Daily Archives: February 20, 2014

Acquiring e-Sourcing and e-Procurement Technology: What Questions Should You Be Asking?

Join Sourcing Innovation and the doctor for the next NLPA Members-only webinar on Acquiring e-Sourcing and e-Procurement Technology; What Questions Should You Be Asking. Taking place next Wednesday, February 26, at 8:30 am Pacific, 11:30 am Eastern, and 16:30 pm GMT (London) time.

This webinar, which follows Novembers webinar on Making Sense of e- in Sourcing and Procurement, will outline the critical questions that must be asked when searching for an e-Sourcing or an e-Procurement solution.

In our last webinar, we clearly defined the sourcing and procurement cycle, indicated where each technology (e-Sourcing, e-Negotiation, e-Procurement, e-Invoicing, e-Auction, e-RFX, e-Contract, e-Payment, Procure-to-Pay, Source-to-Pay, etc.) fell, outlined what each technology did, and indicated the conditions that needed to exist for each solution to potentially be appropriate for your organization. This provided your organization with a set of questions it could ask to determine what technologies it needed to focus on as it looked to acquire new sourcing and procurement technologies to support it in its Supply Management Journey.

However, just knowing that your organization needs a solution is not enough, especially if its biggest need is a basic e-Negotiation suite that is theoretically available from over two dozen vendors. Which solution, or solutions, are right for your organization? Depending on the needs of the organization, it might be the case that only two out of twenty solutions will appropriately address the organizational needs, but unless the right questions are asked, it might look like six meet the needs and the organization will have a 66% chance of selecting the wrong solution.

That’s why the doctor of Sourcing Innovation is hosting this follow-up webinar on Acquiring e-Sourcing and e-Procurement Technology; What Questions Should You Be Asking. You’ll learn the critical questions that must be asked when searching for an e-Sourcing or an e-Procurement solution, some important questions that should also be considered for each major module, and how to structure a (multi-round) RFX for Success.

To register for this free event, login to the NLPA and navigate to the “Webinars” tab where you’ll find a registration link. Be sure to enter a valid email address as attendance details will be sent to you by email. Registration is free (as is basic NLPA membership) but attendance is limited, so sign up soon to ensure access to this event. (If you have forgotten your NLPA password, please visit the NLPA password reset page.)

See you next Wednesday, February 26, at 8:30 am Pacific, 11:30 am Eastern, and 16:30 pm GMT (London) time.

The Storm Clouds Are Coming!

Fifteen years ago, enterprise software was installed on-premise and managed locally. This required organizations with no knowledge of IT or IT management to create IT departments to manage servers and the software services that ran on them. For an organization that didn’t use software in it’s daily operations — such as a manufacturing organization that used manual production lines, an advertising agency that deals in existential image and not physical product, or a real-estate agency that only has to take listings and take cheques — it was an expensive proposition.

Then came the Application Service Providers, better known as ASPs. Using the power of the internet, these software solution providers built their own data centres and hosted the solution for their customers on dedicated machines in their own data centres. However, this solution was not optimal either, as the organization was not only paying for machines, energy, and administrators to run the software, but also paying for these through a thirdparty that added overhead and markup.

This provided an opportunity for more enterprising software delivery organizations that were able to build their applications to be multi-tenant and host multiple clients on the same platform. This reduced the number of machines, kilowatts, and system administrators that were required and thus reduced the overall operating cost. This allowed this new breed of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendor to take business away from the ASPs and advance the state of the art.

But this wasn’t the end. New enterprising software delivery organizations, who realized that their expertise was software and not data centre management, decided that they could do even better if they designed multi-tenant Software-as-a-Service solutions that could be run on someone else’s platform. This would bring more economies of scale into play as not only could multiple solutions could be run on the same platform, but the platform provider could be replaced by another platform provider with a lower-cost at any time. Enter the Cloud, which, like a real cloud is ephemeral, suspended in space, and, in some cases, full of security holes.

Cloud services are ephemeral as any specific instantiation of cloud services last as long as the company behind it has the means and the desire to continue supporting the cloud services. Cloud services are suspended in space since the instantiations may move over time as the service owners switch to lower-cost and/or more secure data centres. And, with the recent revelations on the PRISM program, the cloud is full of security holes to the point where the EU Parliament has called for suspension of the multi-billion ‘Safe-Harbour’ deal over NSA spying because some cloud providers don’t, either because they don’t have the expertise or won’t spend the money, secure their part of the cloud properly.

As a result, supply chains are exposed to additional risks of disruption (if a cloud provider unplugs overnight), security breaches (as some platforms are significantly less secure than others), and privacy risks (as some governments claim the right to all data on servers on their shore that is not associated with citizens or entities of that country or that might pose a security risk under acts like the US Patriot Act).

And this is only one of 14 significant threats to the supply chain in 2014. Would you like to know what the other 13 are? If so, download SI’s latest white paper on the Top Ten Transitions To Tackle in 2014 to Tame the Tolls, sponsored by BravoSolution. (Registration Required) Or, you could just wait and be surprised as the other 13, riding on black swans, one by one, strike at each full moon. Your call.