Monthly Archives: September 2011

High Definition Adoption Measurement Part III

Today’s guest post is from John Shaw (Senior Director, Adoption Services) of BravoSolution, a leading provider of spend analysis, (e-)sourcing, supplier performance management (SPM) and healthcare sourcing solutions and a sponsor of Sourcing Innovation (SI). It is the third of an eight (8) part series, which, when complete, will form a white-paper that BravoSolution will be releasing to the general populace next Wednesday.

Yesterday’s post (Part II) introduced us to High Definition Adoption Measurement (HDAM) and framed the solution in the context of e-Sourcing, which presents a common complex adoption challenge.

Today’s post addresses the typical view from 30,000 feet and how it leaves something to be desired.

Adoption from 30,000 Feet:

The report below highlights what appears to be a very successful Go-Live followed by a year of continual growth of system usage. This is the 30,000-foot view and it should answer some very fundamental questions like:

  • “Have we trained everyone?“
  • “How many of our Souring Events are going through the system?“
  • “Is usage increasing according to plan?“

A view of adoption from 30,000 feet.

These 30,000-foot views are useful. The report could apply to any of our three (3) companies and might be presented at an executive level as evidence of a successful first year of rollout. In this example, it seems our companies are generally moving in the right direction. If we saw problems at this level, we could easily identify the low hanging adoption fruit to pursue.

But if we reflect back upon the business case of each of our example companies, this view does not really tell us much on how any of them are progressing in increasing supplier value, maintaining transparency or increasing efficiency.

Take the following “unknown issues” common in e-Sourcing organizations. Each issue is counter-productive to the organization’s goals, but is not evident on the report:

What you don't see at 30,000 feet.

These examples are the tip of the iceberg. They illustrate how users can appear at a 30,000-foot level to be using a system correctly but also how that 30,000-foot view can be deceptive. When this occurs to your organization, the results are simple. Your organization isn’t realizing the full ROI that you set out to achieve and the Adoption Team doesn’t have visibility into the problems they need to fix.

Part IV will provide an example case study that describes some of the adoption challenges at a global manufacturer.

Working Capital in Europe is at an All Time High

But yet, so is unemployment. What’s the deal? According to this recent article over on the Financial Director site (in the UK), on how working capital bounces back, Europe’s biggest companies have seen the most significant revenue growth in five years. However, these same companies are hoarding their cash and, in many cases, borrowing to do so, while smaller companies remain starved for capital and unemployment remains near 10%.

This is, in a word, disgusting. As SI posted last Thursday, you get nothing for nothing, so if all your company is doing is hoarding cash instead of spending it on talent and innovation, it doesn’t, at least in SI’s view, have a very bright future. Especially given the overall state of the European economy with entire countries risking default on debt. While SI doesn’t know exactly how much cash the 1000 largest Europe-headquartered public companies are hoarding, SI is sure that it’s enough to make quite a dent in the unemployment wake and economic stability of the EU — something that would be very good for global supply chains that probably can’t afford more costly hits from economic instability and the rising prices that such instability entails.

High Definition Adoption Measurement Part II

Today’s guest post is from John Shaw (Senior Director, Adoption Services) of BravoSolution, a leading provider of spend analysis, (e-)sourcing, supplier performance management (SPM) and healthcare sourcing solutions and a sponsor of Sourcing Innovation (SI). It is the second of an eight (8) part series, which, when complete, will form a white-paper that BravoSolution will be releasing to the general populace next Wednesday.

Yesterday’s post (Part I), which noted that rolling out a technology solution isn’t anything like building the “Field of Dreams“, pointed out that just giving the team the tools they need isn’t enough. The leadership team also needs to acquire a set of tools designed to help their team succeed. In short, they need an “adoption toolkit” to make sure the tools are adopted as standard operating procedure.

Today’s post will introduce the concept of High Definition Adoption Measurement (HDAM), but first, it will frame the problem.

E-Sourcing: A commonly complex adoption challenge

For the purposes of this paper, we’ll discuss Adoption Measurement in the context of e-Sourcing simply because so many organizations use an e-sourcing tool to varying levels of success. It serves as an easy-to-identify-with example. Interestingly, the adoption challenges inherent in e-sourcing can be quite complex. We hope this paper will challenge you take an in-depth look at how you apply adoption measurement in your organization, both for e-sourcing and other solutions you use to support your business.

What is High Definition Adoption Measurement?

High Definition Adoption Measurement is a catchy way of saying that we are going to measure and understand how your organization is using a solution. It is a process of understanding your business case and tailoring a set of standard measurements to create visibility into how well the behaviours of your people are supporting your organization’s goals. It includes sharing these metrics with your team, setting collaborative targets and working towards those targets.
Adoption Measurement serves as the basis for prioritizing opportunities for continual improvement and defining solutions for capitalizing upon those opportunities. It essence, it is the Opportunity Assessment and Wave Planning processes of the Adoption Professional!

