Category Archives: Technology

Broaden Your PLM Footprint for Kick-Ass ROI

A recent Industry Week article, that noted that “adoption of product lifecycle management (PLM) technology is reaching record levels” and that the PLM market experienced a stronger-than-expected 13.5% growth rate to reach an estimated 24.3 Billion in 2007, also reported that implementations can quickly develop returns on investment of 100% to 300%. Considering the needs for manufacturers to find every savings opportunity possible with record-high commodity costs and a global economic down-turn on the horizon, this is one opportunity your manufacturing organization should not miss.

As I noted last year in my post on PLM for trends based industries, a PLM systems, which enables the process of managing the entire life-cycle of a product from its conception, through design and manufacture, to service and disposal, will provide:

  • complete process visibility compared to the limited process visibility that is the norm without a PLM solution
  • a centralized, usually web-based, point of control compared to a lack of control point without a solution
  • one version of the product status and truth
  • workflow management
  • unparalleled control over the product life-cycle
  • an integration point for the various systems used in the various stages of product design, development, and merchandising

In addition, as per the Industry Week article, the broader scope of today’s PLM solutions enables manufacturing managers to collaboratively reach upstream into the early stages of portfolio management as well as downstream into the integration with manufacturing. In other words, enhanced productivity of existing resources is the result of PLM’s ability to integrate the various value chains. This is because, with PLM, multiple views of the product can be quickly and easily shared among different people of the organization in real time and the collaboration features allow people to communicate, share ideas and interact dynamically around a particular product.

Furthermore, PLM is not just for manufacturers — it’s for any organization that buys a lot of manufactured parts, especially if a good percentage of those parts are custom. The best results often come from innovation that arises as a result of collaboration between the buying organization that has the expertise in new product design and the custom manufacturer that has the expertise in product manufacturing. So where should you look for these solutions? I’d start with some of the companies I covered here on this blog in the past, which include Akoya, Apriori, Arena, Co-exprise, and MFG.com. Each of their solutions can help you identify and realize cost-savings opportunities when properly applied in your product life-cycle. And a couple of them can even help you manage your product life-cycle – so check them out, move forward, and see if you can’t get yourself some of that 100% to 300% ROI!

Spend Matters on SCM: If The Prophet is Right …

This is part two of a three-part series.

Yesterday we covered the five — new and improved — predictions of Jason “The Prophet” Bush, the Spend Master of Spend Matters, that he has issued from high (on his soapbox) to the supply management community as part of his fall conference tour. These predictions were:

  1. Procurement becomes as much about staying out of the headlines as it does about getting results
  2. Top performers will follow Teddy Roosevelt’s adage: “speak softly and carry a big stick”
  3. Si hablamos espanol … as the US gets over its love affair with China when it comes to global sourcing
  4. The management of information becomes the holy grail of all procurement and operations success
  5. Metaphorically speaking, the procurement combustion engine (and car) has now been invented — now the focus will turn to everything else that must come along with it

Are they correct? Time will tell. I agree with number four wholeheartedly, and mostly agree with the others, with the exception of number five, because, even though we now have a working engine, parts of it are still quite primitive. However, rather than argue their merits, which should be self-evident, I think we instead need to ask “if the Spend Master is right, what should we be doing?”. Prophecies are good, because someone should be thinking about the future, but results are better. That’s why you go to a doctor, and not a seer, when you are sick.

Procurement becomes as much about staying out of the headlines as it does about getting results.

What does this mean? Fundamentally, that supply management has to adopt the old adage that the buck stops here and take ultimate responsibility for quality control. They can’t rely on engineering or R&D or, as has been too often done the past few years, their suppliers to do that for them. They have to make sure that the proper quality control mechanisms are in place and that they are being followed. This means that they either have to perform site visits to the suppliers themselves, or, if they do not have the technical expertise, accompany engineers or third parties to supplier sites and production facilities to ensure that the required quality controls are in place and being followed. After all, it’s one thing if the new plasma TV your customer just forked over two grand for doesn’t work … but it’s another if your company just poisoned someone’s child. All the cost savings in the world aren’t going to matter when the lawsuits hit and you get shut down.

It also means that you have to ensure all of the regulatory compliance requirements are being met. Otherwise, you’re looking at huge fines, inventory destruction, and possibly even sanctions. Just a minor reporting omission alone can result in a fine equal to the total value of your shipment under the new 10+2 requirements. Banned materials can result in seizure and destruction, and repeated violations can result in country (and continent) wide bans.

