Category Archives: Vendor Review

HICX Solutions Wants To Buy You A Shiny New Pair of Shoes! Part I

Last week we asked if SIM was old news or a shiny new pair of shoes. We noted that SIM (Supplier Information Management) was a mature and stable technology with a large number of solution providers not only providing the tools and best practices to manage supplier life-cycles, but to manage risk, compliance, receivables and even spend repositories for spend management. It’s almost a commodity in the Supply Management space, and, thus, an acquisition thereof is not likely to get baby that new pair of shoes anytime soon. Unless, of course, the solution has some new tricks not found in most current solutions.

What tricks? Tricks that provide added value to your organization. What might these tricks look like? As per our last post on the issue, if the SIM product not only allowed a user to define, and redefine, data models as necessary but define, and redefine, workflows as necessary to allow an organization to not only accommodate new product demands but adapt to new technologies and new business requirements as they arise, then this would qualify as new tricks as many classic SIM products have rather fixed data models and inflexible workflows. It’s not the only new trick that would have value, but it is a new trick. And it’s a new trick that HICX Solutions brings to the table with their SIM solution. More on this later.

HICX, which stands for Harmonize, Integrate, Control, and eXchange, is a relatively new SIM offering (even though it has been in development since 2004) that not only addresses the classic SIM sweet-spots, but also hits a few new ones that can bring significant value to your organization if properly implemented and utilized. But let’s back up a bit.

In addition to classic SIM, the HICX SIM platform addresses each of the following areas, which, with the exception of MDM, are all addressed by most current SIM platforms:

  • OnboardingHICX is not the first SIM provider to have a comprehensive on-boarding solution, and won’t be the last, but they are one of the few that recognizes the absolute criticality of a good on-boarding process as effective SIM is 100% dependent on good, complete supplier data — which is dependent on the supplier providing that data to you on a timely basis. This is, of course, dependent on getting the supplier on-board not only with your efforts but the systems you use to collect the data. As a result, effective on-boarding is key.
  • Master Data ManagementWhile many SIM solutions manage data, most can’t serve as your MDM (Master Data Management) repository. However, the HICX solution can. This is important since most Supply Management solutions outside of the ERP space do not have MDM capabilities. But MDM is the key to good supplier and supply management initiatives as every initiative — analysis, modelling, payments, reporting — requires good data. And since the ERP is usually so tightly locked down, and such a mess, you rarely get the good data you need out of it.
  • Performance ManagementThe whole point of collecting good information is to help the organization effectively manage the supply base and improve both organization and supplier performance. As such, this was the first major piece of functionality offered by SIM providers and one of the staples that should be offered by every SIM provider.
  • Compliance ManagementA critical part of performance management is compliance management. It doesn’t matter if your supplier can produce the product 10% cheaper if they do so using a chemical that is banned under RoHS and your product would be confiscated if you tried to import it. Compliance is critical. Compliance with regulations and directives. Compliance with agreed to processes. Compliance with ethics. So you definitely need good compliance management capabilities.
  • Integrated Supplier PortalThe best way to get the data is directly from the supplier, and the supplier is only going to buy-in if the portal is easy to use and integrated. If the supplier has to go to a separate page for each request, with a different login, workflow and UI, the supplier is going to start boycotting your tools and your initiatives faster than the hammer drops.

Moreover, in a few of these areas, and MDM in particular, the HICX solution adds a few tricks of its own. What tricks? Come back for Part II.

Are You Ready to Leave the Procurement Dark Ages? ScoutRFP Has a Simple Tool For You. Part II

In our last post, we noted that many organizations are still in the Procurement Dark Ages, conducting procurement using the age-old three-bids-and-a-buy technique and the fax machine running over a 64 kbit digital ISDN circuit. And that, in the low end of the mid-market in particular, this was the norm and not the exception. Scary!

We also noted that there were a number of reasons for this dismal state of affairs including, but not limited to, a lack of foresight and faith in Procurement by the organizations, the high price tag that used to be associated with these products, and the complexity of the suite solutions that were often thrust upon the technologically illiterate organizations that, sadly, were just not ready for sophisticated solutions.

