{"id":1464,"date":"2014-11-24T11:31:19","date_gmt":"2014-11-24T11:31:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stagingwww.zycus.com\/working-towards-tco-in-a-bom-structure-part-i-common-esourcing-limitations"},"modified":"2023-10-19T04:39:23","modified_gmt":"2023-10-19T04:39:23","slug":"working-towards-tco-in-a-bom-structure-part-i-common-esourcing-limitations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.zycus.com\/freshz\/blog\/strategic-sourcing\/working-towards-tco-in-a-bom-structure-part-i-common-esourcing-limitations","title":{"rendered":"Working towards TCO in a BoM structure \u2013 Part I: Common eSourcing limitations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Every sourcing professional is aware of the importance of pricing item tables.\u00a0 All those building blocks, the color codes, columns that never end, multiple formulae, lookups, logical linkages, and what not!\u00a0 Surely they are complex enough but you can\u2019t help any of it, because it\u2019s what you need to arrive at that holy figure of Total Cost of Ownership.\u00a0 Your pricing template is a critical factor in bid analysis and bid optimization. And hence, the more sophisticated the Bill-of-Materials table gets, the better it is, for everyone involved.<\/p>\n<p>So what stops sourcing professionals today, from making their pricing item tables as sophisticated as they would like them to be in the very interface of an <a href=\"https:\/\/dev.zycus.com\/freshz\/solution\/strategic-sourcing\">eSourcing <\/a>application?\u00a0 It\u2019s to do with usability issues.\u00a0 So let\u2019s take a look at what the sourcing professionals go through.<\/p>\n<p><b>THE BAD USER EXPERIENCE SCENARIO<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Step 1 \u2013 You log onto your <a href=\"https:\/\/dev.zycus.com\/freshz\/blog\/procurement-technology\/understanding-the-what-why-how-of-strategic-sourcing\">eSourcing<\/a> platform<\/li>\n<li>Step 2 \u2013 You start building the pricing table framework in the tool<\/li>\n<li>Step 3 \u2013 You then try adding more sophistication to your pricing table<\/li>\n<li>Step 4 \u2013 But you hit the limitations of the tool<\/li>\n<li>Step 5a \u2013 You waste a lot of time figuring out workarounds and end up with an imperfect table OR<\/li>\n<li>Step 5b \u2013 You finally switch to MS Excel and mail the sheet to your vendors outside the tool<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The solution to your pricing table woes.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>What this entails is that as a sourcing professional, you are unable to capture the data in its true visual format on the technology platform and are forced to leave the eSourcing tool\u2019s premises losing critical records from the tool\u2019s purview while coordinating with suppliers for bid communications and RFP submissions.\u00a0 This inefficiency results in a rather discontinuous flow of data through the tool, making it an imperfect centralized sourcing technology for you.\u00a0 It also results in wastage of man-hours, in say, trying to replicate an Excel sheet in the sourcing tool or trying to figure out a workaround for feature inadequacies in the tool.\u00a0 This necessitates a fundamental technology modification, one that Zycus has cracked!<b>\u00a0 We shall introduce to you, in our next blog, our very new &#8220;eSourcing-desktop integration&#8221; &#8211; a panacea for all your pricing item table woes. <\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every sourcing professional is aware of the importance of pricing item tables.\u00a0 All those building blocks, the color codes, columns that never end, multiple formulae, lookups, logical linkages, and what not!\u00a0 Surely they are complex enough but you can\u2019t help any of it, because it\u2019s what you need to arrive at that holy figure of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":100934,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1938],"tags":[1400,1401,1402,404,1403,1404,1405,1406,1407,1408,1409,354,632,633,1410],"ppma_author":[170],"class_list":["post-1464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-strategic-sourcing","tag-bill-of-materials","tag-bom-structure","tag-ebidding","tag-esourcing","tag-excel-based-pricing-table","tag-price-template","tag-pricing-item-table","tag-pricing-table","tag-request-for-pricing","tag-rfp-tables","tag-rfp-templates","tag-strategic-sourcing-2","tag-tco","tag-total-cost-of-ownership","tag-vendor-pricing-table"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":170,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"zycus-inc","display_name":"Zycus","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/dev.zycus.com\/freshz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/zycus-author.png","url2x":"https:\/\/dev.zycus.com\/freshz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/zycus-author.png"},"author_category":"0","last_name":"Agentic Procurement Platform","first_name":"Zycus","job_title":"","user_url":"https:\/\/dev.zycus.com\/freshz","description":"Zycus is an Agentic Procurement Platform that is redefining procurement from Source-to-Pay to Intake-to-Outcomes. Its unified platform combines native Intake, agentic AI, and an end-to-end S2P core to help enterprises drive real procurement outcomes \u2014 not just transactions. Recognized by Gartner, Forrester, IDC, and customers worldwide, Zycus is shaping the next generation of procurement with the Merlin Agentic AI Platform."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.zycus.com\/freshz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.zycus.com\/freshz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.zycus.com\/freshz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.zycus.com\/freshz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.zycus.com\/freshz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.zycus.com\/freshz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.zycus.com\/freshz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.zycus.com\/freshz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.zycus.com\/freshz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.zycus.com\/freshz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1464"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.zycus.com\/freshz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=1464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}