Category Archives: SaaS

Lavante – The Newest Contestent in the SIM Arena

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, Lavante is the latest provider of Supplier Information Management solutions in the Supply Management space (which includes Aravo, AECSoft (just acquired by SciQuest), CVM Solutions, Hiperos, and Rollstream, which have all been covered on SI). And while it arrived late, it comes ready for battle.

Since you all know by now what a good SIM solution should do (and if you don’t, reread the classic vendor SIM posts linked above), I’m not going to waste any time describing what it should do or spend a lot of time on the details. Instead, I’m going to mention all the standard stuff that the platform does and then focus on what makes Lavante different from the competition and why it should be included in your SIM vendor short list.

Like its competitors, Lavante allows you to collect detailed information on all of your suppliers, including detailed information on each contact. By default, this detailed information includes tax information, headquarters information remit-to information, business structure information, ERP (System) information, ownership information, certifications, services/materials information, risk management information, insurance information, bank information, and user defined summary information. A supplier has the option of entering all of the information on-line or downloading a template. Lavante can import your current supplier master (in a standard format such as XML) or provide a buyer with a (CSV) template to enter information for new suppliers. The information collected can be customized for every supplier, notifications on change can be configured at the element level, and approvals can be required before critical information is changed.

In addition to the standard browser interface, suppliers can also respond to e-mails or faxes (and even call a rep who will enter the information for them if they are still technologically illiterate). The supplier interface allows a supplier to log-in and manage 100% of their information, which minimizes buyer effort if suppliers take an active role in buyer interaction.

At any time, a buyer can get a list of all suppliers who have not provided requested information as well as suppliers who have registered and completed their profile. The buyer can also see which communication attempts have been tried or whether or not the supplier has not provided an e-mail or fax number.

The distinguishing characteristics of the platform are the following:

  • it was built on the cloud
    it was designed to be 100% multi-tenant and cloud compliant from day one
  • extremely configurable
    many early platforms only had the ability to send an alert when a change was made; later ones allowed for alerts to be configured to change type; Lavante’s platform allows each individual data element to be marked as notify/don’t notify on change
  • automatic validation of Tax ID
    Lavante does a real-time check of every TIN that is entered and a supplier is not allowed to register without a valid TIN that matches their name
  • multi-mode outreach
    whereas most providers assume browser or e-mail data provision, Lavante also accepts faxes and integrates OCR and provides supplier outreach services that will get suppliers onboard by e-mail, fax, or phone if necessary
  • a supplier portal that equals the buyer portal
    suppliers were an afterthought in many first generation SIM platforms and a supplier had to log in to a separate instance of the portal for each buying organization they dealt with; in Lavante’s platform, a supplier can manage their data for all buyers who use Lavante through a single log-in — information needs to only be entered once and common information is segregated from buyer specific information
  • very large supplier database
    Lavante, which started as a recovery audit vendor, has been around for 10 years and has amassed a database of over 2 Million vendors that its client do business with — as a result, it has current information on over 2 Million vendors in its database

Plus, Lavante can use this platform to streamline its recovery audits and save an organization up to 10X more than a recovery audit without access to detailed information would save. So when you add the initial savings that will come from 1099 reporting compliance with reduced SIM (when 20% to 40% of supply base information needs to change annually) resource requirements and more successful cost recovery audits, the solution pays for itself almost immediately. Plus, since it’s true multi-tenant cloud, Lavante can turn your organization on in less than an hour.

“Trendspotting”

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is from Dick Locke, Sourcing Innovation’s resident expert on International Sourcing and Procurement. (His previous guest posts are still archived.)

the doctor requested that I look at Panjiva’s new product, Trendspotting, which they are advertising on their site and blog. It has some good points, but it also has many not-so-good points that will ultimately render it unusable for many purchasing people.

Let’s look at the three main features:

“Crack the HTS code.”

The world really does need an HTS-to-your language translator. I don’t think there’s one into English, and this definitely isn’t one. From their demo page, put in “computers” and see what happens. You won’t find anything. OK, that’s a trick because I know that the entire global customs community calls them “automatic data processing machines.” So, type that in the search box.