Some companies need to take it one-step at a time, and like a kid on the beach for the first time, dip their toe in the open ocean before getting comfortable enough to walk, and eventually, dive in. To this end, Scout RFP has decided to launch a new RFP solution to help those companies, and other companies who are using RFP solutions that are overpriced or too advanced for their needs.

Does this make sense given that they are not the first company to offer a stand-alone RFX product, or at least a stand-alone RFX module, and that there are a number of companies on the market that have, or started with, this strategy? For example, EC Sourcing, ThomasNet, and PurchasingNet all offer low-end stand-alone RFX solutions that can be obtained at low cost.

Unless they do something different, definitely not. But the founders recognize this, and might find a way to brighten up the space just a little. (Time will tell.)

So what’s different about ScoutRFP? Especially considering the maturity of RFX technology? Not much, but when you consider the market they are going after, it probably doesn’t take much to make a difference to have an impact. (With the majority of players chasing the same Global 2000, there is still a big unexplored blue ocean when you move further down the corporate food chain.)

Scout RFP is currently focussed on differentiating themselves in the following ways:

1. Ease of Use

The solution is 100% web-based and designed to work with minimal inputs. Like all other modern RFX products, it guides the user through a minimal workflow to create the RFX, select the suppliers to receive the RFX, and evaluate the responses, side-by-side, when they are returned.

2. Flexibility

Whereas many solutions force the user to create an RFX section by section, question by question, the ScoutRFP solution allows the user to create the RFX at their desired level of detail. They can cut and paste entire sections from a Word document into an entire section, break it up into individual questions, or go somewhere in between.

3. Control & Visibility

It allows for the definition of hierarchical visibility and control that allows a CPO to view the work being done by his or her directors who can see the work betting done by his or her buyers.

Like other modern tools, ScoutRFX also has a dashboard view, supplier response and status tracking, and side-by-side comparisons.

And it’s brand new. The company has not officially been around for a year, and has accomplished quite a bit of development in that timeframe as well as landing over a dozen customers in that time as well. So it’s very likely that the next year will see quite a bit of new development, the creation of a knowledge and template library, and other useful advancements to jump start your dark-age Procurement enterprise.

If you’re a mid-size company without an RFX solution, it’s worth checking out. It doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles of some more established solutions, but it doesn’t have the price tag either. And the founders, who know what it’s like to be stuck without basic tools to do your job, won’t beat around the bush or try to shovel you a side of bullcrap with a modules, services, or license seats you don’t yet need. (After all, when you’re selling enterprise systems in the low five-figures, you can’t afford to!)

Are You Ready to Leave the Procurement Dark Ages? ScoutRFP Has a Simple Tool For You. Part I

In yesterday’s post we noted that even though the Procurement profession has went from zero to hero in those leading organizations that were forward looking enough to let Purchasers gain influence in both the inbound and outbound supply chain and raise the profile of the organization in the eyes of both customers and suppliers, it is still only a select group of leaders that have truly embraced Supply Management and leaped the pond.

The remaining organizations are still in the Procurement Dark Ages, conducting procurement using the age-old three-bids-and-a-buy technique and the fax machine running over a 64 kbit digital ISDN circuit. And, especially in the lower end of the mid-market, this is the norm and not the exception.

To this end, a new company has hit the Procurement Technology marketplace focussing only on RFX. That’s right, RFX. You’d think that the market would be saturated by now, given that RFX solutions have been on the market for a decade and a half, but it isn’t. There are a number of reasons for this:

1.As described above, a lack of foresight and faith in Procurement has held Procurement, and Procurement technology, back in a number of organizations.

2. The high price tag that was associated with such technology in the past. This technology used to be six figure technology. It’s far from that today, but when many companies first investigated this technology, they got such a sticker shock that they decided it would be out of their reach for years, if not decades, as used to be the case with MRP and ERP technology.

3. The complexity of the suite of products that were often forced upon them. A number of early Sourcing and Procurement Technology providers tried to sell entire suites, insisting that individual products were not valuable on their own, and most companies, still using phone and fax, were not ready for the breadth of technology being thrust upon them and so retreated to their dungeons.

