Category Archives: Best Practices

e-Auctions — Savings Machine or Inflation Nightmare?

When e-Auctions were first released, they were heralded as the saving grace that Procurement was waiting for because early efforts, in the early 2000s, were always a smashing success with double digit percentage savings on almost every category and endless praise and admiration for the Procurement organization, and their astuteness in the selection of an e-Auction provider to help them find more savings than the organization knew existed.

But mature organizations know that the glory days didn’t last. The next time the auction was run on the same category, double digit percentage savings became low single digit savings, which, if the organization was lucky, barely covered the cost of the pay-per-use auction platform and the services around it. Then, a few years later, when the third auction was run, costs increased, sometimes substantially in the double-digit percentage range that almost equalled the savings found the first time around. The savings machine became the inflation nightmare — run an auction, spend more money.

Auctions were dropped like a hot potato, old-school muscle was broken out of retirement, and in a few organizations, Procurement returned to the dark ages. But now, with many mid-market companies able to afford next generation sourcing suites where pay per use starts in the four digit range and can be put on a P-card and where unlimited use starts in the mid-five figure range (and not the high six figure range), auctions are making a comeback, and the cycle is starting all over again.

But this time, those of us who have been in the game for over 15 years know how the story ends, and can honestly tell you Auctions are not a saving grace. They are an out-of-control spend nightmare.

To understand this, one has to understand why auctions worked in the first place.

  1. The outsourcing and rightsizing crazes of the 80s and 90s pushed more and more spend out, while oversight remained the same, and this resulted in less and less oversight on the majority of categories. As a result, suppliers could keep inflating their margins because of “inflation”, “oil price increases”, “minimum wage increases”, etc.
  2. The lack of market knowledge resulted in most organizations not knowing the breadth of the competition or the true production costs.
  3. The lack of e-Platforms meant that most organizations could barely handle 3-bids and a buy with the usual suspects each time contract renewal went up.

It was the perfect profit storm for suppliers. But with the introduction of auctions:

  • Suppliers could self identify and the buyers knew the extent of the marketplace.
  • Hungry suppliers with efficient processes could afford to offer the product at cost + 10% whereas long-term suppliers who believed they had no competition got fat and lazy and needed 1.3 x cost + 10% to remain profitable. (Also, desperate suppliers could offer for perceived_cost in the hopes of using the award as a loss leader for future business.)
  • Running the auction on line in real time gave hungry and desperate suppliers auction fever and they often bid the majority of their margins away. So where there were 40% margins, there were 30% savings.

But here’s the thing. With respect to savings, Auctions didn’t do anything. Exposing market truths isn’t identifying savings. Reducing margins isn’t identifying savings. And hastening the process isn’t identifying savings. The same “savings” could have been identified with an RFX.

Especially when those margin reductions hurt the supplier. A supplier that is suffering has to increase margins or go out of business. And inflation is back, so if the supplier is at rock bottom pricing, and the costs are going up, what is the supplier expected to do? Bid less and go bankrupt?

Savings is identifying better products, better processes, more innovative suppliers, better delivery schedules, and fat that can be trimmed to reduce cost. Savings isn’t about reducing a supplier’s fair margin to nothing.

And this lack of ability to deliver true savings is just one of the many problems with auctions. To find out the rest, download Sourcing Innovation’s latest paper on The Dangers of e-Auctions today, sponsored by Trade Extensions, before one of the big problems brings your supply chain to a screeching halt.

Don’t Let Tail Spend Take You For a Tail-Spin!

Download Sourcing Innovation’s new white paper on An Introduction to Tail Spend — and why you need a technology-based solution (registration required) today (sponsored by Claritum) and find out how tail spend could be keeping an additional 3% of revenue from hitting the bottom line (and, depending on your industry, and its margins, reducing your profit potential by up to 50%).

