Category Archives: Supplier Information Management

Source-to-Pay+ part 3: Corporate Risk

In Part 1 we noted that Risk Management went much beyond Supplier Risk, and the primitive Supplier “Risk” Management application that is bundled in many S2P suites. Then, in Part 2, we noted that there are risks in every supply chain entity; with the people and materials use; and with the locales they operate in. These risks come in all shapes and sizes. And any single risk can sink the company.

Today we are going to talk about some of the internal corporate risks and outline the function specific baseline capabilities that such a solution will normally possess.

Capability Description
Reputation/Brand A significant risk to a company is its reputation/brand, especially if it’s primarily selling to consumers. And the problem with reputation/brand damage is that it can come from anywhere. Quality issue that leads to a defect that causes consumers harm. Raw materials that are harmful to human health and might cause cancer, or worse, if consumed, inhaled, or even touched. An offensive statement (to a group of people) by an executive. A targeted online misinformation campaign by a disgruntled customer. Environmentalists who claim the organization is doing unnecessary environmental damage. Forced and Slave Labour. The repercussions of continuing to buy cobalt and copper from the congo while turning a blind eye to rampant sexual violence and rape. (An average of 48 victims are treated per day by Medicins Sans Frontieres, that’s 17,520 per year. And this has been going on for over a decade.)

And in these difficult times, you also have to deal with

  • Sourcing from countries engaged in “special military exercises” that have effectively started wars with other countries and
  • Sourcing from countries whose response to terrorist attacks have resulted in 10X the number of casualties caused by the terrorists.

In these two situations, it might be the case that most of your consumer base doesn’t care, but some will praise you while staying the course and helping the side they think is right (or good) while others will go out of their way to aggressively attack your brand for helping the side they think is wrong (or evil). And so on.

As such, the platform needs to be able to monitor news sources and social media. It must look for stories that could blow up, sentiment that could propagate, and events associated with related entities that could propagate. It must tie into multi-tier manufacturing systems and monitor raw materials, quality control systems to monitor production quality, It must tie into CSR/EHG systems to make sure the company is being environmentally conscious. And so on.
Sanctioned Entities An organization that does business with organizations on sanctioned or denied lists can get in serious trouble. It can be prohibited from doing business with government entities, fined, and the executives (criminally) charged. But it’s not just entities, it’s individuals as well. And it’s not just potential employees or contractors, but (potential) investors as well.

Its critical that the system tie into all sanction and denied party lists of every country it does business in, all lists of organizations that have had lawsuits brought against them (and the results if the lawsuits have been concluded), and lists of individuals who have investments in related corporations.
Fraud Every organization that makes money is at risk of being defrauded. That fraud can come from employees, including top executives, suppliers, third parties, and cyber criminals.

Such a system should integrate into the Supplier/Vendor Master and ensure that all invoices are coming from valid entities, the purchase order system to ensure the invoices match purchase orders and the payment amounts are valid, the payment system to make sure the payments go to accounts known to be associated with the vendor who sent the invoice, and no payments made without an invoice or appropriate counter-signed / doubly approved payment approval.

Such a system should also look at connections. Connections between the individuals in the organization who cut the PO, claim the services were delivered, make the payment, and the individuals who sent the invoice, verified the delivery, and accepted the payment.

Such a system should also integrate with the cyber monitoring and internet security systems and look for unusual activity that could indicate potential fraud.
Employees Employees are the biggest internal risks. And not just those who are looking to commit fraud, which will, hopefully, be a very small percentage of employees. There are also those who (might) have a conflict of interest, which could sway them in their decision making. And then there are the rest of the employees, who are human and make mistakes. Small mistakes like accidentally approving an invoice for 5K from a vendor who didn’t actually deliver the services, and might never deliver the services, because there are no processes in place to verify the delivery from approved vendors who have delivered in the past. Big mistakes like not locking down a port that allows a hacker to get into the local payment systems and alter the bank account for the 500K payment going out tomorrow. And everything in between.