Top performers will follow Teddy Roosevelt’s adage: “speak softly and carry a big stick”

Modern procurement professionals recognize that there’s more to procurement these days than just the mallet and the carrot and act accordingly. Generally speaking, you get further with collaboration and trust than with an untrusting dictatorship mentality. That being said, a smart procurement professional still keeps his mallet close-by, just in case a supplier strays from the open road and starts to take advantage of the trust placed in it by the buyer.

Si hablamos espanol … as the US gets over its love affair with China when it comes to global sourcing

Smart procurement professionals realize that it’s a combination of best-cost country sourcing and home-cost country sourcing … not low cost country sourcing … especially when the low-cost country is half-way across the globe! Sourcing across the globe adds cost, complexity, and tons of GHGs to your environmental footprint … which is not sustainable when it’s not necessary. And it’s not best-cost or total cost of ownership … it’s best value or total value management from an entire life-cycle perspective. This means that, given the choice between a slightly higher price from the company down the street that will work with you to improve value and decrease costs over time and a slightly lower price from a company in China that only cares about pumping out product today, you go with the solution down the street. And that you look to your neighbors before you look across the globe. Sometimes you have to go across the world, especially for certain food items and raw materials that are only available in quantity in certain areas, but for the vast majority of materials, products, and services, you can usually get them pretty close to home.

The management of information becomes the holy grail of all procurement and operations success

Great procurement professionals realize that great decisions are actionable decisions based on great information, which is their number one asset. They utilize solutions that gives them the data they need, when they need it, in the form that they need it and use all of the external data sources available to them to improve their understanding of market conditions and make better decisions. (They also read Sourcing Innovation daily, but that should be obvious.) To this end, they utilize best of breed technology that is capable of extracting, organizing, and displaying relevant information on a daily basis. And this leads into …

Metaphorically speaking, the procurement combustion engine (and car) has now been invented — now the focus will turn to everything else that must come along with it

In some cases, today’s technology is more like the (in)famous Model T than a new Ferrari, but the Spend Master is right on this point: more-or-less, a procurement professional, who’s willing to open her mind and use multiple best-of-breed solutions in conjunction with traditional ERPs and data warehouses has access to all of the tools she needs. Some will be ugly, others will be a kluge, and others will require some custom development in house (or through a 3rd party custom development house), but when we look at the sourcing and procurement cycle, logistics and transportation, inventory and warehousing, forecasting, PLM, and the other fundamental areas of SCM, we have technologies that, collectively, more-or-less cover the key points of the full cycle. Now, it’s true that it’s still the case that not a single player in the best-of-breed category has, as a whole, a best-of-breed fully-integrated end-to-end e-Sourcing or e-Procurement solution (despite what a few may claim) built on a common platform, but a few have end-to-end solutions that are pretty damn good (and much better than the horse and buggy that many shops are still running on, metaphorically speaking) and the solutions are getting better every year. As Hackett’s research clearly pointed out, the best shops have the best people that make use of the best technology to get the best results. Thus, if you don’t have a good end-to-end solution (which you might have to cobble together from as many as half-a-dozen vendors, depending on your needs) that fully enables your processes and best-practices, you go out and get one. Furthermore, as long as you stick to best-of-breed players who embrace openness and give you open APIs and full import/export capability through XML, you don’t have to worry about being stuck on the same platform for the next ten to twenty years, as many companies that spent eight and nine figures on ERP systems are now stuck on.

In other words, the best procurement professionals:

  • Take control of quality.
  • Get a handle on compliance.
  • Collaborate and trust …
  • … but keep a big stick nearby, just in case.
  • Don’t jump on a LCCS bandwagon, but focus on best-cost countries …
  • … and total value management over a product and / or relationship life-cycle.
  • Constantly strive for better information.
  • And ensure that they have the right tools and technologies in place to take their processes and best-practices to the next level.

Come back tomorrow for part three.

Spend Matters on SCM: Same Old, Same New

This is part one of a three-part series.

At the recent 6th International Symposium on Supply Chain Management sponsored by PMAC and the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University, Jason “The Prophet” Bush of Spend Matters gave his trademark “Emerging Issues in Procurement and Supply Chain Management Soapbox Presentation. For those of you who’ve heard it a few times before, it was the same speech he gave last year (and the year before), except it wasn’t … it was the same speech, updated to take into account the topsy-turvy roller-coaster of a year that we’ve been having and reflect the most current issues on the plate of supply management professionals everywhere.

