Monthly Archives: June 2009

Some Project Management Basics from SupplyManagement.com

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The one thing supply management has in common with IT is this: projects are never easy, and project management skills are becoming increasingly important if you want your project to be successful. To this end, a recent article in SupplyManagement.com, that claims you should “rule with an iron triangle” (referring to the parameters of time, cost, and quality that must be maintained in a constant balance), attempted to outline the key issues at each stage of a project that must be managed for project success. And while it’s impossible to sum up all the intricacies of project management in a single article, a few good tips never hurt — especially if you want to avoid the “seven stage syndrome” that is all too common in mismanaged and unmanaged projects (wild enthusiasm –> disillusionment –> confusion –> panic –> search for the guilty –> punish the innocent –> glory for the non-participants).

The following are some key issues, and tips, for each of the five main stages of a basic project life-cycle:

  • InitiationThe project needs to be appropriately defined. Create a “project initiation document” that captures and documents key issues, key risks, project structure, and authority levels.
  • PlanningIf not controlled, “padding” can escalate out of control. It’s important to collectively break down the project into a set of manageable tasks that can be reasonably estimated without the need for excess “padding” by an individual outside of their comfort zone.
  • Resourcing & Cost-EstimationCosts can spiral out of control without a plan, and they will spiral out of control without a good plan backed by diligent homework that assigns (reasonably) accurate costs to each component.
  • ExecutionIf not closely monitored, you’re likely to find out at 500 feet that your parachute lines are tangled … leaving you essentially no time to untangle them. But if you monitor closely, you can find out that they’re snagged at 5,000 feet, when you still have time to untangle them.
  • CompletionThis only happens if your project is well planned, well executed, and monitored closely. Otherwise, while you will end up somewhere, it won’t be where you want to be.

New and Upcoming Events from the #1 Supply Chain Resource Site

The Sourcing Innovation Resource Site, always immediately accessible from the link under the “Free Resources” section of the sidebar, continues to add new content on a weekly, and often daily, basis.

The following is a short selection of new and upcoming events:

Upcoming Webinars

Date & Time Webcast
2009-Jun-18

16:00 GMT/WET

 Ask The Expert – Are You Selling Yourself?
Sponsor: IACCM
2009-Jun-18

14:00 GMT-04:00/AST/EDT

 Delivering Retail Distribution Excellence
Sponsor: Logistics Management
2009-Jun-19

11:00 GMT-04:00/AST/EDT

 Supply Chain Talent – Where Next?
Sponsor: Supply Chain Council
2009-Jun-26

11:00 GMT-04:00/AST/EDT

 Can a Greener Supply Chain be a Leaner Supply Chain?
Sponsor: Supply Chain Council

Conferences This Fall

Dates Conference Sponsor
2009-Nov-11 to
2009-Nov-13		 44th Symposium on Purchasing and Logistics
Berlin, Germany (Europe)		 BME
2009-Nov-12 to
2009-Nov-13		 SCM CHEM
Atlanta, Georgia, USA (North-America)		 WB Research
2009-Nov-13 to
2009-Nov-13		 NITL Annual Meeting & TransComp Exhibition
Anaheim, California, USA (North-America)		 NITL
2009-Dec-3 to
2009-Dec-4		 Supply Chain and Logistics 2009
Dallas, Texas, USA (North-America)		 WTG

which are all readily searchable from the comprehensive Site-Search page. So don’t forget to review the resource site on a weekly basis. You just might find what you didn’t even know you were looking for!

Roll Out to Your Community with RollStream

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RollStream (acquired by GXS) is a new entrant to the emerging SIM-centric (Supplier Information Management – centric) subspace of Supply Chain Management that has taken a Web 2.0 inspired approach to its solution. At the core of its “Enterprise Community Management” solution is the belief that collaboration is the missing critical component in many of today’s supplier management solutions.

As a result, when it comes to ease of use and supplier on-boarding, it has developed one of the best, as well as one of the easiest to use, solutions for Supplier Information Management as many people today are familiar and comfortable with the Web 2.0 and social network like interfaces it has developed for supplier, partner, and contact profile management as well as for survey creation and information gathering. It’s scalability and ease of use has allowed one of its largest customers to on-board their roughly 13,000 suppliers and manage roughly 150,000 points of contact. The solution has assisted this customer in credentials capture, compliance, training and enablement, and new technology rollout.

