This post is a bit lengthy, so I’ve broken it into Set-Up and Supply.
Set-Up
| Waiter | Your pie, sir! |
| Wakko | Thanks! Wakko dives into yet another pie. A stack of empty pie trays sits beside him. |
| Waiter | Shall I fetch another? |
| Wakko | Most certainly! |
| Yakko | So, not all industries are created equal when it comes to sourcing. |
| Dot | I guess not! I never knew that some categories were so involved! |
| the maniacs just finished their visit with Power Advocate, an end-to-end solutions provider to the energy and utility industry | |
| Wakko | between mouthfuls of Boston Cream Pie So, where next? |
| Dot | On to the Q’s I guess! |
| Yakko | Quintiq? |
| Dot | Supply chain optimization? That’s too much for Wakko … |
| Yakko | QP Group? |
| Dot | I think they’re consulting. |
| Yakko | You’re right. How about Quadrem? |
| Dot | The marketplace? Maybe. |
| Yakko | I think they also provide solutions and services. |
| Dot | Sounds good. So where are they? |
| Yakko | Good question. I believe they have offices all over the world. |
| Dot | I bet most our sales. Where’s their head office? |
| Yakko | Let me check. tappity-tap-tap Amsterdam. |
| Dot | Too bad. They might have been interesting. On to the R’s? |
| Yakko | Rapt? |
| Wakko | between mouthfuls of Boston Cream Pie Didn’t Microsoft buy them? |
| Dot | I think you’re right. I don’t want anything to do with Microsoft … |
| Yakko | Rearden Commerce? |
| Dot | Back in California … and they’re a little corporate for my taste. |
| Yakko | I’m not ready to go back to the valley either. Resources Global Professionals? |
| Dot | They’re a consulting and staffing services agency, not a consulting and staffing solutions provider. |
| Yakko | Oh. Hmmm. |
| ring | |
| Yakko | Yakko’s Yummy Yams … picture perfect produce … |
| the doctor | Hello, Yakko. You guys looking for someone else to check out? |
| Yakko | We are, actually. |
| the doctor | Great … I just got contacted by SupplierSoft … a new supplier management solutions company … they want to give a demo. |
| Yakko | Will they give it to us? |
| the doctor | I don’t see why not. |
| Yakko | Great! Where are they based? |
| the doctor | The valley. |
| Yakko | We’re not ready to head back to the valley yet. |
| the doctor | That’s okay. They’re 100% SaaS and they will do the demo on-line. |
| Yakko | That sounds good. |
| Wakko | between mouthfuls of Boston Cream Pie What does doc want this time? |
| Yakko | He wants us to review SupplierSoft, a SaaS company. He says we can do the demo from here. |
| Wakko | Great! Waiter … |
| Yakko | So, when’s the demo? |
| the doctor | Ten minutes. I’ll send you the details. Have fun! |
| Yakko | Later, doc! |
| the maniacs prepare for the demo | |
| beep bip-beep-bop boop-bop-bip boop-bop-bip-beip | |
| Yakko | Hello? |
| Mr. CEO | Hello. Is this the doctor? |
| Yakko | No, this is Yakko. |
| Wakko | I’m Wakko. |
| Dot | And I’m Dot. |
| Mr. CEO | The maniacs? Don’t you work for … |
| Yakko | Not since last year. |
| Wakko | We were wakko’d. Get it? |
| Mr. CEO | Sorry to hear that. Anyway, I’m expecting a call from the doctor … |
| Yakko | Something came up. Doc can’t make it. He asked us to take the demo on his behalf. |
| Mr. CEO | Well … |
| Dot | Don’t worry. We’ll convery everything we learn! |
| Mr. CEO | Do you work for the doctor? |
| Yakko | We don’t work for anyone at the moment. |
| Dot | So we’re doing a vendor tour … |
| Wakko | learning as much as we can about the sourcing world … |
| Yakko | and passing on anything useful that we learn to the doctor … |
| Mr. CEO | That’s interesting. |
| Dot | Very. We’ve learned a lot! |
Supply
