Category Archives: Technology

Technological Damnation 86: Template Mania

We’ll admit that compared to the rest of the technological damnations, and damnations like Cybersecurity / Cyberattack (76), The Cloud (80), and Dashboards (84) in particular, just to name a few, this particular damnation isn’t that bad [and it’s certainly no Big Data (79) or Spreadsheet (83)]. But it’s bad enough to make our list. Why? Let’s get to it.

But first, what is a template? Well, that depends. Wikipedia has over a dozen definitions for templates, including:

  • a pre-developed page layout in electronic or paper media used to make new pages with a similar design, pattern, or style;
  • a standardized non-executable file type used by computer software as a pre-formatted example on which to base other files, especially documents; and
  • a master page on which you can globally edit and format graphic elements and text common to each page of a document.

However none of these definitions really clarify what a template is. So let’s consider a few of the templates we use in Supply Management.

  • RFX templates to quick start sourcing projects for common or previously sourced categories
  • Strategic Souring Decision Optimization templates for pre-defining models
  • Data collection templates for analyzing surveys using BI tools
  • Scorecard templates for supplier performance monitoring
  • Workflow templates for setting up a sourcing project
  • Workflow templates for (automatically) approving invoices

And right now you’re probably even more confused. And that’s the point.

Extreme template proliferation makes it hard to even identify what a template is.

Is it a form? It is a form generator? Is it a workflow that powers a form generator to create a form custom for your sourcing project? Is it copyable, or just configurable? Is it specific to you, your project, your organization, and/or your platform? Can it be altered by you, by an administrator, or just a vendor rep? The questions are dizzying. And we still haven’t addressed the fact that …

Even if we can define what a template is, it’s hard to know when it could be used.

Take a quick-start sourcing template for mobile electronics. If it was designed for cell phones, can it be used as-is for smart phones or does it need minor edits. What about tablets. And what about those damn unclassifiable phablets. Aaarrrggghhh!

With so many options for each situation, it’s almost impossible to know which one is best.

If the templates can be copied and altered, there might be the vendor template, the modified template from the Center of Excellence, the modified modified template from the last Sourcing project created by the previous buyer, a modified vendor template from another region created by yet another buyer, a third party template in the customer network on the vendor’s site, and so on. Which one is best? Are any appropriate? At this point you just want to bang your head against the brick walls.

And how do we keep them all up to date?

This is the real damnation. Not only do we have to keep a never ending deluge of data up to date, but we have to now keep a never ending deluge of templates that may or may not be used to capture the never ending deluge of data up to date. Ack!


Data, data everywhere
and all the tables burst
Data, data everywhere
we thought it’d get no worse

Technological Damnation 93: Technological Disasters

When we covered Environmental Damnation 18: Natural Disasters, we noted that natural disasters — including earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis — are on the rise. However, these aren’t the only disasters that can bring your supply chain to ruin. Man made disasters stemming from technological advances can also disrupt, and sometimes destroy, an entire supply chain (region).

Three major disasters we need to be on the lookout for are:

  • Nuclear Meltdowns

    While the proponents might like to sell us on how clean nuclear energy is compared to petro-carbon alternatives, the fact of the matter is that while the energy is clean, the waste is much dirtier, with Plutonium-239 having a half-life of 24 Thousand years and Neptunium-237 has a half-life of 2 Million years! Plus, while an explosion at a petro-carbon energy plant might wipe out the plant and immediate surrounding area, an explosion at a nuclear power plant can make an entire city, or even a small state, uninhabitable for millennia! For example, the 30 km exclusion zone surrounding Chernobyl will not be safe for human life for another 20,000 years (and even today, 30 years later when [over] half of the iodine-131, caesium-134, caesium-137, and strontium-90 — the four most harmful radionuclides that spread as a result of the explosion — have reached their half-life, workers are not allowed to work in the zone for more than 5 hours a day and not for more than one month at a stretch due to the ongoing risk to one’s life).

  • Chemical Leaks

    Most of the chemicals we use in manufacturing and production need to be transported, and most are transported by tanker truck or rail car (or pipeline between plant locations), but some are transported by barrels, especially when being shipped by sea (or air). Leaks can be dangerous if the chemical is explosive, acidic, or poisonous, especially if the leak is near a populated area or a water supply. For example, the Bhopal disaster of 1984 exposed over 500,000 people to methyl isocyanate (a toxin often used in pesticides such as Carbaryl which are designed to kill bugs hardier than us, and banned in many countries) and resulted in 3,787 confirmed deaths, 3,900 severe and permanent injuries, and 558,125 reported injuries.

