Category Archives: Miscellaneous

The Sourcing Maniacs Are At It Again!

“GPO”*1
by Dot and the ‘Riba Brothers

Dot
Little GPO, you’re really lookin’ fine
Three staplers and a printer only $389!
Loadin’ up the shoppin’ cart in the e-checkout line
C’mon and fill it up, check it out, get it now, GPO

Wakko and Yakko
Wo wo, wo wo wo wo wo
(yeah yeah, little GPO)
Wo wo, wo wo wo wo wo
(yeah yeah, little GPO)
Wo wo, wo wo wo wo wo
(ah, little G-P-O)

Dot
You oughta see it on your system on the LCD
This little modified network has got plenty for thee
She beats the punch-outs and the catalogues, its our guarantee
Just read the fine print, exemptions, legal tint, GPO

Wakko and Yakko
Wo wo, wo wo wo wo wo
(yeah yeah, little GPO)
Wo wo, wo wo wo wo wo
(yeah yeah, little GPO)
Wo wo, wo wo wo wo wo
(ah, little G-P-O)

Dot
Time to save all your money and buy a GPO
Indeminity and some IT and you’ll be ready to go
Roll it out to your buyers and let ’em know
That it’s the only game in town
Little buddy, gonna lock you down
When you turn it on, let it loose, start to buy, GPO

Wakko and Yakko
Wo wo, wo wo wo wo wo
(yeah yeah, little GPO)
Wo wo, wo wo wo wo wo
(yeah yeah, little GPO)
Wo wo, wo wo wo wo wo
(ah, little G-P-O)

Stuck in Procurement with Ariba Lite*2
by Ralph T. Guard*3

Doctor*4, every day I have to source some stuff
Doctor, listen to me, tell me it’s not slough
First I’m goin’ shoppin on Ariba Lite
Then all of a sudden things aren’t quite right
I search for thongs and everybody gets a fright
Undies and flip flops are displayed in plain site

Now Doctor, wait a minute, you ain’t heard nothing yet
Next comes the part that I won’t ever forget
Now I’m being coerced by some Chinese spies
To buy some toothpaste and a box of dies
Suddenly I’m locked out from buying office supplies
I click a wrong link and that’s when I realize

I’m stuck in procurement with Ariba Lite
I’m stuck in procurement with Ariba Lite
Day after day and night after night

Not right!

Doctor, won’t you tell me, am I going insane
Was it something they did or something wrong with my brain
See I’m surfin’ the web when I find a great deal
Want to buy, but my hands have been tied to the wheel
Stuck in fourth gear in a runaway automobile
Drivin in circles forever on a roulette wheel

I’m stuck in procurement with Ariba Lite
I’m stuck in procurement with Ariba Lite
Day after day and night after night

And I can’t bust out and I can’t break free
And its getting just a little too stuffy here for me
And I can’t go home and I can’t get loose
And I try to escape but it’s just no use

And I can’t ever leave and I can’t ever win
And I’m runnin’ out of air and the walls are closin’ in
And I can’t go back and I can’t get through
But Ariba since you’re here, why don’t you let me buy a six-shot from you

Come on Ariba, come on!

Ow, ’cause

Doctor, every day I think I’m losing my mind
That’s right, I even think that I’m being maligned
See, I’m coming here from work but I just can’t forget
I’m half an hour late and covered in sweat
Tried to buy a rope but Ariba wouldn’t let
me fill up the shopping cart unless I agreed to debt

I’m stuck in procurement with Ariba Lite
I’m stuck in procurement with Ariba Lite
Day after day and night after night

I’m stuck in procurement with Ariba Lite
Stuck in procurement with Ariba Lite
D-d-d-day after day and night after night

Then I’m stuck in procurement with Ariba Lite
(ya-ya ya-ya, ya-ya, ya, ya-ya)
I’m stuck in procurement with Ariba Lite
Day after day and night after night

Then I’m stuck in procurement with Ariba Lite
(ya-ya ya-ya, ya-ya, ya, ya-ya)
I’m stuck in procurement with Ariba Lite

*1 To the tune of “GTO” by Ronny and the Daytonas
*2 To the tune of “Stuck in a Closet with Vanna White” by Weird Al Yankovic
*3Ralph has the miserable job of trying to keep the sourcing maniacs in check. Given his limited intelligence, and the multiple concussions he has received from anvils and other heavy objects being dropped on his head, he tends to be rather unsuccessful. As a result, he has become rather reclusive, as his outlook on life has become quite dark, and that’s why we don’t hear from him very much.
*4Dr. Otto Scratchansniff

 

Risk is Everywhere!

