Category Archives: Best Practices

Sanguine Strategic Sourcing

Today’s guest post is from Jennifer Ulrich, an Associate Director and Category Planning Subject Matter Expert at Source One Management Services as well as a contributing author of Wiley & Sons “Managing Indirect Spend: Enhancing Profitability”.

It’s not just vampires that find themselves looking for blood. Healthcare procurement professionals also depend on a consistent stream of the stuff, though they’d define stakeholders quite differently than Dracula. All purchasing is important work, but they can honestly say that their sourcing operations are a matter of life and death. Imagine learning that you couldn’t receive a transfusion because your medical center couldn’t locate a reliable supplier, or failed to plan for a disruption in its supply chain. It’s a terrifying thought.

Human blood ($150 – $180 a pint!) is one of countless commodities Source One’s consultants and I have helped our clients purchase more efficiently. For one organization in particular, it amounted to eight million dollars of total spend. You might think that sourcing a product out of a horror film would present especially grim or bizarre challenges, but the initiative proved straightforward. It essentially came down to a question of vendor consolidation, a question that’s always essential in procurement: Would our client benefit more from a single, or multi-source strategy?

Whether it’s blood or Butterfingers you’re buying, your answer to this question will largely shape your strategy. It’s important to consider the potential drawbacks and benefits of both approaches.

The recent rash of natural disasters have not only underlined the importance of well-supplied healthcare providers, but they’ve also reminded procurement teams around the globe how important it is to assess and mitigate risk across the supply chain. When you’re dealing with a commodity as valuable as blood, the smallest disruption can have deadly ramifications. In theory, a multi-source strategy reduces the risk of shortages by broadening the supply base. Medical organizations that draw blood from a number of suppliers are unlikely to be completely drained if one should come up short.

A multi-source solution also presents the potential benefit of supplier competition. Leveraging this could mean a more agreeable arrangement or sustainable strategy. Though your average individual might know of just one blood supplier (you know the one), the field is actually saturated with a number of emerging regional businesses. Granted a seat at the table, they can drive more competitive pricing while partnering with one another to collectively manage volume concerns.

Sourcing from more than one supplier does not, however, eliminate risk or produce value in every instance. In fact, an organization might find that the strain and uncertainty of managing multiple supplier relationships outweighs its benefit. Consistent communication is essential for maintaining an amicable, respectful, and fruitful relationship with any provider. It’s obviously far easier to ensure open lines of dialogue with a single vendor than with a large group. The right SRM expert can make any arrangement work, but it’s often preferable to consolidate your supplier base for more personalization and collaboration.

In this particular situation, our client found that one trusted supplier could most effectively meet their specifications. With our help, they learned that a close relationship with this provider presented considerable value incentives. In addition to a tiered discount structure, they offered risk management solutions in the form of comprehensive training programs. By educating end users on the proper procedures for transporting, handling, and administering blood they helped foster a sense of teamwork while greatly reducing the chance of lost or wasted product.

There’s no O negative approach when it comes to assessing the market. One company’s life-saving cure could send another into convulsions. That being said, whatever your industry, whatever size your supply base, the same set of principles apply for effectively maintaining relationships and encouraging compliance. The most successful procurement professionals perform a transfusion of sorts. They supplement the foundational techniques of good sourcing with a healthy dose of innovation to determine the appropriate treatment.

In a future post we’ll dissect single and multi-source strategies and discuss which situations favor which approach. Happy Halloween!

Thanks, Jennifer!

The Procure to Pay User Experience Should NOT be Overlooked!

The history of enterprise software systems is fraught with implementation failures. This is especially true in the ERP and MRP space, which have contributed to some of the biggest supply chain failures in history (including Hershey Foods, Adidas and Foxmeyer). But not all failures are catastrophic. The majority are just the result of (significant) project overruns in terms of time and money or the inability to deliver critical features or functions in the original system specification. And this is more common than one may think. Some estimates put the rate of project overruns in IT as high as 85%. That’s problematic.

Why are there so many failures? The reasons are many. Some are the result of poor change management; others are the result of the selection of inappropriate process automation for the company; and still more are the result of limited or low-quality information. If one goes through the list of possible reasons, we see there is one commonality across the majority of failures: the user experience. Poor change management leaves users confused. Inappropriate process selection frustrates users as it increases time and effort (rather than decreasing it), and low-quality information makes users question why they are migrating to a new system at all. (And when significant system features or functions fail to be implemented at all, that’s the worst user experience.)

