Category Archives: Vendor Review

BravoSolution’s Business Center 2.0 – A Complete Category Solution for Transportation, MRO, Temporary Labour, GPO Category Management, and Retail: Part I

Two years ago, we reviewed BravoSolution’s Business Center Category Sourcing Solution that took e-Sourcing to a new level for nine common categories that provided the average Supply Management organization with a considerable sourcing challenge. In order to maximize savings in each of these categories, the organization needed to construct category-specific RFQs/RFBs for the category, collect extensive amounts of detailed data, build a tailored model, and/or analyze the impact of each possible sourcing decision. And if the RFXs were designed wrong, the data was incomplete, or the model missed key trade offs, the solutions were sub-optimal at best, and not even as good as the current supply management situation in the worst case.

That’s why BravoSolution built a solution that, capturing the years of experience and knowledge built-up by their global sourcing and solutions teams (who work out of offices in ten different countries on four different continents), that would allow a buyer to:

  • define an event of the supported type with the click of a mouse,
  • dynamically determine appropriate, and minimal, data requirements,
  • send the appropriate RFXs to the chosen suppliers with just a few clicks of the mouse,
  • push the data into the optimization engine,
  • add or remove (default and pre-defined) constraints with a few mouse clicks, and
  • select the award scenario and generate a contract template with a click of the mouse.

It was a great leap forward in e-Sourcing technology for the average buyer who was not an expert in e-Sourcing, and definitely not an expert in the chosen categories. But it had limits — specifically, out-of-the-box, it was limited to the categories that it supported or to categories for which repeatable methodologies could be identified and for which appropriate workflows could be implemented (as long as the buying organization was willing to work with the BravoSolution team to build a new category solution).

Knowing this, and knowing that certain industries had needs that were different than other industries, BravoSolution decided that what was needed was an equally simple solution that could be applied company wide (to all significant categories) for buyers in industries that needed extra support (either due to the complex nature of the problems, the time intensiveness of the categories, or the average level of e-Sourcing sophistication of the buyer in an industry where the average organization is arriving late to the advanced sourcing party). This is because BravoSolution realized that the reality of the situation is that if e-Sourcing is easy to use for some categories, but hard to use for other categories, the organization will continually favour the easy categories in their sourcing efforts, to the detriment of the organization’s cost savings or value generation goals. If a sourcing event is appropriately designed and effectively executed, and the organization has Procurement policies and systems in place to insure that the identified and negotiated savings are appropriately captured, most of the savings are going to be identified in the first event and the incremental return on subsequent events, especially in an economy where costs are going up and the supplier has more bargaining power, will be minimal. Meanwhile, more and more dollars will flow down the drain as savings-rich categories get continually ignored.

But if the sourcing team is presented with a solution where every souring event is as easy as every other sourcing event, intelligence is built in for all of the common categories, and existing data (such as supplier locations, contract transportation pricing, production constraints, etc.) can be re-used and propagated from one event to the next, then every category is going to be given equal consideration for the strategic sourcing treatment. And BravoSolution’s new and improved business center solution makes this a reality for the Transportation (3PL), MRO, Temporary Labour, GPO Category Management, and Retail industries.

In the remainder of this series, we will discuss BravoSolution’s new business center solution, built on collaborative sourcing capabilities (that were covered in these posts on Collaborative Sourcing, High Definition Sourcing, and Category Excellence) for MRO, GPO Category Management, and Retail. Stay tuned. (We’ll be back at the same KaT time on the same KaT channel.)

Vinimaya: Taking Their Procurement Marketplace Global, Part II

In Part I we noted that Vinimaya, despite scaling back on their marketing efforts for about two years, has been hard at work extending their core Procurement Marketplace platform to be a fully-featured Procurement Marketplace platform that fills the gap that ERP e-Procurement solutions leave wide open. Specifically, while the average ERP e-Procurement solution does great when it comes to master data management; workflow, approval, and PO management; and financial system integration; it doesn’t do so hot when it comes to content management, search, ordering, and invoice management. (Just ask vendors like Wallmedien that became the number one e-Procurement provider in Germany by filling in the holes in the SAP e-Procurement solution and Nipendo that is growing fast here in North America by offering an e-Invoice management and automation solution that most e-Procurement solutions are missing.)

The proof that Vinimaya fills the gap is, as they say, in the pudding that a large number of large organizations are eating. The Vinimaya solution, which has had great success in the private and public sectors, and which supports 37 different currencies, is utilized by buyers and suppliers in 13 languages across 80 countries on 6 different continents. That’s pretty damn good for a small company with less than 75 employees headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. Vinimaya’s success is due to the uniqueness it brings to the table. A unique federated search capability, a pure focus on the features other platforms lack, and a rapid implementation timeline (as a customer can go live on already supported supplier [platforms] immediately and most suppliers can be added within 24 hours) are just some of the reasons for their success. Other reasons include the platform’s ability to validate pricing in real time, force compliance if required, track pricing discrepancies, and get an organization’s spend under management.

