Category Archives: Orchestration

Dangerous Procurement Predictions Part III

As per our first two posts, if you read my predictions post, you know SI hates predictions posts. It fully despises them because the vast majority of these posts are pure optimistic fantasy and help no one. Why are the posts like this? Because no one wants to hear the sobering reality off of the bat in the new year and the influencers care more about clicks than actually helping you.

But the predictions are not only bad, they’re dangerous if you believe them. So we are continuing to lay bare the reality of the situation to make sure you understand that this year isn’t much different than last year, no miracles are coming, and only hard work and the application of your human intelligence are going to get you anywhere. Today we tackle the next three, and while we hope we’re getting close to the end of the series, we’re pretty sure there will be at least one more entry.

8. Global Trade Will Shift, Prioritizing Resilience Over Cost.

In the mid to long term some trade will shift to prioritize resilience, but most trade won’t. While defence procurements, critical mineral and material acquisitions for high-end electronics, and valuable commodities that can be traded like currency (such as gold, silver, platinum, diamonds, etc.) will be shifted for resilience, the reality is that, even with natural disasters, sanctions, trade wars, and actual wars, most companies aren’t going to make any changes to their supply chains (unless given absolutely no choice) because

  • finding new suppliers (in new countries) takes time and effort
  • qualifying new suppliers (in new countries) takes time and effort
  • identifying and contracting reliable carriers takes time and effort
  • building and securing new supply lines takes time and effort
  • etc.

and most companies are in constant fire-fighting mode, overworked, overstressed, and they just don’t have the time as long as the current supply chain, while strained, still works. Until their supply completely dries up, their primary production lines and revenue streams are threatened, and they have no other choice, they won’t change because they’ll keep telling themselves random natural disasters won’t impact them, the tariffs are only temporary, sanctions change with administrations, and wars eventually end.

9. Your employees will orchestrate outcomes.

Woody Woodpecker, take it away!

The level of talent needed to orchestrate outcomes is well beyond the average level of talent in an average (and even most above average) Procurement Department(s). There’s a reason that talent is a concern, a <href=”” target=_blank>top risk, and a top barrier for not just the last five years of studies and surveys, but at least the last ten. Talent has been scarce for a decade, and the situation is much worse since COVID. COVID saw many early retirements of the forced and chosen variety. Then the constant fears of recession saw more layoffs, starting with the highest paid (and most experienced) talent first. And you can be damn sure many of them are not coming back. We told you a year ago that talent is about to become scarce, and we’re sad to say we think we underestimated just how scarce talent is about to become.

And the reality is that only top talent can orchestrate outcomes. All the vast majority of talent can do is execute tasks one by one in a well-defined process. They can’t create new processes, and they certainly can’t define new outcome-centric processes on the fly. Especially when the ORCestration platforms they are given can’t even “orchestrate” a process to lead a mouse to the cheese it desperately wants.

10. New Year, New Me.

Who were you last year?

That’s right, the same person you are this year.

This BS lasts until all the bubbly you drank on New Year’s eve wears off, the rose coloured glasses go dim from the glare of doing the same damn thing as you stare at the same damn screen 12 hours a day, and you get overwhelmed with all the same tasks you were doing last year. Within two weeks at most, the new year, new me bullcr@p disappears with your last new years resolution and you’re just fighting to survive being overworked, understaffed, underfunded, and under-resourced, especially on the tech side (because the C-Suite wasted all the budget on a Big X Consultancy Gen-AI project that never even got to beta testing because the prototype phase never actually worked).

Most people won’t even make an effort to improve, which is the best one can hope for! (So if you have an employee who does, proactively give them a raise, any training they ask for, and keep them. Because, as per our response to the last false, and dangerous, prediction, talent is scarce and you should do whatever you can to keep whatever talent you have [instead of trying to replace it with fake AI that will never work fully autonomously].)

Dangerous Procurement Predictions Part I

If you read my predictions post, you know SI hates predictions posts. It fully despises them because the vast majority of these posts are pure optimistic fantasy and help no one. Why are the posts like this? Because no one wants to hear the sobering reality off of the bat in the new year and the influencers care more about clicks than actually helping you.

