Category Archives: Knowledge Management

Don’t Cheat Yourself with Cheat Sheets, Kid Yourself with KPI Quick Lists, or Rip Yourself Off with Bad RFPs!

In an effort to quickly catch up on the parts of S2P the doctor hasn’t been covering as much in the past few years, when he was focussed primarily on Analytics, Optimization, Modelling, and advanced tech in S2P (inc. RPI, ML, “AI”, etc.), he’s been paying more attention to LinkedIn. Probably too much, even though he can (speed) read very fast and skim a semi-infinite scroll page in a minute. Why? Because a lot of what he’s been seeing is troubling him, and as per last Friday’s post, sometimes angering him when predatory sales-people and consultants are giving other sales-people and consultants bad advice (presumably to increase their follower count or coaching sales or whatever) that will not only hurt what could be a well-intentioned sales-person or consultant (they still exist, though sometimes it seems they are fewer by the year as more sales people bleed into our space from enterprise software, looking for the next hot software solution and the next big payday), but also the individuals, and companies, those influenced sales people sell to in the thoughtless, emotionless, uncaring aggressive style the predatory sales coaches are mandating. (Not to say that a sales person shouldn’t be aggressive about getting a sale, just that they should be focussed on the companies they can actually help and be focussed on getting the customer all the information and insight that customer needs to make the right choice, feel comfortable about it, and feel prepared to defend it. The aggression should be channeled into making sure their company does everything it can to properly educate the potential client before that client commits to a long term relationship.)

A few of the things that have been repeatedly troubling him is

  1. all the cheat sheets he’s been seeing for those looking to get a better grip on Procurement and how it integrates into the rest of the business, that supposedly summarize everything you need to know about accounting, finance, payments / accounts payable, etc. to help you make good choices about Procurement in general;
  2. all the 10/20/50 Procurement, Spend, Manufacturing, etc. KPIs that you need to keep tabs on your Procurement, cashflow plan, product lifecycle, etc.; and
  3. all the RFP outlines or guidances that are being made available, sometimes by leaving your email, to help buyers acquire a certain technology.

And it’s not because they’re bad. They’re not. Some of them are actually quite good. A few are even excellent. Some of the cheat sheets and KPI lists the doctor has seen are incredibly well thought out, incredibly clear, and incredibly useful to you. Some are so good that, as a buyer, likely with little support from your organization and even less of a training budget, you should be profusely thanking whomever was so kind to create this for you and give it away for free.

Nor is it because the doctor suspects any ill intent or malice behind the efforts (in the vast majority of the cases). Many of these people giving away the cheat sheets or the KPI lists are generally trying to help their fellow humans get better at the job and improve the profession overall. And when the RFP outline is coming from a former practitioner, it’s also the case that they are typically trying to help you out (and maybe sell their services as a consultant, but they are providing proof of value up-front).

So why has it been troubling the doctor so? It took a while and some thought to put his finger on it, and the answer is, surprisingly, one of the reasons [but not the obvious one] that the doctor hates software vendor RFPs and despises any vendor that gives you one.

Now, the primary reason the doctor despises those RFPs, which became popular when Procuri started doing it en-masse in the mid-to-late 2000s (before being acquired by Ariba and quietly sunsetted as the integration never finished by the time Ariba sold to SAP, for those of you who remember the APE circus), is that these RFIPs are always written to be entirely one sided and ensure the vendor giving them away ALWAYS comes out on top. The feature list is exactly what the vendor offers, the weightings correspond exactly to the vendor core strengths, etc. etc. etc. And don’t tell me you can start with a vendor RFP and alter it to suit other vendors, because you can’t. You’d have to know all the features as the vendor focussed on point features, not integrated functions, and you, as a buyer who’s never used a modern system, have no knowledge of how to equate features (when vendor specific terminology is used), or how to determine if one feature is more advanced than another. (That was the reason the doctor co-developed Solution Map, to help rate and evaluate technology, which is the one thing most buying organizations can’t do well. Not the things they can do well, and better than most analyst firms, like rate the appropriateness of services to them, assess whether or not the vendor has a culture that will be a good fit, define their business needs and goals, etc.)