And then there’s Vinimaya’s new vTransport solution that runs on top of their marketplace. One of the big inefficiencies in most Procurement organizations is invoice management and automation. With no standard means of invoice receipt and management, most large organizations require teams of tactical AP personnel who spend the vast majority of their time simply entering invoices into the payment system and validating basic information. In addition, due to limited manpower, only one in ten invoices gets fully validated and the result is a large number of overpayments, duplicate payments, and fraudulent payments. (There’s a reason that the recovery industry is still thriving and vendors like Lavante are building automated recovery solutions.) Like Nipendo, Vinimaya also recognized this issue and also recognized that many of the invoices are for goods and services requisitioned by organization personnel — most of which, if the solution is fully deployed and effectively utilized, should be bought through the Vinimaya platform.

So they acquired a leading PO and invoice management solution, improved it, and integrated it into their solution. With their new vTransport solution, POs can be delivered to the supplier through their mechanism of choice – XML, EDI, e-Document, supplier network, PDF scan attached to an e-mail, or old-fashioned fax, and then the invoice can be returned to the buyer through their mechanism of choice. And everything can be pulled direct from the central ERP data store and pushed back into the ERP workflow when received. In addition, the POs and invoices can pass through the Vinimaya audit engines which can verify prices and totals and limits to make sure no overcharges or fraudulent invoices get through. While the solution isn’t as extensive as you’ll get from a provider like Nipendo (which also has a print-to-cloud solution and [third-party] I-OCR integration), it’s considerably more extensive than the vast majority of e-Procurement solutions (and definitely way more extensive than what ERP offers) and will give most organizations an 80%+ solution. (The only POs and invoices missing will be for goods and servies not put through the platform – but such requisitions and invoices should be few and far between if the platform is fully deployed.) And the fact that it works with all of the big ERP and AP Systems (including Oracle, PeopleSoft, JDE, SAP, Lawson, Ariba, iValua, Microsoft, etc) out of the box is a big plus for organizations that want a good e-Procurement solution that is going to rapidly get their Spend Under Management (SUM).

Also, as indicated in our last post, the core platform has been extended, the UI has been revamped, and the performance has been accelerated greatly. Like many of the other e-Procurement players (like Coupa and b-Pack), Vinimaya has kept a close eye on consumer search and shopping (cart) technology and has incorporated the best features you’ll find on the web into their platform. Not only can you search all of the catalogs, punch-outs, and marketplaces relevant to your procurement needs in one federated search and dynamically validate the pricing and availability in real time, but you can filter on suppliers, price, and other relevant attributes dynamically, compare items in detailed comparison views, filter preferred items (based on simple or complex rankings) to the top, and track the price (and purchase) history of each item in real-time. Plus, the interface can be configured to each buyer and by each buyer to meet their particular needs.

Vinimaya has also added new quick-order and e-Forms functionality to support regular (re-orders) of products and services from suppliers based on standard catalog numbers (which a buyer probably has memorized) and standard organizational needs. The forms can be used for both simple and complex services, and templates can be pre-configured to meet all different types of service and manpower needs, including janitorial, (simple) advertising, and internal full-time and contingent workforce positions. In addition, buyers can also use them to make free-form requests and send them to the appropriate suppliers using the new quick-quote functionality. While not as extensive as what you will find in the Contingent Workforce or Agency Management solutions, it’s more than enough for most goods-based industries.

And extensive improvements have been made to auditing and analytics, but that, as well as other new development, will be the subject of a future post in this series on Vinimaya’s Global Procurement Marketplace.

Vinimaya: Taking Their Procurement Marketplace Global, Part I

When we last covered Vinimaya, the B2B Search Engine, back in 2008, they were the next wave in product catalogue management. Remembering that Networks are ok. Catalogs are Good. Punch-outs are Better. But Agents are King!, we noted that Vinimaya was the first solution that did real-time federated search across all of your supplier databases, catalogues, and punch-outs through a single consumer-like search and shop interface.

And, unlike other procurement enablement solutions of the day, a buyer could be up and running in a day with all suppliers that provided formatted catalogues, standard punch-outs, or industry standard APIs and the majority of remaining suppliers could be brought on with about one day’s worth of effort due to their extensively configurable agent architecture specially designed to integrate with punch-outs, catalogues, EDI, XML, marketplaces, and industry standard database APIs. And even the 25% of suppliers that did not fall into the quick enable category could typically be enabled in 3 to 5 days.