That’s why the user experience (UX) is important, and why the doctor has been writing tomes on it this year, starting with a number of multi-part series co-authored with the prophet over on Spend Matters on:

What Makes a Good UX? Part I
What Makes a Good UX? Part II “Smart Systems”
What Makes a Good UX? Part III “Mission Control Dashboards”

The UX One Should Expect from Best-in-Class e-Sourcing, Part I
The UX One Should Expect from Best-in-Class e-Sourcing, Part II

The UIX One Should Expect from Best-In-Class Auctions, Part I
The UIX One Should Expect from Best-In-Class Auctions, Part II

The UX One Should Expect from Best-In-Class Optimization … Part I
The UX One Should Expect from Best-In-Class Optimization … Part II
The UX One Should Expect from Best-In-Class Optimization … Part III
The UX One Should Expect from Best-In-Class Optimization … Part IV

The UX One Should Expect from Best-in-Class Spend Analysis … Part I
The UX One Should Expect from Best-in-Class Spend Analysis … Part II
The UX One Should Expect from Best-in-Class Spend Analysis … Part III
The UX One Should Expect from Best-in-Class Spend Analysis … Part IV
The UX One Should Expect from Best-in-Class Spend Analysis … Part V

… with SRM & CLM on the way …

But that is just the beginning. Now that we have fairly adequately covered the core Sourcing technologies, we need to cover P2P, and that, as we all know, is the domain of the revolutionary. So, starting last week, the doctor teamed up with the revolutionary and, in the months to come, we are going to bring you deep, deep insight into Procure-to-Pay, both from a UX and a FX viewpoint so that at the end of the day you have deep insight into not only what P2P has to do, but how it should do it.

Our first instalment of “The Procure-to-Pay User Experience” premiered last Thursday over on Spend Matters Pro (membership required), and more will be coming.

Stay tuned!

The implications of Crying Thief!

Today’s guest post is from Tony Bridger of Assymetrix Consulting. Got a spending, process, or change management problem? Tony has a solution.

There is an old Nigerian Proverb that runs a little like: “One cry of “Thief!” and the whole marketplace is on the lookout.

However, crying “thief” has serious implications for many business, particularly those public organisations with shareholders who would quickly perceive financial crime as a systemic business process failure.     It is easier for management teams to internally manage fraud than to prosecute. Detection of large fraud is also an admission that both controls and deterrence are failing.   In a recent article, It’s Hard to Find Fraud in Big Spend Stacks …   the advent of AI could provide that vital detection of internal fraud.   It’s a sophisticated solution.

Whilst we are on the subject of proverbs, a key element in fraud management is “prevention is better than cure”. Companies that detect fraud have clearly not created the cultural norms that others take for granted that deter staff from committing fraud.   There are many cultural and technological capabilities that can reduce the incidence of fraudulent activity that are well within the grasp of many businesses.   Deterrence – or risk of detection is a critical cultural message.

With some careful risk analysis, it is quite easy to map out where company fraud is likely to originate. Finance, Procurement and staff expenses are usually the key internal risk areas.   Culturally, one of the first steps is to ensure that there is adequate separation of duties.   In finance, this is simply ensuring that a finance staff member does not have the capacity to both create a supplier vendor master entry – and pay an invoice.   This is a system administration role setting. The creation of “dummy vendors” and subsequent payments is often down to this simple failure.   Making all data elements (Business Number, address, contact details) as mandatory data items also reinforces the message on data integrity.   Many mid to high end systems will also allow user audit trail analysis if required. This simply captures the user-id of the employee accessing the key finance system forms.

For smaller companies, separation of duties can be an issue – but keeping a register of new supplier entries and reviewing this regularly is a key move.   In the procurement space, the person who creates the contract and then manages the winning vendor should also not be one and the same person if possible.   Again, hard to mobilize with limited staff and expertise – but a very clear signal around why is a powerful deterrent.   The idea is not to create a draconian working environment – it is simply ensuring that employees understand that this is designed to protect them – as well as the company.

Where possible, organizations should also use the power of their accounting system to the full.   Many of the low-end accounting systems have decent quality automation for transactions like staff expenses.   From experience, there are some subtle employee mindset changes generated with increased automation.   Almost all of us realize that entering data in to a system creates a record.   Once submitted, unless a request is made to vary the claim – the electronic evidence exists.   Paper can be lost, shredded or misinterpreted.

Almost all staff will recognize that these transactions can be retrieved many years later.   A very good business practice is to engage a vendor that provides duplicate invoice analysis services periodically.   This service can also detect anomalies and “odd” transactions.   A multiple repeated “same value” claim by an employee will almost certainly be found and analyzed. As many of these services are contingent based, they are quite affordable.   Regular auditing can also send clear signals on fraud risk assurance.

