Self-Service can be a win-win… convenience for one party and cost savings for another!
I was in one the big box home improvement chains the other day, buying a pack of screws. I found the size I needed, and went up front to pay. Now, this isn’t the grocery story – there is no express checkout line. I saw that the three registers open all had a decent size line… guess I have to wait.
But wait – I saw something new. The store finally installed a few self-service checkout lines. HOO-RAY! I went over, scanned my one item, paid with my credit card, and was out the door. Elapsed time? 35 seconds. Sweet.
I thought about it on my way home – that self-service checkout was awesome. It was intuitive, easy, and it did the job I needed to do. Plus, the store didn’t have to pay a cashier to ring up my package of screws. Win / win.
That got me to thinking about self-service in general. I love helping myself when at all possible. Especially if it’s intuitive and straightforward. And I think most people are like that – self-service rocks, whether I’m ringing myself out, or I’m checking the status of an invoice. And that’s where the argument for portals comes in.
Of course, customer and supplier self-service is just one aspect of why a company should invest in a portal. There are other reasons, like better service, more streamlined operations, and savings of millions of dollars (and I’ll talk about them all here at one point), but for now, the package of screws I rang out myself is a great analogy. People simply LIKE self-service. If you offer it to them, they will use it. And if they use it instead of calling you, well, that saves you money, because you aren’t paying someone to be on the other end of the phone.
Imagine if you have 100,000 invoices a month to pay (that’s a lot, but stay with me here). You can bet that anywhere between 1 and 5% of them will generate a phone call or e-mail of some sort from a supplier. That’s 1,000-5,000 communications. Divided by 20 workdays for the month, that’s 50-250 a day. That’s probably anywhere from two to ten full time people just to handle invoice questions. The invoice inquiry self-service of a Vendor Portal eliminates that almost entirely. Those people can work on something else, or be reduced from payroll. Your Portal likely paid for itself JUST by this one aspect.
Neat, huh?
That wraps up my Portal thought today – maybe tomorrow, something will strike me that reminds of those millions of dollars I mentioned (one can only hope, right!)