This system should not only integrate with background check systems for employees who have access to the payment systems, but those who have access to restricted/classified IP, sensitive systems that need specialized training, and so on.

It should also integrate with certification and training systems to track an employee’s certifications and training.
GHG/Carbon In today’s climate, it’s important for a large company to track it’s internal carbon usage, not just the supply chain.

It’s likely that the organization will have it’s own system for carbon tracking. Such an organization will need to make sure the system is configured to track internal emissions and chain emissions separately, assign internal emissions to the company and the outbound chain as appropriate, and export the summaries to the corporate risk tracking system.
GDPR/Privacy GDPR is here, it must be respected, and failure to do so can be costly. But it’s not just GDPR an organization needs to be concerned with as privacy regulations are cropping up all over the world, and many countries in which the organization does business as a buyer, a seller, or both.

An organization must identify the private data it maintains on its employees, contractors, representatives of third parties, and the public. It must ensure such data is secured, encrypted, accessible only by those with explicit authority, and tagged as data the organization is legally allowed, or required, to keep and data that does not fall under that category. The location of such data must be indexed and the data, as well as all backups thereof, must be easily erased if someone asks to be forgotten (with the exception of any data the organization is legally required to maintain), and that must include all backups.
Contract The organization has contractual risk, both in the contracts with its suppliers as well as the contracts with its customers, and with respects to the contracts it never signed, but implied when it made the first order or purchase from a supplier. These risks include the losses from failure to complete its obligations as well as risks from suppliers and customers failing to complete theirs as well as force majeure risks and lack of of assignment to third parties and/or lack of adequate insurance coverage.

It’s critical that the Corporate Risk System integrate with all of the contract systems used by the organization, track contracts by risk type, identify lack of key clauses, and identify areas where lack of contracts or insurance put the organization at significant risk.
Epidemics/Pandemics The pandemic was not the last epidemic/pandemic the organization is going to face. More are coming. The organization needs to identify which parts of the operation are most at risk, what can be done to prepare for it, and what is in place when the worst happens.

As to how the system should support the planning, monitoring for, detection, and response to an emerging epidemic/pandemic, that’s probably organization dependent. But any Corporate Risk system that doesn’t at least recognize the need is not meeting the full problem.

A corporate risk system will also contain a host of generic analytics/planning/monitoring capabilities, but since many of these are, or at least should be, common among multiple types of risk systems, and since stand alone risk-focussed analytics applications are also part of the plethora of offerings out there, instead of discussing these generic features in this and every other article describing a particular focus/type of risk application, we will instead discuss these capabilities in an article dedicated to Risk Analytics and Monitoring near the end of this series.

Source-to-Pay+ part 2: End-to-End Risk Management

In Part 1 we noted that Risk Management goes much beyond Supplier Risk, and a primitive Supplier “Risk” Management application (which we prefer to label Supplier Uncertainty Management since it’s not full blown risk management, and there’s uncertainty as to how much it will actually do for you) is only the beginning of what your organization will likely need.

When it comes to risk, there are risks in:

  • your company
  • your suppliers
  • their suppliers
  • third parties you interact with (which may not be [direct] suppliers of goods or services)
  • your carriers
  • your supply chain network (ports, warehouses, [cross]docks, etc.)

