Category Archives: Services

Procurement Trend #15. System Integration with Partners

A dozen anti-trends from those wild and crazy guys still remain, and as much as we’d like to find some entertainment value in what they have to offer, we must agree with LOLCat who is bored with our continuing anti-trend coverage and, like the foxes the wild and crazy guys like to chase, instead flee from the obnoxious diatribe they thrust upon us.

So why do so many historians keep pegging system integration with partners as a future trend? I honestly can’t fathom this as Big Blue has been pushing integration projects for decades, but maybe it is because they’ve been living in the corporate cave (as Procurement is still relegated to the basement in many organizations) and:

  • e-Procurement benefits like invoice Automation require some system integration

    because invoices come from suppliers and often have to get into AP systems on the way through the e-Procurement system

  • supply chain visibility is critical for risk mitigation

    because you cannot take action to protect against a disruption if you do not know that a disruptive event occurred

  • strategic planning is improved with good data

    because even though you can make great strategic plans without data, it’s just a theoretical exercise if the plan depends on postulated conditions that do not actually exist in the real world

So what does this mean?

System integration

Not only do you need to brush up on your IT skills, but you have to brush up on your IT project management skills too. System integration projects have been responsible for some of the worst supply chain disasters in history. Don’t believe me? Review Supply Chain Digest’s top supply chain disasters and notice that 9 of the 11 top failures were as a result of technology, and all but one of these technology failures was at least partly, if not entirely, IT technology!

Supply Chain Visibility

You need to implement a multi-tier supply chain visibility. Knowing your supplier’s status is not good enough, you need to know your supplier’s supplier status and sometimes even the status of the supplier of your supplier’s supplier — especially if raw materials acquisition is the weakest link in the chain. Leave no stone unturned that could be covering a ticking time-bomb.

Good Data

When we say good data, we mean good data. Not just data because not all data is good. If it has a lot of holes, is inaccurate, or is too old, it’s bad data, and all analysis on bad data leads to is bad information that results in bad decisions. But good data can lead to good information and then good decisions, and, in an appropriate model, it can lead to actionable intelligence that can power great decisions.

Procurement Trend #19. Service Providers Excel

Sixteen anti-trends still remain but we again assure you that we are getting to the end of the series and all is ok as LOLCat is still dreaming of his grandfather’s adventures as an archaeologist cat uncovering lost tombs, and waiting for this series that is regurgitating topics of his past lives to fade into history. We will continue to lay bare each and every one of the futurists’ lies, and when we’re done, you’ll be in a better position to learn the truth and seize upon the real trends that lie ahead and the opportunities they contain.

So why do the historians keep pegging service providers excelling as a future trend? Have they spent too much time in the janitors’ closets breathing paint fumes from improperly sealed paint cans while practicing their speeches that no one really wants to hear? Hard to say, but some of the reasons probably include:

  • Outsourced Services are still improving

    in both traditional Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO) and non-traditional service sectors.

  • Service Providers are mastering tech faster than their clients

    and often get a lot more experience with a platform in a shorter time frame as they are running projects for multiple clients on that platform.

  • Everything is going out

    because overpriced overly-optimistic consultants have strapped themselves to the outsourcing bandwagon in an effort to make sure that they never fall off.

So what does this mean?

Outsourced Services

Service Providers can often do things better than you, but if they do, you need to adapt or lose control. You don’t want to lose control, because one of your jobs is Supplier Relationship Management. However, at some point during the adaptation, you will, if you are doing it right, become better at managing the process than the outsourced provider, but you will still be locked into a multi-year service agreement. So you will have to transition from learning through managing through teaching. And once the service providers masters your teachings, as they will have more opportunity to practice and perfect, they will again get better than you and the cycle of the student becoming the master and the master becoming the student will continue.