You get a list of potential HTS codes. Here the system shows its US-centricity. I’m in Mexico, the internet knows I’m in Mexico (when I go to Google.com I get their Mexican home page) but Panjiva gives me the special 10-digit US codes. That’s still helpful in the goal of finding the right countries if you are in North America. It’s not so helpful if you are somewhere else.

“Find countries”

Pick the first HTS code (8471.30.01.00) and click “Trends.” You get some really helpful data on laptop imports. You can see that the two primary sources are China and Malaysia. You can see their trends. This is really a handy sourcing tool. However you can get the same data free from the US International Trade Commission‘s web site. I’ve been advocating doing that for about 14 years in my seminars. The USITC site is less graphically pleasing and slightly harder to use, however. Panjiva did a good programming job.

“Find suppliers”

Here it really falls apart. You would expect to find Lenovo and Foxconn as suppliers of laptops. They’re not listed. However, you do find Autoliv China Inflator Company Ltd, who makes airbag inflators. What’s going on here?

It’s a data source problem. They list companies for one of two reasons. One is that a company shows up as a sea freight shipper of automatic data processing machines on a public data base. There’s no such data base for air shipments. Very few laptops travel by ocean.
I’ve been using this kind of data for more than a decade. It has two more big problems. First if the words “automatic data processing machines” (ADP machines) show up on import documentation, the exporter gets listed. That gets items that connect to, contain, or are parts of ADP machines. Second, many companies have set up legal entities in China that purchase for them. The Chinese entity (i.e. HP China) buys the goods, and ships them to HP US. HP would show up as both the exporter and importer and you would never find the name of the manufacturer.

Of course, your results could be different than mine. Try it on a product where you know what the countries are and where the suppliers are and see what happens. Maybe it will work better for you than for me.

Thanks, Dick.

Dogbert Translates Cloud-Consultanese

Check out today’s Dilbert strip. With the help of Dogbert and the Pointy Haired Boss, Scott Adams cuts right to the heart of the cloud craziness that has overtaken us.

Simply put:

Dogbert (the consultant) … Blah Blah Cloud. Blah Blah Cloud. …
Pointy-Haired Boss It’s as if you’re a technologist and a philosopher all in one!
Dogbert (the consultant) Blah Blah Platform.

That’s exactly what I hear when people start blabbing about “The Cloud”. That’s exactly what any smart technology person hears when people start blabbing about the cloud. And I say this with confidence because even Larry doesn’t know what the cloud is. (What the Hell is Cloud Computing?) He’s one of the smartest technology guys out there … and if he doesn’t know what it is, how can your average technology genius know what it is?

The reality, and please say this aloud three times, is that THERE IS NO CLOUD. (THERE IS NO CLOUD. THERE IS NO CLOUD.) It is a myth perpetuated by sales people and consultants who don’t have anything new to sell, but who know that if they speak the truth, they won’t sell anything … so they go around talking about this mythical magical cloud in a wonderful and confusing manner until they get some of the more dimwitted middle managers with a budget to bite. Then these dimwitted middle managers start perpetuating the myth because they know that if there isn’t enough hype for the technology they just overspent on, they won’t be able to justify their decision, and they’ll look bad. Then everyone else starts playing follow the leader because they don’t realize that it wasn’t Organization X that bought “the cloud”, but some dimwitted middle manager with a silver tongue and a charming smile. And then we have another technology craze around technology that doesn’t exist.

If someone is selling you “cloud technology”, then, if you’re lucky, what they are really selling you is a multi-tenanted hosted SaaS solution with open APIs that allow you to upload, manage, transfer, and download your data at your convenience and to manage how much processing is done when. (Something you should have been able to do since day one, but couldn’t with most multi-tenant SaaS providers that knew that only way to lock you in was to lock-in your data.) That’s it. Multi-tenant SaaS with open APIs that interoperate with an open standard so that you can, if you wish, suck your data out of one “cloud” instance and spit it into another “cloud” instance that uses the same API. If you’re really lucky, it might also have some good graphical management software that you can access through your browser (instead of undocumented command line RPC calls that take expensive coders weeks of time to figure out).

