Category Archives: Procurement Innovation

GoTradeLive: A LinkedIn eBay on Steroids for Small Business Procurement to Groupon To.

GoTradeLive is launching its new, global, trading platform targeted at small and medium businesses in the US today. Its new free social commerce and commercial trading platform is poised to be as disruptive to the small business Procurement market as Coupa (Cabana) was when it was launched back in 2007 on Procurement Independence Day. This is not something the doctor says lightly.

So what is GoTradeLive? It is, simply put, a power-auction platform for small businesses on steroids. And what’s so great about that, you astutely ask because there are dozens, and dozens, of auction platforms out there ranging from free to seven figures in cost? It’s social. It’s networked. It’s mobile. It’s easy to use. It’s global (and multi-currency). It’s Free. It can be branded. And it’s proven — as it’s already been tested in Australia, New Zealand, China, and the UK, where they have offices.

Let’s take the benefits one-by-one.

  • It’s social
    You can create your own trading networks using a Facebook / Linked-In type interface and these can be public or private for public or private sales or trades.
  • It’s networked
    While the build-your-trading network ability of the Ariba or Ketera networks are not yet there, the building blocks are and you can see it’s coming. But the ability to define custom trading networks is unique.
  • It’s (a) mobile (platform)
    Like the consumer social networks and e-Commerce platforms, they have a mobile app that allows you to monitor your trades and bids from your mobile device.
  • It’s easy to use
    It’s as easy to use as Facebook, eBay, and other consumer sites.
  • It’s global.
    It has already been launched in Australasia and the UK and further global launches are already planned. It supports automatic currency translation for global buying and selling.
  • It’s Free.
    It’s using the Freemium model pioneered by sites like LinkedIn, DropBox, and BaseCamp. It literally costs nothing to use. No registration or account fees. No listing fees. No transaction fees. (However, if you don’t pay, you are subjected to ads and there is nothing to prevent an advertisement for a competitor’s product or auction appearing on your listing page.) Given that the cost of some platforms include transaction fees of up to 15%, this is a great deal.
  • It can be branded.
    For as little as $15 a month, which gives you one-user access, you can brand the site into your own trading platform (with your logo, colour scheme, etc.) and eliminate advertisements. Small Business Pricing is coming soon, and will start at less than $100 / month.

It’s a great social commerce platform for quickly moving slow, excess, or end-of life inventory and a great platform for many small businesses, especially those in retail, construction, and similar goods-based verticals, for spot-buying product needed at irregular intervals. And it has a lot of promise. This is one platform the doctor will be watching closely.

The Procurement Game Plan: A Review Part I.1

Charles Dominick of Next Level Purchasing and Soheila R. Lunney of Lunney Advisory Group recently released The Procurement Game Plan: Winning Strategies and Techniques for Supply Management Professionals. We’re going to do a fairly detailed review of this book over four to five posts, but to start, we’re simply going to cover the purchasing professional’s 10 commandments because they do a great job of covering the basic mindset a Procurement or Supply Management professional has to have if she is to expect a successful career.

The Purchasing Professional’s 10 Commandments

  1. Thou shalt always make decisions in the best interest of thy employer.
    Good purchasing agents avoid any real, and even perceived, conflicts of interest.
  2. Thous shalt always involve thy internal customers throughout the purchasing process.
    Good purchasing professionals never act alone.
  3. Thou shalt never make price the only criterion in a purchasing decision.
    Good purchasing agents take quality, delivery, and other relevant criteria into consideration also.
  4. Thou shalt measure thy performance and communicate thy performance to management.
    Good purchasing professionals know and show their value.
  5. Thou shalt treat suppliers fairly.
    Good purchasing professionals don’t attempt to take advantage of suppliers’ mistakes nor trick them into accepting unfavourable terms.
  6. Thou shalt embrace change and new technologies.
    Thou shalt not resist them.
  7. Thou shalt negotiate with the understanding that there may someday need to be a close relationship with the supplier across the table.
    Thou shalt not burn thy bridges, especially before crossing them.
  8. Thou shalt realize it is a global economy.
    Thou shalt never make assumptions that thou knoweth every supplier available.
  9. Thou shalt acknowledge that thy manager’s job is to develop and implement a strategy for development.
    Therefore, thy shalt challenge thyself to solve problems independently rather than involve thy manager in tactical crises that can be reasonably resolved at your level.
  10. Thou shalt commit to continuous improvement of thy skills.
    Thou shalt never let a year go by without learning new practices used by other purchasing professionals.
  11. Thou shalt always exceed expectations, consistently delivering more than anticipated.
    Good purchasing professionals will also fulfill obligations sooner than expected.

In our next post, we’ll review first part of the book on organizational role, supply management strategy, talent, and social responsibility — the stage that a modern supply management professional has to act upon.

Did “The Gambler” Teach Us Everything We Need To Know About supply Management Operational Success?


You Got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.

Thirty three years ago, Kenny Rogers unleashed upon the world this country classic, written by Don Schlitz, which was the inspiration for a movie that came out two years later. And it seems, thirty three years later, that this is the message that SAP is unleashing upon the supply management world as the foundation of their advice for “achieving operational excellence in any economic climate”.