Technology Progression in the Outside World

While this is one of the reasons that service providers outpace you, this is a great learning opportunity for you. Most companies don’t pick the right technology the first time around — and instead implement expensive systems in even more expensive projects that turn out to be massive failures. Then they learn from their mistakes, implement the right technology, and provide you a free lesson on what works if your processes match theirs if you choose to seek it out and learn from it.

Out, Out, and Away

Because your managers are still living two decades in the past where cost reduction was defined as outsourcing, you can, unfortunately, expect more pressure in the organization to not only outsource your tactical work, but to outsource as much tactical work for other departments in the organization as can possibly be outsourced. So you need to either prepare for this, or build the business case as to why the work should stay in and how keeping it in house will either deliver savings or add value.

Enterprise Software Companies DO NOT Need Public Relations!

Since we’re on the topic of what really grinds the doctor‘s gears, another thing that really grinds the doctor‘s gears is the incessant insistence by public relation companies that they need to be ingrained in all communication activities undertaken by an enterprise software company. To this I say, BullCrap!

Let’s start by defining what public relations is. As can easily be read on Wikipedia, public relations is the practice of managing the spread of information between an organization and the public. Let’s dwell on this. It’s the management of information flow between the organization and the public. Now let’s dwell on what enterprise software companies do. Enterprise software companies sell software made by their organization to their client organizations. Now let’s dwell on this. They move software from one organization to another organization. Not to the public. As a result, the accompanying information flow is between two organizations, not between the organization and the public. So where does public relations enter the mix?

Let’s dive into what modern Public relations organizations do, or at least try to sell perspective clients, to see if we can make any sense of this.

  • Audience Targeting

    While it’s important to sell to the right audience, enterprise software companies have a pretty good idea of who their audience is. It is companies with a potential need for their software that is their audience, and not only does marketing have a pretty good idea of what their audience is, it is their job to know what that audience is.

  • Messaging

    Messaging is of the utmost importance, especially with so many other vendors also hawking their wares, and in a world where many customers are looking for partners, or at least software providers who can offer a complete solution (software, services, and training), the messaging often has to be perfect. But this is why you have Marketing — this is their primary job.

  • Social Media Marketing

    Since many of the decision makers at a potential customer are on social media, this is an important channel in which to place your messaging. With so many social media networks (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and so many different individuals in the target organizations to target (employees, directors, C-Suite, etc.), this is a lot to manage, and secondary to the messaging and audience targeting responsibilities of Marketing. So it makes some sense to get some help here — but this help should come in the form of organizations that specialize in social media marketing for B2B organizations, not Public Relations firms that specialize in information flow to the public for B2C organizations.

  • Media Relations

    This is important for any organization that does business and needs to get its message out to the world, even if it is just the corporate sector. However, this relationship should be controlled by marketing, not some third party with a watered down message.

Now it’s no secret that the doctor does not like PR, for a host of reasons (chronicled in his Blogger Relations series), but this has nothing to do with his like of PR. This has to do with his dislike of many PR firms telling enterprise software companies that they need to be embedded in all of their communication processes and work with those companies in a collaborative and consultant manner for months and months to define their targeting, messaging, (social) media, and relations strategy and do all of the work that should be done, or at least managed, by Marketing at a very high cost to you. Not only are you shelling out 10’s of thousands of dollars for them to walk you through an exercise where you do all the work (because, let’s face it, they don’t have a clue what you’re selling, what’s unique about it, or how to uniquely position it), but you’re losing two, three, and sometimes even four quarters of momentum while you go through this drawn out exercise to get a message that your marketing team, possibly with the help of some subject matter experts, could figure out in a matter of weeks! It’s the oldest consulting trick in the book after making up a fad you don’t need — take your money to listen to you elicit what you need. (If you need to talk through your strategy to elicit your messaging, the doctor is certain a quack psychologist will be cheaper.)

