Category Archives: Best Practices

Dear Procurement, No Excuses! Carpe Diem Rursus!

When we said that cloud-based solutions — and not just video conferencing applications like Zoom — can help turn your sofa or kitchen table into a mobile procurement command center, we meant it, and gave you four great examples of activities normally done (mostly) in person that you could do just as well (or better) from your home office desk, sofa, or even bed!

But it doesn’t stop there. Today we’re going to review a few more activities that still have a large face-to-face component but that can be done as required while working from home. (And, in a couple of cases, maybe should be done from home as the surroundings, or the approach that needs to be taken, adds relevance!)

Yesterday we described in detail how you could tackle, and conquer:

  • Category Planning
  • Vendor Site Audits
  • User Groups and Workshops
  • Internal Category, Supplier, and Market Intelligence

while working remote. And all you needed to do was embrace modern technology (including modern Source-to-Pay solutions) and think, and work, different. But don’t stop there. With a little thought, creativity, and willingness, you can also effectively tackle:

  • Contract Negotiations
  • End-User Product Qualification
  • Inventory and Asset Management
  • Project Post Mortems

from home as well and get it done. And while you’re probably wondering if all this self-isolation is causing at least some of us, including the doctor, to lose it (we admit we are, to some degree). But the doctor assures you he is not, nor is he a stranger to remote work and having to devise ways to get things done remotely. In fact, he has been working remotely to some extent since the early days of the internet more than two decades ago, and that extent has grown over time (to being 100% remote thanks to COVID-19).

And you can be sure that when he says you can do this, you can. How?

Check out the full details in this CoronaVirus Response Part II post the doctor wrote that published today over on Spend Matters main site.

In other words, don’t look at this crisis as a huge challenge and a stop to business, but instead as an opportunity to do business better than ever and lead your organizations out of this troubled time.

Dear Procurement, No Excuses! Carpe Diem per Scientia et Lectum Diurnum

Cloud-based solutions — and I’m not just talking about Zoom — can help turn your sofa or kitchen table into a mobile procurement command center.

For example, while you have always done the following at least partially (if not entirely) in person and on site, you can tackle these from your barcalounger:

  • Category Planning
  • Vendor Site Audits
  • User Groups and Workshops
  • Internal Category, Supplier, and Market Intelligence

All you need to do is use modern technology (including modern Source-to-Pay solutions) and think and work different. And if you do embrace this new normal and new way of working and start using more of the capabilities, you might just find that you actually perform just as well, if not better (and yes, in some cases you will perform better) than doing it the old way.

How you ask? Check out the full details in this CoronaVirus Response post the doctor wrote that published yesterday over on Spend Matters main site.

In other words, you can look at this crisis as a huge challenge and a stop to business, or an opportunity to do business better than ever and lead your organizations out of this troubled time.

What is that Platform Worth?

That’s a question you really need to be asking before you sign on the dotted line. Because platforms are getting more expensive than ever. As a result of big companies gobbling up smaller companies at high multiples, their investors are pushing them harder and harder to get profitable returns on the investments fast, and since a company can only sell so fast (because cycles are long and it only has so many sales people to purse them), the only way it can satisfy its investors is to up the price.

Now the vendor will justify the increased cost as a result of the increased value it can bring with the new acquisition(s), and while the new acquisition(s) will definitely have value to some customers, they may not necessarily have value to you … or at least not in this stage of your development. if the acquisitions require a certain degree of maturity in your Procurement organization in order for you to obtain value from them, and you won’t achieve that level of maturity for at least three years, paying for it since day one because it’s “part of the platform” is not going to buy you anything.

You need an ROI, and while it’s perfectly valid for a provider to price on an ROI model, it’s only okay for you to pay if the ROI model is one that you can achieve based upon your current processes, level of organizational maturity, manpower levels, change management capability, and buying profile.

The ROI most providers are promising is not an ROI that is achievable by an average organization until they realize best-in-class performance, and for the average organization committed to that journey, that’s five to eight years in the future.

So, before you take a vendor’s word as to what the ROI is, ask for their assumptions and do your own internal assessment. You’ll likely only realize a fraction of the promised ROI in the first year, and it will likely be 3 to 5 years until you realize the majority of the ROI being promised to you.

So the “worth” of the platform the vendors are promising, especially in the beginning, is a lot less than you might think … so be sure that the platform is priced accordingly, and key features rolled out incrementally, so that you do realize value year-over-year.

We’re Still Not on the Side of Majority … And That’s a Damn Good Thing

Three years ago we reminded you of one of Mark Twain’s most insightful sayings:

Whenever you find yourself on the side of majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

The majority is still happy with the status quo. Still accepting the word of Gartner as Gospel. And accepting the word of vendors that they have a fully functioning, value-generating, feature-complete 3.0 Procurement platform and well on their way to the 4.0 Procurement platform that they’ve been hiring experts to talk about at all of their events over the last year (when nothing could be further from the truth).

That’s why the doctor is pushing forward with Spend Matters on Solution Maps — the only maps in the space that are bias free. The analyst rating is 100% tech weightings on a well-defined scale to beyond market average. The customer rating is 100% unbiased customer ratings as the analysts don’t talk to the customers filling out the surveys (at least not until they’ve filled the surveys out). (Psychologists have proven the way you ask questions leads the customers to specific biases in their responses and scorings, and we avoid that with out methodology.) It doesn’t mix six different measurements, half of which are completely subjective, on an axis like other analyst reports.

That’s also why the doctor still has sponsorships suspended — he won’t entertain any pay-to-play relationships and he’s not about to abandon the educational goals this blog was started on. He’s slowed down a bit, but that’s just because he’s waiting to see how the market is going to shake-out as a result of this M&A frenzy and how you will have to adapt your processes and strategies to be successful. (In the interim, the vast majority of the 5,600 posts in the archive have education that is still as relevant as ever.)

So, for now, just hold tight

Magnus Bergfors joins Spend Matters Today …

And here’s a key excerpt from the ex-Gartner analyst as to why and the importance Solution Map (co-designed by the doctor) plays in solution section (and key insights into why Magnus joined Spend Matters):

Q: How do procurement departments go about doing a tech selection and deciding which vendor among so many to spend their business’ money on? From your perspective, what role does SolutionMap play in that process?

A: Businesses need to review (and probably redesign) the way you work as part of the implementation. I saw a quote from someone that said something like, “If you digitalize a crappy process you get a crappy digital process” … and this is really true.

Unfortunately the vendor marketing here doesn’t help. The big vendors are (for obvious reasons) pushing their whole suites, and very few organizations have the resources and change management capabilities to implement a full suite at once.

So going back to your question: Identify the key areas, start there and implement carefully. Build on this success to expand the program. Even if the end goal is a full S2P suite, it needs to be implemented step by step and continuously adjusted and improved.

As for what solution, this is where SolutionMap comes in: The ability to focus in on the specific module you need and look at it from a persona perspective is incredibly powerful. Other analyst ratings don’t get into that level of detail and often includes parameters that have little to do with the actual functionality.

For the full story, check out Technology analyst Magnus Bergfors joins Spend Matters’ team from Gartner.