Although I don’t have the space to cover the entire 48 page presentation within a single post (since my fellow blogger would do an auctioneer proud with the speed at which he delivers his observations and musings), I will try to highlight some of the more prominent points, and, in particular, the new points that the Spend Master is making in his fall conference tour.

In brief, costs are skyrocketing (as it now costs almost twice as much to make a penny and a nickel as they are worth), the trade climate leading up to the election is not a great one, stagflation is back, and the financial markets are melting down everywhere, which is in turn causing liquidity concerns and restricted access to desperately needed capital for your suppliers. This is, in turn, leading to economic declines and reactionary corporate cost cutting. The net effect is that we essentially have the perfect storm to upset the apple cart. And things could still get worse before they get better, especially since supply risk is also rising by the day. (This is where all of the analyst firms agree. The statistics indicate that you will experience at least one supply disruption this year. And this is true whether we are talking about products or services.)

In fact, supply risk is getting so bad that it’s not enough for a supply management professional to be a sourcing savior … a supply manager also has to be a wizard of risk. According to Jason, today’s sourcing leaders:

  • view procurement as more than just “strategic” but as an integrated business function
  • do more with less by making aggressive use of technology and the competitive advantage that good information provides them
  • focus on risk and performance management, especially in the context of all global activities

They do this because they recognize that sustained procurement results are the result of a complete evolution of the function.

Furthermore, leaders of top performing organizations spend more on technology and people, and save almost three times as much by doing so. Consider the recent findings of the Hackett Group*:

 

Area Average World Class
Annual Procurement ROI 281% 694%
Tech Cost per Proc FTE $12,476 $24,507
Cost per transactional FTE $55,060 $51,001
Cost per strategic FTE $81,574 $106,366
Involvement in Enterprise Budgeting & Planning 31% 55%

 

Finally, leaders recognize that the procurement landscape, including the procurement technology landscape, is changing, and they do their best to keep up. For example, if they heed the words of the Spend Master who predicts that the emphasis on procurement technology will shift away from the world inside to the world outside — to focus on all of the opportunities and associated risks that the outside world brings with it, they will start looking for new technology that enables them to better access and utilize the information sources that is available to them from both inside and outside the four walls of the organization.

After setting the stage and defining what leaders do, Jason concludes with his five — new and improved — predictions on where supply management is going. In the new Spend Matters world view:

  • Procurement becomes as much about staying out of the headlines as it does about getting results
  • Top performers will follow Teddy Roosevelt’s adage: “speak softly and carry a big stick”
  • Si hablamos espanol … as the US gets over its love affair with China when it comes to global sourcing
  • The management of information becomes the holy grail of all procurement and operations success
  • Metaphorically speaking, the procurement combustion engine (and car) has now been invented — now the focus will turn to everything else that must come along with it

Come back tomorrow for part two.

* For more information on the Hackett Group findings, contact Pierre Mitchell at pmitchell <at> thehackettgroup <dot> com.

The Sourcing Maniacs 2008 Vendor Tour Part VI: Coupa

When we left the Sourcing Maniacs, they had just finished learning about Co-exprise and Sourcing Lifecycle Management. We join them wandering the streets somewhere in Pittsburgh, PA.