The solution was the first to give the buyer total control over access, view, and pricing with their local pricing and audit engine capabilities. Marketplace pricing could be over-riden with contract pricing if and when required. And the platform worked beautifully. In 2008, their five largest implementations supported over 30K users and allowed hundreds of suppliers to be searched simultaneously through one federated view.

But Vinimaya didn’t stand still. While they may have had a brief hiccup on the marketing side during 2009 – 2011 due to management changes and the relocation of corporate headquarters, product development kept on trucking and since then have built a large number of new and impressive features and capabilities on top of the industry leading procurement marketplace technology that Vinimaya built between 2003 and 2009. (One has to remember that Vinimaya was the first vendor with [patented] federated search back in 2003, the first “simple search” of all content sources, the first forced ranking solution for products and searches across all content sources, and the first to offer real-time audit of pricing across punch-out supplier search results. In addition, it is now the first solution SI has seen that offers universal search results and shopping from within your ERP e-Procurement solution.)

On top of their base platform, that supported content management, federated search, powerful connectivity options, personalization and customization, globalization, and an easy to use shopping cart with authentication and single sign on, user roles and permission, Vinimaya has added (more extensive) auditing capability, workflow-based catalog management, quick-quote (RFX) capability, e-Forms, deep analytics capability, mobile capabilities, and social integration as well as a new transport framework for managing Purchase Orders and Invoices. In the posts that follow, we’ll dive deeper into these new capabilities and the strides Vinimaya has made over the last four years.

Intengo – Mastering the e-Procurement Tango in Turkey

When we last covered Intengo back in 2010, they were doing the e-Sourcing Tango in Turkey. At that time, they provided an on-demand e-Negotiation platform built around (multi-round) e-RFX and e-Auction with a sprinkling of Supplier Information Management (SIM) and early stage catalog management thrown in. A project-oriented system, it was a breeze to set up a new RFX or e-Auction event in the system and get a new sourcing event going. One of the unique features of the platform was the calendar view, which integrated with Microsoft Outlook and hot-linked to all of the relevant screens in the relevant projects, and which allowed a buyer to get a quick summary of where they were and what they needed to do at any given time. Other cool features were item-level currency support, smart unit support, and bulk-updates on (filtered) lots or items.

Since then they have been dancing up a storm and they are now the leading e-Sourcing and e-Procurement provider in Turkey, with over 100 clients, including a few notable international clients with operations throughout Europe and Asia. That’s right, they have migrated from a basic e-Sourcing application to an end-to-end e-Procurement solution in an effort to serve their clients better. Since 2010, they have added requisition and purchase order support, price lists and full catalog support, delivery notification and tracking, and integration with the big ERPs (Oracle and SAP) for master data management, invoice management, and e-Payment / Accounts Payable integration. In addition, they have also integrated budget management into the e-Procurement process.

A user can begin a requisition from a catalog or from a free-form request. The request can be sent straight to a (preferred) supplier if it is within the user’s spending limit (as defined by the budget), turned into a Purchase Order (after being approved, if necessary), or turned into an RFX or e-Auction. If the request is turned into an RFX or e-Auction sourcing event, the RFX or Auction is pre-populated with pricing from the most recent supplier price list (at the volume level) or catalog if pricing is available. If the request is sent straight to the supplier, the supplier can accept the request and provide delivery information, reject the request, or decline due to incorrect or insufficient information. In the last case, the buyer is notified and corrections can be made. In the case of an RFX, after the event has been configured, the request is sent to the selected suppliers who can bid on the whole or part, decline to bid on the whole or part, or decline to bid because of incorrect or incomplete specifications on one or more line items. In the last case, the buyer is notified, and if the buyer agrees, he can suspend the RFX or e-Auction until corrections are made, and all suppliers are immediately notified of the event suspension. A supplier who accepts a purchase order, who is awarded an RFX, or who wins an auction is able to immediately enter delivery information into the system (which can generate e-invoice data for submission to the organization’s ERP) and when the product is received, a buyer can mark the product as received in the mini delivery module.

The catalog functionality is pretty much what you would expect and is comparable to most other e-Procurement platforms out there and the budget capability can be used to define budgets by user, project, and department and track them against requisitions and awards project-to-date and year-to-date. The built-in reporting is good, and Intengo even has canned reports by brands (which are great for retailers). Furthermore, Intengo can create and customize any report on any platform data that you want, but note that the platform is still missing a custom report builder. However, realizing this weakness, Intengo gives you the ability to export any and all data to Excel or to your ERP (so you can build your own reports using reporting tools you already have). So if you do full ERP integration (and use it for your Master Data), and you already have a best-of-breed reporting product sitting on top of that (and chances are you do), you can use that to build custom reports on your sourcing and procurement projects.