But given how dangerous and costly the hopeful fantasy has become, not only did SI swallow its disgust and give you a realistic predictions post, but it’s going to collect and lay bare the most dangerous of the predictions that, even if seemingly innocuous, will lead you astray if you believe them. And now some of the influencers and LinkedIn aficionados are taking up the claims, and the charge, but like many other claims, they are overstated.

Today we tackle the first three, but you can expect this to be the first of many posts as dangerous prediction posts flood your feeds for the rest of the month.

1. The “Great Convergence” Accelerates

The claims of of the ORChestration providers is that all roads lead to them, the convergence will accelerate, and you won’t have to worry about what you need because, as long as you have orchestration, you’ll have it all!

For example, if you want to use the largest orchestration provider in S2P, your are limited to the platforms they have already integrated. The same goes for the second or third largest. Plus, if the providers you want to integrate aren’t reasonably sized Source to Pay providers, good luck expecting the workflow to support them appropriately.

Moreover, they were built to minimally support the existing solutions, not emerging solutions in the Source to Pay and extended Supply Chain Marketplace. In other words, the convergence will continue at a snails pace, but it will never be great!

2. “X” Finally Gets Modern Attention

It doesn’t matter what X is — if X has been needed, but ignored, for the last ten years, it’s NOT going to all of a sudden be addressed this year. For whatever reason, it will continue to be ignored.

Example #1, Cybersecurity.

As per my recent post on breaking down the risks: IP / cyberattacks, the risk of cyberattacks has been high since 2014, a year when 71% of organizations were affected by a successful cyberattack! Ten years later, 70% of small to medium sized businesses are still getting hit by cyberattacks. (Which means that if it was going to get major attention, shouldn’t 2014 have been the year?!?)

Nothing has changed — the reason? Cybersecurity is seen as a cost, not a return. So, when a successful attack results in significant losses, organizations spend on improved cybersecurity, and ignore it until the next significant successful attack hits, and that is the only time they will spend for new systems across the board, and that’s it. That’s why cybersecurity, inside and outside the organization, won’t get any more attention this year than last year.

Example #2, Risk Management.

There’s a big reason it’s been the exact same risks in the state of procurement studies and reports for at least the last five, if not the last ten, years. It’s because, despite the fact that risks keep increasing, no one ever does anything about it … there’s no additional investment in risk management software. Why? Again, it’s seen as a cost and not an investment. And when you’re already paying for insurance, why pay for what, at best, seems like more?

Even though the cost of insurance will soon be unaffordable given that natural disaster and fraud losses are going through the roof, if you can even get insurance at all, risk management solutions are still being ignored by every organization that hasn’t suffered a major loss as a result of a risk-related event. (And who knows if insurance will cover AI losses when AI escapes the vending machine? It’s a question you should definitely be asking!)

Example #3, Direct.

That’s supply chain, right? Right?

Wrong! But that’s the view that the vast majority of Source-to-Pay providers have taken since the beginning. Sure a few big suites picked up a few smaller players that specialized in direct sourcing, but that’s about it from the big players. And there are a few startups here and there, but they’re all overlooked, underfunded, and not getting any traction.

Because it’s hard. Damn hard. And the majority of S2P players don’t want hard. They want easy. They built easy. They sell easy. And that’s all they want to do. (And, often, all they can do!)

We could continue, but you get the point.

3. One of the big legacy S2P suites will go out of business.

This is a prediction straight from the genius of Gary Wright. Only a Dream Weaver would predict this! This has happened exactly once since our space began in the late 1990s, and it wasn’t exactly going out of business, it was a big acquirer deciding the space wasn’t profitable enough and shutting the vendor down. Specifically, it was IBM shutting down Emptoris and shunting all the customers to SAP Ariba in 2017.

Every big provider in this space is controlled by PE who have poured tens, hundreds, or thousands of millions (that’s billions) into the firm. If it starts losing money, and if they think they can’t turn it around, rather than shutting it down, they’ll flip it to another firm at a loss (to recover some investment) who will pick up some fire sale acquisitions, integrate them, update the UX, install a whole new management team, fluff it up, rebrand it, and bring it out with a whole new spin. Like ERPs, Suites never die. Even if they’re twenty years behind the times.

So if a new big player hits the scene, check under the covers, do a bit of research, and dig up those skeletons. PE knows how to make everything old new again, but tech is not like fashion, and you don’t want two decades old SaaS, as that’s just the same old sh!t.

