Category Archives: COVID-19

Coronavirus/COVID-19 Response: Analytics Can Help Get You Through the Crisis

In the first stage of the pandemic, mines close, processors close, or other suppliers of critical raw materials become unavailable and your direct procurement becomes threatened, and you have to identify new sources of supply quickly to maintain supply assurance, while also making the best selection for the business to keep total of cost ownership acceptable and predictable (as a lower cost risky alternative could put you back in the same position in a few months). You need good analytics to make the right decision.

In the second stage of the pandemic, factories close, certain distribution channels become unstable, and distributor stockpiles run out and indirect goods become scarce and problematic across key categories. And you need to respond. Good analytics will again be key as you don’t want to be going back to market in three to six months, but you also need to keep costs down to insure you have the cash to deal with cost spikes in direct lines where supply unavailability significantly tips the supply/demand balance scale or where costly expedited logistics will be needed. You again need good analytics to make the right decision.

And unless you have a modern best-of-breed Source-to-Pay suite with great analytics embedded or a best-of-breed stand-alone analytics solution, you don’t have anywhere close to what you need. Just a few of the questions you will need to answer include:

  • How much am I paying now for a product, and how much should I pay based on today’s commodity pricing and currency volatility?
  • How do I understand the cost impact of supplier failure?
  • How do I understand the cost impact of raw material availability?
  • How do I identify outliers that might signify future issues or opportunities?

… along with dozens more. So how do you answer these questions? What technologies do you choose? Check out the doctor‘s CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE: Advanced Procurement Analytics — find the risks hiding in your data, prioritize and take action Pro piece over on Spend Matters. Even if you don’t have Pro access, the content in front of the paywall is still useful and might give you some ideas on where to start.

Surviving the coronavirus crisis for the self-employed or COVID-19 disenfranchised (Part 3)

In our previous two installments in this coronavirus series for small-business owners, we noted how two general categories of business have been hit hard by the coronavirus shutdown: services and non-essential products. We focused on how those businesses not selling products will be especially hard-hit and have to be creative with e-commerce, social media and other online tools to have any chance of survival in some cases. We also noted that these businesses would not be able to maintain staff levels and would be contributing even more to the COVID-19 disenfranchised workers as time went on.

The shelter-in-place emergency measures mean less shopping or spending money on a meal or a night on the town — so a large number of people are out of work, including:

  • entertainers
  • sales clerks
  • wait staff (restaurants, coffee shops, liquor establishments, etc.)
  • personal services professionals (tattoo artists, barbers, stylists, cosmetologists, etc.)
  • tour guides, museum staff, etc.With the exception of some personal services professionals who can work out of their homes, there is no traditional work for these individuals. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they can’t do anything related to their chosen profession, just that they can’t do it the way they intended to do it — and that they might need to find other work to supplement their income. Or they may need to change jobs for the time being (and in doing so they just might find a better career).

So what can they do? Read Part III of the doctor‘s 3-part series on Surviving the Coronavirus that just posted over on Spend Matters.

Surviving the coronavirus crisis for physical small businesses: Take a lesson from creators! (Part 1)

Two general categories of businesses have been hit hard by the coronavirus shutdown: services and non-essential products.

In the first case, while it’s regrettably the case that some small businesses might not survive, many services professionals can weather the storm if they get creative. In the second case, your storefront may be gone, but your business doesn’t have to be. Chances are, your business is already online to some degree. Now’s the time to go all in on e-commerce.

How can you survive, you ask? Simple. Take a lesson from creators.

A third industry that has been hit very hard is entertainment. Performers who make the majority of their income from productions and performances are, on the surface, totally screwed. Think about it. If you depend on a bunch of people crowding into a bar, concert hall, theater, studio or arena, what do you do?

You get creative, or you starve!

So let’s take a look at what creators are doing.

Musicians, especially independent musicians, are doing live-streaming, direct selling of digital content and Patreon-based (or similar) fundraising with special perks. And they’re also creating new content and recording at home. Thanks to modern technology, at least if you live in a relatively quiet building or house, you can produce near studio quality for a fraction of what studio recordings used to cost, and you can definitely do recordings with a “live” feeling.

Comedians are doing online comedy or talk shows, for free, to engage with a fan base (that might in turn buy merchandise), or through third party ad-supported channels (and, when possible, taking a cut of the advertising revenue or getting a small commission from the platform). All they need to engage their audience is a laptop with a decent quality camera and mic and a web-sharing tool with recording capability.

Actors and performers are doing podcasts to stay relevant with their fan base, and some are using that to promote books or merchandise they have for sale. Post offices and delivery companies are still delivering.
In other words, while they have all lost their major income streams and often must perform from home, they haven’t given up — and neither should you!

If you can’t keep your small business going through the shutdown, you can at least keep going and maintain your relevance and be ready to be the first to recover when you can re-open and get back on track to normalcy.

So how do you do that?

Read the full article over on Spend Matters to find out!

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.