| Yakko | So, can we have the demo? |
| Mr. CEO | Uhmm, sure. Where should we start? |
| Yakko | Well, Doc literally just asked us to do this ten minutes ago, so we haven’t the first clue about you. We didn’t even know you existed until then! |
| Mr. CEO | That’s probably because we’ve been in stealth mode developing our solutions and working out the kinks with our beta customers until very recently. I don’t believe in vaporware, and since we’re a pure SaaS solution, I wasn’t going to launch a product for mass-market adoption until it was ready. |
| Yakko | So how long have you guys been around? |
| Mr. CEO | I started the company last year … |
| Yakko | and you already have a product ready for the mass-market? |
| Mr. CEO | We have four actually … |
| Dot | Are you serious? |
| Mr. CEO | Yes. Since we built our solution on the Salesforce platform … |
| Dot | Isn’t Salesforce CRM? I thought you were in the supplier management space. |
| Mr. CEO | We are. There’s actually a lot of similarity between CRM and SRM … |
| Yakko | But one solution is focussed on customers and the other solution is focussed on suppliers … |
| Mr. CEO | That’s true, but what you have to realize is that both platforms require the same foundation … |
| Dot | … which is? |
| Mr. CEO | Extensive information management capabilities. CRM requires you to maintain an interaction history with the client. Those interactions are captured and categorized as data. SRM requires you to maintain an interaction history with the supplier. Those interactions are also captured and categorized as data. Fundamentally, from a technical standpoint, they’re almost identical solutions … the only real difference is one solution faces the downstream customer while the other faces the upstream supplier. |
| Dot | But what about SPM? (Supplier Performance Management) There’s no CPM equivalent … |
| Mr. CEO | You’re right. But the foundation is, again, data. |
| Yakko | So you’re telling us it really is possible to build an extensive supplier management platform on Salesforce? |
| Mr. CEO | And then some! |
| Yakko | Ok, I’ll bite … why would you do so? |
| Mr. CEO | Salesforce is a scalable, secure, reliable, and proven platform with 47,000 customers and 1.2 Million users. They’ve spent over 150 Million on their infrastructure. It allows us to offer our customers big enterprise scalability and reliability from day one … and do so at small company prices. How many companies in the supply management space can say they’re hosted on a 150 Million infrastructure? |
| Yakko | Uhmm … uhmm … uhmm … |
| Mr. CEO | That’s my point! |
| Yakko | So what solutions do you offer? |
| Mr. CEO | We currently offer Supplier Management, Environmental Compliance Management, Supplier Corrective Action Management, and Supplier Audit Management solutions with embedded process and project management. And we have a Supplier Help Desk Application in beta. |
| Yakko | I guess we should start with the Supplier Management solution. |
| Mr. CEO | As you can see, it’s an extensive supplier information management solution that captures a complete supplier profile; contacts based on roles; diversity, quality, and environmental certificates; insurance certificates; non-disclosure agreements; documents; meetings and meeting notes; projects; and custom data-capture requirements. In addition, you can tag items, include custom links, and search your entire supplier database based on multiple filters. It also has fairly extensive reporting capabilities, and a customizable dashboard for the home-page which keeps track of your tasks, calendar, waiting approvals, and the reports of your choice.