So Fire That PR Firm and put your money where you need it:

  • Subject Matter Expert Consulting

    to help you figure out what is distinct about your solution and missing in your solution space

  • Thought Leadership and Expert Writing Services

    to help you get your message crystallized and down on (white) (e-)paper and in appropriate training materials for your clients

  • Social Media Campaign Management

    to manage your messaging through social media and on-line channels

Just like you shouldn’t get taken in by companies selling infinite scrolling websites that you don’t need, you shouldn’t get taken in by companies selling your collaborative PR services that you don’t need either.

IQNavigator Navigates You Through Statement of Work Creation

Since we last covered IQNavigator and their IQ-based Navigation of Contingent Labour Sourcing in 2008, IQNavigator has been hard at work extending their platform and its capabilities to go beyond temporary and contingent labour and also handle project and SOW (Statement-of-Work) sourcing events and the full SOW life-cycle.

Project and SOW sourcing projects, even if they consist primarily of contingent labour, are different from standard contingent labour sourcing events in that a third party is managing the project, payments are (typically) on a different schedule and have to be tracked against a budget, and named resources need to be tracked. The entire process, from RFX, through contract generation and award, to project management and delivery is different.

The customizations in the IQNavigator platform start with the initial RFX creation, which begins with a wizard-based decision-tree workflow. This Decision Manager is customizable by the organization for each type of SOW project that it undertakes, that, based on a series of questions, will configure the proper RFX for the project in question. This series of questions (that can be customized by each client organization), which could be as simple as asking the user to identify the location where the services are required, the category of the work (IT, engineering, advertising, etc.), the length of the project, the expected budget (range) required, and the approvals required, will, once completed, initiate an RFX workflow that will incorporate the necessary elements of the SOW project. The Decision Manager solution was designed to focus on two things:

  1. Delivering the end user to the correct channel (or category) based on Procurement’s operational and/or vendor preferences and
  2. Placing the end user at the optimal point of the defined category workflow based on the end user’s responses

Depending on the answers given, the RFX will include sections for the definition of milestones, budgets, rate tables, (open) supplier selection, support for named resources, questionnaires, and / or required submissions (such as insurance certificates) from the supplier to be considered for the project. The user will then be walked through the definition of the RFX for the SOW project step-by-step (by way of a pre-configured RFX or SOW template).

Milestones are up to the individual who creates the project, can be tied to a budget line item, and associated with one or more deliverables. Budgets can be as simple as an overall budget for the project, or as detailed as a budget category for each deliverable associated with each milestone (if the project is being paid for on a deliverable basis) or by (named) resource if the project is being conducted on a time-and-materials basis.

Suppliers can quickly be selected from a drop-down search box if the organization has (pre)approved suppliers for the SOW project in question, and if the suppliers have provided rate tables, these rate tables can be automatically pulled in and presented back to the supplier (to verify) during their bid. In addition, if the supplier has previously specified named resources, these named resources can be pre-populated as well. Depending on the project, they buyer may also have the option to add additional suppliers (which will be invited to bid on the project as well).

Questionnaires can also be selected from a set of standard pre-existing questionnaires associated with the type of project being sourced. They can be distributed as-is or modified as required. In addition, the user can create their own questionnaire if one doesn’t exist that fits the bill.

When the RFX is complete to the user’s satisfaction, it is sent to the supplier who logs in and completes a bid to their satisfaction. If the supplier has already defined their rate tables and named resources and uploaded their insurance certificates, bidding on the project by the supplier could be as simple as identifying the resources who will complete the work, providing work estimates and proposed fees, and accepting the (automatically calculated) budget.

When all of the supplier responses have been obtained, the buyer, who can choose to analyze each response individually, can also evaluate the responses side by side in a comparison report that includes the (budget) elements of interest and then select one of the responses as the basis of a project award. At this point, the application can generate a draft contract based upon a template that pulls in all of the collected information, and includes any necessary documents in appendices. And if the supplier has signed a MSA (Master Services Agreement) with the buyer that authorizes password-based named-login approvals in the IQNavigator SOW platform as e-Signatures, the contract can be accepted online and work can begin immediately.