But the primary reason doesn’t apply here. So what’s the secondary reason? When an average, overworked, underpaid, and overstressed buyer got their hands on one of these free vendor RFPs, especially when the RFP was thick, heavy, and professionally edited and prepared to look polished and ready for use, and was more detailed than what the buyer could do, they thought they had their answer and could run with it. They thought it was all they needed to know, for now, and that they could send it out, collect the responses, and get back to fire-fighting. They were lulled into a false sense of security.

And that’s why these cheat sheets and KPI guides and former buyer/consultant RFPs are so troubling. When you’ve been struggling without even the basics, and these are so good that they teach you all the basics, and more, it seems like they have all the answers you need and that when you learn those basics, encapsulate them in the tool, and start running your business against them, things will be better. Then you configure your tool to respect the basics, encode the KPIs, and things are better. Significantly better, and for once processes start going smoothly. And then you believe you know everything you need to in that area (that’s not your primary area) to interface with those functions and that those KPIs will be enough to keep you on the Procurement track and let you know if there are any issues to be addressed. And you start operating like that’s the case. But it’s not.

And that’s the problem — these cheat sheet, guides, and templates, which are much better than what you’d get in the past, can make such a drastic difference when you first learn and implement them that they instill a false sense of security. You get complacent with your integrations, reports, and KPI monitors, not recognizing that they only capture and catch what they were encoded to capture and catch. However, real world conditions are constantly changing, the supply base is constantly changing, and external events such as natural disasters, political squabbles, and endemics are coming fast and furious. If the risk metric doesn’t take into account external events, real-time slips in OTD (as it is based on risk profiles upon onboarding, and updates upon contract completion), or past regulatory compliance violations (as an indicator of potential violations in the future), the organization could be blindsided by a disruption the buyer thought the KPI would prevent. Similarly, the wrong cash-flow related KPIS can give a false sense of liquidity and financial security and the wrong inventory metrics can lead to the wrong forecasts in outlier categories (very fast moving, very slow moving, or recently promoted).

In other words, by giving you the answers, without the rationale behind them, or deep insight into how appropriate those answers are to your situation, you will cheat yourself, kid yourself, or, even worse, rip yourself off. And that’s worrisome. So please, please, please remember what these are — learning aids and starting points only — not the end result. (Especially if it’s an RFP template.)

Seeking an Analyst? Who does the doctor recommend?

In our last two posts, we asked how relevant is the analyst firm and then answered that it’s not the analyst firm that’s relevant, but the senior analysts in its rank that are relevant. (And if the firm doesn’t have any in your Source-to-Pay/Supply Chain (related) area, it doesn’t matter how many employees it has, how many countries it is in, how many Billions or Trillions its customers spend, etc. because it won’t be able to help you get your message right, hit your market, or enhance your strategy.)

So, in their honour, here are forty analysts (even if they didn’t work for analyst firms and mainly did behind-the-scenes analyst work as a consultant/advisor) that the doctor has trusted and often referred inquiries to over the years, past and present, and (some of) their (former) areas of specialty:

Present (note that many [14/25] are independent and NOT with a big firm):

Andrew Bartels Back-Office Tech-Driven Business Transformation Forrester
Andrew Karpie CWM/VMS/HCS Independent
Bertrand Maltaverne Source-to-Contract Spend Matters
Bob Derocher SC/Procurement Process Transformation Digitization Independent
Bob Ferrari Supply Chain, Manufacturing, Digitization Strategy Independent
Brian Sommer ERP, HR, & Finance (Transformation) Independent
Chris Sawchuk Metric-Based Procurement Modernization Advisory Hackett Group
Doug Smock Supply Chain Evolution Independent
Garry Mansell Entrepreneurship and Business Growth in S2P and SC / Global Supply Chain Design and Management Independent
Jason Busch Broader Source-to-Pay Market Strategy Spend Matters
Katie Evans AI Ethics Independent
Kelli Coviello Business Growth, Diversity, Work/Life Balance Independent
Lora Cecere Supply Chain Supply Chain Insights
Mickey North Rizza Sourcing, Procurement, Commerce, SRM, Risk IDC
Navroop Sahdev Digital Economy Digital Economist
Noha Tohamy Logistics, Supply Chain Digitization, Analytics Gartner
Patrick Connaughton (Ecosystem) Enterprise Applications Gartner
Pete Loughlin Purchase to Pay / Procurement / Coupa & Ariba Independent
Peter Smith Best Practices, Sustainability, Procurement with Purpose Independent
Phil Fersht Emerging Technologies, Automation, Outsourcing, Global Business, and Horses HFS Research
Pierre Mitchell Procurement and Services Benchmarking & Transformation Spend Matters
Robert Rudzki Strategic Advisory and Procurement Transformation Independent
Sigi Osagie Business Growth through Personal and Team-Based Growth Independent
Vinnie Mirchandani Enterprise Applications and Outsourcing Independent
Voitek Szewczyk Strategic Sourcing, Procurement Transformation, Eastern Europe Independent
Xavier Olivera Procure-to-Pay/LATAM Market Spend Matters

