Monthly Archives: March 2018

How Many Billions Are Lost Each Year to Dumb Sourcing?

Today I saw an article entitled E-Sourcing is Dead, Long Live Intelligent Sourcing Systems and all I could say is what parallel world did this article materialize from? Given that we’ve had Strategic Sourcing Decision Optimization with multi-line item support, freight brackets, and carrier support for 17 years, advanced analytics algorithms with smart trend projection and outlier analysis for just as long, and easy access to pretty much all market and public sector buy data in e-friendly countries for over a decade, this should be the case. But it’s not.

We’re not even in a position to say half of mid-size or larger organizations even have anything resembling a modern e-Sourcing solution, and only a small fraction of those have embedded optimization capability, and only a small fraction of their customers actually use it. In reality, e-Sourcing is barely alive and just coming into it’s own. After all, the oompa-loompa empire is only valued at about Two point Five Billion … and in software terms, that’s pretty puny when you consider the market valuations of companies like SAP (approx 107B) and Oracle (approx 220B) … either of these companies could easily buy out the oompa-loompas and put them back in the chocolate factory on a whim! (Which would be a shame since they make great coders.)

But regular readers will know this to be the case, as it’s been SI’s core lament for a decade now — and the market still doesn’t look poised to change. Even though, as SI has stated over and over (and over) again, the average year-over-year savings from the proper application of optimization backed sourcing is 10% across the board. That means if you’re sourcing 105M, that’s 10.5M in savings that could be yours, as soon as you can attack all 100M of spend. If it takes an average of 3 years to get through all spend, that’s 3.5M a year for easy taking. But you’re probably sourcing closer to 1.05 Billion, which means you’re overspending by an average of 105 million, or 35 Million each year. That’s a lot of money, but obviously not enough to take notice.

So obviously we need bigger numbers. How much money is lost in the economy overall each year due to the lack of application of advanced, optimization backed, sourcing? While it’s pretty hard to get a firm grasp on OPEX in the US, and how much of that is addressable by optimization-backed sourcing (as payroll can’t be optimized, only outsourced services, and taxes are taxes), the US Census keeps good data on CAPEX, and in 2015, CAPEX was 1.65 Trillion! Ten Percent of that is 165 Billion. If, and this is an overly aggressive estimate, 10% of that was optimized, that still leaves 149 Billion on the table in the US alone. The US is about one forth of the global market, and assuming CAPEX / OPEX ratios are about equal, this says, globally, that’s about 600 Billion from CAPEX alone left on the table each year because companies aren’t optimizing spend. SIX HUNDRED BILLION. And that’s a lower, lower bound estimate. Is that number big enough for you???

Don’t Get Sucked in By Impressive Words!

It’s conference season, and that means marketing overload for many vendors. And there’s a few words the doctor is hearing a bit too much and he’s NOT impressed! So what are these words?

Digitization

Digital. Digital Procurement. Digitized. Digitized Procurement. Digitization. Ugh. They’ve been using variations of the same word for almost 20 years — and despite claims to the contrary, the meaning hasn’t really changed. You’re analog, or you’re digital. There’s no degrees to digital.

Look at the dictionary definition for crying out loud! Of, relating to, or using data in the form of numerical digits. What’s new, or even enticing, about this? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

Internet of Things

The internet has ALWAYS been an internet of things. Computers are not people. They are computers. The only difference today is that we are sticking computers in more things to collect and transmit sensor data automatically rather than reading it, and entering it into the computer. It’s not the big whoop most companies are making it out to be as most companies haven’t developed much that uses that near real-time in a truly useful way.

Cognitive

It’s not artificially intelligent. It’s cognitive. And the bull crap has reached a whole new level. Let’s look at the definition.

Of or relating to the mental process of perception, memory, judgment, and reasoning.