But, as you know, SIM is only the first component of Enterprise Management, whether you call it Supplier Central (CVM Solutions), Extended Enterprise Management (Hiperos), or Enterprise Community Management. There’s also, depending upon your outlook, risk, performance, compliance, sustainability, diversity, dispute resolution, initiative management, and collaboration for innovation.

The RollStream solution addresses, in its own words, basic Supplier Information Management in the form of on-boarding and profile management, Dispute Resolution by way of on-line collaboration, Compliance and Risk Management by way of task-managed projects and web surveys, and Performance and Feedback Management by way of a workflow-based community dashboard and collaborative scorecarding process.

The Supplier Information Management component, which is what they started with, is mature, and as I said above, one of the best and easiest to use solutions that you’re going to find for SIM on the market today, used by a number of global Fortune 3000’s to manage supplier bases of over 10,000 suppliers and 100,000 contacts in a number of verticals. The collaboration components, with complete conversation and audit trails, simplify the online dispute resolution process and make it much friendlier than the alternatives.

The Performance and Feedback Management is good for simple surveys and on-line discussions, but don’t expect to be able to build any complex scorecards within the system at this point in time. If you have a solution that generates your scorecards as spreadsheets or PDFs, you can automate the retrieval and attachment of the scorecards within the platform and then create tasks around the discussion of the scorecards with the relevant individuals at each of your suppliers, which could be quite helpful, but you can’t yet build complex scorecards within the system or attach comments to individual sections. This should not be an issue for most companies in most verticals, but if you are very metric-focussed or use collaborative scorecarding and need to retrieve inputs as well as send them and integrate all of the scorecards into a common collaboration tool, you’ll need to evaluate the solution carefully.

This brings us to the last component — Compliance, Risk, and Sustainability Initiative Management. Their solution, which allows you to build as many virtual sub-communities as you want within the application, and then create as many task-managed projects around those communities as you want, is quite powerful in its simplicity when it comes to the management of these projects, but most projects will require data collection and the degree of data collection will determine its fit within your organization. If you primarily do indirect sourcing or simple commodity sourcing, the solution should be more than enough for your needs as most of the regulatory requirements can be captured in simple yes-no questions. But if you do direct manufacturing, where you have to deal with RoHS, REACH, and or WEEE, the simple survey-monkey style web-form survey capability isn’t going to cut it when you have to capture not only whether or not thousands of chemicals are present in your products, but to what extent they are present. Similarly, if you have adopted, or foresee the need to adopt, complex carbon measurement calculations which depend not only on if-then logic (which the forms support) but also complex built-in calculations, then you’ll find their solution is not ready for prime time.

So what’s the verdict? I think many companies will find that the solution meets their SIM-Centric Enterprise Community Management needs, especially when you consider that even the best solution will take at least a year to roll-out to thousands of suppliers and get them proficient on the solution. In that timeframe, you’ll see more capability added to the Performance Management and Compliance, Risk, and Sustainability Management components as RollStream continues to implement their solution roadmap.

Get Noticed and Keep Your Sourcing or Procurement Job

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SupplyManagement.com recently ran a good article on “10 ways to get noticed” and lift your profile during this recession. Most are pretty obvious, but it’s still a good refresher article.