Past ([semi-]retired, out of the analyst world, and/or working for a vendor; 4 independent):

Charles Dominick Procurement and Procurement Training Independent
Debbie Wilson ERP & Finance Independent
Dick Locke Operations, Strategic Sourcing, and International Trade Independent
Doug Hudgeon Back Office Integration & Modernization / Australasia Market Managed Functions
Duncan Jones Procurement Independent
Gerraint John Sourcing, Procurement, SRM, and Risk Interos
Magnus Bergfors Strategic Sourcing, Strategic Procurement, SRM Keelvar
Mark Perera Procurement and SRM Vizibl
Nick Heinzmann Procurement, CLM, Sustainability, Fraud Risk, and Startups Zip
Sudy Bhardadwaj Direct Supply Chain, Source-to-Supply, Entrepreneurship SAP
Tim Minahan Procurement & Supply Chain, Business Performance Benchmarks, Best Practices Citrix
Tony Poshek Strategic Sourcing Simfoni
Vance Checketts Supply Chain, Operations Built for Teams
Viktoria Sadlovska Anshu Supply Chain, Trade Finance, Analytics RepTrak Company
Vishal Patel CLM and P2P Ivalua

Still No Single Starting Point for Your Supply Management Journey!

Just as there is no one platform and no one workflow for Supply Management, yet alone even S2P (although the vendors claiming to have such seem to be increasing by the day) — and the only way to make progress is to define the core workflow, identify a set of overlapping/integrating systems to achieve the core workflow, identify vendors that can provide these systems — with enough configurability to allow you to support the necessary variances, and then select those vendors that best meet overall organizational needs and move forward — there is no one starting point.

The starting point, with the ever increasing complexity of systems, processes, and global supply chains, is more organization dependent than ever. One has to take all of the following questions, and corresponding answers, into account … and more!

  • What does the organization have now for systems and processes?
  • Where is the organization in its Supply Management journey?
  • What is the talent profile — what is its average and collective IQ, EQ, and TQ?
  • What are the organization’s biggest pain points?
  • What are the organization’s top pressures?
  • What is the organization’s budget? Can it be extended? Leveraged?
  • What resources does the organization have available to support implementation and change management?
  • What resources and programs do its current, and prospective, vendors have to help?
  • What professional organizations and associations can it lean on for support?
  • What leading research and advice can it access?
  • And so on.

It’s tough. Typically, an organization makes the jump when it’s desperate to get savings, and typically, when doing a systems buy, the organization will focus on the system that is advertised to identify the biggest return. In Supply Management, that’s a true strategic sourcing system that supports complex sourcing as only decision optimization and spend analysis technologies have been repeatedly found to identify year-over-year savings in excess of 10%, with everything else being single digits. (This system will support complex sourcing workflows, decision optimization, and at least industry average analytics as well as a solid supplier master / SIM capability. Contracts can be external.)

But identification is not realization. In an average organization without the proper processes and systems to support contract implementation, as per a classic AMR series on reaching sourcing excellence, an average organization will only capture 60 cents to 70 cents of every dollar of negotiated savings at the end of the day.