If you’re unlucky, it’s a traditional hosted ASP provider that has implemented the basics of an API that, through a lot of sweat and manpower in the offshore development centres, lets them fake a multi-tenant SaaS solution if you don’t look under the hood (as the best these providers can really pull off is single-tenant SaaS).

And since multi-tenant SaaS and open APIs have been around for years, it’s not new, it’s not magic, and it’s definitely not a new fluffy magic box.

Don’t get me wrong. I am a huge fan of multi-tenant SaaS (done right) and have promoted such technology for years. But I am sick and tired of this marketing BS. It’s a cloud all right — a cloud of smug produced by conceited marketing types. (If you don’t know what a smug cloud is, Trey Parker and Matt Stone produced a South Park episode that explains it quite well. If you are in the US, you can find video clips on the South Park Studios site. Warning: TV-14 to TV-MA, possibly NSFW)

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Finally An Article That Demonstrates That The Cloud Is Filled With Hail!

StorefrontBacktalk recently ran a great article on how “it’s not so soft in the cloud after all”. On December 5th, the web site of U.K. grocery giant Tesco ground to a halt after a surge of customers tried to take advantage of a new loyalty-card promotion. This was AFTER Tesco had announced that Akamai would be offloading 90% of the load to make sure nothing would go wrong.

And, of course, once the site went down, the call centre got overloaded too. And what happened when the failure was investigated? Akamai blamed the failure on a part of the Tesco site that was not being supported by Akamai’s cloud services, passing the buck.

And if all transactions eventually have to pass through, or be recorded in your systems, the bottleneck will still be there and all the cloud will do is accelerate your failure.

That’s why I’ve warned you again and again and again that the cloud is not a fluffy magic box.

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It’s Not Risk Management If You Just Trade One Risk for Another!

Especially if the second risk is just as risky, or, even worse, more risky than the first.

After reading a number of articles that claim IT Outsourcing reduces cost AND risk, including this recent piece over on Global Services on “Operational Risk, IT, and Outsourcing”, I am getting nervous about the mad dash to the cloud that these articles are directly or indirectly promoting.

While SaaS is often the best choice for many SMEs and large scale industries without a lot of technical know-how, it’s not always the best choice, and some systems are a lot safer to outsource than others. It’s one thing to outsource an ERP/MRP, especially if you don’t store your bank account access information in the ERP/MRP, but another thing to outsource user account management if such management contains credit card information and/or detailed financial profiles that are sufficient for an average criminal to commit identify fraud in his sleep. In the first case, just about any SaaS provider will do. In the latter, you need one who not only hosts in a secure data centre, but understands security and built security (and encryption) into the application (and database) from the ground up — especially if they are hosting in a shared data centre that uses a true multi-tenant architecture. Otherwise, a hacker could break in through a weakness in the application layer, dump the database, and get unencrypted credit card numbers, bank account numbers, SINs, etc. if the application wasn’t designed right from the bottom up. This could be financially devastating to you and your customers (who, for starters, would never buy from you again and who would probably take you to court).

The requirements for outsourcing and maintaining financial systems are much greater than for Supply Chain and Inventory Management. So what if they get your inventory database. Unless you’re storing nuclear material, who cares if they know for sure that you have 250 outdated PCs, 100 rolls of steel, and a warehouse full of binders. If they were doing a competitive intelligence project and really wanted to know that much about you, they’d check one of the import/export trade data monitoring services (or just watch what went in and out of your warehouse from across the street) and know it anyway.

Before you outsource financial systems, you have to be sure that the provider and the hosted application is at least as secure as the applications and environment you’d build in house, or the outsourcing effort will come at the expense of increased risk. And if risk increases, the decrease in cost may be inconsequential.

And if you don’t have the technical savvy to make a fully informed decision, bring in a consultant who has that knowledge. Trust me when I say it will be one of the best investments you ever make.

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