  1. Cut Costs
    Even though best-in-class procurement is about cost avoidance, not savings, in troubled time, cutting costs is what gets you noticed. So attack those sacred cow service categories with strategic sourcing and decision optimization, save big, and be an organizational hero.
  2. Engage Colleagues
    The best results come from cross-functional teams who work together to identify not the best price, but the best overall value for the company when all factors are considered, and the most recognition goes to the procurement professional who can organize a team and lead them down a path to success.
  3. Demonstrate SRM Skills
    When times are tough, they’re doubly so for your suppliers. To get the most from any supplier relationship, the relationship has to be managed. That takes a special breed of procurement professional who can work with the supplier, and not just beat them over the head demanding cost reductions.
  4. Consider Cash Flow
    Right now, the CFO likely only has one thing on her mind … making the next payroll while keeping the lights on. Anything you can do to help her will make you an instant organizational hero.
  5. Eliminate Risk
    Chances are, your organization is currently facing more risks than any one individual can count, let alone keep track of. If you can eliminate just one major risk, you’ll get noticed.
  6. Innovate and Be Flexible
    Smart organizations are starting to realize the same-old, same-old isn’t good enough any more and that they need to innovate. This means that they’re looking for innovators to lead the transformation. It could be you …
  7. Be A Leader
    There are lots of followers out there. But not enough leaders to lead the transformations that will be necessary for most businesses to survive.
  8. Stay Up To Speed With Training
    Your company needs someone who can thrive in today’s marketplace, not yesterday’s.
  9. Know Your Strengths
    Leverage them and stick to them.
  10. A Little Self Publicity Goes a Long Way
    Be sure to publicize and capture your successes. A hint of modesty is good, but too much will find you lost in the crowd.

Seven Tips for Online Marketing Success in a Down Economy

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Smart companies know that the last thing you should do in a down economy, which is what builds great companies, is to stop marketing because out of sight, out of mind is never more true than it is in troubled times. Plus, with so many of your competitors blindly freezing the marketing budget, with less forward-thinking companies marketing these days, those of you who do consistently market and build a brand presence become front of mind, and the first invited to the table.

To help you get started, here are the doctor‘s top 7 tips for marketing online in a down economy.

  1. Understand Your Audience
    Who are you trying to reach? What do they look for online? Where do they go to find it?
  2. Understand the Avenues at Your Disposal
    Once you’ve identified where your audience goes, you then need to understand the audience of the sites they visit before you choose any as potential investments. For example, 50% of your audience reads CNN. Does that mean you should you advertise on CNN? Considering that CNN gets over 1,000,000 visits a day, if you have a niche product that you are targeting at 5,000 companies, this says that your audience comprises less than 0.5% of CNN’s readership on a good day. Not good odds of your ad being seen by the right individual. You want to find a site where the majority of it’s readers are from your target audience.
  3. Target Niche Sites and Bloggers
    The best way to reach your target audience is to advertise on niche sites and blogs where the majority of their traffic is your potential customer base. A blog with 10,000 unique visitors a month that likely has 70% of it’s readers in your target market is ten times as attractive as a major site with 100,000 unique visitors a month that would likely have only 0.70% of it’s readership in your target market.
  4. Focus on Building Your Brand
    It used to be all about impressions. Then it was all about clicks. Now it’s shifting to leads. But the leaders know it’s all about impressions through a trusted channel (and recent research is proving this out). There’s a difference between selling trinkets to tourists and selling enterprise software and services. The first is an impulse buy. The second is a calculated decision, after a budget becomes available, made by individuals who will not always be ready to buy when you’re ready to sell and who are very busy and likely will not have the time to research your offering when they first see your ad. That means you need them to remember your brand so that they’ll look you up when the next budget cycle comes near and they are researching the solutions they want to acquire. They’re most likely to remember you if they see your logo time and time again on a trusted site that they visit every few days.
  5. Avoid Sites with “Set-Up” or “Hidden” Fees and Prices
    Let’s face it … there’s not much work to adding your logo to a page, re-directing a URL, or cutting an invoice off of a standard agreement. The price should be all-inclusive and straight-forward, because if you can’t trust the price, can you trust the site?
  6. Look for Prominence
    Just like people will not notice your logo on a printed page with a dozen other logos crowding the page, people will not notice your logo on a crowded web-page that has more advertising than content. You want to make sure that the site limits the number of advertisers/sponsors it will accept at any one time to a small number (my recommendation is at most 7, since psychologists tell us this is the maximum number of pieces of information an average person can process at any one time in their short term memory) and that your logo is at the top of every page, because, let’s face it, most readers don’t scroll all the way down on a page that’s 3, 4, 5, or even 10 screens deep.
  7. Target the Campaign
    Use your understanding of the site’s audience to tailor welcome pages specific to what they will be looking for. And keep the content current and relevant.