The first thing that the paper does is define just what tail-spend is. It’s more than just the “tactical” (or “nuisance”) spend in the lower-left quadrant of the famous 2*2 Krajlic matrix, which describes the traditional strategy of “purchasing management” to manage non-critical abundant supply that can be sourced locally in a de-centralized manner for maximum efficiency. And it’s less than any transaction less than $200,000 which is how Accenture describes tail spend.

Tail spend is essentially that spend that shouldn’t be put through a rigorous sourcing project, because the ROI that would be obtained is not enough to warrant the effort. If the ROI is not at least 3x, the spend just needs to be appropriately managed. Maybe that’s a low bid auction. Maybe it’s the cheapest product or service in a vetted catalog. Maybe it’s the preferred item from a catalog (or even strategic) supplier to increase total spend and negotiate additional volume based discounts.

It’s not leaving it up to whomever to do whatever whenever with whomever they like. When tail spend is not managed, the following can happen:

  • rebates and discounts can be lost
    when contracted volumes are not met
  • process costs can increase
    as tail spend invoices, often submitted through fax and e-mail, continue to increaseas tail spend will inevitably expand over time (and it will increase with no accompanying or referenced purchase order)
  • liability risk increases
    when service vendors without appropriate insurance are contracted
  • reputational risk increases
    when junior buyers buy from a supplier with a poor CSR record
  • supply risk increase
    when junior buyers buy from unstable suppliers
  • non-compliance risk increases
    when mandated MWVDBE vendors or fair-trade vendors are bypassed
  • (personnel) fraud risk increases
    as buyers can put charges on p-Cards with little or no documentation (and submit the same receipt 3 times over 6 months)

In other words, tail spend needs to be managed, but it can’t be managed until you understand what it is and how it should be dealt with. This is where Sourcing Innovation’s new paper on An Introduction to Tail Spend — and why you need a technology-based solution (registration required) today (sponsored by Claritum) comes in. It will help you understand what tail spend is, why it is important, how you can manage it, and the value that can be extracted from good tail spend management.

How Does Your State of Flux Measure Up?

Your SRM (Supplier Relationship Management) is in a state of flux. It’s a fact. Policies are undocumented. Processes are not automated. Critical interaction data is not captured. And the majority of your employees interacting with your suppliers on a daily basis cannot even identify five of your top ten strategic suppliers. (Finance might hazard a guess, but while dollars spent is an indicator, it’s not a guarantee.)

A strategic supplier is any supplier that supplies products and / or services that are critical to your operations and that cannot be easily replaced by going out to bid to one of three suppliers in the next state. The supplier might get 1 Million annually and might get 100 Million annually. And if you want the best value from that strategic supplier, you have to be a customer of choice.

How do you become a customer of choice? Good SRM. How do you get good SRM? Good processes, and good platforms. That’s why it’s quite appropriate that this year the annual State of Flux research report is centered around technology. In particular, State of Flux will be researching the use of SRM technology globally, the benefits achieved, and implementation best practices for commercial success.

As with previous years, the 75-question survey takes about 20 minutes and all respondents get a free copy of the annual report, released at the end of October. This report has traditionally been the most extensive research on SRM on the global market and is well worth the time investment.

This year, as a bonus, State of Flux will immediately provide all companies that take the survey a benchmark ranking of how well they are doing against their peers based upon the eight years of survey data they have collected and a standardized ranking system that they are able to use. (And if multiple parties from your organization in different roles complete the survey, they will even augment that benchmark ranking with a SWOT analysis.)

The survey is open until July 1, 2016. Take the survey here.

Aligning Procurement Strategies to Business Goals, Part II


Today’s guest post is from Torey Guingrich, a Project Manager at Source One Management Services, who focuses on helping global companies drive greater value from their expenditures.

