Daily Archives: November 5, 2012

Technology Trials 2012 – Part V

In Part IV, after we determined in Part III that you needed to find a new supply management solution, we outlined the critical (set of) question(s) that you needed to answer before you selected a BoB (Best-of-Breed) or FuSS (Full Supply Suite) solution.

Now that we know the critical questions that need to be asked in the selection of a BoB or FuSS solution, we will move on to the next (set) of question(s) that you need to answer before you can start to narrow in on a solution.

(05) What are the globalization requirements?

In particular,

  (05.1)Who are my stakeholders and what do they need??
  (05.2)How many countries will the solution be used in?
  (05.3)How many languages does the solution need to support?
  (05.4)How much support from the vendor will be required?
  (05.5)How much support for the suppliers will be required?

  (05.1)Who are my stakeholders and what do they need??
No solution exists in a vacuum. And you won’t be the only one depending on it. Executives will be depending on the reporting capabilities for insights and compliance purposes. Procurement will be depending on the contract details generated by a sourcing platform. Warehouse Management Systems will require the orders created in the Procurement Systems for m-way matching and inventory planning. Risk management will require compliance and performance information. Finance will require orders. Etc.

  (05.2)How many countries will the solution be used in?
If the organization is a global multi-national, then the solution will probably need to deployed across multiple countries, especially if services are shared across multiple locations. And if the solution is a sourcing solution, and services are sourced from a dozen countries, then the solution may need to be (partially) deployed in that many countries.

  (05.3)How many languages does the solution need to support?
Again, if services are shared across the globe or the solution needs to be used by suppliers across the globe, the solution could need to support a dozen, or more, languages.

  (05.4)How much support from the vendor will be required?
Do you have a cracker-jack IT and/or services support team, or was your solution cobbled together from the trinkets in boxes of cracker jacks? In the first case, your organization might not need too much support from the vendor. In the second, your organization might require extensive support from the vendor.

  (05.5)How much support for the suppliers will be required?
None, some, or quite a bit? In the former case, just about any solution could fit the bill. In the latter case, there might only be a few solutions with extensive supplier support capabilities that could even be considered. In between, there could be any number of suppliers with solution on a sliding scale.

In other words, there are a lot of questions that need to be answered before you even consider sending out that first RFI.