Category Archives: Vendor Review

Services Struggles? Get Zivio. It’s Apropos!

In Friday’s post we told you not to use a sub-standard sourcing solution for services sourcing because, in the end, you won’t realize the value you expect or collect the data you need to make better awards in the process. And we know that left you with questions because all the big platforms you know don’t do services, or at least do not do services well.

So, today, we provide one answer to that problem — Zivio, a relatively new player that specializes in complex services sourcing, that is Best of Breed, and that meets the requirement of being able to integrate into an existing platform or ecosystem that contains open APIs and that can accept all of the data it can capture, generate, and exchange, with its complete, open, APIs.

Zivio was designed to manage the entire process from initial project creation through supplier onboarding, selection, and approval to milestone tracking and management to close-out, final bill-out and reporting. Each step of the process is designed to be easy to use and efficient and makes use of any existing templates and knowledge in the tool, using AI where (and only where) appropriate.

Their new project definition wizard, called ScopeIQ, is designed for quick Statement of Work (SoW) creation and all a requisitioner has to do is enter a few short sentences with the most relevant keywords and the solution will suggest a title based upon similar projects in the past, which the user can accept or edit, and then, using past project descriptions (from the company and publicly available datasets), it will use AI to assemble a project description and statement of work that the user can then review and edit. If the organization does a number of similar projects, it works exceptionally well and the starting statements of work and project descriptions are quite good and often need little editing (comparatively speaking).

Once the user has accepted the SoW, they can complete the project definition by defining the appropriate metadata (category, subcategory, budget, milestones, project release date, bid closing date, award criteria, etc.) and send the project out for bid. The system can automatically identify the best suppliers based on project categorization, milestones, and past performance on similar project and the user can select these suppliers and invite them to bid with just one click.

When the bids are submitted, the users can see an overarching summary and select a sub-set for side-by-side comparison. At any time before award, the buyer can easily modify the project description and add or modify milestones. Milestones can also be added and modified after award with the right approvals and agreement from both parties.

The product has good supplier management, performance management, and approval management, especially around supplier onboarding, milestone approvals, and payment approvals. By default, the platform tracks on time performance, operational best practice, and on budget metrics by supplier, but can be configured on implementation to track more. It also computes an overall score for easy ranking purposes (which can also be customized on implementation). When it comes to reports, there are a large number of project, milestone, supplier, and financial reports out-of-the-box, and more can be easily configured on implementation. Plus, as the platform was built to integrate with your existing S2P/ERP platform / ecosystem, it can push all of the data out to an external tool where you can do additional reporting and analysis.

But the best part about the tool is the ability to define complex services projects to any level of detail needed, with as many milestones, tasks, and approvals as required, customized for the project, with breakdown costing and interim payments as needed. And then to log into the system at any time, see where a project is, see where all projects are with a supplier or where all suppliers are with a set of related projects. And the ability to quickly bring up summary reports of relevance to the appropriate level of detail at any time. It’s project based sourcing and it works great, especially when you’ve defined your first few projects and the system can use (and learn) from those templates and suggest SoWs, suppliers, and steps for you. It’s what general services sourcing should be.

Now, before we sign off, we should make it clear that we are not saying that Zivio is the only solution (especially as we’re sure we will see more in the months and years ahead as more people realize how critical proper services sourcing is), or the solution for every business (as there are custom solutions for Legal, Marketing, and SaaS, that we will be covering in our Source-to-Pay is Extensive series), but that Zivio is a solid general purpose solution for an organization with a wide array of services needs that should be considered if the organization does not have a services sourcing solution. It could be the right solution for your organization and, if it is, given the typical overspend in services categories, that means you should have been using it yesterday!

Now that Per Angusta is going away …

… we’re finally getting a new Procurement Management Platform! And that’s a great thing!

Hopefully that last line caught your attention enough to read on (since Per Angusta isn’t actually going away, just its name) because the reason it’s a great thing is that Per Angusta, which finally completed it’s integration with SpendHQ, is soon to be one with SpendHQ. This will provide the procurement space with one of the first, true, Procurement Management Platforms, which, as per yesterday’s post, is something the space is desperately needing. (We doubt it will be the last such platform this year, but it’s certainly the first.)

Why?

1) It will be spend data driven, not just pull and push spend data around.