Setting the Stage: Understand the Business Case

The first step in measuring adoption is to understand why a particular tool is being implemented by an organization. While this may seem both obvious and easy for something like an e-Sourcing tool, I can assure you that one business case does not fit all organizations, no matter how well the benefits of e-Sourcing have been documented. For our discussion, we will highlight 3 organizations that have been modelled after common customer profiles in BravoSolution’s customer base.

3 Distinct e-Sourcing Needs


Three companies, three e-Sourcing needs.

Observe that each of these organizations is trying to solve a different problem with the same e-sourcing tool. Although they all may be able to benefit from using e-Sourcing to achieve additional supplier value, increase transparency to the sourcing process and increase team efficiency, they each have their own focus areas.

Part III will describe the typical view of adoption from 30,000 feet and the useful- and useless-ness of such a view.

Your Transportation Costs Are About To Go Way Up!

Mary C. Holcomb of The University of Tennessee and Karl B. Manrodt of Georgia Southern University, in partnership with Con-way Inc., Ernst & Young, and Logistics Mangaement, just released their Annual Study of Logistics and Transporation (The Masters of Logistics Report), and the findings, summarized in this recent article on Study of Logistics and Transportation Trends: Navigating transportation’s Bermuda Triangle that had some scary findings. Namely that, in the average supply chain, there is:

  • a lack of planning for the impact of rising fuel prices,
  • a rigid network that is incapable of flexing when uncertainty occurs, and
  • a myopic internal focus that limits the enterprises’ ability to achive the desired performance results.

Furthermore, the most mature actions being undertaken by study respondents are

  • use of core carriers
    which doesn’t deal with the fact that they will tack on fuel surcharges when prices get high enough
  • use of dedicated transportation
    which generally only helps with core routes
  • carrier tracking
    which keeps on top of rates but does nothing to mitigate or control rates
  • load planning
    which increases fill rate and minimizes shipments, but doesn’t necessarily optimize the network
  • shipment consolidation
    which helps, but only if done in conjuction with S&OP planning because, otherwise, there’s a chance that this could increase the probability of costly stock-outs

And none of these are optimal. As the authors indicate, logistics managers need to be looking at route planning in conjuction with network optimization and redesign with respect to overall supply chain needs. This is the only way to adequately mitigate the risk of (rapidly) rising freight prices in the years to come. And any company that keeps doing the same-old, same-old, which is the majority of companies by the looks of things, is in for a rapid rate increase as soon as the (global) economy bounces back.

High Definition Adoption Measurement Part I

Today’s guest post is from John Shaw (Senior Director, Adoption Services) of BravoSolution, a leading provider of spend analysis, (e-)sourcing, supplier performance management (SPM) and healthcare sourcing solutions and a sponsor of Sourcing Innovation (SI). It is the first of an eight (8) part series, which, when complete, will form a white-paper that BravoSolution will be releasing to the general populace next Wednesday. However, since SI is focussed on delivering educational, innovational, and inquisitive content on a regular basis, BravoSolution has been kind enough to give SI readers a first-look.

So you are a seasoned leader in the rapidly maturing field of strategic sourcing and your leadership team continually challenges you to maximize the value of your team to the organization. You are, of course, resource constrained. Before you lay an open field of opportunities, yet you hold in your hands a limited amount of time, money and people.

And so the work begins! You prioritize the opportunities, build a budget and set about bringing the right mix of people, process and tools forward. As a part of this planning, you invest in giving your people the right set of tools and processes for the job. In the field of Strategic Sourcing this usually means the implementation of solutions to support activities like spend analysis, sourcing execution and contract implementation.

Unfortunately, rolling a spend analysis or e-sourcing tool out across a global organization isn’t anything like building the “Field of Dreams“. Just because you’ve built and shared the solution doesn’t mean the team will use it AND use it correctly. Just as a Sourcing Professional needs the right tools in their toolkit, the leadership team needs a set of tools designed to help their people succeed with the solution and tools they have provided. They need an “adoption toolkit” to make sure the solutions and tools are adopted as standard operating procedure.

The Adoption Toolkit

The most successful adoption programs start at the very beginning of the solution implementation project and are institutionalized into the ongoing operations of a business. In practice, most solution implementations are heavily front-loaded. For a period leading up to the “Go-Live”, organizations invest heavily in solution configuration, communications, training, documentation and process consulting. When the solution goes live, the broader team celebrates, claps each other on the back and leaves the solution’s ultimate success to the solution owner and their super users. We’ll call these individuals left in charge of the solution the Adoption Team.

There are a number of critical tools that should be available to the Adoption Team, but the most important by far are the tools by which they will measure the ongoing adoption of the solution by the organization. Measuring adoption progress against a solution’s business case is the single most important element in understanding where to direct the time and energies of the Adoption Team. Without high quality adoption measurement, an Adoption Team is analogous to a ship at sea without a navigation system; the best and most experienced captains may find their way, but the majority will be left drifting without direction or focus.

Part II will define High Definition Adoption Management (HDAM) and describe it in the context of e-sourcing, a commonly complex adoption challenge.