Category Archives: Event

Prove Your Mettle with Source-to-Settle

We all know the importance of having both Sourcing and Procurement* solutions as neither solution on its own is sufficient to enable an organization to extract the savings and value inherent in each sourcing and procurement project. For example, the savings that result from the best negotiated contracts in the world as a result of an intense strategic sourcing project will never be realized when a lack of good procurement processes and systems results in over 30% maverick spend. Similarly, the best procurement processes and systems in the world are useless if the organization is unable to take advantage of the data and inherent efficiencies to source better contracts next time around.

However, if an organization wants to achieve the best results, just having both solutions is not enough. Certain categories of savings and value only materialize when the solution is integrated end-to-end. What do we mean by this?

Consider the situation that occurs when an organization has separate Source-to-Contract (S2C) and Procure-to-Pay (P2P) solutions. In this situation, what typically happens is there are two code-bases, relying on three separate databases, that rely on the ERP, the Vendor Master database it controls, and the Inventory Master database the ERP connects to, which is generally under the control of the Logistics and Warehouse Management solution.

In this situation, in order to accomplish a task, the Supply Management professional may need to consult three databases to find the information she needs, use two completely different workflows to issue an RFQ and then issue a PO, and use two completely different solutions to extract the relevant transactions for analysis and do the analysis. It’s not efficient, and, moreover, since data has to be entered in (at least) two different solutions, it’s error prone. As a result, the organization is missing out on up to sixteen different efficiencies and benefits that would otherwise be available to it.

What are these efficiencies and benefits? To find out, download Sourcing Innovation’s latest white-paper on how An Integrated Source-to-Settle Platform Brings Unparalleled Benefits to Supply Management and register for Ivalua’s upcoming webinar that will Help Build Your Business Case Today! on January 28 @ 11 PST / 14 EST / 19 GMT!

Remember, it’s Sourcing and Procurement!

It’s Illegal to Burn Money, But Yet Your Organization Does It Every Day! (So Find Out How to Do Something About It!)

Title 18, Section 33 of the United States Code says you shall not mutilate, cut, disfigure, perforate, unite or cement together, or do any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, Federal Reserve Bank, or Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued and if you do, you can be fined or imprisoned for up to 6 months. But yet, every day, organizations everywhere collectively flush billions of dollars down the drain, overpaying suppliers, including foreign suppliers, millions of dollars that can not be recovered and reissued by the organization for other business purposes.

If it wasn’t for the fact that the vast majority of these organizations don’t intend to overpay and waste money, since this money (and evidence of debt) flows through the American banking system, I would otherwise be inclined to argue that, technically, this gross incompetence in management of corporate funds is criminal.

For proof that the average organization wastes money, we simply have to look to the audit recovery industry which recovers, on average 1% to 1.5% of annual spend. And, typically, this is just what they can find with a quick, mostly manual, review of the top n suppliers that account for 2/3rds (66%) to 3/4ths (75%) of external organizational spend using a very loose interpretation of the 80/20 rule. And that’s just overspend. What about spend that should never of happened in the first place (because it was off-contract and 15% higher than contracted rates)? Or unrecoverable losses due to a key supplier not having mandatory insurance policies in place? Or gross violations of the T&E (Travel & Expense) policy (that border on criminal malfeasance) where the VP of Sales decides that a dinner costing 2K / head at the local strip club is a valid use of the organization’s P-Card?

But most of these situations are easily preventable by a Procurement system that is designed to not only enforce compliance, but make it easy. To find out how, check out Sourcing Innovation’s New White Paper on The Procurement Marketplace and the Power of Compliance (registration), sponsored by Vinimaya.

The Procurement Marketplace and the Power of Compliance

When it comes to Procurement, compliance is very important.

  • Non-Compliance with contracts is the biggest reason that 30% to 40% of negotiated savings never materializes.
  • Non-Compliance with standards and regulations often results in poor product quality, unusable inventory, or, even worse, seizure of goods by customs.
  • Non-Compliance with insurance and financial regulations could leave you on the hook for million dollar lawsuits and your CEO and CFO on the hook for criminal charges.

Compliance is also very hard to enforce in the average organization because your resources, time, and visibility is limited and it’s easy for anyone and everyone to fly under the radar whenever and however they want to.

But there is something you can do about it.

The Power of Compliance To find out, join Sourcing Innovation and Vinimaya at 13:30 PDT / 16:30 EDT / 20:30 BST this Thursday, October 16 for our webinar on The Procurement Marketplace and the Power of Compliance, hosted by Don Carrington and the doctor, where we will fill you in on how you can go about improving your organizational compliance.

Attendees will be the first to receive Sourcing Innovation’s New White Paper on The Procurement Marketplace and the Power of Compliance. Register now for The Procurement Marketplace and the Power of Compliance and get a leg up on your competition!

Savings Are Disappearing, Cost Are Risings, and Value is Vanishing. Is Your Procurement Infrastructure to Blame?

A recent 2013 CPO survey from Deloitte reported that only 61% of organizations are somewhat effective at delivering value for stakeholders. There are a number of explanations for this, but the most prevalent reason stated was a lack of business alignment.