2) It will support all of the necessary intake requests and output reporting.

3) It is built to support procurement-centric workflows or projects.

4) It is built to integrate with any application an organization needs to support a certain process, sub-process, or data-centric capability through easy multi-endpoint integration with push-pulls at either end.

… which solves the four big problems created by Source-to-Pay suites as pointed out in yesterday’s post that asked where the Procurement Management Platform was.

And how they did it is very slick. Not only did they follow the levels of integration appropriately (where they started by re-creating the Per Angusta UX using SpendHQ look-and-feel, while they were working on data model integration on the back-end [which is a difficult task that many companies don’t actually achieve]) to get to the point where they are now working on full integration, but they built the solution to support third-party solution integration at key process points, not just separate integration tabs / menus, and this allows all of the embedded applications to be extensions of each other, not a pool of disconnected apps you have to glue together with Excel.

In other words, every solution that is integrated is inserted at key points of the process flow where it makes sense to do so … for example:

* sourcing partners are brought up when an opportunity is being created and sourcing is selected as the mechanism
* data partners are displayed in a supplier overview / risk report so that an analyst can punch in to the source system for deeper analysis, metric breakdowns
* partner spend solutions are integrated at key parts of category drill downs if an analyst wants to push out a subset of data for what-if or experimental (AI) analyses without messing up the categorization or mappings of the source system
* key data from CLM systems can be pulled into the core to drive the application, and when contracting opportunities arise, data can easily be pushed out and pulled in at key points

etc.

And on top of all of this, there’s a solid, modern, competitive spend analysis platform built into the solution that is both a leader in data usability and in multi-data source integration, which is a key requirement for spend analysis, and Procurement success, as a whole, because, unless you can get a complete picture across all of your spend (related) data, you can’t truly make informed decisions and determine which opportunities are worth pursuing and likely to deliver the best organizational results over all.

The only thing that’s missing is the message.

* SpendHQ is all about “Spend Intelligence: Clear & Simple” (which is not a unique message or capability)
* Per Angusta is all about “Powering Up Procurement” and “Procurement Performance Management” (which is not a unique message or capability either)
… but neither comes close to capturing what the integration truly is, or can do, or how they’re one of the handful of players that will be creating the new foundations for Procurement offerings going forward (as Suite 4.0 is not just a suite, it’s a platform).

I hope they get it right, as we don’t want SpendHQ to go away too …

Algorhythm: Twenty Years Later and the Optimization Rhythm Has Not Missed a Beat

It’s been almost a decade since we covered Algorhythm (Part I and Part II), and that’s because the last time the doctor caught up with them mid-decade, they were deep into creating their new accelerated cloud-native rapid application development platform, called AppliFire, with native mobile-first development support capabilities. And while it was very interesting, it was not Supply Chain focussed at the time, and not the core of what SI covers.

But fast forward about five years later, and Algorhythm has re-built their entire Supply Chain Planning, Optimization and Execution Management platform on top of this new development platform and now has one of the most modern cloud-native suites on the market — which not only has the capabilities of big name peers like Kinaxis, E2 Open and Infor, but also the ability to run on any mobile platform with seamless integration across modules and platforms.

And their optimization capabilities are still among the best on the market, and possibly only rivaled by Coupa Sourcing Optimization (powered by their Trade Extensions acquisition) — demonstrated by the fact that whether you are dealing with a demand plan, manufacturing plan, production plan, supply plan, logistics plan, route plan, or any other plan supported by the system, their system can find the optimal solution no matter how many demand locations, plans, sites, suppliers, products, lanes, etc. — and can do so rapidly if the user doesn’t overload the scenario with unnecessary constraints. (Even without constraints, these models can get huge, as the doctor knows all too well, but yet they solve rather rapidly in the Algorhythm platform.)