These risks can be with

  • your people
  • your board
  • your investors
  • your supplier’s people, board, or investors
  • the materials your suppliers use
  • the locale they operate in
  • the suppliers your suppliers use
  • the locale they operate in
  • the carriers
  • the ports your carriers use
  • the warehouses used for interim storage
  • and any other part of, or player in, the supply chain

And the types of risks are numerous. They include, but are far from limited to:

  • unskilled/uncertified people
  • sanctioned/prohibited individuals and entity
  • restricted / banned materials
  • use of underage / forced / slave labour
  • geo-politics
  • economics / currency fluctuations
  • natural disasters
  • labour unrest / strikes
  • fraud / theft
  • the internet
  • and so on

And you need a very extensive application to identify, analyze, monitor, mitigate, and manage these risks. In fact, you may even need a suite of these applications, especially when you consider that most applications consider risks from the viewpoint of:

  • the company (especially those that offer GRC applications)
  • the supplier / third party (SRM/SUM+ / TPRM)
  • supply chain visibility
  • … w/or in-transport visibility
  • w/or multi-tier (manufacturing chain) visibility
  • cyber monitoring

And such an application will need entity/function specific capabilities as well as generic capabilities. The generic capabilities might include, but not be limited to:

  • data feed/stream integration
  • metric definition
  • trend analysis
  • user defined reports
  • data / trend monitoring
  • (mitigation) plan creation
  • plan management

Risk is broad, and the solution footprint needs to be broad as well. In the next few articles we will tackle some of the major application areas we noted above.

MarketDojo has stepped up it’s Mid-Market Game!

The last time we covered MarketDojo (which recently had a majority stake in the company acquired by Esker) was in 2016 where we noted that marketdojo opens the dojo to suppliers as well after introducing you to MarketDojo in 2014 back when it was a simple RFX/e-Auction platform with some category intelligence and SIM (in our posts on how you could walk your own way and plan your own path). Since then, they have improved the platform greatly. For details on some of these improvements, we recommend their 2016 Vendor Analysis on Spend Matters by Jason Busch (Part I, Part II, and Part III) and their 2020 Vendor Analysis on Spend Matters by Magnus Bergfors (Part I, Part II, and Part III) [Pro or ContentHub subscription required].

Today, we’re going to quickly overview the primary capabilities of the platform, and then focus in on the new and advanced capabilities added since our last review.

MarketDojo is primarily an e-Sourcing platform with foundational supplier management (information and relationship capabilities) and contract tracking (baseline governance). (They still have their categorydojo solution, where they identify current market opportunities that you may want to pursue, but that isn’t the focus of this piece, so we will refer you back to previous articles for details on that functionality.)

e-Sourcing primarily consists of (multi-round) RFX capability, lot-based e-Auctions, and quick quotes (for quick one-time buys/quotes where full sourcing events are not needed). e-RFX creation is quick and easy — define some basic meta-data under settings, add any necessary documents, create the specific questionnaires and additional supplier data collection forms, define the items (which can be lotted in RFX as well as Auctions), add the collaborators (that can be given full access or limited view access), and even invite new suppliers (which can be onboarded later if the responses to the survey forms look good).

The major improvements and/or differentiation since we covered them last is in the


event instantiation
they now support templates, with a library of out-of-the-box templates (for the categories they track in categorydojo and then some) for RFX and e-Auction as well as custom templates built by the organization
survey creation
(in beta) you can now use Bard to identify common questions / characteristics of a category or product/service and then edit the form accordingly [which is a decent use of NLP, gives you some good ideas you might miss but keeps you, the intelligent human, in full control]
lots
lots now support transformational bids (where bids can be marked up by a percentage or a fixed amount to implement switching costs or penalties for reduced quality/utilization rations) as well as bids in DPD (Dynamic Parcel Distribution), FOB (Free on Board), and EXW (ExWorks).
bids
bids can defined as a complex formula over an arbitrary number of bid components and they support a brand new formula builder
collaborators
collaborators weren’t part of the initial solution, and they didn’t have tiered access
bid ranking
easily see the top bid for every item in every lot in a default lowest cost award scenario and easily dive in to see all the bids for every item of every lot in rank order
bid component ranking
see how every bid component ranks against all supplier bids for an item; this helps you identify the cost components that a #2 or #3 supplier (that you want to do business with) is not competitive on (such as freight, overhead, etc.), which might allow you to work with the supplier to get those cost components down to make their bid more competitive
dynamic RFX round creation
you can easily create a new round and control which suppliers and collaborators from the current round get invited to a new round