The companies at the low-end of the technology and innovation spectrum need to take things one step at a time, and get comfortable with basic technology solutions, like RFX, before moving on to auction and spend analysis and even, if we’re lucky, optimization. And they want to be able to acquire these solutions one at a time.

That’s why Scout RFP has launched a new RFX solution that attempts to provide these companies with a simple, starting, technology solution that these companies can use to dip their toe in the modern age of Procurement at a low cost with little to no risk.

Is it needed? Is it worth it? Stay Tuned for Part II.

Iasta: Smart-Source Style! Part III

It’s been a while since Part I, where we covered the inclusion of native analytics capability, improved native contract management capability, and better integrated SIM & SPM capabilities in the Iasta platform and Part II where we covered extensive support for third party data feeds, P2P integration capabilities, and customizable reporting, but that doesn’t mean Iasta has been sleeping. Since then they’ve had a new major release, and a few minor releases, of their platform, which have included the following improvements:

Extended and Streamlined Project Management
One of the big changes was the ability for an organization, and a user, to define configurable project fields with whatever information they want to track — and all of the user-defined fields can be included in scorecards and analytics. So, in addition to name, start date, end date, etc. you can have custom sub-types, budget codes, execution hours, etc. The project team can be defined by role, with as few or as many roles as you like, and each role can have the user assigned, and re-assigned, as necessary.

Furthermore, setting up a project is a quick 5-step wizard-driven process:

  1. Basic Project Metadata
  2. Project Team and Customized Fields
  3. Project Classification and Value
  4. Bid Type, Display Settings, and Additional (Optional) Project Properties
  5. Lots and Items

Executive Analytics

In addition to the standard Smart Analytics module that was introduced in version 8, Iasta has added a new Executive Analytics module built on top of the Smart Analytics module that includes a set of dashboards with the most commonly requested executive reports and requests split into sourcing, scorecard, contract, profile, and trending dashboards.

In addition, each user can define their own dashboards with their own reports on any data fields associated with any data element from any project, supplier, contract, scorecard, etc. they have access to. New dashboards that can come pre-packaged with the solution include diversity and savings tracking dashboards. If you integrate an e-Procurement or Accounts Payable system feed (with a daily or weekly update), the reports on the savings tracking dashboard will compare actual versus projected spend and show you captured versus projected savings.

Excel Bidding & Embedded Optimization

Not only can bids be submitted in Excel, but Iasta finally added the ability to define individual bid fields in an Excel spreadsheet and upload complete bids broken down on all relevant cost dimensions – unit quote, shipping, tariffs, surcharges, etc. In addition, the optimization module, which used to be stand-alone (and which required projects to be imported to build models), is now embedded in the main suite and it’s easy to switch to the optimization tab and pre-populate a model with bids collected in an RFX.

Streamlined Supplier Portal

One thing Iasta has learned is that, even if a supplier makes a claim to the contrary, they are never as technical or proficient with the tool as the buyer and the best way to not only get a supplier to use a tool, but to minimize the supplier management and support time required as well, is to make that tool as easy to use as possible from the perspective of the supplier. As a result, they have completely redesigned their supplier portal so that when a supplier (rep) logs in, they can quickly see their current tasks in a front-and-center task list that breaks down their task by type, their active projects by status, their most recently completed tasks and projects, and quick links to their profile, training, and scorecards. Each project has a clear and succinct timeline and status for each of their requirements, bid and award history is available for each lot, and outstanding surveys are on the main page as well.

Survey navigation is greatly improved, with the user being able to quickly jump to specific pages and see the status of each page that is her responsibility. She can also assign pages to other team members if their input is needed or they are better able to provide the information. Everything is fully indexed and searchable and it’s designed to be just as easy for a supplier to manage her bidding and survey completion projects as it is for a buyer to manage his RFX and survey creation projects.

Session Sharing

In their newest version, Iasta has implemented a screen-share technology where a user can send her colleague or superior a link through an email that they can use to enter a screen-share with the user within the Iasta application, see what the user sees, and even take over the mouse and drive if need be. The Iasta platform is providing a great, easy, way to get multiple users on the same page.