True Orchestration Platforms Are A Lot Rarer Than You Think. How do you find one?

In our last article we told you that you need a modern orchestration platform in order to deal with the application sprawl not just in an average organization but in your own department. However, the majority of today’s platforms are not orchestration platforms but ORCestration platforms, integrating your applications in a manner that is forceful, ugly, and impure, to say the least.

So how do you find a real platform? Well, for starters you can use the checklists in our first two part where Part I gave you the red flags to look out for and Part II gives you key features to identify.

But if you’re techie enough, or savvy enough, here’s a starting list of technical requirements that you look for. (There are more, especially if you’re looking ahead to 2035 and beyond, but let’s face it, you’re lucky if you’re running 2015 technology anywhere in your organization. So if you make it to 2025, that would be a quantum leap for you.)

Technical Requirements

  • Micro-Service Building Blocks that can be assembled together to support all existing and emerging internet an communication protocols
  • Transactional Blocks that encompass standard data-centric operations in the business back office around the information and finance supply chains
  • Blockchain Support for immutable records that capture data, ownership, and processing that has transpired
  • Context Aware as it’s not just data, it’s metadata of what it represents, who’s data it is, where it was obtained, when it was obtained created, and how it was accessed, why it was valid (and who validated it) in a secure, immutable, block
  • Policy Definition Support that can recognize the security and compliance policies of the integrated applications and ensure they are checked and adhered to before processing any request
  • Dynamic Routing that can ensure messages are re-routed when issues are detected to maintain (guaranteed) response times
  • Resiliency via decentralization and multiple service instances to ensure that one failure doesn’t prevent critical functions and processes from being completed
  • Adaptive when human intervention is required, it is recorded and new rules, and workflows, are generated to prevent a human from having to intervene again for the same problem
  • Secure as modern security protocols and requirements are built in at the core, not around the edges as an afterthought
  • Trustworthy full support immutable data objects, policies, and security independent of what systems are connected to the orchestration platform

Savvy Requirements

The whole point of Procurement is supposed to support the business, a business which must buy and sell to survive, and do so profitably. (That’s why Procurement is so focussed on cost, to keep expenses down, and supply assurance, to keep sales flowing.) This means that the business also requires Sales (who sells) and Supply Chain (who ultimately supplies) and that all of these units must work in harmony. However, fundamentally, without inputs, which depend on suppliers, there are no outputs, which means that the Supply Chain, and the support for the Supply Chain Ecosystem, is fundamental.

This means that the best orchestration solution will be one that is built to support the supply chain department’s integration requirements within the organization and with external partners, not just Procurement. After all, if you read the series Bob and I authored on Legacy Sourcing and Planning Solutions, you can’t divorce Direct Sourcing from Supply Chain and expect success.

So if you want a great orchestration solution, find one that was originally built for supply chain where the vendor has layered on out-of-the-box support for Procurement. This maximizes your chance for success as you will already know supply chain integration support has been taken care of.

Wondering where to start? Maybe start by taking a look at something like HubX12 built as a decentralized distributed network for next-gen supply chains. With its built-in support for modern and emerging internet and communication protocols, advanced chains of custody, and compliance, it could serve as the transaction backbone that you need to integrate existing systems and build custom capabilities both within your organization and your supply chain.

Stop Buying ORCestration. You need Orchestration!

In our last article we told you that the majority of today’s platforms attempting to unify the Procurement application space for you are not Orchestration platforms but ORCestration platforms, integrating your applications in a manner that is forceful, ugly, and impure, to say the least. Definitely not what you need in a modern orchestration platform.

A real Orchestration platform is:

–> Light

They aren’t adding another bulky SaaS platform with its own deep stack requirements, vendor maintenance requirements, data store requirements, and rules engine which must not only be maintained separately, but replicate data and rules across the apps it connects. It’s a truly next gen platform, built up from only the (micro) services necessary to connect the apps and accomplish the tasks. It’s a composable container community, not a 100 room palace with no option in between.

–> Cheap

Next generation platforms, built on modern distributed architectures, and built to work behind the scenes (not in front) to allow the users to access the ecosystems they need to access through the applications they are comfortable with, won’t be million dollar applications. They’ll be a fraction of that as the organizations will be buying just a configurable framework, that they can configure themselves as needed, and not a full, heavy, SaaS application with all of the required support infrastructure just to keep it operational (regardless of whether it integrates any applications or not).