And, of course, the quick-quote functionality is brand new. These are super simple. All that a requester has to specify is what do they want, when do they want it by, what requirements must be satisfied, what are the payment terms, and which (approved) suppliers should it go out to and off the quote request can go. They can also attach spec documents, add special instructions, and request physical copies, but that’s not necessary. And if they want a certain currency or quotes in a certain unit of measure, that can also be specified. When the quotes come back, they’ll see an easy-to-understand quote summary and can choose one for award. Easy-peasy and, most importantly, the spend is captured and can be managed.

The supplier information management primarily covers the onboarding of new suppliers, to ensure that the appropriate information is captured, and then supports ongoing maintenance of the data. Onboarding is quite simple. A buyer defines the basic supplier information (name and corporate e-mail address), adds any mandatory and optional tags (such as DPST Tier, ESG, Minority, specialized category, etc.), selects the questionnaires they want the supplier to answer (of which a default set will be automatically selected upon tag definition), identifies the business users, either by role or by name, that will approve the forms as the supplier returns them, and then the corporate/contact email the onboarding request will be sent to (and the language the request should be sent in — it’s relevant to note that MarketDojo now supports 23 languages in its platform, but if you want the forms in 23 languages, someone will need to translate them, unless you are using MarketDojo out-of-the-box forms where those forms have already been translated).

The relationship management solution is straight-forward as well and is primarily designed to track supplier contacts and organizational users, associated sourcing events (that they participated in, not just awards), onboarding status (by requested survey/form) and associated surveys, contracts, identified innovation opportunities, and activities. Activities have a type (such as call, task, objective, audit, review), an assigned organizational user who is responsible for ensuring the supplier completes the activity, associated documents, organizational (and user) notes, and possibly even an (optional) associated hierarchy of sub-tasks.

Reporting has been updated and is currently supported in PowerBI through MarketDojo’s OpenAPI (and it is also supported by MarketDojos partner SpendKey) and the default built in reporting suite is pretty decent for a Sourcing platform with click-through dashboards on contracts, sourcing events, suppliers, overall spend, spend by category, spend by supplier, spend by country, spend distribution, PO (vs non-PO) Analysis, Compliance, and even Supply Chain Geographic Coverage. While not a full-fledged analytics platform by any stretch of the imagination, it’s enough to give buyers some insights as to where they may want to begin their analytics efforts if they are looking to increase savings, increase diversity, increase compliance, or decrease risk.

Contract management is baseline. It’s basically a searchable meta-data index of contracts, which can be associated with suppliers. However, for smaller mid-size organizations, that might be all they need.

MarketDojo is a great mid-market SIM-powered sourcing platform at an affordable mid-market price point.

SourceDogg dogs the Sourcing Process so You Don’t Have To!

SourceDogg was founded over a decade ago (in 2009 in Ireland, with the UK subsidiary opening a decade ago in 2013) by founders from the construction industry who decided they just didn’t have any good tools for sourcing products and managing suppliers. Since then, it has evolved into a full indirect Source-to-Contract application for requesting (intake support) and sourcing products (and services) (through traditional RFX and e-Auction), managing suppliers (with information, relationship, compliance, performance, and development support), and managing contracts for customers across a wide range of industries, including a strong customer base in manufacturing, pharma / health-care, and CPG/F&B.

Like the majority of modern Source-to-Contract applications, it is a fully SaaS-based product that can also be integrated with your organization’s ERP to pull supplier and product data, especially on initial product deployment. And, like the majority of modern Source-to-Contract applications, it has a fully functional Supplier Portal that allows suppliers to fully interact with all of the sourcing, management, and contracting processes employed by the organization.