Sourcing platform for users and bosses too. Sweet.
SaaS on the cloud, always on, real-time reporting complete. L33t.
Analyze this. Auctions, Performance. Real time data.
Optimize It. Contracts, and vendor schema.
One. Two. Smart-Source Success!

 


Sourcing Smart-Source Style.
Smart-Source Style.

How BizSlate is Bringing Sexy Back to ERP! Part II

As per our last post, ERP used to be sexy, but hasn’t been that way in a while. That needs to change, because ERP should be sexy. Fortunately for us, BizSlate has decided to do something about it. They agree that ERP should be appealing, exciting, glamorous, trendy, and just a little risqué and are doing something about it. In our last post, we discussed what they are doing to make it appealing, exciting, and even glamorous. And if that isn’t enough to whet your whistle and take a look at what a modern ERP should be, today we’re going to discuss some of the things they are doing to make it trendy and even risqué!

Trendy

When it comes to ERP, Icona Pop got it right:


You’re on a different road I’m in the Milky Way
You want me down on Earth, but I am up in space
You’re so damn hard to please, we gotta kill this switch
You’re from the seventies, but I’m a nineties bitch

Fundamentally, ERP hasn’t changed since the nineties, which is two decades behind where it needs to be. When ERP came out in the late 80’s, the World Wide Web didn’t even exist. It was 1992 before the first commercial sales website was put up, and 1995 before the US National Science Foundation lifted its strict prohibition of commercial enterprise on the internet (which, as per our recent history lesson, was almost immediately followed by the release of the first commercial spam — damn you, NSF!). One-click on-line shopping? It wasn’t even a pipe dream! By the time Amazon.com hit the mainstream in the late nineties, the ERP, formally defined by Gartner Group back in 1990, was quite mature and, like an old dog, unable to learn new tricks.

That’s why BizSlate went back to basics and rebuilt its ERP from the ground up. This allowed it to replace old-fashioned OLAP with real-time reporting, offline down-time forecast generation with real-time what-if forecasting, batch-mode accounting/procurement system integration and reporting with real-time integration and query execution, etc. For the first time in over a decade, ERP is trendy again — and it’s not even 2038!*

Risqué

It’s disruptive — in addition to the appealing, exciting, glamorous, and trendy features discussed above, it’s re-built the ERP from the ground up to follow and support the life-cycle of the product through your supply chain. Additional features that have been included to support this are cross-reference SKUS, which allow you to track, and use, all of the different SKUS used by your suppliers and customers seamlessly and interchangeably; a full-featured web-based API that allow a front end interface to be developed for any web-based browser (so a slimmed down interface can be developed for your smartphone, should you so choose, and their product already supports the iPad, allowing your sales people to check product availability and take orders in real-time on the trade show floor with 100% confidence that all promises made can be kept); support for multiple types of e-Document exchange and the ability to define the type of e-Document exchange (EDI, XML, e-mail PDF attachment) that will be used with each customer or vendor for each type of communication; fine-grained roles and responsibilities and appropriate support for company, agent, supplier, vendor, and licensor representatives; multi-order receiving capability (which isn’t even found in mature products like NetSuite), multi-order shipment update; an API for shopping cart integration (in alpha); etc.

All this is in addition to the unique bulk order functionality, tight GL integration, multi-edit capability, pre-pack/re-pack functionality, and document generation discussed in our first two posts on how BizSlate is ERP for the Small to Mid-Size Distributor that was Released to Mid-Sized Distributors and Retailers to the Masses last year.

BizSlate wants to redefine what it means to be ERP. And bring sexy back to ERP.

* ERP hasn’t been trendy since it was promoted as the cure to the year 2000 problem, brought about by mainframe, mini-computer, and windows programmers that decided to save bytes by representing years using two digits instead of four. The next impending disaster isn’t until 2038, when all Unix-like systems that store the system time as a signed 32-bit integer, reach their maximum value. (Unless, of course, you think the Network Time Protocol will fail when it reaches it’s max value in 2036.)