The Algorhythm suite of twelve (12) integrated Supply Chain Planning, Optimization, and Execution Management Modules is not only one of the most complete end-to-end suites on the market, but one of the most seamlessly integrated as well. It’s very easy to take the output of the “Demand Planner” (which allows the entire organization to collaborate on forecasts) and pump it into the “Manufacturing Network” (which integrates with the “Distribution Network” and “Inventory Planner”) to create a manufacturing (site) plan and then pump that into the “Production Planner” to create a manufacturing schedule by site and then push that into the “Logistics Planner” to determine the best logistics plan and then push that output into the “Route Planner” to optimize lanes and so on. (The suite also includes a “Supply Planner” to optimize individual shipments for JIT manufacturing; a S&OP planner to help sales and operations balance demand vs. supply; a “Manufacturing Execution System” to break PDI (Production Parameters) down, fetch actual production data, and validate results; a “Distributor Ordering” Management module to automatically create distributor orders across thousands of distributors; and a “Beat Planner” to optimize last mile delivery for outbound supply chain for distributors or CPG companies in geographies — like Asia — where last mile is difficult (due to inability to send large trucks, need to restock daily, etc.) With the exception of strategic sourcing and initial supplier selection, they basically have inbound demand to outbound supply covered in terms of supply chain optimization and management once you know the suppliers you are going to buy from and the products that are acceptable to you.

The UI is homogenous across the suite, and the modern web-based components such as drill-down menus, buttons, pop-ups, and so on make the suite easy to use — especially when it comes to tables and reports. The application supports built-in dynamic Excel like grids and tables which can be altered dynamically on the fly with built-in pagination to make navigation and view-control navigable, especially on tablets (for users on the go). It also supports standard (Excel-like) charts and graphs with drill-down, as well as modern calendar and interactive Google Map components. Navigation is easy, with bread-crumb trails so a user doesn’t get lost, and response time is great. It’s powerful and useable, which is exactly what you need to manage your supply chain on-the-go.

There’s a reason they have some of the biggest names in the F500 as clients, and that reason is their unique combination of

  1. power,
  2. ease of use, and
  3. and understanding of the Asian supply chain needs (especially around last-mile delivery).

The last point is especially relevant as many of the big name American (and even German) supply chain companies don’t really understand the unique complexities of (last-mile) supply chains in India and Asia. However, Algorhythm’s unique capability combined with their understanding has made their platform a force to be reckoned with in a market that is one of the hardest in the world. And as a result, they have built a platform that is more than sufficient for every other market as well. the doctor is looking forward to seeing more of Algorhythm outside of the Asian market as, at least in his view, the supply chain market in general needs a good kick in the pants as innovation there-in has considerably lagged the Source-to-Pay market that we primarily cover here on SI.

So if you need a good Supply Chain Orchestration solution, the doctor strongly encourages you to check out Algorhythm … you won’t be disappointed.

Don’t Throw Away That Old Spend Cube, Spendata Will Recover It For You!

And if you act fast, to prove they can do it, they’ll recover it for free. All you have to do is provide them 12 months of data from your old cube. More on this at the end of the post, but first …

As per our article yesterday, many organizations, often through no fault of their own, end up with a spend cube (filled with their IP) that they spent a lot of money to acquire, but which they can’t maintain — either because it was built by experts using a third party system, built by experts who did manual re-mappings with no explanations (or repeatable rules), built by a vendor that used AI “pattern matching”, or built by a vendor that ceased supporting the cube (and simply provided it to the company without any of the rules that were used to accomplish the categorization).

Such a cube is unusable, and unless maintainable rules can be recovered, it’s money down the drain. But, as per yesterday’s post, it doesn’t have to be.

  1. It’s possible to build the vast majority of spend cubes on the largest data sets in a matter of days using the classic secret sauce described in our last post.
  2. All mappings leave evidence, and that evidence can be used to reconstruct a new and maintainable rules set.

Spendata has figured out that it’s possible to reverse engineer old spend cubes by deriving new rules by inference, based on the existing mappings. This is possible because the majority of such (lost) cubes are indirect spending cubes (where most organizations find the most bang for their buck). These can often be mapped to 95% or better accuracy using just Vendor and General Ledger code, with outliers mapped (if necessary) by Item Description.

And it doesn’t matter how your original cube was mapped — keyword matching algorithms, the deep neural net de jour, or by Elves from Rivendell — because supplier, GL-code, and supplier and GL-code patterns can be deduced from the original mappings, and then poked at with intelligent (AI) algorithms to find and address the exceptions.

In fact, Spendata is so confident of its reverse-engineering that — for at least the first 10 volunteers who contact them (at the number here) — they’ll take your old spend cube and use Spendata (at no charge) to reverse-engineer its rules, returning a cube to you so you can see the results (as well as the reverse-engineering algorithms that were applied) and the sequenced plain-English rules that can be used (and modified) to maintain it going forward.

