Category Archives: Procurement Innovation

We First Rocked Around the Clock 60 Years Ago Today …

… but how long have you been rockin’ your supply chain?

As Christopher Sciacca insists, supply chains don’t have to be boring. You don’t have to sing the blues. You can twist and shout.


Put your glad rags on and join me, hun,
We’ll have some fun when the clock strikes one
We’re gonna save some money tonight.
We’re gonna save, save, save ’til broad daylight

Modern e-Sourcing Technology allows you to identify savings you never knew existed.
Spend Analysis and Decision Optimization identify year-over-year savings in excess of 10% when properly deployed.
New market intelligence solutions identify changing commodity prices in near real time.
Six Sigma and Lean solutions allow you to improve processes to reduce manpower costs.


When the clock strikes two, three and four,
if the float goes down we’ll save some more
We’re gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We’re gonna add value ’til broad daylight

Visibility solutions identify potential risk and allow for mitigation and prevention.
Sustainable options increase brand value and minimize long-term costs.
Recognized brands add value to your own.


When the chimes ring five, six and seven,
we’ll be right in seventh heaven.
We’re gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We’re gonna innovate ’til broad daylight

Collaboration tools allow for joint product design.
VMI allows for joint inventory management.
e-Document Management allows for procurement and sales support.


When it’s eight, nine, ten, eleven too,
I’ll be goin’ strong and so will you.
We’re gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We’re gonna start again at broad daylight

Savings, Value Generation, Innovation is a continuous process — and supply chains support it!


We’re gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight!

Magic & Logic (i.e. Marketing & Procurement) Through the Years [2014] (Collected Links)

PREAMBLE

Magic & Logic

The Creative Challenge

Efficient Sourcing in Marketing

How Do You Support Marketing and Get a Grip on Agency Lifecycle Management?

Too Many Marketing Fingers in the Procurement Pie?

BONUS

Procurement Key Issues from the Hackett Group, Part II

Last month, the Hackett Group, as part of its Procurement Executive Insight series, released its “2014 Procurement Key Issues” report on Rethinking How Procurement Defines Its Value, Balances Risk, and Gets the Most from Technology Investments. It had some very interesting findings, including the fact that Procurement in 76% of companies surveyed indicated that a top priority was to expand procurement’s scope/influence. This is logical, but a little unexpected giving that the top Management priorities are to grow revenue and improve margins / profitability, at 66% and 61%, and most companies still see margin improvement in an uncertain market as cost reduction since limited or no-growth markets don’t generally take favourably to cost increases.

It seems that, as Hackett notes in its insight, we have the situation where many of the Procurement groups in Hackett’s survey stable have reached the upper limit of cost reductions possible in categories they actively source today and are interested in taking on new spend categories in an effort to unearth additional savings and meet the savings targets they are still being (implicitly) given for the organization to achieve it’s margin improvement.

While I applaud the long-needed alignment from this group of Procurement organizations that are obviously in the above-average and best-in-class categories — because savings are a thing of the past with (hyper)inflation returning to historical norms, raw materials in many categories become scarce (and supply barely meeting demand), and transportation costs continuing to increase — I worry that the finance organization is not yet aligned with the need and, when push comes to shove, will resort to a strong arm instead of a gentle hand, putting Marketing, Legal, and other non-physical product organizations on the defensive.

Somewhere two fists are pounding
And they don’t care what’s correct
Somewhere somebody’s walking the wire
Without a safety net …

This will not only result in a push-back from the internal departments that Procurement needs to help, but from the vendors and third-parties that the Marketing, Legal, and other non-physical product departments rely on to keep the organization running. The disdain dripping from the forced smiles on all sides will be visible across the room …

Somewhere some buyer’s crazy
And some Rep’s half out of her head
Now the CPO’s fearless
And hopes they won’t wind up dead

You have to remember these are vendors who are used to doing deals with a wink and a smile in the back room or skybox of their favourite entertainment venue and sealing them with a firm handshake. Terms? Conditions? Agreed Upon Rates? Performance Requirements? Contracts? This is a whole new ballgame to a vendor used to doing the work and sending a one-line invoice when it’s done.

Where the rubber meets the road
Welcome to Procurement mode
Used to be deals were a firm handshake
Now the rubber meets the road

The vendors are going to try and bypass Procurement at every opportunity …

Rep in the front seat
Lawyer in the back seat
Gettin’ it on the dotted line
Got a snake in the bed
Lord, hissin’ on the headboard
Trying to lure you offside

… and if the Marketing, Legal, and other affected internal departments aren’t onside with the new process 100%, any chance of savings and spend control are going to fly out the window. Not only will a side-stepped process result in a deal that is at least as expensive as last year’s deal (and probably more as the incumbent preferred vendor will probably cry poor due to inflation), but nothing will be done to reduce the demand side volatility, threat of competition (which often requires true partners and not just preferred vendors), and supply volatility that are the top three business drivers that Procurement has identified as needing to be addressed.

In summary, the fundamental Procurement focus is right, but has the rest of the organization caught up? And does Procurement really have a firm handle on what it needs to do to extend its reach and deal with all of the external business drivers that are hitting it hard, which also include the need for more (trained) talent and the skills gap, the increasing regulatory risk around the globe, and risk of a truly global economic crisis? Looking at the technology priorities, SI is not certain that it does.

In closing, the 2014 Procurement Key Issues report on Rethinking How Procurement Defines Its Value, Balances Risk, and Gets the Most from Technology Investments is an interesting and thought-provoking read and you should add it to the top of your reading stack.

