As far as supplier onboarding costs go, I think this is one of those areas where you’re faced on one hand with a “boiling the ocean” problem — how to realistically onboard tens of thousands of suppliers, particularly if you don’t have a reliable supplier data across your enterprise — and on the other with picking the most important supplier relationships to enable first.

A network would seem like a convenient solution, but it is sort of a least common denominator approach when applied across ALL suppliers a la EDI/VAN. The surviving marketplaces take a different approach, but siloed by industry. And with all the hullabaloo about outsourcing, what do you do about outsourced relationships? How far down the multi-tier food chain do you go?

I agree that most organizations don’t give enough attention to supplier onboarding costs — or any kind of supplier operational investment — until they’re already locked in with an approach/vendor and alternatives are impractical. It will be interesting to see how this problem gets solved as procurement evolves.

K