Yakko Enterprise Cost Management and Predictive Analytics.
Wakko True Spend Analysis.
Dot Sourcing Lifecycle Managment.
Yakko The Sourcing World is sure a whole lot bigger than we ever thought it was!
Wakko Maybe it was good we got canned.
Dot We’d never have learned all of this if we were still locked in the corporate boardroom.
Wakko So where next?
Yakko Good question! Do we stay with the C’s or move onto the D’s?
Dot I’m curious what that little upstart by the name of Coupa is up to.
Yakko So am I. When they first appeared, I remember we laughed about the idea of an on-demand SaaS e-Procurement application … but after everything we’ve learned so far on this journey, I’m thinking that maybe we wrong and they were right … that maybe new technology is the future of e-Procurement, not legacy behind-the-firewall ERP add-on technology.
Dot After all, new best-of-breed sourcing technology appears to be revolutionizing sourcing, so maybe procurement can be revolutionized as well!
Wakko So where are they?
Yakko I think they’re back in California!
Dot I don’t want to go back to California just yet.
Wakko So what do we do?
Yakko They’re SaaS … and I hear they’re covered regularly by new media – so that should mean that everything we need to know is online. Let’s use the web! I think that’s a cyber-cafe up the street.
  The maniacs enter the cyber-cafe.
Dot So where do we start?
Yakko Coupa.com, of course!
  The maniacs go to Coupa.com and start surfing.
Yakko Wow … what a diverse customer base. Government organizations, science institutes, universities, mid-size companies, even a hockey team.
Dot Multiple major releases a year … I remember that sometimes we couldn’t even get one major release out in an 18-month period!
Wakko And look at that Pricing! It’s even more insane than I am! How can they possibly start at only $295/month and make money? We’d be losing money hand over fist at $2995/month if we were still at our old job!
Yakko Must be something to do with SaaS. Let’s read more about that.
Yakko surfs.
Here’s a great article by the doctor on the e-Sourcing Wiki. According to the article, SaaS allows for great economies of scale, a single multi-tenant instance, and a total cost of ownership that is much, much lower than the traditional on-premise model that we used to promote. Plus, as per this article I found on Sourcing Innovation, they deploy on the Amazon cloud that allows them to keep their infrastructure overhead ridiculously low and only pay for the computing resources they use.
Dot Is on-Premise really that much more expensive? I thought we had a great TCO in the old days.
Yakko I just found this great on-premise vs SaaS TCO calculator on the Coupa site that allows you to factor in license, support, upgrade costs, database costs, application server costs, implementation costs, and annual internal support costs for an equivalent procurement system and it’s surprising. If you managed to score a great deal and get an installed e-Procurement license for only 50K, with an annual industry average support fee of about 20K, and get it installed for 25K, and your tream trained for 25K, your first year cost would be $158,000 and your five year cost would be over $350,000! On the other hand, an enterprise level coupa license for a mid-size business with 1000 users, that costs about 17K with equivalent training costs, if my math is right, would only cost $42,000 the first year, and have a five year cost of only $110,000 … which is less than 1/3 of the five year cost for an on-premise application.
Wakko Wow! That’s less than my annual baloney bill!
Dot And what I spent on Gucci when we had a full time job!
Yakko I guess SaaS really stands for Sumptuary Allowances Actuate Savings!
Dot You’ve been reading the dictionary again, haven’t you?
Yakko It’s almost as interesting as the Universe.
Wakko But I thought you already knew all of the words in the English language!
Yakko I did … but they keep adding more! Did you know that almost 20,000 words are added per year?
Dot Plus all the ones you invent!
Yakko Yassuredly.
  At this point the sourcing maniacs really get off topic and start arguing how many parts of the brain it takes to source, so we’ll skip ahead until they get back to their Coupa discussion.
Dot So what we we doing before Wakko demonstrated how to eat sphaghetti with chopsticks?
Yakko Investigating Coupa I believe.
Wakko And their wacko pricing that’s less than my annual baloney bill!
Yakko And SaaS … which appears to totally rock …
Wakko … almost as much as I rock America!
Dot So, I guess the big question is … at that price, does it do what it needs to do?
Yakko Well, according to the doctor, who wrote an introductory e-Procurement Wiki Article, e-Procurement has up to 9 steps, with the first seven being key: requisition, authorization, purchase order, receipt of goods, invoice, reconciliation, and payment.

Now, according to the Coupa site, it supports requisitioning, multi-level rules-based and workflow-based authorizations, purchase order management, goods receipts and inventory management, invoicing, and integration with existing platforms which allow you to do reconciliation and e-payment.
Dot Shouldn’t it do reconciliation and e-payment?
Yakko Considering that the data you need for reconcilation is probably in your ERP or CM system anyway, built in reconcilation probably isn’t that important, and considering that not only do many companies use AP systems to pay, but that most e-Procurement platforms don’t include a built-in e-Payment mechanism, and simply interface with external e-payment systems, it looks like it’s pretty competitive.
Wakko Okay … there’s got to be something missing at that price! We would have charged $500K a year for this back in the day!
Dot Heck, we would have tried for a million! Gucci and Prada ain’t cheap, you know.
Yakko I guess we’ll just have to try it out!
(Coupa has a 30 day free trial!)
  Silence ensues for about 15 minutes while they try it … all of it … out.
Yakko That was …
Wakko, Yakko, & Dot Awesome!

Editor’s Note: For more information about Coupa, see this list of indexed posts.

Also, since I’m a little tired of typing, we’re going to break for a week or so … and pick up where we left off early next month.

The Sourcing Maniacs 2008 Vendor Tour Part V: Co-exprise

When we left the Sourcing Maniacs, they had just finished learning about BIQ (acquired by Opera Solutions, rebranded ElectrifAI) and the true meaning of spend analysis. We join them wandering the streets of Southborough, MA.