One of the presentations I hoped to make, but wasn’t able to (due to a prior commitment), at the 5th Annual International Symposium on Supply Chain Management was the presentation by Philipp Hohrath from the Hamburg University of Technology on A Supply Chain Risk Management Process. Fortunately, the paper on which the presentation was based was one of the papers included in the conference materials.

The process the authors presented in the paper for supply chain risk management, defined as part of Supply Chain Management which contains all strategies and measures, all knowledge, all institutions, all processes, and all technologies, which can be used on the technical, personal, and organizational level to reduce supply chain risk, was pretty straight-forward and obvious – Identify Risk, Analyze risk, Assess Risk, Handle Risk, and Control Risk – without any new insights beyond what was already out their in the traditional and web 2.0 literature, but the paper contained a great table on the different risks that logistics service providers and manufacturing companies have to worry about, categorized by source. This table is as follows:

  Company Supply Demand Environment
Manufacturing
  • Loss of Production
  • Quality Failure
  • Logistics Service Provider Failure
  • Employee Shortage
  • Supplier Failure
  • Decreasing Supply Quality
  • Decreasing Supply Reliability
  • Increasing Supply Lead Times
  • Price Increase
  • Stock Outage
  • Logistics Service Provider Failure
  • Single Supplier Dependence
  • Demand Variation Increase
  • Customer Insolvency
  • Margin
  • Unpredictable Product Substitution
  • Single Customer Dependence
  • Logistics Service Provider Failure
  • Legal Risk
  • Liability Risk
  • Political Risk
  • War / Conflict Risk
  • Natural Disaster
Logistics Services Providers
  • Insufficient Capacity
  • Quality Failure
  • Employee Shortage
  • Subcontractor Failure
  • Decreasing Service Quality
  • Decreasing Supply Reliability
  • Price Increase
  • Subcontractor Dependency
  • Customer Insolvency
  • Margin
  • Service Substitution
  • Single Customer Dependence
  • Legal Risk
  • Liability Risk
  • Political Risk
  • War / Conflict Risk
  • Natural Disaster

The paper also addressed the rising importance of supply chain risk management, from the 3-8% range in 2000, to the 27-38% range in 2005, to a project range of 70-82% in 2010, as well as some of the barriers to the implementation of supply chain risk management, including competitive thinking, lack of transparency, lack of understanding, and lack of sufficiently qualified employees. What’s important to note about the barriers is that the first three are easily solved with training and organizational transformation, whereas the talent problem is going to be with us for some time.

What’s In Their Wallet? (Is it Provade?)

A few colleagues of mine were at SIG earlier this month, and they all had (some) good things to say about it. I, of course, wasn’t there as SIG events are typically members only and I’m not a member – as it’s primarily for companies and not bloggers and independent consultants. But I’m always happy to hear someone say “I used a quote from SI, and everyone in the room nodded in agreement as they know what SI is and what it stands for.” since these are rooms full of CPOs and VPs who care about taking their sourcing to the next level. But I digress.

After finding out a few people were there and had positive feedback, I decided to download the brochure agenda and see who else was there. Buried on page 15 is the following:

Finding the Right Approach to Services Spend Management
Ross Creasy, Senior Director of Global IT, Capital One and Ian Sullivan, COO, Provade

A joint presentation by Capital One and Provade! I don’t know about you, but I can’t help but make the obvious inference – that Capital One is using Provade (acquired by Smart ERP Solutions) to manage at least some of their services spend. If true (and I’ll probably never know one way or the other for certain because Capital One is one of those high fallutin’ financial institutions that never announces who they use or makes joint press releases and Provade is not going to confirm anything I can’t print), this means that this innovative little technology-based BPO with a unique view on complex services outsourcing in areas such as HR, Legal, and Marketing that Jason Busch and I have been blogging about off-and-on for a while now has made a major score!

And if this wasn’t enough to get you wondering, a quick look at their website on the events page has them at Oracle OpenWorld 2007 next month. Now, this could be just because they have developed their unique platform on the PeopleTools stack, and, thus, are able to uniquely leverage Oracle applications in their managed services. Or it could be because Provade is a Tier 1 Oracle BPO Partner. However, I’m betting it’s because there’s more here than meets the eye here as well or because they plan on making a major announcement in the next month or so. (Let’s face it, massive events like this are not cheap.)