Yes computers can perceive through sensors, store data in memory, use algorithms to assign, or judge, and use very advanced automated algorithms to reason, but we’re overlooking one key word here. Mental. Computers don’t have a mind, and they are not intelligent. The implication here is that which is cognitive is intelligent, and they are not intelligent.

We haven’t even reached true AI yet in any field and we are supposed to believe that a little Sourcing or Procurement vendor has reached the next, cognitive level of AI development? While a best in class vendor may have a few algorithms that are almost cognitive for a few, select, situations, considering the billions going into AI research and the limited progress most specialist vendors are making, you know we’re not ready to be throwing this term around.

And, an honorable mention (because, while not common in our space yet, it’s coming):

Postmodern

the doctor‘s been seeing this word a lot on social media in marketing and commentary, and, unfortunately, it seems like it’s starting to creep into our space. For those of us that actually went to a real University and have a sound (classical) education, we know that Postmodernism is a rather broad intellectual movement across the arts and fields with applied arts (like architecture and archaeology) based on a philosophy that takes us from the literary-influenced philosophy of modernism to a post-modern way of thinking that developed in the middle of the last century and reached wide acceptance in the 1980s, when it was a Land of Confusion.

This was the time of the MRPs (and not the ERPs). Do we really want to be associating our new and innovative solutions with that era?

So please, please, please don’t get sucked in by the the impressive words. Instead look for impressive, time-saving, value-adding functions (and forget the feature lists). (But that’s another rant.)

Will Trump’s America First Policies Put America Last?

Trump wants to bring production back to America, and that’s a noble effort and, for many companies, a smarter thing to do than they realize as escalating logistics costs and global uncertainty make near-shoring and, even better, home-shoring much less risky (and, in the long run, often more cost effective) than off-shoring, especially when there’s no good reason to off-shore.

But Trump’s recent almost across-the-board tariffs are going to cost some American manufacturers anywhere between millions of dollars to hundreds of millions of dollars as, simply put, due to a lack of availability of certain resources, Americans have to import. The net effect of so many lower-cost global options over the years is that American companies went off-shore for just about everything they figured they could get cheaper, and as a result not only has there been little to no growth in raw-material extraction and production at home, but some industries have actually lost capacity. And that capacity can’t be turned on and ramped up over night.

As a result, Americans need to import aluminum, steel, and other metals, at least for the short term. And while most of that importation should come from near-source locations (like Canada and Mexico, especially if the US wants to maintain NAFTA, which, for the most part, is better for it than Canada and Mexico [combined]) to decrease risk and increase border security (after all, it has two borders — Canada and Mexico; working with Canada and Mexico on security issues makes the entire North American continent safer), Americans have such high demand in some categories even Canada and Mexico can’t meet it all.

For now, American manufacturers have no choice to but import their raw materials from other (non-exempted) countries. It’s unfortunate, but it’s the reality. And if any of these companies have access to good global strategic sourcing optimization and supply chain planning tools, they’re going to start modelling and realize that it’s cheaper in the mid-term, and maybe even the short term, to manufacturer whatever is intended for the global market outside the US. Rev that factory back up in Mexico and serve the world from there. Only manufacture at home what is needed at home.

And what happens if companies shift their operations to other jurisdictions? America loses jobs, tax revenue, and it’s share of the global GDP. That’s, hopefully, not what Trump, or anyone inside North America, wants.

And while there should be tariffs on goods imported from jurisdictions a country can’t compete with and, in particular, a country that allows its corporations to pay it’s employees $2 a day for a job an American would have to be paid at least $58 a day for (as there’s no way America could compete with imports otherwise), those tariffs should be designed not to hurt the manufacturers who depend on raw materials they can’t get at home, or at least be used to fund local raw material extractors / producers to give those companies at home a local option. For instance, all tariffs collected should go into a fund to help local raw material extractors and producers expand or increase production, and until that happens, companies that need to rely on imports in the interim should at least get tax credits until such a time as they have a local option. Or they are just going to find ways to take as much of their business as they can elsewhere.

