Category Archives: Miscellaneous

What I Learned From Conference Season – Prologue

The next Sourcing-Innovtion sponsored cross blog series on “What I Learned From Conference Season” starts next Monday – May 26, 2008. If you have not received an invite and would like to guest-post on this blog, please contact us.  Contact information is in the FAQ.

Unlike previous cross-blog series, this theme is open. The goal is to have the leading bloggers and guest bloggers identify what they think are the most important topics, issues, and messages discussed and delivered in this years conference slate and pass those messages on to you, dear reader. Collectively, we’re going to define what’s coming next and what practitioners need to do to prepare for it! It’s become pretty clear to me of late, with the less than spectacular work coming out from some of the vendors and traditional publications, that us bloggers need to be the ones moving the space forward – and I’d like to think we’re up to the challenge!

As usual, I’ll be cross-indexing all of the posts that appear on the other blogs in the space for your conveinence.

For your reference, the last three cross-blog series were:

Top 10 Mistakes by Entrepreneurs … and Managers

Over on Xconomy, Steve Woit had a great post on the “top 10 mistakes by entrepreneurs” last quarter. According to the post, they are:

  1. Undervaluing the importance of the management team.
  2. Attempting to build the business around rocket science.
  3. Assembling the wrong ownership group.
  4. Over-valuing the business at critical junctures.
  5. Failing to communicate with important constituencies.
  6. Failing to tap knowledgeable advice.
  7. Fear of dilution or loss of control.
  8. Spending too much for too little.
  9. Partnering for too little.
  10. Failing to understand the changing roles of founders.

What really struck me is how similar this is to the top 10 mistakes made by managers, which I could argue are:

  1. Under-valuing the importance of your senior staff.
    Face it – half of the best ideas anywhere are going to come from them. Take the cotton out of your ears and listen. It’s your job as a manager to identify and implement the best ideas. This doesn’t mean that you have to come up with all the ideas yourself.
  2. Attempting to build your business around the business opportunity of the day.
    I’ve seen company after company after company fail with this short term thinking … every quarter was a new project (despite the fact the project from the last quarter never got finished) and then they’d wonder why they went bankrupt.
  3. Assembling the wrong advisory board.
    A group of ass-kissing yes-men might be good for the ego, but it’s bad for the business.
  4. Under-valuing key parts of your offering.
    Sometimes an auxiliary product or service is actually more valuable than what you think your core product is. Failing to recognize this will rob you of your best revenue opportunity.
  5. Failing to communicate.
    Your employees what to know what’s happening, and, more importantly, why. Half a message is often worse than no message – don’t make this mistake.
  6. Failing to understand the value of a good consultant.
    As I pointed out in consultants are cheap, consultants are a very valuable resource that you can use to take your operation to the next level.
  7. Fear of experts.
    Many managers think that they’ll be seen as weak, stupid, or dispensable if they turn to experts, when, in fact, the opposite is true. A good manager knows when there is a problem that requires expert input, and that she doesn’t have to worry about being replaced because managers who make the right decisions get rewarded (and promoted).
  8. Spending too little.
    Many managers cheap out just to make the short term financials look good, even when the net result is a long term loss. This is particularly true when it comes to getting employees the tools and training they need to be productive – especially in IT and Supply & Spend Management when the company doesn’t understand the productivity enhancements that the right tools and training generates.
  9. Partnership avoidance.
    You shouldn’t partner too early, but sometimes it takes a partnership to take the business to the next level. Also, the right partner at the right time can help a company address an emerging market trend quicker, and this can make a huge difference in the scale of new market penetration that a company can achieve in the short term.
  10. Failing to understand the changing nature of the business.
    Some managers don’t think they’re doing a good job unless the business runs like clockwork … but considering even Canada’s top economist admits that if you’re doing business today the same way you were doing business even five years ago, that you’re on your way out of business … clockwork management just doesn’t cut it anymore.

Now, regardless of what I say, or don’t say, you’re going to make some of these mistakes – you’re only human, and it’s hard to get a 360 view when you’re inside the box. But whatever you do, don’t forget #6! If you can’t see the problem, chances are good consultant can – and it will be money well spent!

Supply Chain Shocks Get the Attention of “Chief Executive”

One of the publications I like to peruse regularly is Chief Executive, but more often than not, supply chain has been missing from their pages. However, it looks like that might be changing and it was nice to see the recent article on “Shocks to the Supply Chain” that noted the importance of the supply chain and the need for a company to look at its supply chain “holistically”.

With fuel costs approaching 120 a barrel as I write this, limited shipping capacities, skyrocketing raw material costs in certain categories, and supply chain risk increasing by the day, it’s nice to see supply chain getting more press in publications targeted at chief executives as it could be the only shot at profitability for many company’s in today’s economy which is currently undergoing a recession and stagflation.

It’s also nice to see that it noted that supply chain is taking on importance in companies of all shapes in sizes. For example, the article noted that Jamba Juice takes supply chain issues so seriously that last July it made the effort to lure the Vice president of Global Procurement at Wal-Mart to its operation. Furthermore, in an effort to control costs, they also use long-term forecasting models to minimize surprises and develop a holistic approach to mitigate future cost risk.

And although the article was pretty high-level, and not that useful to a supply chain pro, it also had some good advice at a level an executive not well versed in supply chain can understand. For example, the article notes that the supply chain should be flexible and allow for different modes of sourcing, manufacturing, and transport if breaks emerge or if costs increase. So, even though it won’t tell you anything you don’t already know, it would be worth your time to make sure your CEO’s copy of Chief Executive falls open on those pages. Because maybe, just maybe, they’ll get a little closer to understanding just how important you are.

