14 June 2006 | Rebecca Ellinor
Purchasers using on-demand supply management services are needed to take part in a survey assessing its effectiveness.
Research firm Aberdeen Group is conducting the study and is inviting responses until the end of the month at
www.aberdeen.com/survey/smaas It hopes this research will identify the benefits and risks of using the "software as a service" model, whereby a software company provides maintenance, technical support and daily operation of software for a client.
The firm also wants to discover how it can be used to ensure best value and analyse current and planned adoption of pay-as-you-go software.
On-demand supply management services offer software to help carry out spend analysis, procurement, contract management, sourcing, content and category management, invoice reconciliation and payment and supplier enablement and development.
Vishal Patel, Aberdeen research analyst, told
supplymanagement.com: "There's a lot of interest in the subject of on-demand supply management because of the potential cost benefits compared to using a more traditional licence or installed software model.
"We want to verify the benefits to see if companies are receiving a higher return on investment and lower cost and to benchmark it."
SMjun2006