Note that there’s a big advantage to rules-based mapping that is not found in black-box AI solutions — you can easily see any new items at refresh time that are unmapped, and define rules to handle them. This has two advantages.

  1. You can see if you are spending where you are supposed to be spending against your contracts and policies.
  2. You can see how fast new suppliers, products, and human errors are entering your system. [And you can speak with the offending personnel in the latter case to prevent these errors in the future.]

And mapping this new data is not a significant effort. If you think about it, how many new suppliers with meaningful spending does your company add in one month? Is it five? Ten? Twenty? It’s not many, and you should know who they are. The same goes for products. Chances are you’ll be able to keep up with the necessary rule additions and changes in an hour a month. That’s not much effort for having a spend cube you can fully understand and manage and that helps you identify what’s new or changed month over month.

If you’re interested in doing this, the doctor is interested in the results, so let SI know what happens and we’ll publish a follow-up article.

And if you take Spendata up on the offer:

  1. take a view of the old cube with 13 consecutive months of data
  2. give Spendata the first 12 consecutive months, and get the new cube back
  3. then add the 13th month of data to the new cube to see what the reverse-engineered rules miss.

You will likely find that the new rules catch almost all of the month 13 spending, showing that the maintenance effort is minimal, and that you can update the spend cube yourself without dependence on a third party.

Per Angusta: End-to-End Cross-Platform Purchasing & Procurement Project Management

When we last discussed Per Angusta last year in our post on Purchasing CRM, they were a relatively new SaaS company focussing on the workflow that ties the entire Supply Management process together.

They were building a SaaS platform to manage sourcing pipelines, track savings for organizational validation, and make Procurement’s impact visible to the organization. And, more importantly, they were building a tool designed to manage the sourcing workflow by integrating (through APIs) with Sourcing, Procurement, and Supplier platforms … out-of-the-box. At the time, they were integrated, or building integrations with, Rosslyn Analytics, HICX, Market Dojo. Today, they are also integrated with Coupa, Dhatim, D&B, and Ecovadis and other integrations are in the way.

Back then, they were mainly workflow, budget management, and great project management. Since then, they’ve added (better) ERP integration; improved alerts with rule definitions that will, in the next release, also support approval management and “toll gates” for better project management capability; added better contract management and tracking support (with forthcoming DocuSign integration); added supplier (information) management capability (that can import data from existing systems); added opportunity identification and management (with some innovative capability for those that also use Dhatim); and added an overall progress management capability … with the ability to take reporting snapshots from any point in time (in the past). In this post we are going to focus on three key advancements: opportunity management, supplier management and the progress management capability.

Opportunity Management was designed as a “scratch-pad” based application that allows a sourcing and procurement team to track potential opportunities as they are identified. To start identifying an opportunity, all that is needed is a name, an opportunity type, and a category. A short description, stakeholder, scope, implementation difficulty, and expected start date can also be defined. Once an opportunity is accepted, a potential budget impact can be defined, and once the opportunity is implemented, the expected savings can be defined and then the actual savings tracked. And all of this is summarized on the dashboard that summarizes opportunities by status, type of impact, ease of implementation, and project duration. But the great thing is that if a customer also has Dhatim, they can use Dhatim’s AI to identify the likely best opportunities that can be attacked and then feed them right into the Per Angusta platform.

Supplier Management, which can take data from the ERP, organizational Sourcing / ERP / Supply Management systems, and third party systems (D&B, Ecovadis, etc.), can be use to provide a basic Supplier snapshot independent of any given Sourcing system that can merge all the relevant data and provide consistent information to all Supply Management personnel. If they integrate a supplier discovery platform, it will be quick and easy to identify the best current and new suppliers to invite to your next Sourcing or Procurement project.

The Progress Management capability is essentially a pair of operational and financial dashboards that summarize target, forecast, and actual results for the year on top of the opportunity management and tracking capability. It’s trivially simple, but when data from all the platforms is integrated, extremely powerful and useful to the Procurement and Finance organizations.

Per Angusta has come a long way in a short time and SI looks forward to see what they do next year, especially as they are now working on “finding ways to use AI to make sourcing and procurement professionals much more productive and effective”.