Yakko, Wakko, & Dot We’re the sourcing-maniacs
We’re zany to the max
We lost our pay-to-play contracts
Without a job we can’t relax
We’re sourcing-maniacs!
Wakko & Yakko Come join the ‘Riba Brothers
Dot And the ‘Riba Sister, Dot
Wakko, Yakko, & Dot Just for fun we ran around the corp’rate parking lot
They locked us in the boardroom whenever we got caught
But let us loose from the caboose
And now you know the plot!
Wakko So where are we going next, Yakko?
Yakko I don’t know, but I think we should move onto the C’s.
Dot Any cool C companies nearby?
Yakko None that I know of. I think they’re all in Pennsylvania, Illinois, or California.
Dot Well, we’re from California.
Wakko And I always thought Illinois was a railroad!
Yakko So Pennsylvania it is!
Wakko Pennsylvania is a railroad, too!
Dot So who’s in Pennsylvania?
Yakko If I recall correctly, CombineNet and Co-exprise.
Wakko CombineNet? I don’t think we’re smart enough to work for them. I still have problems with double-digit multiplication, I couldn’t do com-bin-a-tore-e-ul op-ti-my-za-shun!
Dot I guess it’s Co-exprise. What do they do?
Yakko Something called SLM.
Wakko Sea Level Measurement? In Pennsylvania? Cool! Do they have any yellow submarines?
Yakko I think it stands for Sourcing Lifecycle Management.
Wakko Oh. Well, maybe they have some baloney sandwiches. I’m hungry!
Dot You just ate two servings of Boston Baked Beans, drank enough tea for a party, and finished it off with an entire Boston Cream Pie!
Wakko I know … but I’m always hungry for baloney sandwiches.
Dot So which way to Pennsylvania?
Yakko Yakko licks his finger, sticks it in the air, and pauses.
This way!
Dot Let’s go!
  As per their nature, they start to sing.
Yakko, Wakko, & Dot We’re off to see Co-exprise
We’re gonna get our exercise
As it’s 600 miles away
But we’ll learn about SLM
And if it has a hidden gem
And how it can help you save
  The song goes on for a few hundred more versus which somehow manage to include references to roman aqueducts, visitors from Beetlegeuse Seven, South-going Zax, and something called PffT, which I always thought was the sound my cat made when she was cross. Including it herein would be almost as bad as subjecting you to Vogon poetry, so we’ll skip ahead to when the Sourcing Maniacs land in Wexford, PA.
Yakko, Wakko, & Dot We’re the sourcing-maniacs
…
Wakko Brooktree Road! I think we’re almost there!
Dot I see lots of office buildings!
Yakko This must be the place!
Dot Do you think they’ll talk to us?
Yakko Why wouldn’t they?
Dot They’ve been in stealth mode, hardly talking to anyone in the media besides the doctor and …
Wakko And?
Dot It looks like this place is access-controlled.
Yakko Well, rumor has it that a number of big companies that have DoD contracts are considering using Co-exprise’s solution. Companies that do military projects have to insure their suppliers have a basic level of data security in place, at least SAS 70!
Wakko Do you think anyone from the military could be in there now?
Yakko Relax, Wakko. I’m sure the military has forgotton all about that little incident where you mistakenly procured a real Tomahawk missile instead of the model rocket you were coveting.
Wakko But I almost blew up the valley!
Yakko But you can’t aim. It harmlessly exploded in the ocean. No harm done.
Wakko But the General said …
Yakko Look, someone’s coming out. Maybe we can talk to them out here. Would that be okay with you?
Wakko Ok …
Yakko Hi, I’m Yakko. Do you work for Co-exprise?
Man-in-Black Yes, I do. Yakko … Yakko … why do I know that name?
Dot I’m Dot.
Man-in-Black Dot. Hmmm. Wait a minute, you’re the Sourcing Maniacs!
Yakko & Dot That’s us!
Man-in-Black I heard you were let go from Ariba a while back. Sorry to hear.
Yakko & Dot Well, can you at least tell us about SLM and what you do?
Man-in-Black Man-in-Black pauses and thinks for a bit.
Well, we have been slowly spreading the SLM message, which we believe is the first major revolution to hit the direct sourcing space since one of our founders co-invented the reverse auction at GE, and we do want to get the Co-exprise message out when the time is right, so I’ll make you a deal. You promise to keep things under your hats for a couple of months, and I’ll tell you about the future of direct sourcing. Deal?
Yakko & Dot Deal.
Man-in-Black Wakko?
Wakko Wakko, who has somehow developed a fear of all men dressed in black, looks out from behind Yakko.
Yes, sir?
Man-in-Black Is it a deal?
Wakko Yes, sir!
Man-in-Black OK, follow me.
Dot Where are we going?
Man-in-Black The coffee shop on the corner. The most discreet place is a public place.
Man-in-Black So, do you know what Sourcing Lifecycle Management is all about?
Dot Managing the e-RFX and e-Auction process?
Man-in-Black Well, that’s what many people think, but it’s much more than that.