The process starts with intake, where an organizational user can request a product or request a supplier. When a user needs a new product, they can go to the web portal and select the appropriate option (by clicking on the appropriate tile) that lets them do a general product request or a request in particular categories defined by the organization. When they make a general request, the application walks them through the process (using wizard-like functionality) to collect the appropriate information on category, volume, expected cost, requirements, etc. so that a buyer can kick off the appropriate sourcing process. Category specific requests function similarly, but are designed to minimize the process steps and information required for commonly requested categories. Now, if you’re using our core requirements for intake, as defined in Part 37 of our Source-to-Pay+ series Investigating Intake – Diving in to the Details, it’s not quite a full intake platform as there’s no budget tracking and process visibility (and in-process messaging depends on whether or not the requester is made a member of the sourcing event team), but it’s better than what many traditional sourcing platforms offer with respect to intake (if they even offer intake at all). Plus, SourceDogg is continually improving their product and we do expect their intake capabilities will continue to improve over time.

From intake, we move onto sourcing which supports full, multi-round, e-RFX and e-Auction with all of the typical functionality that you expect. One thing that stands out is their ability to include matrices (and built-in formulas) in not only the quotation fields, but all forms and elements of the process, allowing the organization to collect matrix options for product/packaging configurations, team configurations (on services), compliance/certification options, and so on.

As expected, setting up an event in SourceDogg is super easy. You define the typical sourcing event meta data (name, description, products, team, internal budget estimates, scoring system, etc.), create the content (forms and bid matrices), invite the suppliers (who need to already be defined/onboard in the core supplier management module), create the FAQ (which can be extended as needed during the process), and release it into the wild. (Suppliers can then login to their portal upon receiving the notification and fill it out within the designated window. If the bid sheets or data collection forms are complex, they can be output or collected using every Purchaser’s favourite tool and format, Microsoft Excel.) When the event concludes, the responses can be viewed, various side-by-side reports generated (and output to multiple standard formats including DOCX, PDF, and, of course, Microsoft Excel), responses scored, and final decision(s) recorded in the tool (and an email auto-generated and sent to the winning supplier[s] if desired). There is also the ability to capture notes at a question level (by individual who reviewed/scored the response), the supplier level, and the project level.

e-Auctions are setup similarly, and, as expected, run for a much shorter time. The degree of feedback presented to the suppliers depends on the configuration. Upon event completion, the platform automatically generates reports ranking the bidders on cost or, if the event was preceded by an RFI/RFP with a qualitative component, on a weighted score. (And, of course, the buyer can always go in and view the complete bid history.) Note that the Q&A feature can be used to post updates during the auction to all suppliers, a supplier group associated with a lot, or just a specific supplier who asked a question or obviously needs guidance.

Supplier Management consists of four primary modules: Supplier (Information) Management (SIM), Supplier Relationship Management (SRM), Supplier Performance Management (SPM), and Action Plans.

Let’s start with Supplier (Information) Management. The system tracks all the core supplier meta-data you would expect as well as all associated contacts, product data sheets, RFX and other data from specific collection effort (from SRM, SPM, or Development Actions) responses, certifications, contracts (including full version history support), other relevant documents (the organization wishes to track), and any critical notes. It also maintains a full-history of interaction with the supplier that can be viewed and queried as well as allowing the supplier to be tagged using category and location tags (that can be defined by both the buyer and supplier.

The Supplier Relationship Management module allows the organization to define supplier reviews, track the results of those reviews, and define actions to be completed by the supplier and followed up on by buyer personnel when the supplier indicates the action has been taken. It’s nothing fancy, but it gets the job done efficiently, and that’s what’s important.

The Supplier Performance Management module allows the organization to design and track KPIs and supplier scorecards in support of processes to measure, analyze and manage supplier performance. The scorecards can be simple or complex across a wide range of metrics and categories. It really depends on what data the organization has and is willing to collect (through surveys) or enter into the application. (At present, it does not integrate with risk/etc. data feeds out of the box, but if these feeds are pushed into your ERP and associated with suppliers and products, that data can be pulled in.) Creating a Performance Review is easy. Once simply creates an instance, and a record for every area, sub-area, and rating that one wants to record. The review can then be sent to as many team members as you want and they can be limited to rating specific areas, sub-areas, or records, as appropriate.

