save up to 30%. This takes some of the pressure off the CPO (hopefully to better enjoy the dinner party) but also allows the CPO to have budget to invest in innovation. With the software portfolio under control, the CIO has asked the CPO to collaborate with the IT director to accelerate the Digital Transformation strategy for the company. The lessons learned on the software portfolio side can be directly applied to an organization’s Digital Transformation strategy.