In Part I, we noted that if you are applying the same strategy for every category, e.g. consolidate suppliers and sign a three-year contract, you may need to reconsider the variances in the categories and how these differences should affect the chosen strategy. We also noted that, over 30 years ago, Peter Kraljic published his ideas around how Procurement can transition from purchasing to supply management in a still-relevant 1983 article, and that if you look at the complexity of the supply market and contrast that with the criticality to the business, you can fit Procurement’s spend categories into different quadrants and develop a sourcing strategy around each.

Before we discuss what type of strategy generally works in each bucket, we want to make it clear that it is important to track changes and moves in the degree of availability/criticality and adjust your strategy when and where it makes sense. Each classification is examined below; remember that a given product/category can change classifications based on your company and the market conditions; the examples given below should encourage you to think of a comparable product for your company:

Highly Critical, Low Availability [Strategic]:
These are the areas that will stop production or service to customers and are also the hardest products or services to secure and source. To guarantee supply, you will likely need to establish long-term contracts and high quality standards. Due to the criticality, ideally, you would have an alternate supplier pre-qualified for failover or shortages with your preferred supplier. If the market is extremely scarce, you may even need to supplement your supply with multiple long-term suppliers to meet the demand you require. Depending on the products or service, companies can examine the make vs. buy decision and consider vertically integrating the supply into your own company.

Take iron ore for a steel company as an example. If quantities and quality are not met, it can severely impact or even halt production; there are very few suppliers in the market and high barriers to entry. Many steel companies have long term contracts and their own mining divisions to lower the supply risk.

Highly Critical, High Availability [Leverage]:
These categories of spend are still very important to the business, but the products/services are much easier to secure. Due to criticality, you will typically need to establish quality standards, but you can make changes in suppliers more easily and the market should be able to absorb increases in demand. This is one category where other market conditions will likely play a major role in determining sourcing strategy, i.e. how is the market evolving and how are vendors differentiating themselves? Because there is high availability of supply, Procurement should look to leverage spend and focus on cost and quality.

IT products and services are a prime example of this. They are highly available in the market and these can be critical to keep core processes or systems running. For many software and hardware products, there are multiple options to get the same end product by going direct to an OEM, utilizing a reseller, leveraging a VAR relationship, or even one-off buys from local or online suppliers if necessary.

Less Critical, High Availability [Non-critical]:
These products and services are still necessary to run the business, but do not have a significant impact on the end product and results should not be drastic if there is a lapse in supply or an alternate product or service is used in its place. This is where you may cherry pick among suppliers to achieve the lowest cost, introduce alternates/replacements, and use regular RFx efforts to drive down cost. Procurement should look to streamline purchasing and not invest their time heavily on non-critical items.

Office supplies could fall under this category. While office supplies are needed, there are certainly options and alternatives if they are not available, e.g. if pens aren’t available, pencils can be used. Essentially, you can continue to push production without office supplies and the supply base for these items is rather abundant.

Less Critical, Low Availability [Bottleneck]:
Similar to the items above, these categories of products and services are less crucial to running the business and do not add much value to the end product, but because the supply is limited, there is increased risk of scarcity. Procurement will need to secure supply by fostering the supplier relationship to ensure supply, while simultaneously qualifying additional suppliers, considering alternatives, and creating a cushion of inventory where able.

For example: electricity – the market is limited and electricity doesn’t add value as an input into an end product. For many companies, electricity is a utility and necessary to continuing day to day business, so it is crucial to ensure there is a supplier in place. The strategy for something like electricity may lean towards assurance of supply as opposed to finding alternates, but that strategy could adjust depending on presence in deregulated vs regulated energy markets.

These classifications are a starting point that Procurement should use to begin looking at categories and sourcing strategies in a more deliberate manner (or validate the strategies in place today). Determining where a category or even a specific product fits on the scales of criticality and availability will take heavy partnership with business stakeholders. By partnering with end users, Procurement can transform itself from a “buying” department to a “business-enablement” partner and gain inherent knowledge of the business you are supporting each day. The onus is on Procurement to understand how categories being sourced affect and fit into the core business to ensure alignment to overall company goals and business plans. By understanding and tracking the changes in criticality and availability of different inputs to your business, Procurement can ensure the sourcing strategy, category management, and vendor management are aligned to both the supply market and the company goals.