In the aforementioned article, the author provides four (4) tactics that are employed by best-in-class performers to elevate procurement proficiencies. Simply put, the author is recommending that you hold ’em, fold ’em, walk away, and run.

  • Hold ’em: Hold On To Your Suppliers through a Supplier Connectivity Strategy
    Integrate suppliers into key points in the supply management process. This will reduce mutual overheads and costs through better insights into your process.
  • Fold ’em: Fold Your Employees Into Your Organizational Procurement Process through a Compelling End-User Purchasing Experience
    Utilize the fact that your employees are web-savvy online shoppers with expertise in navigating online purchasing sites in such a way that allows them to slice and dice their options and get the best deal. Provide them with the right enterprise supply management portals and they will get the best value available to them.
  • Walk Away: from Non-Existent Savings and Unprofitable Efforts by Prioritizing Spend Categories with Significant Cost Reduction Opportunities
    Start with categories that will deliver a high return with minimal effort (usually by way of standardization) and then progress to categories that will deliver reasonable savings with reasonable effort, staying far away from those categories that yield only minimum returns for maximum effort. Remember the 80/20 rule – 80% of savings will typically come from 20% of categories. Focus there.
  • Run: Away from Unnecessary Processes by Moving towards a “Zero-Touch” Procurement Process
    Leading organizations use procurement solutions to do the “heavy lifting” on approvals, order delivery, and invoice management that streamline approvals and automate approvals for low-value, low-risk purchases where manual review would often cost more than could be saved through a detailed analysis.

And it’s all great advice. Now if only they had remember that you:

Never Count Your Money While You’re At The Table

    • :

because Failure is Imminent without Constant Innovation

    Simply put, what is leading-edge today, is average tomorrow, and yesterday’s technology the next day. You can never rest on your laurels — you have to keep improving your processes. The minute you stop to count your money, you stop innovating, you stop identifying new cost reduction or value generation opportunities, you stop saving or generating value, and you begin the slow decline from leader to laggard. Today’s corporate world has evolved to a high-stakes winner-take-all poker game and there’s no time to pause and count your savings until the supply management game is won.

It would be a great starting recipe for supply management organizational success.

You Don’t Need to Fish to Identify Savings Opportunities in Indirect Procurement

A recent article in the SIG Newsletter on “How to Identify Savings Opportunities in Indirect Procurement” gave a fisherman’s perspective on how to identify savings. It wasn’t bad, and went something like this:

  • The “big catch” comes from understanding the entomology
    Just as an angler must understand the feeding opportunities created by a trout’s main source of food – bugs – a Procurement Professional must understand the current business climate and the opportunities provided that, when intersected with the right plan at the right time, will create success.
  • Match the Hatch
    Trout opportunistically feed at the time of the hatch (when fly larva emerge and float to the water’s surface to dry their wings). A skilled angler will know when a bug hatch is occurring and match the fly to the hatching bugs to increase the catch. Similarly, a skilled procurement professional will identify which business trends are hatching and what elements need to be considered to create a category “catching” opportunity. She will start by prioritizing categories by ROI, developing a change management strategy, and focussing on internal and external adoption requirements.
  • Fish With a Guide
    There’s a big difference between traditional spincasting rods and fly rods and moving from one to another can be intimidating even for an experienced angler. The best way to move from one to the other is through a guide — an expert who already made the transition, learned from past mistakes, and who can help you overcome your fears and take you forward. In Procurement, a good guide will help your company create a strong indirect program through:

    • Analysis (Opportunity Evaluation)
    • Strategy (Best Practices)
    • Implementation (Adoption)
    • Management (Sustainability)
  • Approaching Indirect Procurement Services is Just About “Getting it Done”
    Intimidation and uncertainty can create a paralytic environment. Be empowered. If fish are analogous to categories, then plan where you want to fish and what kind of fish you want to catch. Determine where the fish are and if you can access them. Then, set out with clear goals and enlist the help of a good guide. The results can be that “big catch” or a series of smaller fish that add up to a great day or quarter.

And it overviewed some of the more common reasons why companies are not taking a more aggressive approach to indirect services expenditures, which include:

  • Fragmented buyer base
  • Difficult to transactionally manage (no comprehensive systems — too many point/niche solutions)
  • No detailed, real time visibility
  • Big change management issues
  • Not properly staffed to ensure adoption & sustainability post sourcing
  • Focused on direct materials & services
  • No internal expertise
  • No executive sponsorship

And it even indicated the most common indirect categories organizations were going after.

So it wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t that good either. It didn’t dive into how to detect a business climate that was prime for “a big catch”, how to detect “hatching” trends early in the game to be ready for an opportunity that is about to become prime, how to identify the right “guide” for your business, or the best way to “Get it Done”. As we indicated in a recent post, this will require stakeholder involvement across the board — and this is where the fly fishing analogy breaks down. You fly fish alone. You need to source indirect categories in a team. Furthermore, the right “guide” might be category dependent (as IT [targeted by 76% of businesses surveyed] and Travel [targeted by 84% of business surveyed] require very different knowledge bases and skill sets), trends are often very dependent on a sector, and a “big catch” will vary depending on business spend patterns, industry, and the overall economic climate (and the supply / demand [im]balance). And while these answers may be organization specific, they need to be answered to insure success.