However, the combination of separation of duties, increased electronic transaction processing and periodic data analysis should send very clear cultural signals about what is acceptable. Staff will work out the “why?” comparatively quickly.

Organizations cannot effectively function if trust is lacking.   The notion of the cry of thief! Is far more acceptable if good management controls are in place and any subsequent fraud is detected. In effect, it’s a best effort approach to fraud prevention.

Thanks, Tony.

It’s Hard to Find Fraud in Big Spend Stacks …

Let’s start with T&E spend. While most organizations might believe that this spend, which is primarily for low value amounts on fairly well understood products and services, does not hide much in the way of fraud, that’s not always the case. Nor is the fraud limited to employees upgrading to business class, upgrading from rooms to suites, and spending a bit too much on drinks at the client dinner. (But even this can be very expensive. If this off-policy spend results in negotiated volume-based rebates failing to materialize, this can be very costly.) But that’s not the case. It cal also contain:

  • the same receipt for a $500 business entertainment submitted two (three, or even five) times, one month apart, on different claims and never noticed
  • a pet hosteling bill that looks just like a hotel bill
  • an invoice from Benny’s buddy Bob for 20% above market rates who drove him to the airport (instead of a licensed service at market rates)
  • that double billing by your no-longer favourite hotel for a room charged to your guest and then charged on your tab is really hard to spot (especially when some rooms were picked up and some rooms weren’t at your recent event)
  • collusion between an employee and a spouse who owns a travel “services” company can account for a lot of extra travel “services” billings that weren’t delivered
  • suppliers who know you have holes in your T&E monitoring can submit fake invoices for services never delivered
  • etc.

It’s really hard to find these low-impact fraud needles in a T&E haystack, but these needles can add up quickly — especially for products and services never even delivered! Only automated processing that can compare multiple entries across multiple dimensions and learn typical patterns can identify the majority of errant fraud that passes through your T&E system.

Moreover, as an organization learns to detect certain types of fraud, the fraudsters get smarter. No static system can keep up! AI based systems are key to an organization’s success.

In particular, AI-based systems that can work on multiple types of spend. T&E is just one category. There’s also invoice data for sourced and procured products and services that can be six to eight times the T&E volume in an average organization. And when we go broad, there are even more options for creative fraud from less-than-honourable parties. For example, you could see things like:

  • $4.95K shipping fees for $5 items because the tolerances in the system don’t kick anything up for review with shipping less than $5K
  • invoices from fake suppliers with the same name as your tendered suppliers with faked registry numbers and different bank information for payment
  • invoices from corporates owned by spouses of employees for services not delivered submitted by the employees and approved by colluding associates doing the same thing
  • etc.

For some of these instances, humans have almost zero chance of surfacing the infraction when its 1 invoice in 1000. A new solution is needed. A number of players are tackling the problem with modern AI solutions, but do the approaches have what it takes to find the gold in them there hills? Only time will tell.

Sourcing the Day After Tomorrow … Part XVI

In this series we have been reviewing sourcing today, the primary phases and sub-steps, and how they look strategic on the surface but often hide a lot of tactical work underneath. Moreover, sometimes “strategic” is simply a decision that is entirely based on the results of a sophisticated analysis that can be encoded in a very complex rule.

What does all this mean? It means that systems can do more of the work and with next generation sourcing systems, the strategic decisions will be made by expert buyers who know the market in ways designers of systems can’t. Expert buyers who can identify external stimuli that occur, and impact, the market once every five to ten years (that a new system wouldn’t know). Expert buyers who can better judge the impact of a new supplier on the market that the system doesn’t have the history on. Expert buyers who know the best way to handle unexpected demands or change requests in a negotiation process.

Strategic will change from data gathering to data analysis to knowledge evaluation where the analyst first learns to analyze the data gathered to better train and correct the system to knowledge evaluation where the analyst learns to identify the gaps in the analysis or the weightings that need to change. It’s going to become primarily an intelligence exercise, not an analysis exercise. Computers can do considerably more analysis and number crunching than we can in an exponentially smaller amount of time. As a result, more and more analysis will be given to the computers, and more and more intelligence will be expected of the user.

And the entire sourcing process will be affect. How much? In the beginning, more and more of each step, and then of each phase will be automated. But then, in the longer term, the sourcing process will change and adapt to one that is more suitable for the knowledge-based endeavour that it is. What will this look like? Time will tell, but we have our ideas. And we will address them in at a future time.