Monthly Archives: February 2019

Supplier Solutions – All About the Space … (Repost)

… of Supplier Enablement. In our recent post about Supplier Networks, we discussed the value wasn’t what the provider typically promoted, but the fact that it greatly decreased the effort required by the supplier to do business. It enabled them to be efficient, whereas most sourcing and procurement applications just suck their time.

So if you are going to buy a supplier management solution, then it better be one that truly, truly, truly enables suppliers. So what does this mean?

Find a solution that focuses suppliers on missing, outlier, and information that can’t be confirmed.

Many solutions just send out regular “please review and correct” alerts and call that supplier information management. But information management isn’t about reminders and checking boxes, it’s about finding issues and fixing them. A good solution identifies missing information, information that is outlier from norms (i.e. an insurance certificate is usually only 1 year, but the supplier entered 10), and information that can’t be confirmed (such as third party audits from organizations that can’t be found in government registries).

Find a solution that makes integration with supplier’s systems (MRP, CRM, order management, etc.) easy.

Suppliers need to quickly get POs out of your portal and into their order management, MRP, ERP, accounts receivable, etc. system for which your vendor will likely not have an out-of-the-box integration solution that you are able to implement on behalf of your supplier. So make sure the solution has a well-defined API that makes it easy for the supplier to integrate their systems if they want to and well defined file formats that will allow them to export orders, etc. from your system and import shipping notices, invoices, etc. from theirs.

Find a solution that includes cash forecasting capability for the supplier based on your early payment discounting schedule.

Face it. A supplier isn’t going to go for your early payment discount program just because you say it’s a good idea — they need to run their own numbers and realize that 2% is less than they are paying in interest, etc. Give them an easy to use calculator, especially since their Procurement or AR guys are likely NOT as financially adept as your financial modellers.

In other words, if you want a true supplier solution, find one that truly, truly, truly enables the supplier. Not just you.

One Hundred and Ten Years Ago Today …

Kinemacolor, the first successful color motion picture process, is first shown to the general public at the Palace Theatre in London by way of an eight-minute short filmed in Brighton titled A Visit to the Seaside.

This revolutionary technology was invented by George Albert Smith and launched by Urban Trading Co. of London and used commercially for 6 years. It was a two-colour additive colour process that involved photographing and projecting a black and white film behind alternating red and green filters at a rate of thirty-two images per second on panchromatic film.

Motion was a bit blurry, and color was a bit off, but it gave color to a world without any. It was revolutionary. And a mere 110 years later we can scan in Colortrac and capture 281,474,976,710,656 different colors (using 48-bit deep color), process it through ATI FireGL 3D Workstation Graphics Accelerators which can process 48-bit color, and display it on a HDR*1-enabled LCD*2 flat-screen display.

But still, a mere 110 years ago, this image of a 1911 Kinimacolor recreated from original materials, and found on Wikipedia, was revolutionary!

*1 High Dynamic Range
*2 Liquid Crystal Display

Five Years Ago We Told You to Blame the Bankers …

… for the biggest risks in your supply chain, as per our classic post where we told you don’t blame the lawyers, blame the bankers because they were ultimately responsible for three of the top four most likely risks to disrupt your supply chain.

(Even though the doctor can sympathize with William Shakespeare when he said the first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers, the lawyers are not responsible for the current state of the global economy, the bankers are. And while it’s true that the lawyers are not innocent, happily taking the bankers money to do things that disrupt entire economies, it is the bankers that were the ringleaders here.)

But do we still blame all the bankers? Well, yes, we blame them for the economic risks that continue to persist to this day. But we no longer blame them for the top three risks in our global supply chains.

That honour goes to … The United States of America. Yes, that’s right. The root cause of the three biggest risks in your supply chain is the United States of America. (And not China, although there is a massive risk there as well. And if we wait a few more years, they might get their turn on top.)

How can it be? How can the United States be the single cause of the three biggest risks in your supply chain?

To explain that, we’ll start by repeating them for those of you that have not read The Global Risks Report 2019, 14th Edition, from the World Economic Forum.

