Monthly Archives: October 2015

The Trade Extensions Event Was Different. Their View Is Different. It’s time for Different.

In our last post we noted that those of you following Spend Matters and Spend Matters EU will have noticed Nancy’s and Jason’s posts on the recent Trade Extensions events in London and Chicago on Managing Complexity. In these posts they made a number of interesting observations about the event and how it was different from many other customer-focussed vendor events. We summarized these in our last post and noted that while all of the differences identified were major differences between the Trade Extensions event and the average vendor event, the biggest difference was left unsaid.

The biggest difference was not in the event, or even in the unique approach Trade Extensions took in the planning and organization of the event, but in the viewpoint they took with regards to the core subject matter. The viewpoint, which is one that Sourcing Innovation has had for a long time, is simply thus:

It’s not optimization. It’s just sourcing.

It’s 2015. As indicated in a recent white paper by Mr. Smith on What Defines Complex Sourcing, Sourcing is Complex. In fact, as will be clarified in Sourcing Innovation’s upcoming paper on Complex Sourcing: Are You Ready, even the most basic of categories these days hide complexity well beyond an average Sourcing Professional’s wildest imagination. In fact, even a basic print tender can hide all nine dimensions of complexity and finding the right solution is in fact a sourcing problem of the highest magnitude. (The reality is that sourcing custom made controller boards is often easier.)

Sourcing involves identifying the plethora of options available, defining the cost model breakdowns, capturing all of the data, allowing suppliers to define their own proposals, capturing all of the buyer constraints and capacity restrictions, and creating various scenarios that represent different workable options. All of this requires an optimization platform.

The reality is that strategic sourcing requires a lot of analysis, and the only sourcing platform that can support the analysis required is one based on optimization. But it’s not necessarily about the optimization. Sometimes it’s about the requirements capture. Sometimes it’s about the data collection. Sometimes its about the modelling. Sometimes its just creating and costing scenarios. And sometimes, which could be a small fraction of the time, it’s about the optimization.

It’s not optimization, it’s strategic sourcing. You can’t do sourcing without optimization, even though you can do optimization without sourcing. That’s why the Trade Extensions event focussed on Sourcing. Whether or not the end of Procurement is nigh. How to effect change to keep it relevant. How to source responsibly. And what some best practices to achieve that goal are. If you can not strategically source, you cannot optimize. Don’t try to preach optimization before one understands the importance of true and proper strategic sourcing.

That’s also why Trade Extensions commissioned a book, The Strategic Sourcing Lifecycle: An Introduction, written by the doctor, which they will be giving away FREE as an e-Book download through their TESS Academy. (Stay tuned for more information on when this will be available.) It’s not optimization, it’s sourcing. And we’ve reached a point where most firms that claim to have Sourcing don’t.

Environmental Damnation 21: Climate Change

We’ve hinted at this in our damnation posts on natural disasters, water, and food shortages but this source environmental damnation is one that has repercussions across the damnation categories. While we won’t discuss all of the ripple effects of the shockwaves it is producing, we’ll discuss some of the biggest ones from the primary effects.

Hotter Summers

Everyone associates climate change with global warming, and the summers are definitely warming up, as this is one aspect of climate change. As a result of hotter average summertime temperatures, we are experiencing a global change in weather patterns that is bringing more droughts and wildfires, which is resulting in an increase in lost crops at a time when food reserves are hovering near the all time lows that arrived in 2011 (and at a time when the US no longer has any strategic grain reserves). This means that spiking commodity prices are going to keep spiking, assuming that you can even get enough of the commodity. If your organization is not your supplier’s preferred customer, and 30% of the global crop gets wiped out, is your order getting filled?

Colder Winters

Global warming is not just global warming, it’s global climate change year round. While the summers get hotter, the winters get colder and more severe and bring more severe storms with record setting snowfalls that can bury your average personal automobile, massive ice storms (that can bring down entire power grids), and fast moving ice, even in the US. (Source: Raw Video) As a result transportation routes are shutting down, which doesn’t matter because your factories cannot run without power, and your people can not get to work in temperatures that can inflict frostbite in less than sixty seconds.

More Regulations

Climate change is a result of global warming and global warming is at least partially a result of our industrialization and all of the carbon and particulates that we pump into the atmosphere that would not get there naturally. The smarter countries realize this, and are creating regulations to prevent (over) pollution that is damaging our planet and threatening our very existence. And while this is a good thing in theory, the fact that these regulations are not only popping up faster than Fibonacci’s rabbits but that every clean air, water, etc. regulation around the globe has not only different restrictions on pollutant output, but on quality control and reporting, it’s a paperwork nightmare. When one considers all the trees that are being cut down to support the creation of these regulations, one has to wonder if more harm is being done than good sometimes.

In short, climate change is another eternal damnation that plays havoc in the direct manners specified above, and in more indirect manners when one considers the impact it has on transportation infrastructure (as extreme cold and rapid freezing and thawing is very hard on our man made structures), our providers (who are forced to claim force majeure on a more regular basis), and us (when we just cannot handle extreme weather conditions we never evolved for).