The Action Plans module allows for the creation of specific improvement plans and non-conformance reports for a supplier that needs to improve generally or specifically on one product. The Action Plan modules supports multiple default plans (called forms) that can be used to quickly an initiate a new action plan. The forms can be used as is or modified to the appropriate situation, and the monitoring team can include as many organizational personnel as required. Once a supplier responds, the team can then accept or reject the response, and once all responses have been accepted, the response can be approved and archived. If performance slips or the issue comes up again, an action plan can also be “reactivated” and parts, or all, of the plan kicked-off again.

Layered on top of all of the supplier related modules is a supplier visualization dashboard for non-procurement organizational users and executives that make it really easy to get statistics on organizational suppliers (total, approved, by-size [SME, MM, Large], by type [Product, Services, Subcontractor]) and filter down by category & sub-category, status, and other key identifiers as well as see the (subset of) suppliers on a map. From this primary visualization screen, the user can jump into individual supplier records (with key performance dashboards also displayed)

The contracts module, which revolves around contract governance, is very straight-forward and easy to use as well. Contracts can be grouped by area for easy human location, searched on key metadata and tags, and viewed within the tool. The default meta data is fairly extensive (and can be extended by the organization on implementation) and should capture all of the key information necessary to locate a contract, track expiry, track key terms, and track key clauses. While there’s nothing fancy about the contracts module, we want to re-iterate just how straight-forward it is for an average user to add a contract (addendum or updated version), define or edit the metadata, and locate any contract in the system quickly and easily. Some of the more advanced CLM tools focussed around negotiation support or analytics lose sight of the fact that the average person who needs to retrieve a contract is not a Procurement or Legal or Technology super user and just need a system that follows the KISS principle.

The entire suite also contains a fully modifiable tile-based entry dashboard that allows an average user to define the parts of the application they use, as well as any customized intake forms or application modules, organize them by frequency of access, and see which modules have updated information or new actions assigned to them.

This fully modifiable tile-based entry dashboard with alerts is also the first thing a supplier sees when they login to the platform (and, to complete the tri-fecta, a non-Procurement organizational stakeholder who needs to make a Procurement request, review an RFX, or participate in a supplier development initiative). While simplistic, this is a key feature as you can ensure that supplier or organizational users are not overwhelmed with over-crowded dashboards or 40 menu items they will never use (and likely never understand).

The application is also highly configurable by the client admin who can define the organizational profile and branding, the settings, the certifications it requires from all its suppliers, data-sheet categories, security settings, users and user categories, guides (which can also have an access tile on a main dashboard), default fields for core system objects (requisitions, auctions, supplier profiles, contracts, action plan forms, etc.), supplier onboarding workflow, tags and tag groups, SourceDogg Connect (for ERP and/or organizational data feed pulls), etc. Plus, the SourceDogg team can make additional customizations across the product during implementation and support initial data loads as required.

Finally, they have extensive support guides and courses on their customer web site to help you extract maximum value from the platform. (And those constant iOS/Android action required alerts will dog you through the process of getting things done.) If you’re a SME or MM company looking for a modern best-of-breed S2C (Source-to-Contract) suite (especially in construction/facilities, manufacturing, pharma / health, O&G, CPG, and F&B) to get the job done, SourceDogg is a platform we suggest that you check out.

Synching with State of Flux — Do the Oscillations Resonate?

It’s been a few years since SI checked in with State of Flux, so when the oscillations recently synched, it was time to see what this long-time leader in Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) has been up to. With it’s long history in helping clients actually manage supplier relationships, and 15 years doing global supplier research (having just completed its global benchmark survey for it’s 15th annual supplier management study which will be released later this year), it’s not only a grand-daddy of the space but one which gets wiser with age.