In addition to being able to define your own suplier data model, it supports multiple sections for each information type, it supports attachments whereever you need them, customizable step and task-based workflows by user or role, and an instantly accessible supplier view from anywhere in the supplier management application. |
| Yakko | What does that do? |
| Mr. CEO | It allows you to see what the supplier will see at any time. |
| Yakko | Well, so far it sounds similar to what Aravo and CVM Solutions offer. |
| Mr. CEO | There are similarities, as they also offer supplier information management solutions, but we feel we have some significant differences that will make our platform more attractive to our target market. |
| Dot | Like what? |
| Mr. CEO | The stability of our underlying platform, our low-cost, and, most-importantly, the tight integration with our other modules, which include not only the environmental compliance (which we believe allows us to match Aravo’s capabilities) and the supplier audit management (which we believe is better than CVM’s capabilities), but our rather unique corrective action management and help desk solutions. |
| Yakko | Let’s move on. I’m still waiting to be suitably impressed. |
| Mr. CEO | No problem. As you can see, our Environmental Compliance Solution comes with extensive environmental data collection capabilities at the Bill of Material (BOM), part, and raw material level; the ability to track all of the relevant regulations and regulatory exemptions; complete specifications, parts, component materials, and material declarations; substances and substance declarations; and AVLs.
It supports standard PDF forms that can be filled out by suppliers and uploaded into the system by way of XML extraction and automated data load; it validates and verifies all data on definition and import; it can generate user-defined alerts whenever a substance, material, part, or BOM is not in compliance; and in addition to a standard set of compliance reports, it allows users to define their own. |
| Yakko | So you’ve more or less matched the lesser-known offerings from EcoVadis and Co-exprise. |
| Mr. CEO | Well, I’m not really familiar with those solutions, but I think our solution does what an environmental compliance solution needs to do. And it integrates with our Information and Audit Management solutions, which we feel is a big plus. |
| Yakko | Interesting. Show us your Audit solution. |
| Mr. CEO | No problem. As you can see, it builds on our information and environmental compliance solutions and allows for collaboration between our customer, their suppliers, and third party auditors. It also allows for the definition of corrective action plans and projects to implement and monitor those corrective action plans, which is based on our integrated workflow and project management capabilities. |
| Yakko | Not bad at all. So how did you build it all so fast? |
| Mr. CEO | We took advantage of everything Salesforce had to offer and built it in their Apex language, which essentially wraps Java in a rapid development language designed to take full advantage of the multi-tenancy Salesforce.com environment. We also used good coding practices and created our applications in an object-oriented manner that allowed us to re-use common components, which could be tested once and re-used wherever needed. |
| Yakko | So what are your plans? |
| Mr. CEO | Eventually, we plan to be the Salesforce++ of the SRM world. |
| Wakko | But I thought you said you used a Java-Based language? |
| Mr. CEO | Ha, ha. Good one, Wakko. It’s an ambitous plan, but one we believe is ultimately realizable. Of course, we’re starting small. Right now, we’re focussed on manufacturing and distribution. |
| Yakko | Why? |
| Mr. CEO | That’s where we see the biggest pain, and the biggest benefit of our solution. |
| Yakko | How so? |
| Mr. CEO | Consider a large manufacturer sourcing 10,000 parts from 500 suppliers who has to get the lead out to comply with RoHS. How are they going to do this without our solution? They’re going to use spreadsheets. This is going to result in hundreds of thousands of spreadsheets. How do you analyze that many spreadsheets to find out which parts from which suppliers are not in compliance. And, more importantly, how do you insure that they get to the right person at the supplier who you are certain will fill them out properly without a central supplier database with up-to-date contact information? You don’t … and you scramble a very large team on a very large project, that takes way too long, trying … and risk huge losses from product recalls if just one part slips through. |
| Yakko | And with your product … |
| Mr. CEO | You select the parts that need to be in compliance, all of the suppliers get the PDF forms e-mailed to them, once the form is filled out it is automatically uploaded into the system, and you can run a report at any time that tells you how many parts are compliant, non-compliant, or in an unknown state because the supplier hasn’t provided you with the information. You can then run another report to get a list of the suppliers, listed contacts, and follow-up with them through the system, which integrates with Outlook. As you maniacs would say, once the supplier and part masters, and their relationships, have been defined … it’s easy-peasy. |
| Wakko | Whoa! |
| Mr. CEO | You said it, Wakko. And if anyone wants to see for themselves how powerful our solution is, we offer a free 30-day trial. We’re sure that it won’t disappoint. |