If the organization is not set up to capture savings, it has to start simple. Processes. e-Procurement/I2P. SRM to get suppliers on board with processes and programs that will allow it to capture data and insure the suppliers deliver the value they promise without constant monitoring by the buyer. If the organization is set up to capture savings, but can’t identify any, it has to look at more complex platforms or options. However, regardless of the answers to the above questions, it should start simple and work it’s way up the technology and process complexity ladder. The key to success will be adoption, and that will mean not overwhelming those that will be required to adopt the new systems and processes if success is to be achieved.

Knowledge is Power

So why would you want a platform that doesn’t embed any knowledge?

There is not a product or service in existence that cannot be made more valuable with information, and in technology, there does not exist a solution that cannot be made more valuable through embedded information. So why would you ever want a platform without it?

In fact, if the platform has enough embedded information, and can use it to power adaptive workflows built on top of robotic process automation, you’ll find that you might not even need any AI at all (especially if all it equates to is Applied Indirection). If the platform comes embedded with leading market knowledge for the majority of your categories, and you can define, and embed, rules with the help of experts to cover the rest, then you have the majority of what you need.

Because, at the end of the day, the best value comes from not only getting Spend Under Management, but making the best Sourcing / Procurement decision possible for the organization — and that can only be done if the organization has the right information. No organization has expertise in more than a few categories, and it definitely doesn’t have all the information. So having a platform that comes equipped with the best should cost models out of the box, integration to current market data feeds, and historical data on previous events (anonymized if necessary) to help organizations select the right type of even tfor current conditions is very beneficial — versus just a piece of dumb software that executes a canned one-size-fits-all workflow.

At the end of the day, the more you know about your raw materials, your components, your assembly / manufacturing options, your products, your shipping, the import and export restrictions and costs, and the inherent value of each product versus your other options, the more accurately you can model your options and make a good decision. The more accurately you can model your options, the better chance you have of determining the solution with the lowest cost, the lowest risk, the highest value, and the best value (defined as risk reduction, profit generation capability, etc — whatever makes sense) to cost ratio.

This is how leading Supply Management organizations can save 12%, off-the-top, in an optimization-backed information-enabled sourcing event — and even more if they collaboratively work with their peers to identify all of the options that may be available and all of the associated tradeoffs.

Plus, good, timely, information allows an organization to:

  1. constantly improve products and services by way of the fact that they are able to
  2. collect more relevant, timely, accurate, detailed, and integrated data.So get an information enabled platform – at the end of the day, it’s better than all the platforms with the fake “AI” that do nothing more than automate static, dumb, one-size-does-not-fit-all, workflows!

Where are You on Your Master Data Journey?

You want to get cost under control. Maybe even save. You need to ensure compliance. You need to satisfy the auditors. You want to know the risks you face. And the risks you could face. All laudable goals, but all goals that are unobtainable without … you guessed it … data.

More specifically, clean, rich, up-to-date, relatively complete data … which, likely, resides in multiple systems, duplicated across each. This makes data centralization, which is necessary for any of these initiatives, complicated, and often difficult. It’s not just the last update record date, especially since some systems do the last update at the record level, and not the data element level.

Plus, how do you know which parts of which records can be combined? Especially when they conflict or don’t line up. Without an appropriate master data management strategy, and a system that can handle master data management across multiple, loosely related, supply management and enterprise, it can be downright impossible for any initiative that spans more than a few dozen providers or categories. And even that is an effort.

But MDM is not easy to define, and even less easy to implement. First of all, which systems do you use for master data when there is an argument for multiple systems that store a record, such as a supplier, to be a master data system. Secondly, when you do identify the master system, how do you manage, and approve, updates … and how do you insure they get synched to the right systems at the right time? Third, how do you integrate all the data into a single, even if only virtual, record so that you can run a spend report. A compliance report. A risk report. An audit report?

The point is that it’s not just as easy as selecting a system, proclaiming it your MDM, and believing the implementor that your MDM problems will be solved in a few months. Some companies, that aren’t heavily focussed on, and involved with, the initiative take years to integrate systems and arrive at a nearly clean set of master data.

So before you march forward on your next, data intensive initiative, maybe you should step back, ask yourself where you are on your data management journey, and give an honest answer.