2008 San Francisco Web Mission

I was recently contacted with a request to promote the 2008 Web Mission to San Francisco from April 19 to April 25 that will see 20 “leading” UK Web 2.0 companies converge on Silicon Valley in an effort to “explore new opportunities for growth”. My first thought was to just dismiss it, as most Web 2.0 companies these days have yet another “content aggregation and organization” spin or, even worse, a “social network” foundation (and I think you know how the faceless and spaceless doctor feels about that), but I thought I should at least check out who the invitees were just in case there were any potentials in the mix that maybe, just maybe, might be useful to supply and spend management professionals.

Most are about as useful as a deep freeze to an Eskimo in a middle of a twentieth century arctic winter (before global warming), but there were three companies that appear to show some promise. They are:

Huddle
Huddle.net combines online collaboration, project management and document sharing using social networking principles.

Huddle is taking the SaaS approach to collaboration, project management, and document sharing – on-demand, available for all, and, most importantly, affordable. For as little as £10 a month, a small business can set up 10 workspaces and upload up to 2.5 GB worth of documents. This can be increased to 50 workspaces and 25GB for a mere 40£ more. It’s not Microsoft Project or Microsoft SharePoint, but for the cost, it does what a business is going to need it to do for small, distributed, projects. Huddle offers an easily accessible product tour on their web-site.

Zogix
Zogix provides a SaaS (software as a service) platform for companies and consumers to measure and track Green House Gas (GHG) emissions, monitor and store emissions reduced from energy efficiency initiatives, and monetize CO2 saved from change in energy consumption.

Billing itself as compliant services procurement … that doesn’t cost the earth, Zogix allows procurement managers to manage, influence and control how their employees source Travel and Entertainment and other services with an ability to define alternative options that can significantly reduce this spend, as well as giving CSR Managers the tools they need to reduce emissions, and employees the ability to make better informed travel and entertainment choices. Zogix offers a demo as well as a free trial. The easiest way to define it is that it is a slimmed down Rearden Commerce platform with a zPoints incentive program and a focus on sustainability.

edocr
At edocr, you can upload your documents for sharing in the professional and business community. At the same time, you can interact with the documents uploaded by like minded professionals and businesses.

edocr, with its upload | convert | share capabilities, promotes its platform as a marketing communications channel for lead generation, knowledge exchange portal, and event collaboration platform. Pretty heady for a simple documents exchange platform that’s really just a cleaned up version of the photo-share capability on just about every social network in existence. So why could it be useful for procurement? First of all, the site also supports communities and groups, which is a great way to collect and store documents and discussions related to specific sourcing and procurement issues, without all the useless overhead of most of the supplier networks. Furthermore, it’s a much cleaner, simpler interface than many other platforms, which is what knowledge sharing should be all about. Secondly, you can use it as a free RFx platform for your open bids, and simply direct your suppliers to the appropriate documents in the appropriate group on the site for the bid package, rather than e-mailing large documents that are likely to bounce.

Conference Fever

It’s that time of year again where everyone gets conference fever – and the time of year where I recluse myself in the dark corners of my basement in the hopes that I can again avoid the annual malady that infects so many of us. But alas, although I’ve managed to escape the worst strains yet again, I’ve still been inflicted with a minor strain.

Thus, even though I don’t have the crazy schedule of some of my fellow bloggers (like Jason Busch [who is “Gearing Up for Conference Season”], I will be at a few conferences this spring. So far, I’m committed to two in the space and one not. And in this post, I’m going to plug the two in the space that I am committed to since I think they’ll be worth your while.

The first conference I am confirmed to attend is SCL’s “Creating a Resilient Supply Chain”, which is taking place May 5 and 6 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at the Paramount Conference and Event Venue. Now, I’m sure a lot of you, and particularly those of you south of the 49th parallel, are probably saying “who, what, where“, so I’m going to answer your questions. SCL is the” Supply Chain & Logistics Association Canada”, one of our organizations that would be like your CSCMP, just like our PMAC (Purchasing Management Association of Canada) is like your ISM. (Remember, although the doctor spends a lot of time in, and working with, the US, even though he has lived in the US, he does maintain his permanent residence north of the 49th parallel.) The what is SCLs big annual conference, and the where is in one of our conference capitals, quite close to Pearson International Airport.

There are some good professional and corporate names at this event. Matt Gersper of Global Data Mining, who’s contributed to this blog in the past; Sankar Krishnan, a Senior VP of Citibank; Bob Dye, the President of PMAC; Ginnie Vensiovaltis, Transportation Services Manager of Unilever Canada; Ryan Persad, Purolator Global Supply Chain Services; Jim Topkins, CEO of Tompkins Associates; Warren Sarafinchan, Transportation Director of Maple Leaf Foods; and Jayson Myers, the President of the Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters association.

The second conference I am confirmed to attend is Iasta’s reSource, which is taking place May 12 through May 14 in Indianapolis, Indiana, at the Marriott Downtown. Although this is, primarily, a customer-focused conference, it is still one that you should be strongly considering if you are a customer or considering becoming a customer. Although it’s a relatively new conference (as it’s only in its second year), Iasta did a great job pulling this together last year and managed to create an event that was both useful as a training event (the first day) and a general conference on good e-Sourcing, supply, and spend management best practices, mixing customer presentations with keynotes from thought leaders. (Jason Busch of Spend Matters gave the main keynote last year.) Plus, and you race fans will love this, they host their main networking event at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. (And it looks like they’ve added a second networking event at Victory Field as well this year.)

And for those of you dying to know what the third event outside of the space that I’m committed to attend is, it’s the IEEE Region 7 Canada Spring Board Meeting that takes place immediately before CCECE 2008. Aren’t you ever so glad that you asked?

I’m sure I’ll be busy in June as well … but that will have to wait for another post.