In addition, 79% of CPOs consider cost reduction to be their primary goal. There are various reasons for this as well, but a common reason, cited in multiple studies, is a lack of focus around demand management.

Not only did Aberdeen echo this focus on cost in their recent publication on the Top Three Supply Chain Execution Priorities for 2014, but they also indicated that the most critical strategic action for Procurement is to improve internal cross-departmental systems, process collaboration and integration and to align the Procurement strategy with organizational goals.

If you put all of this together, it tells a story. The organization is still seeking cost savings because potential savings opportunities are not captured. There is a lack of compliance with contracts and purchasing policies. The potential cost savings are not captured because demand is not properly managed, despite best efforts. Users are not buying the right product, not buying from the right supplier, not buying at the right price, and/or not buying at the right time (and incurring extra costs by way of expedited shipping). There is a lack of visibility into true demand. This lack of demand management is partially due to the lack of an aligned Procurement strategy consistent with organizational goals — and the lack of alignment is largely due to a lack of actionable intelligence.

In other words, many Procurement organizations, including those with (relatively) modern eProcurement or eSourcing software solutions are blinded by a lack of visibility, hindered by the absence of a platform that supports actionable intelligence, and still challenged with achieving basic contract compliance.

A key part of the solution is missing. Specifically, it is the part that provides visibility into the organization’s real buying behaviour.

So how do you fill the gap? You acquire a Procurement Marketplace that provides users with visibility into policies, contracts, and goods and services readily available for consumption and purchase.

What does such a solution look like?

The Power of Compliance Join the doctor of Sourcing Innovation and Vinimaya at 13:30 PDT / 16:30 EDT / 20:30 BST one week from today on Thursday, October 16 for our webinar on The Procurement Marketplace and the Power of Compliance where we will discuss how a modern Procurement Marketplace can significantly reduce the 30% to 40% of negotiated savings that disappears every day when buyers buy off-contract and incorrect invoices are overpaid.

Attendees will be the first to receive Sourcing Innovation’s New White Paper on The Procurement Marketplace and the Power of Compliance.  Register now for The Procurement Marketplace and the Power of Compliance and get a leg up on your competition!

It’s Conference Season Again — Do We Have to Talk About the Future?

Conference season is around the corner and, with it, plenty of talks on the Future of Procurement, Procurement in 2015, and Procurement 2025 — What it Will Take to Get There.

Regular readers will know the doctor is beginning to really despise this. Why? First of all, as will be outlined in an upcoming series of posts, it’s a lot of the same old, same old … which, in some cases, will be recycled for the tenth year in a row. Second, many* of the solution providers will be doing their best to instill in you an unnecessary sense of urgency to adopt second rate sourcing and procurement solutions that you aren’t ready for or that won’t deliver the returns you need now. (While 9 out of 10 companies do need better sourcing and procurement solutions, the solutions these companies need to start with often aren’t the solutions that money hungry solution providers push upon them.) Third, and most annoyingly, come the questions on what does the doctor think the future of Sourcing / Procurement is.

Why is this annoying?

  1. A Future Vision Doesn’t Change Much In Six Months

    Conference season is every six months, but unless a radical, ground-breaking, unexpected innovation hits the scene, between one conference season and the next, one’s future vision is not going to change a heck of a lot. And when one considers there has not been any radical new offerings in Supply Management in over 5 years, one’s future vision doesn’t have much reason to change at all.

  2. Tomorrow Has Come And Gone Many Times, but The Promised Future Has Not Arrived

    If you look at the predictions for 2020/2025, they are not that much different than the predictions for 2010/2015 that were made 10 years ago. Why? First of all, as per our last point, there haven’t been any radical new offerings in Supply Management in over 5 years (just steady improvements, with a few providers progressing much faster than others). Second, adoption of mainstream sourcing and procurement solutions remains slow. Third, the best solutions, and the advanced solutions that an organization really needs to make an impact on their Supply Management return, have not yet been adopted outside of a handful of best-in-class organizations.

  3. It’s Not What You Think the Future Will Be, It’s Where You Need To Go

    When an organization asks What’s the Future of Procurement, it’s asking the wrong question. First, while most of the consultancies, analyst firms, and providers feeding these consultancies and analysts firm their provider preferred messaging tend to agree on what the future is at a high level, each tends to tailor their message to the product or service offerings they can deliver to you today. Second, the future is in a state of flux due to uncertainties in supply management, business, and globalization. Third, and most important, it doesn’t matter what the future is, it matters what the future needs to be for your organization to succeed. The question an organization needs to ask is what is our Procurement Future — where do we need to go to succeed.

So while it’s very important to plan for the future, it’s very annoying to keep talking about it again and again in a way that adds nothing to the message. So, since the medium is the message, unless you want to be annoying, let’s ditch all this feel-good future talk and focus on figuring out how to get the right solutions into the companies that need those solutions now if those companies are to have any hope of having a future. Capis?

*Many, but, fortunately not all. But do you know enough to tell the difference?