And that won’t make America great again, or even competitive. While I actually agree with the premise that, especially when it comes to manufacturing and agriculture and staple industries, America needs to be great again, unfortunately, just slapping import tariffs without a broader plan to achieve that goal is not only not going to help, but it’s going to hurt.

Ninety Five Years Ago Today …

TIME magazine was published for the first time, and, to date, has stood the test of time. It was the first weekly news magazine in the US and today has the world’s largest circulation for a weekly news magazine (with three quarters of its readers in the US).

The idea behind the magazine was brevity, with the original intent that a busy man could read it in an hour. The original slogan was Take Time — It’s Brief. Maybe that’s why it’s still around today, since it seems all the younger generation has time to read are short LinkedIn articles and Facebook Posts, and if they are on the go, you’re lucky if they get through the new, double length, tweet.

But it teaches us something … if you want to be widely read, or at least widely acknowledged, get to the point … fast. Add more in depth later when you have attention, bur brevity sells. Advertising revenue may be down (but it’s down in print across the board), but TIME is still surviving, and looks like if it does go down in the future, it will be among the last major print publications to fall. It’s a communication lesson for all of us, so let’s take time to understand it.

The Revolution of Purchasing: Part II

Yesterday, in Part I, we noted that even though Purchasing has been evolving in the leading Supply Management organizations, thanks largely in part to some great technology platforms outlined by Lisa Nyce of Source One Management Services in her guest post three years ago on The Evolution of Purchasing, it has been an evolution to more strategic purchasing on select categories, and not a widespread revolution.

And this is problematic in SI’s view because we’ll never have a true purchasing revolution until all Spend Under Management is truly Managed Spend. Right now, many Procurement organizations have the fallacy that just because the spend goes through the e-Pro/P2P/I2P system, that doesn’t mean it’s managed. It just means it’s tracked and available for analysis. And, more importantly, the spend strategy and decision has to be enforced. Negotiation a contract with Supplier X for 10% below current prices is useless if everyone keeps buying from Supplier Y. Deciding to go three bids and a buy is useless if the buy is from the highest price / lowest book value supplier just because the buyer knows they’ll deliver. Directing a user to a catalog with preferred items is not spend under management if the user can just punch-out to Amazon and buy from an overpriced third party because they want a non-standard product. And so on.

For all spend to be managed spend, at least things have to happen:

  1. All spend has to be categorized.
    Uncategorized spend is unmanaged spend. It gets shoved into the tail spend, and is left for anyone with budget authority to manage as they see fit. Catalog buy. Spot buy. Non-preferred vendor spend. Big barkup store down the street spend. Etc. If it gets into a category, and that category is a managed one, there’s a chance it will be managed.
  2. All categories have to properly purchased.

    Every category has to have an associated bucket. Strategic. Non-strategic 3-bids and a buy due to high spend volume. Catalog. Just categorizing is not good enough — categories must be mapped to preferred strategies. And bought according to those strategies.

  3. All purchasing decisions have to be enforced by a platform.

    Once a purchasing strategy is selected for a category, it must be executed. And once an award or decision has been made, it must be enforced. The platform should not permit a strategic category purchase to go through punch-out catalogs or a catalog buy for an on-contract item to be made with an off-contract supplier.

And, since there just isn’t enough manpower for a Procurement department to tackle 100% of Spend Under Management (as the average organization struggles to tackle 1/3 of strategic spend each year), the platform must support automation of tactical 3-bids and a buy, catalog buys, inventory re-orders, etc. Modern cognitive solutions, with enough rules, data, and market intelligence can buy low-dollar, non-strategic categories as good, if not better, than overworked purchasing professionals. Automate 3-bids and a buy. Automate catalog purchases with on-contract suppliers. Automate re-orders for on contract product and services when inventory gets low. Automate that where your strategic insight provides little value, and then increase the percentage of strategic spend that gets strategically sourced every year and you will have a real purchasing revolution.