We’ll have to wait and see, but regardless, for the progress they’ve made in tackling services categories that most solution providers won’t touch with a ten foot pole, they’re my vendor of the week (a SI exclusive through year-end – the 12 Vendors of XMas if you will).

For more information on Provade, I refer you back to the following posts:

Vendor Sourcing Innovation Spend Matters Solution(s)
Provade Outsourcing, Part I
Outsourcing, Part II 		There’s Room For New BPO Entrants * Outsourced Procurement
* Workforce Management

For more information on just how hard it is to source marketing and legal spend, I refer you back to the following posts:

Magic & Logic I
Magic & Logic II
The Creative Challenge I
The Creative Challenge II

Legal Cooperation
Key Concepts for Major Procurements
Procurement Contract Risk Management

Don’t they have anything better to blog about?

Not that long ago, I happened to notice the title of a SupplyManagement.com blog entry … that asked a really pointless question … specifically What is the most common name in procurement? Then it started with: while reporting on the profession we have been struck by the number of procurement professionals with the same first names and asked if anyone else noticed any trends, like they were the first to think of it.

Its a well known that name popularity rises and falls with the times – and even an American 5th grader can tell you that this means some names are going to be more common than others! Furthermore, even my cat has read Freakonomics (or at the very least snuggled up to all of the pages, chewed on the ears, and slept on it a few dozen times) and knows that some names are going to be more common than others and that if she lets loose a mrow-mrow-ra instead of a mrow-mrow-mi-ous she’s more likely to get attention in a room of drunks mistaking slurs for actual names.

Now I know I should also be asking Don’t I have anything better to blog about?, and trust me when I say that I did, but after hearing Distinguishing the Indistinguishable: Exploring Differences in Supply Chain Software Packages Using Centering Resonance Text Analysis all I can think about are Stirling engines and the obvious jokes. I’m panning, but all I’m coming up with is fool’s gold. Maybe next weekend.

Winning Strategies for Vendor Engagement

By far the best presentation that I attended at the 5thAnnual International Symposium on Supply Chain Management was Jon Hansen‘s presentation on Winning Strategies for Vendor Engagement, part of his Chaning Face of Procurement Series.

Even though there was nothing revolutionary in his talk, Jon did a great job of hitting home on the core message, spelling out the basics, simplifying the core messages which a lot of people focussed on new e-Procurement and e-Sourcing efforts still overlook, and delivering a presentation the way a presentation should be delivered. Simply put, the key to success still ultimately lies with your vendors, and if they don’t participate, or participate 100%, you’re going to lose out in the end. Basically, unless managed properly, your e-Procurement initiative, instead of being a benefit, could be a threat to your supply base. And this is not just theory – it’s fact. Consider a recent statistic from the Wall Street Journal (in February, 2005) which noted that 73% of all implementations result in partial or total failure.

It’s not hard to win suppliers over – often all you have to do is meet their needs and take the time to work with them to explain why the new system is better and why they won or lost the bid. Basically, suppliers are looking at (most at) six factors when being asked to use a new technology:

  • Ease of use
  • Non-invasive technology
  • Convenience and speed
  • Business Intelligence
  • Chance to maintain or increase revenue
  • Non-adversarial environment

Meeting these factors is not hard to do. For example:

  • Ease of use
    • Use technologies not limited to largest / most sophisticated suppliers
    • Communicate the initiative via multiple avenues of communication
    • Proper tool alignment
  • Non-invasive technology
    • Does not increase work
    • Increases opportunities
    • Reduces the cost of sale
  • Convenience and speed
    • Automated and intelligent engagement
    • Minimal Administrative Requirements
  • Business Intelligence
    • Proper spend alignment
    • Real-time reporting capabilities
    • Orientation sessions
    • Project and quarterly Reviews
  • Chance to maintain or increase revenue
    • Create an equal opportunity environment
    • Greater opportunity
  • Non-adversarial environment
    • Fair competition with clearly defined rules
    • Proper spend alignment
    • Proper technological alignment

Basically, vendors are the key to your success and will want to help you succeed if you take the time to help them succeed. It’s not hard. Just do it.