Thanks, Torey.

Aligning Procurement Strategies to Business Goals, Part I


Today’s guest post is from Torey Guingrich, a Project Manager at Source One Management Services, who focuses on helping global companies drive greater value from their expenditures.

Part of good category management is ensuring that the sourcing strategy in place for the products/services is intentional and logical based on the market and commercial aspects of your company. Consider how you are determining sourcing, contract management, and vendor management strategies for different categories of spend: what are the guiding factors that push you towards a long term versus a short term contract, or a consolidated versus a segmented supply base? If you are applying the same strategy for every category, e.g. consolidate suppliers and sign a three-year contract, you may need to reconsider the variances in the categories and how these differences should affect the chosen strategy.

In 1983, Peter Kraljic published his ideas around how Procurement can transition from purchasing to supply management in a still-relevant 1983 article. These ideas were introduced to me when I first began my career in Procurement. I’ve kept these ideas in mind throughout my career to understand at a high-level how the inputs being sourced relate to the business at hand and how to best position a category management strategy given the market conditions associated. We’ll walk through a simplified version of Kraljic’s original ideas and how they can be applied to Procurement at any company.


Complexity of Supply Market/Supply Availability:

To simplify the original idea around “Complexity of the Supply Market” that Kraljic introduced, I want to focus on the availability of supply within the market. Across categories, there are certainly areas where suppliers or additional production are more available than others. In the manufacturing world, I’ve worked with companies that pursued long-term contracts with key suppliers, e.g. over 10 years, and even shared in the capital investment of building plants or production facilities in order to secure supply. Certainly a decision that large would be made with many stakeholders and C-suite folks involved, but it serves as an example of understanding the availability of supply in a given market and strategically responding to scarcity.

Scarce goods or services have rigid supply curves; there are limitations that prevent supply from meeting demand by simply increasing production/output. I use availability to mean more than just physically scarce resources; low availability can be brought on by high barriers to entry, complexity in extracting or moving the materials, a rapid increase in demand, or a rapid decrease in supply. Consider a manufacturing company; an example of a relatively scarce service in that market would be railroad transportation. For railroad capacity, we see high barriers to entry (e.g. we don’t see new railroad companies popping up every year) and an inability to ramp up to changes in demand (e.g. new railroad lines can’t be quickly added). When in Procurement, it is crucial need to look at the supply markets of different categories related to your business – are you being approached by suppliers frequently; are you able to easily find new suppliers to include in sourcing events; have there been any large-scale events that impact supply? Additionally, you can research the number of suppliers in the market, limitations on delivering the product/service, alternatives/substitutions available, and any other limiting factors that can affect supply to determine the relative scale of availability.


Importance of Purchasing/Criticality to the Business:

Availability of supply works hand-in-hand with criticality of that category to the business. Kraljic calls this component “Importance of Purchasing;” I position this aspect as “Criticality to the Business” to refer to the level of spend for a category and the overall impact on profit or production. To be able to measure this, Procurement needs to understand the business perspective and what drives production (either physical production of goods or sale of services). When I was taught these concepts at a steel company, one of the key materials to production was coke to fuel the furnace to smelt iron ore. Consider the core elements of your business and the drivers of production/sales as well as high volume/high price goods; this will help to gauge how critical a given product/service is your business. It should be noted that when looking at criticality, that the quality of that supply can be just as important as actually guaranteeing the volume needed. If key quality specs do not meet acceptable levels for production, there is the risk that the material may not be usable at all.

Based on availability and criticality, you can begin fitting Procurement’s spend categories into different quadrants to develop a sourcing strategy around each.

We will dive into details in Part II.


Thanks, Torey.