According to this report, produced in partnership with Marsh & McLennan Companies and Zurich Insurance Group, the three biggest risks are:

  1. Extreme Weather Events
  2. Failure of Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation
  3. Natural Disasters

and, as should be obvious, these are all interconnected.

Many (if not the majority of) natural disasters are the result of extreme weather events, and many (if not the majority of) extreme weather events are, whether your choose to believe facts or not, the result of the failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation.

And why has climate change mitigation and adaptation failed? Because it hasn’t happened. And why hasn’t it happened? Because countries aren’t aggressively working toward it. And why is that not the case? Because only 175 parties, of 197, have ratified The Paris Agreement (the UN Convention on Climate Change) … and one party that initially accepted has withdrawn (and done so in a very public manner). Guess what that country is? You guessed it!

The United States of America has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement. If the country that is responsible for approximately 25% of global GDP refuses to support the most important initiative in the world (which still falls short of where we need to be to truly mitigate climate change, but would make a substantial impact on slowing climate change down), especially when it comes to preventing the three biggest risks in your supply chain, then that country is unilaterally responsible for those risks.

So next time a typhoon sinks the freighter carrying all your goods, don’t blame God, Poseidon, or Mother Earth. Blame the United States of America. Or, if you really want to, blame Trump. But don’t blame God or nature because, with the current rate of increase in the number of natural disasters annually, there will soon be a 90% chance that it the natural disaster is 100% the result of climate change brought on by the United States inaction to do anything about it.

The Value of Market Intelligence in a Down Economy

A decade ago we ran a piece on The Value of Market Intelligence in a Down Economy because it was a down economy near the end of last decade and many organizations were overlooking the importance of market intelligence at a time when it was needed most. (Because, when times get tough, organizations always cut the training budget first and the intelligence / consulting budget second, even though the only thing that will get the organizations though the tough times is their talent — which needs to be as educated and informed as possible to do the jobs that need to be done.)

But now that depression era economics are about to make a come back, SI believes its time to repeat the message in the hopes that you will do the right thing and make sure that, under no condition, do the limited market intelligence and training budget get cut when they are needed most.

Remembering that success in a down economy stems from smart sourcing, and that smart sourcing stems from intelligence, it should be pretty obvious how critical market intelligence is, but just in case it is not, let’s remind you that:

  • market cost data is market intelligence
    and without it, you don’t have enough data to know how much you should be paying (even if you have extensive should cost models because, guess what, those component costs need to come from the market)
  • expected supplier performance is market intelligence
    even if you have lots of historical performance data across your supply base, that doesn’t tell you how good a supplier should perform, just what would be better performance for your organization
  • expected product quality, lifespan, and consumer usage levels is market intelligence
    and you are only going to get so much data from your customer base, and none for a new product line under development

Plus, when you look at the big picture:

  • it’s not as expensive as you think it is
    since a lot of the data or information you need to spot trends and focus on the core issues and data points is low cost, and even expert advice at 5K a day is nothing if it saves you 50K of internal research or steers you toward a solution that helps the organization generate a 500K return
  • it enables supplier performance, and relationship, management
    which is key in difficult times — just look at the auto industry. When times get tough, the American automakers (that score dismal on the OEM-Supplier Working Relations Index [OEM-WRI]) all fail while the Japanese (and Korean), who cooperate and collaborate with their suppliers (and rock the OEM-WRI) always pull through
  • intelligence gathering is an iterative process
    not “one-and-done” and if you stop, especially when market conditions are changing constantly and could change drastically at some point in the near future, you can be blindsided by an event that could grind the entire organization to a halt

Market Intelligence is critical for good decision making – in good times, and bad. Especially in bad. It identifies risks before they materialize and insures that your contracts have appropriate risk mitigation clauses built in. It leads to savings and cost avoidance that would never be identified without it. And while it doesn’t always require multiple high six-figure subscriptions to analyst firms … it does require some spending to keep up with what you need, when you need it. But if you choose wisely, it will save you 5X to 10X what you spend or help you increase your value proposition by that amount.

So get the intelligence you need. Today.