If Even a Canadian TelCo Can Use Payables to Add $3 Million To Their Bottom Line

Imagine what your company could do with invoice automation. As per this recent article over on Shared Services Link on how to turn payables into an opportunity and add $3M to your bottom line, Telus, a 10 Billion telecommunication products and services provider which typically receives 15,000 to 20,000 paper invoices per month, implemented a supplier portal, electronic invoicing, and a dynamic discounting solution that allows them to save 3 Million annually.

When you consider that 10 Billion is big, but not that big these days, that a lot of organizations receive 15,000 to 20,000 paper invoices a month, or more, and that a supplier portal is pretty primitive from an automated invoicing viewpoint, you quickly see that there is quite a lot of opportunity for your organization to save quite a lot of money from invoice processing. In some organizations, the overhead alone from manual processing exceeds a million dollars, and this barely covers a detailed review of 10% to 20% of the invoices. Proper automation insures m-way matching on 100% of invoices with exception-based processing on the 10% to 15% that contain issues or errors.

You see, when you implement the right invoice automation solution:

  • 98%+ of all invoices flow through the system,
  • 99%+ of all errors are caught,
  • 90%+ of all invoices are automatically processed without human intervention, and
  • 80%+ process savings are realized and maintained.

And then, instead of spending $30 to $40 to process an single invoice, you’ll be spending $3 to $4. So, if your organization is processing 10,000 invoices a month, you’ll see your overhead costs drop about $300,000 and you’ll save upwards of 3 Million a year before dynamic discounting or other supply chain financing solutions are put into the mix!

For more information on how your organization can save 3 Million, download Sourcing Innovation’s recent white-paper on An End-to-End Invoice Automation Framework – Ten Keys to Success (registration required), sponsored by Nipendo.

Basware: P2P for the Global “E” Part IV

In today’s post, we continue our introduction to Basware, a Finnish provider of enterprise finance solutions that serves the global e-Commerce, P2P, and AP Automation marketplace with over 2,000 international customers that collectively do business with over 1 Million companies in over 100 countries. In Part II we discussed the AP Automation and Invoice Processing solutions, the full Purchase-to-Pay process coverage from the Procurement and AP perspective, and the full compliance with e-Commerce, Taxation and Digital Signature Requirements that they offer in over 50 countries. Then, in Part III, we discussed the Basware Commerce Network (BCN). An open commerce network that connects almost 1 Million companies in over 100 countries through 170 partner networks, the BCN currently delivers over 60 Million e-invoices per year with a combined value in excess of $420 Billion and Basware expects to be processing over 150 Million e-invoices a year by the end of 2015 with a combined value in excess of $1 Trillion dollars. Part of this increase will be as a result of Basware’s new partnership with Mastercard, which provides suppliers’ a guaranteed payment once the invoice has been approved, and an early payment option as well. In addition, buyers can have extended payment time if they need it. In addition, cross-border payments, which take over a week on average, are simplified and generally executed at a reduced cost to both parties.

Today we are going to focus on their analytics capability, called Basware Analytics. Basware built their analytics platform on top of Tableau Software‘s Data Visualization Engine, a high-performance data engine designed to allow for real-time data analysis, visualization, and reporting. Using this engine as a foundation, they focussed on designing an analytics application that was useable by the average Spend Management professional and that presented that professional with over 80% of the information across the P2P cycle that a Spend Management professional needs immediately upon log-in.

Over time, Basware has built a suite of package reports that cover 80% of a Spend Management and Finance organization’s need for process and spend visibility to drive process efficiency. In addition, they provide a suite of templates that can be easily altered in such a way that, in most organizations, users are able to build reports that quickly cover most of the reporting needs not covered out-of-the-box within a few hours of deployment, and gradually build reports, possibly with the help of Basware’s services organization, that will let them achieve the remaining 20%.

The solution was designed from an AP and Procurement perspective and in addition to standard procurement reports which include, but are not limited to, total spend, geographical spend by organization or cost centre, top suppliers, top products, invoices received, procurement KPIs, and maverick spend, there are accounts payable reports which include, but are not limited to, invoices received, invoices received with or without a contract or PO, cash flow analysis, spend by supplier analysis, AP KPIs, AP Process and Cycle Times, and AP Financial metrics. Each report allows for real-time drill down and filtering on any dimension. Because the underlying analysis engine has been built to sit on top of all invoiced spend and related P2P data, the platform can address spend visibility, supplier performance, procurement performance, contract compliance, catalog coverage, cash forecasting and management, accounts payable and invoice management. With the visibility provided, you can dive into opportunity identification, process optimization, and rationalization.

Users can access the template behind any report and quickly customize it by adding or removing available dimensions, customizing filters, and tweaking the layout. A user can select which of the available data sources1 (which have been mapped to a common schema) she wants to use, specify the dimensions of interest (to build the cube), define the default ranges and allowable filters, choose the graph types, and modify the layout. The application supports all of the standard graphs and charts, including cloud charts (which is great for looking at search term history or the most common products and/or services being bought) and tree-maps, which give a quick visual representation as to which supplier, cost centre, product, etc. is accounting for the most (maverick) spend. It’s one of few, and most effective, implementations of cloud charts and tree maps that SI has seen to date.

The user does not require any technical skills to modify the templates to adjust or create new reports. This solution is optimal for giving more people within the organization real-time access to spend and process metrics, and allows the Procurement and Finance organizations to begin their spend analysis journey immediately. (In addition, if the user needs help or wants to add custom data sources, Basware has professional services personnel in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific and offers a broad suite of support services, including supplier activation/onboarding, in 10 languages: English, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.)

1 Even though reports are limited to Basware’s data sources out of the box, the customer has an option to extend the reporting solution to other data sources through the use of other Tableau Software tools leveraged by Basware.