If you review the previous posts on State of Flux and their SupplierBase solution (which was, once upon a time, called Statess), you’ll see that State of Flux offers an extensive Supplier Relationship Management platform that, to various extents, offers capabilities in:

  • supplier & prospective supplier management (& onboarding)
  • supplier performance management / KPI tracking
  • supplier compliance management [intelligence]
  • supplier risk management
  • supplier contract management
  • supplier ESG management
  • supplier innovation (challenge) management
  • supplier reporting / snapshots
  • supplier relationship / plan management

We’re not going to repeat anything we covered before, especially in our posts on

… but we are going to highlight recent improvements or capabilities that were not highlighted before (which may or may not have been there in 2016).

We’re going to take the “modules” one by one, and cover them in the order above, starting with: supplier & prospective supplier management.

You can’t have SIM/SRM without supplier onboarding and basic supplier management, and in terms of the management, they have it down quite well. You can customize your profiles, track as little or as much as you want to on your suppliers (by supplier type), quickly pop-up an overview card or a status card (on how many outstanding actions, items, messages, meetings, KPI flags, risk flags, data updates, etc. you need to review and deal with), and dive into any area of tracked data in any of the categories we are going to cover below.

In terms of onboarding it’s good, but it’s one of the oldest parts of the platform and a bit slow, so, to that end, it is currently being updated end-to-end to take advantage of all recent stack and technology improvements, streamline the process, improve the response time, and enhance the UX.

Moving on to supplier performance management / KPI tracking, as per past coverage, they’ve always had this down pat and can support multi-level KPIS, roll-up and down divisions, departments, and teams as required in any split you want, normalize all metrics to a common scale for (dashboard) display and comparison automatically, and give you deep insight.

The only real weakness is that they don’t yet have an (Open)API or support integrations to any other enterprise systems where key performance data resides. (It is on the roadmap, but we don’t have an expected release date.) As such, you are limited to their import functionality, and will likely need to export all the data you need in CSV and manually (schedule) the imports, or having an API custom developed on demand (which they can do during system implementation) to any system you need integration to.

With respect to supplier compliance management, which they call Intelligence, they’ve always been good here, and have supported certification/compliance document tracking for years, but with their generic survey capability and extensive experience, upon setup, they can help you build / provide you with templates, for a whole host of compliance needs and requirements and go as broad and deep as you desire. They can also track certificates, insurance, product spec sheets, and any other documents that you require.

And then there’s supplier risk management which, like compliance, they’ve been good at for a while, and like compliance, not a lot of new capability (that will get your attention). Their platform takes a buyer-centric approach to risk — the buying organization defines what’s important to them from a performance/relationship perspective, what the risks are, the information that will help them assess that risk, builds the questionnaires and surveys they need the suppliers to answer, includes those in onboarding / innovation challenge / ESG / contracting initiatives, and then build metrics to assess them.

The only external risk data feed / risk score they can import out-of-the-box today is CreditSafe, which is retiring, but they have an integration with S&P Global Partnership forthcoming to replace it. Also, as per above, they don’t yet have an (Open)API to allow you to plug and play risk data feeds of your choice, but can custom integrate any you need upon system implementation. You have to send surveys or load well-formatted CSV files. Better integration/load capabilities are on the roadmap, but there is no committed date yet for general release, nor decision as to how complete a public API will be. So if you can’t send surveys, you will have to export the data into flat files and load them.