The Trade Extensions Event Was Different. It Needed to Be. Do You Know Why?

Those of you following Spend Matters and Spend Matters EU will have noticed Nancy’s and Jason’s posts on the recent Trade Extensions events in London and Chicago on Managing Complexity. In these posts they made a number of interesting observations (which the doctor can verify as he was at the UK EVENT) about the event and how it was different from many other customer-focussed vendor events.

Major differences included:

  • Focus of the talks

    Speeches focused on real, live issues and scenarios that listeners could learn from and apply to their procurement functions and their companies’ wider strategic visions. (Optimising Your Game) There wasn’t a single demo or even a detailed description of the next major release (which will be their biggest release since 2009), coming next year.

  • Make up of the crowd

    Users tend to be forward-thinking and technology-savvy people, given this is leading-edge software, and there were more people in their 20s (“bright young things”) than is usual at events of this nature. It was the leaders of today and tomorrow, not the leaders of yesteryear counting the days to their retirement. (A Rewarding Day)

  • Value to the crowd.

    Nancy noted that one person said that coming to the event had taught him more in one day than he could have learned from going on a £30K procurement course.(A Rewarding Day) The focus was on real-world value, not vendor messaging.

  • Key takeaways.

    There’s more to an optimization-based sourcing system than just product sourcing. One company noted that having changed from their existing sourcing system to something more advanced 12 months ago, has proved invaluable in two key areas: logistics activities (not surprisingly) and supplier data capture. Optimization is about total costs, goods and transportation, and in order to analyze and select the best total cost scenario, a lot of data needs to be captured. As a result, such a tool must be great at data capture. And, as a result, the tool can be used in more diverse ways and in more applications than you would expect. (A Rewarding Day)

  • Individual Thought

    Jason noted how many thoughts of the attendees center on areas around the technology rather than the core solution itself. Taken together, I believe the thoughts below point to the future of where sourcing technology is headed, which centers as much on people as systems. (Brainstorming) Trade Extensions is encouraging ideas and feedback, hoping to harvest the best for future development.

These were all major differences, but the biggest difference is the one that is going unsaid by Nancy, Peter, and Jason and Trade extensions. What is the biggest difference? What is left unsaid. What was left unsaid? We’ll tackle that in our next post …
after we give you a day to think on it.

LOLCat Says “Canada, Vote that [Person] Out”!

Last week, Canadian LOLCat said Canada, do NOT vote Conservative because, in LOLCat’s view, it was long past time for Harper to go.

However, since the election is tomorrow, SI wanted to be sure LOLCat hadn’t changed its mind. So we asked:

LOLCat, have you changed your mind about your opinion that Canadians should NOT vote conservative tomorrow?

LOLCat replied …


No way! It’s time to Vote that [Person] Out!

Why so hard on Harper, LOLCat. Not that we don’t agree that he deserves it, but I’m curious. Is it his invasion of our privacy? Is it his withdrawal from environmental protection? Is it his adoption of war-like ways and his love for Uncle Sam? Is it his treatment of sick moms on disability? Can you even settle on a #1 reason why Harperman, it’s time for you to go?

It’s his refusal to end the seal hunt!

Really? I know it’s cruel, but why does that particular injustice bother you more than his many efforts to enact legislation that violates our very basic rights and freedom?

If he allows those poor, defenceless, furry seal cubs to be bludgeoned to death, how do we know we’re not next? Our fur is just as soft …

Good point, LOLCat. Good point. You must be terrified. (FYI, if you, like LOLCat, love the seals too, you should sign the Humane Society International petition to end the seal hunt.)

So, in the words of our new Veterans Group slogan, tomorrow, remember its Vote Anyone But Conservative! And maybe Canada will have a future that doesn’t involve it becoming the 51st state …


Canadian LOLCats Do NOT Vote Conservative

Fifty Years Ago Today …

The 1964 New York World’s Fair comes to a close after a two-year run. More than 51 Million people attended the exposition designed to showcase mid-20th-century American culture and technology that is still inspiring some people today, as evidenced by its inclusion in Walt Disney Pictures recent epic film, Tomorrowland. While it was not sanctioned by the Bureau International des Expositions, it was the first time many of the attendees saw, and interacted with, mainframe computers, computer terminals with keyboards and CRT displays, and telephone modems when the few corporations that had computer equipment kept it in back offices.

Major exhibitors included General Motors, IBM, Bell Systems, Sinclair Oil, and Ford Motor Company — still big names in American Industry 50 years later. While it may have been a financial disaster, it’s legacy and remnants still live on today, with a handful of the pavilions being relocated to new homes around the country, including a ski lodge in western New York, a radio station in Wisconsin, a Hilton Hotel in Missouri, a Four Seasons Lodge in Missouri, a church in California, a science center in Seattle, and attractions at Disneyland.

These days there are conventions galore, but when was the last time there was a true international exposition that really tried to look ahead to what we could achieve with peace and prosperity instead of war mongering (and that people remember) ?