Many providers, particularly those that only service the indirect sourcing space, believe that sourcing starts with an e-RFX or auction for a commodity, results in a contract, and ends with order delivery. But things aren’t so simple in the direct space.

In the direct space, the lifecycle starts way back at new product design as you are sourcing not a pre-defined commodity part, but a custom-made part. You have to insure that the design is appropriate with respect to the capabilities of your potential supply base; you have to insure that the raw materials are available, in the requisite quantities, at the appropriate times, in the manufacturing regions; and you have to make sure that the projected cost does not exceed the maximum cost that would make the end product viable for sale in your target market. You also need to collaborate with your supply base in the design, as needed, to optimize the design for production.

Once you have the design, you need to go through a negotiation and collaboration intensive sourcing process to select one, maybe two, suppliers who will manufacture the part for you. This involves the sharing of confidential information, which needs to be done in a secure manner, as well as collaboration on forecasts and target delivery dates.

Once you have an award, you have to manage the procurement, which usually has to coincide with the procurement of other custom parts, which have to hit a single location at the same time for integration into the final end-product, which then has to be packaged and shipped to the end customer. This involves coordination between manufacturers, 3PLs, assemblers, and end retailers. Plus, you still have to insure prices are contract prices, charges are valid charges, and that the i’s are dotted and the t’s crossed, as you would in indirect procurement.

As you can see, whereas indirect sourcing can often be accomplished with just e-RFX, e-Auction, and Contract Management — with Spend Analysis and Decision Optimization for higher-value projects — direct sourcing requires extensive integrated project management capabilities, product lifecycle management, collaboration capabilities, Bill-of-Material management, and the ability to easily integrate with third party platforms.
Yakko, Wakko, & Dot We … we … never knew.
Dot We always thought it was just e-RFX, e-Auction, and good data management.
Yakko & Dot So how do you do all that?
Man-in-Black With a great code-base, of course! Although I have to be really careful with what I say now, especially until our next release hits beta later this year and hits full release late this year or early next year, I can tell you a few things that are already more-or-less public knowledge.

First of all, our platform is entirely new, built from the ground up to handle the direct sourcing process, which our senior management and developers are intimately familiar with. This allows us to do things that retrofitted indirect sourcing platforms can’t do.

Second, we have our own universal data model that underlies our application and it can integrate with data in over 1500 different formats.

Third, we have PLM built in at the core, and this allows us to enable direct sourcing professionals to track a project from beginning to end and always access the most recent data, regardless of which module they are in.

Fourth, we have fine-grained security that allows us to assign access permissions down at the data element level that indicates who can see the data, where (by IP), when, and how they can access it (read-only, view-only, etc.).

Fifth, we’ve integrated a compliance tracking module that allows companies to track regulatory requirements such as REACH, ITAR, etc. from product inception to product end-of-life, and insure that such requirements are met at every stage of the sourcing process.

Sixth, we’ve re-invented “spend analysis” for direct sourcing. Although I can’t say anything yet … we’re still finalizing the initial product offering and working on getting our first beta projects under way, I can say that our founders and developers have been involved with spend analysis since the days of FreeMarkets, and know why traditional “spend analysis”, developed in the indirect world, just doesn’t cut it in the direct world.
Dot Can we see it?
Man-in-Black Definitely not.
Yakko & Dot Can you tell us more about it?
Man-in-Black Not yet. But you’ll be able to read all about it soon enough.
Dot When?
Man-in-Black When the story hits the blogs. We’ll show the right people at the right time. Right now we’re totally focussed on getting the next release of the product out and pleasing our current customers, who include some of the bigger names in manufacturing, and getting beta projects underway at some of the biggest names in manufacturing.
Yakko & Dot Until then?
Man-in-Black You go on your merry way. Have a nice day.
The man in black gets up and walks away, leaving the Sourcing Maniacs speechless, again, as their view of the Sourcing World broadens with each vendor they talk to.