Now for supplier contract management. This is where you quickly notice one of the most significant enhancements to the platform since SI last covered it. While it still doesn’t do authoring or version tracking, and they do integrate with Zoho for that if you want it, they have implemented a full end-to-end contracting process model that consists of the following steps:

  • request – where it captures the contract type, the product/service category and template, and the necessary approval routing;
  • creation – where it captures all of the necessary metadata, and then the contract document and/or integrates with zoho for the creation of the contract document (and version tracking)
  • review – where it forces the appropriate people to review their portions, confirm review and okay and issue, and potentially sends the contract back to negotiation
  • final review – where key parties have to sign off before it is sent to the managers/owners for approval
  • supplier signature – which can be through DocuSign integration
  • buyer signature – which can be through DocuSign integration

The process is so good that an average mid-sized enterprise won’t need a Best-of-Breed (BoB) standalone CLM, and just a basic authoring solution, like Zoho, to get contracts under their control.

Tackling supplier ESG management, this is a relatively new module that allows an organization to track it’s ESG initiatives, the associated data, supplier assessments and reviews, associated challenges, and select data to support the supply base / supplier development plans (which we’ll discuss down the virtual page). It’s not meant to be an ESG Calculator, Scope 3 solution, or similar offering. The whole point of it is that it’s not just compliance or risk, but an area on its own that must be managed.

With regards to supplier innovation (challenge) management, this is one of their classic areas of functionality, as they were one of the first pure SRM platforms to include it as sometimes the only way for a supplier to be right for you is if they can come up with a better solution to your problem or product production through a challenge.

That being said, it’s not NPD/NPI, it’s not full project management, and it’s not even full innovation (but more challenge) management (as that may require CAD/CAM diagrams, extensive on-line design/visual collaboration, etc.), but it gets the job done, it’s easy to use, it’s streamlined, and it can be fit easily into overall supplier profiles and programs.

We’re not sure how much has changed in underlying reporting and dashboarding capability, but we can say it does look a lot cleaner and seems to load a lot faster than years ago. Also, not only are they highly configurable (as you would expect in a modern BoB solution, although there are limits on how much is self-serve vs. State of Flux configuration), but as they have learned and advanced through the years (through their consulting practice and fifteen years of research), their out-of-the-box configurations have improved by the year to the point where most organizations should get the majority of the metrics and insight they need with out-of-the-box configurations.

Finally, we’ll tackle the core of the platform the supplier relationship / plan management capability. This is where they’ve done the most work, or at least the most improvement, since SI covered the solution last. While it’s not to say that, regardless of what was and was not said above, they have not made improvements across the entire platform in the past six years, as they most certainly have, it is to say that only a few areas are really standing out as being considerably improved (and not just updated/progressed as expected).

What really stands out here is their integrated support for supplier-based strategic and joint business plans based on a full relationship profile and a 360-degree relationship assessment. The depth of detail that is captured around:

  • the relationship context
  • the relationship SWOT
  • strategy / development goals
  • 360-degree interaction
  • governance (with respects to roles and responsibilities on both sides)
  • risks
  • contracts
  • spend / category information (which must be loaded)
  • projects / action plans

is second-to-none. If this is the type of capability you are looking for with regards to strategic supplier management, this is the capability you really need a demo of, and not a third party overview. You need to see it to get the full depth of the capability and potential for your organization.

In addition, they have improved their meeting/calendar/communication management functionality and you can schedule all of your meetings inside the platform as well as manage all of your communications, including those through e-mail, so you maintain the complete interaction history with the supplier and its personnel.

In other words, it’s not only managing the supplier data, or the interaction, but all aspects of the relationship as well as the plans to improve that relationship. It’s rather unique in that way. It may not be best-in-class in specific functionality, and you may need to augment certain areas for risk, innovation/NPD/NPI, ESG, etc., but you have the central management platform and data store that you need to power your supplier-centric sourcing and procurement eco-system.

If this sounds like what you want in a strategic supplier relationship management platform, then the State of Flux SupplierBase solution should definitely be on your shortlist. Especially when they can offer full service around integration, best-practice consulting, training, and research findings to jump-start a program or shift an existing one into high gear.

Postscript: We’ve covered State of Flux, and their philosophy to leading SRM practices, quite a bit in the past. Here are some in-depth series from 2015 and 2016.