The entire SOW application is streamlined to make the sourcing and approval of SOW projects as easy as possible for the project manager, while incorporating as many best practices as possible, which allows the project manager to focus her time on what she does best — managing projects and not running sourcing events.

Then, once the SOW project has been awarded, the project manager can use the rest of the IQNavigator platform to track project progress against milestones, collect time sheets, approve time sheets and expenditures, make payments against project budget categories, and track overall supplier performance. The reporting engine can be used to run reports at any time and the dashboard can be used to monitor current action items and outstanding project milestones and deliverables.

The inclusion of SOW capability makes IQNavigator an end-to-end platform for managing all types of contingent labour required by your organization, whether such labour is managed in house or by a third party. The IQNaviagor approach to SOW is unique, and it is the most thorough solution for generic SOW sourcing events in a contingent labour solution that SI has seen to date.
The IQNavigator platform is a great way to get all of your labour-based spend under management in one platform.

While You Were on Summer Vacation, Vendor Posts, Part I

While you were on summer vacation, SI was powering away with daily posts and continuing to cover some of the leading vendors in the space, presenting a number of deep dives on their respective technology platforms. Here is a short recap of some of the coverage you might have missed!

Ecovadis-Powered E-TASC

In our post on Ecovadis-Powered E-TASC, we reported that Ecovadis is now powering the new, and greatly improved, version of the Electronic Tool for Accountable Supply Chains. Launched by the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GESI), the new platform had over 20 ITC companies and over 1000 ICT suppliers registered, subscribed, and deployed within a month and, according to the E-TASC site, now has over 1,400 facilities in the system. By (re)launching on Ecovadis, a buyer has immediate access to deep sustainability, business practice, labour practice, human rights, and environmental assessments in one comprehensive, audited, third party verified report. (More information on Ecovadis can be found in this classic SI post on how they are Ecovating the Globe.)

Nipendo

In our posts on Nipendo, which is Bringing O2P and P2P to the Mainstream and Streamlined Invoice Management for Even the Largest Organization, we noted how Nipendo, a provider of order-to-payment automation software, recently released a new version of its order-to-payment (O2P) platform that includes automated rules-based end-to-end invoice reconciliation — which also supports automatic data normalization, completion, and matching — that allows even the largest Global 3000 to not only reach the point where 98%+ of invoices are processed electronically, but where 90%+ are processed without human intervention. Their largest customer reached this point within two years, and their average customer sees over 80% of invoices being processed electronically within one year due to Nipendo’s multi-faceted supplier onboarding process. Realizing that the necessary data is going to come from a variety of systems, Nipendo integrates with all the major ERP vendors, a large number of third party supply management platforms, and provides suppliers with a number of options to submit invoices, including a web-portal and a print-to-cloud solution that allows a supplier to install a plug-in that will allow them to print their invoice from their billing system directly into the Nipendo platform.

Fieldglass

In our post about Fieldglass, and how they are adapting to every contingency (Part I, Part II, and Part III), we noted how Fieldglass has been hard at work evolving their platform since SI last covered them in 2010 and, in addition to improving its rate guidance and extending its rate structure capability, has streamlined its job posting capability, implemented e-mail approvals, developed an “Ask- An-Expert” recommendation engine, built a powerful timesheet manager, and added extensive Statement of Work Support. The rate structure capability is one of the hidden gems of the platform. With deployments in over 80 countries, Fieldglass has a deep insight into the many varied, complex, and strange rate structures around the world that can include per diems, special bonuses, hazard and isolation pay, vacation pay, etc., with each component separately (not) taxable by multiple state (and federal) agencies – and has built a platform with enough flexibility and configurability to handle it all. Another hidden gem is e-mail approvals. While very simple in theory, and relatively simple in implementation, this simple functionality reduced the cycle time to fill a position by 66% in the customers that implemented it! And the timesheet and Statement of Work modules are just cool.

Come back tomorrow and we’ll tell you about three more recently covered companies you might have missed!