  • (Natural) Gas Leaks

    Gas leaks, whether chemical or hydrocarbon, are among the most dangerous leaks, and natural gas leaks are among the most dangerous. Not only are they toxic (as we are talking about a mixture of methane, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, etc.), but they are also highly explosive, requiring only a single spark to (potentially) obliterate an area the size of (multiple) city blocks. Recent examples are the 2012 explosion in Springfield Massachusetts that destroyed 2 buildings and damaged 42 and the 1992 explosion in Guadalajara that killed over 200, injured 500, and left 15,000 people homeless.

The more we progress, the more we need more, and, stronger energy sources and more chemicals to produce our new technology, and the more danger we place ourselves, and our supply chains, in.

This necessitates the need for more safety audits, more safety practices, and more oversight — especially as more regulations start popping up to try and prevent more accidents and control dangerous substances. So not only do you have to worry about the well being of people in your supply chain, you have to worry about the well-being of your brand if you fail to maintain top safety practices, go afoul of regulations, or take your time switching away from dangerous chemicals or energy sources to more environmentally friendly sources.

This damnation always needs to be at the back of one’s mind or when it unexpectedly rears its ugly head, one will not be ready.

There is no ONE platform!

As much as we would like to realize the dream of one platform for Supply Management, it’s not going to happen — at least not within our professional lifetime. The internet, and software development, might be moving in cat years, but let’s face it, it’s been 90 cat years since true first generation strategic sourcing, e-Procurement, and other fledgling Supply Management products hit the scene and we still don’t have a single end-to-end strategic source to pay platform! (Yes, there are source-to-pay platforms, and some are rather good, but there is not one that is not missing some key piece of functionality for strategic sourcing, such as optimization or advanced analytics, or for e-Procurement, such as e-Invoicing and automated m-way match.)

But what can we expect, with the exception of a handful of organizations (that can be counted on your fingers, minus your thumbs), we haven’t even reached the era of one ERP. Larry had a dream, but outside of Oracle, I believe the number of global organizations that successfully migrated their international operations to one global (Oracle) ERP instance is 5 (and that’s why the vision of one platform went away and Oracle acquired so many other leading ERP platforms, leaving only its rival SAP standing at the end of the day once the acquisitions on both side are tallied up.)

We have the situation that no one vendor, and this includes SAP, Oracle, and IBM even after their string of acquisitions over the last 90 cat years, has a platform that fully addresses basic Sourcing, Procurement, and Logistics, and once you start factoring in CLM, SRM, Sustainability, Talent Management, and Innovation Management needs, nothing comes close, or will come close, for at least another 60 cat years at the current development pace. In addition, with the constant pace of innovation in terms of process, and the constant shift both towards globalization and specialization, nothing may ever come close.

Sauron may have forged the one ring, but not even the almighty Google will forge the one platform. So you have to stop focussing on finding the right vendor and shift to finding the right platforms to serve your Supply Management needs. To do this, you have to first ask, what is the workflow?

Even though the organization may have different processes and procedures for T&E, P-Card, indirect, and direct purchases, depending on category, department, amount, and budget owner, there is still one (mega) process that is followed.

There will be a needs identification followed by an identification of whether or not an inventory, contract or preferred vendor exists to fill that needed followed by a determination of whether an event is needed or not, followed by the determination if a requisition is needed, followed by an order (which may or may not require a purchase order) followed by goods delivery and an invoice, followed by acknowledgement and inventory, followed by determination of an approval process, followed by an approval process for the invoice, followed by a payment, followed by data capture and archival in the right systems. There is a mega-flowchart that defines the mega-workflow that is defined by everything the organization needs to directly and indirectly support the process that defines system needs and integration needs.

The answer is to identify one or more minimal set of overlapping platforms that fulfill the workflow needs, integrate with the underlying ERP and / or (Master) Data Management (MDM) systems, and, directly or indirectly (through the underlying systems) integrate with each other. Once these system sets are identified, one works with the vendors that best meet the organization’s overall needs and implement the systems that accomplish the workflow. That’s how progress is made. Nothing is gained by seeking out the one platform. It is a myth, and a myth that destroys organizational progress and productivity.