They have also made enhancements to their e-Sourcing platform. One of the most significant enhancements is their formulaic auction capability. This weighted auction capability allows a user to define an arbitrary weighting, composed of one or more factors, to every bid, on a lot and line-item level, that is used in determining the rankings. The user can define one-or-more weighting factors based upon quality, warranty, shipping, associated duties, etc. The categories can be (optionally) displayed to the suppliers who can choose the ones relevant to their bids (such as shipping, warranty included, etc.) and the weighting factors can then be applied behind the scene. In addition, during an auction, suppliers can also suggest substitutions for each line-item and lot, which a buyer can accept. (And, if necessary, the buyer can pause the auction, define appropriate formulae, and provide additional information to other suppliers who might also be capable of offering substitutions on different terms.)

Intengo is definitely an up-and-coming contender on the end-to-end Procurement scene in the European mid-market and another European e-Procurement provider to watch, especially since, like other European players, they have been internationalized and multi-language since day one on their integrated, single-solution, SaaS platform that allows them to create new instances virtually on-demand. While SI doesn’t expect them to cross the Atlantic for another couple of years, it does expect that the North America companies competing across the pond are going to be seeing a lot more of them on mainland Europe in the coming years.

b-pack: Taking Root in Their Brave New World, Part III

In Part I, we discussed how b-pack, who packed it in for a brave new world back in 2010, crossed the Atlantic in their quest to spread some of their French Procurement bohemian revolution to the rest of the world, bringing with them a suite of Procurement solutions that take you from the start of a traditional sourcing cycle (RFx), through a contract, to a requisition (which may be from a catalog), against a budget, to receipt (which can include asset tracking information), and an invoice, to payment, reporting, and supplier management.

Then, in Part II, we noted that b-pack has spent the last three years implementing (or significantly improving) (collaborative) contract authoring and advanced contract management (coming out in the next release this quarter), advanced requisitioning and services procurement, OCR (Optical Character Recognition) integration, project management and project support across requisitions and budgets, an enhanced collaboration portal, a GPO (Group Purchasing Organization) module, and enhancements across the board to all core and supporting modules while at the same time extending their out-of-the-box integrations with ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and AP (Accounts Payable) systems, increasing usability, and taking (RAD) rapid application development to a whole new level with respect to the degree to which the platform can be customized for a new client. In addition, we did a deep dive into their requisition, budget, and project-management functionality.

Today we want to talk about their new RAD (Rapid Application Development) capability and their ability to customize an implementation for every customer off of one common platform. In the new version of their platform, each of their 30+ components have been implemented as stand-alone modules. This allows a customer to choose just the modules that make sense for their organization. In addition, each module can be custom configured to the client’s need. As discussed in yesterday’s post, the customer can choose just those requisitions that make sense for their Procurement processes in the 1Cart & Requisition Module. A customer that already has a BoB (best-of-breed) strategic sourcing module can exclude the sourcing module, a customer that has a multi-channel invoice solution can turn off the OCR module, and a customer that doesn’t have an ERP can leave the integration out.

In addition, the options that are presented for configuration in each module are then restricted to those that are related to the modules that are selected. For example, the user will not be able to configure OCR receiving rules in the invoice module if the OCR module is not part of the solution. Furthermore, the configuration of each module is workflow driven, so the user will only be presented with configuration options that make sense based upon previous selections. So, if a user selects that only user-initiated requisitions and invoice-free requisition workflows are supported, the user will not be presented with, or be able to access, configuration options for check-requisition.

Finally, the workflow-driven dashboard is extensively customizable and can be pre-configured for each user type. The user, which is only presented with the workflow elements and analytics associated with the modules the user has access to, can select what workflow elements (such as outstanding approvals, requisitions, etc.) she wants to see on the dashboard, and in what order, as well as what reports should be generated and loaded upon application log in.

Using the extensive configuration capability in their platform, b-pack is able to rapidly configure a custom-installation for each customer, that exactly mirrors their current processes, in a matter of days and deploy an appropriate instance of their platform from the start, that includes out-of-the-box integrations with ERP and AP systems and third-party punch-outs for catalog purchases. Then, all that is required to get a customer fully operational is to load any master data elements that do not exist in the ERP or AP systems and, optionally, define the requisition, project, budget, invoice, etc. templates used by the organization. In a matter of weeks, the organization is running on a fully configured, fully featured, customized e-Procurement solution that runs on one common code base that can be updated on-demand in a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) environment, giving the customer the best of both worlds (rapid deployment and extensive customization).

In our next series, we will dive deeper into some of the new capabilities of Version 4.0 of the b-pack platform that is coming out this quarter.