–> Flexible

Workflow can be built up, torn down, and put back together on the fly, as required to support evolving processes. Intake, UI, and integration can all be defined, and redefined, as processes evolve, new applications enter the landscape, and old applications leave. The organization is not restricted to a fixed intake screens with limited configuration, predefined workflows, or limited data formats.

–> Open

Built on composable micro-services, that are fully documented and compatible with modern stacks, they allow anyone to build the necessary integrations, workflows, and data manipulations necessary for true process orchestration. They also support the definition of contexts that allow them to be natively compatible with the data structures of the applications they are integrating. And one definitional mistake won’t bring down the whole platform because it’s not a monolithic megalith built on a house of data cards.

–> Real-Time

Not only are data pushes and pulls accomplished in real time, but the orchestration platform will automatically propagate data updates to all apps that maintain a copy of the data. Moreover, when an input the orchestration platform is an initiator of a process, the entire process will be executed without explicit instructions as each output will trigger the next step and serve as the input for that step.

–> Execution

Real orchestration platforms don’t connect apps in workflows, they execute workflows, and they do so dynamically based upon the inputs and outputs of each step. They adapt, and when transactions occur that cause exceptions that require human intervention, they learn from those interventions and dynamically construct new exception workflows on the fly, ensuring that no specific exception ever has to be manually dealt with twice.

–> Blockchain

It will support blockchain at the core, allowing not only for the integration and processing of arbitrary data records, but for immutable data objects to be input, created, and output — with a full history of what app did which change when. That’s a lot more than you can say about today’s ORCestration platforms.

–> Multi-Protocol

Not only will the orchestration platform be composable from the core up, but the building blocks will be designed in such a way that they can be composed to support all of the standard, obscure, and emerging protocols that might need to be supported. As a result, the platform will be able to integrate not only current apps, but emerging apps as well.

–> Organizational

A true orchestration platform is designed to support organizational processes and applications, not just Procurement, allowing the input (signal) data to come from any organizational system and be pushed to any other organizational system, bridging the gap between sales orders, POS demand signals, and demand planning and supply chain (re)order and logistics systems. True orchestration finally tears down the technology walls holding Procurement back, vs. today’s ORCestration platforms which just strengthen their foundations.

–> Secure

Not only are these platforms built on security at the core, recognizing both security standards AND security policies, including the security policy of each application that is orchestrated by the platform. This means that when a user initiates an action, it only executes if they have the appropriate (data) access in all of the applications on the orchestration platform that are needed to complete the action. No hoping, or praying, that the ORCestration platform encoded the right security checks in its native workflow.

–> Policy (Aware)

As per our last point, modern orchestration platforms will understand the concept of policy at the core, and not just for security — for compliance as well! The orchestration platform will integrate with all of the applications that contain encodings of the organizational compliance requirements, understand those compliance requirements in their native contexts, and ensure that all processes are completed in a compliant process.

–> Collaborative

The core of the orchestration backbone is designed to not only support application collaboration, but user collaboration across the organization, and even with connected parties in the supply chain, through the native support of internet communication protocols as well as all standard application messaging protocols. Collaboration will never be easier than with a true orchestration platform.

–> Resilient

Since it’s not just another megalithic SaaS app, but instead a (micro-)service platform built up from building blocks, one failed integration and even one failed block will not bring down the whole platform, the rest of the platform and apps will still work.

–> Process (Focussed)

Modern orchestration platforms are designed to support organizational enterprise processes end-to-end, not departmental functions end-to-end. They can integrate and orchestrate any application in the organization’s software ecosystem (all 1,000+ in a large enterprise) as well as any partner systems the organization has access to.

–> Exception (Orientation)

Modern orchestration is designed to quickly identify exceptions, invoke exception processes, and ensure humans are only involved for a here-to-forth unforeseen exception. Moreover, it will allow for the human instructions and guided process to be automatically captured and encoded to make sure that humans never have to teach the system twice.

Unlike yesterday’s ORCestration platforms, today’s (and tomorrow’s) true orchestration platforms are built on modern technology stacks, and future-proofed for tomorrow’s applications, not just yesterday’s.