Freightos: Flippin’ Freight Quotes Faster than a Fleet-Footed Feline on Guarana

A couple of years ago we introduced you to Freightos in our post on how they were helping to bring freight into the modern era. Even today, when we are over half-way through the teens, many Procurement professionals, when they call up a forwarder for a spot quote, still have to wait two or three (or even eight) days for a response. It’s absurd. (See this hilarious video on The Great Freight Experiment.) And when the buyer has to get a shipment from Shanghai to San Francisco, which requires a truck, ocean freight, and another truck or a truck, air freight, and another truck, it’s a nightmare waiting for all the quotes to come in.

Freightos was founded to deal with this problem. In order to address this problem and speed up the freight quote time, on or off contract, in the global market place, Freightos was built as a technology platform that enables an on-line network of global freight forwarders to provide instant spot-rate and on-contract quotes for point-to-point global shipments when a (potential) customer needs them.

When a forwarder, or freight-forwarder / 3PL, signed up for the Freightos network, and uploaded their standard buy and sell rate tables for ocean, air, and land-based shipping for all of the routes they serviced, customers could access the forwarder’s portal on the Freight OS network and get almost instantaneous quotes for the route(s) of their choice. All the buyer had to do was specify the origin, the destination, some basic load characteristics, the desired pick-up date, the allowable modes, whether or not the load is hazardous, if insurance is required, if a customers brokerage is used, whether or not nearby ports / airports can be used, and click quote. Within seconds, the buyer could get the quickest delivery quote, the cheapest quote, and some alternate options from any forwarder that had a rate table in the system and chose to make it public. They could also request custom quotes from a forwarder as well, which they might want to do if they were willing to commit to a certain volume over a certain period of time.

Since it’s launch, Freightos, which primarily targeted freight forwarders and 3PLs, has been extending its platform and its target audience, now also serving (and targeting) enterprise shippers (in traditional logistics divisions) and e-commerce shippers as well. Since it’s initial launch, Freightos has added two major features:

  • the marketplace
    where all forwarders can list their public rates and any buyer can easily search public quotes (without a forwarder having to share quotes with them), compare, and book quotes
  • contract management
    which permits a buying organization to upload all of their contracts, which are included in search results, if the route is covered, and allow a buyer to see their contracted rate vs. the market rates

As well as a few other valuable features for enterprise shippers that include:

  • tariff management
    that allows freight providers (including 3PLs and forwarders) to define all of the associated tariffs and buyers to include all the tariffs defined by their contracted routes
  • spend visibility
    that allows enterprise shippers to see how much is being spent by lane, forwarder, region
  • business intelligence
    that allows enterprise shippers to slice and dice the spend visibility and contract data
  • real-time multi-currency support
  • powerful filtering
    that allows an enterprise shipper to include or exclude forwarders, forwarders, transport modes (and specify ocean only or air only), select and deselect nearby ports, etc.

Freightos is a very powerful solution that will soon be Procurement’s best friend. How so? Stay tuned, as Freightos will be launching their Procurement portal early next year which will build on the powerful enterprise shipping portal they have now, but with features and functions targeted to make your life as a Procurement professional much easier when you are trying to build those total cost of ownership models during your multi quarter and multi-year sourcing events.

There’s No Return on Customization.

the doctor does not attend many events, but hen he does one thing he regularly hears is Company B saying that there is no platform that meets there needs so they are buying Solution S from Company X and customizing it through the vendor or a third party.

Before one more organization does this, the doctor needs to scream DON’T! In this day of age there is no return on enterprise software customization … no matter what the vendor or 3rd party may tell you.

Why?

1) Time to Delivery

If the functionality is truly valuable, by the time it is delivered, another vendor is sure to have equivalent functionality on the market ready and waiting for your implementation.

2) Up Front Cost

Custom development is a huge cost — which may never be realized given the average IT project failure rate and the average return.

3) Maintenance Cost

Out of the box functionality is covered under standard warranty and standard maintenance agreements — custom modifications usually require high hourly rates to contract scarce development talent for as long as is needed to fix any bugs or do any required upgrades.

4) Delayed Upgrades

While everyone else gets upgrades and new, free, features on the provider’s schedule, you get to wait and wait and wait until the talent has the time to address, and complete, the necessary upgrades to the custom modifications you made to allow the base system to be upgraded — this can be months (or years) and efficiency losses will add up on a daily basis!

When you put it all together, the costs will typically outweigh the benefits. So put the effort in to finding the right vendor with the right system and when it comes to customization, just do NOT do it! The only company that profits off of customizations is the vendor doing the customizations, because they are the company at the bottom of the money pit while their clients keep shovelling the money in.