Sachin Sharma breaks down how to move from spreadsheets to procurement software in three steps: assess adoption risk and plan training, document your current processes and define what you actually need, then pilot solutions with a partner. People, process, and technology all matter equally.
Now, if you are using a spreadsheet process today and thinking about digitizing or moving to a tool to manage your spending, either a purchase order process and all, there are a few things you should consider which I would just say like the logical sequence of thinking about things. Right? So when you are using a. And I would say let's first highlight some of them and then I'll provide details or answers around it. Right. So one is the adoption risk. So what's my adoption risk? Second is I would say specific use cases which I need to address from my requirements standpoint. Do I understand that? Right. And three is obviously finding a partner who can help with the first two. So let's get into each one of them. So adoption risk is more thinking about. People are used to using spreadsheets, right? And spreadsheets the easiest thing you can use. And you know, there's no learning curve in terms of understanding how to use it. Maintaining it is a different thing altogether. But if you think about the adoption is like, okay, what do I need to do to transition my people or my team to a, a tool or a digital procurement process? Is this a matter of will or skill? So they are not doing because they don't want to do it? I mean, I'm just thinking from a transition standpoint. Right, but. Or is it more a. I need to make sure, you know, I have people like, I have personally worked with people who use paper forms and that's what they have used for acquisitions. And then when you get into, you know, adopting a digital tool, that's the number one thing we have to kind of think about is like how often we have to train them. Because you have to think about these things, right? So if, if there is like, let's say not, not everybody in your workforce is going to be the behave the same way, have the same set of skill sets. So you had to start thinking about training, for example, how often I need to train them, maybe those people need additional training and so on. So that's kind of number one or option. Second is your specific use cases. So how do you do business? Because when you're doing it in a spreadsheet, it's in people's head, right? I mean, nobody's documenting the process. So the first thing is let's document the process and say, what do we buy and how do we buy that today and how you would like to make it better. Because if you implement your non documented poor process with the technology, it's not going to go a long way in the first two months, you're going to just say, yeah, it's working, but it's not fully working. Maybe we are too early on it. And then eventually you start saying and saying, no, the technology tools doesn't work. Tools work. If you have a process defined now, a process is good or bad, I think it matters. But if you do not have a process, that's worse, right? So you got to have at least a process documented so everybody can look at it and say, okay, what do we need to do? And based on that, you define a set of requirements and then the third is finding a partner who can do that for you. Now, I would say, in my experience, the best way to kind of figure all these things out is trying the solution out versus let me call five people, get five demos and decide a demo is a good way to kind of get intro to the product. But you really need to kind of try it out with your use cases. So now think about logically, right? You identified your adoption risk, so you know what you need to look for. You created your set of requirements, so you know what you're looking for. Now try that out, right? So if it works or it doesn't work, and whatever works, whatever best fits your feature solution set, you kind of go for that. So those are the three logical steps I would execute if I was transitioning from a spreadsheet to a digital procurement process.
