Category Archives: Vendor Review

Iasta: Smart Source-Style! Part II.

To the tune of Gangnam Style.

Sourcing Smart-Source Style.
Smart-Source Style.

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!

In Part I, we covered the first three significant changes to the Iasta platform since we last covered Iasta in depth on SI three years ago. Today, we cover the remaining significant changes.

Extensive Support for Third Party Data Feeds
Realizing that no analytics platform is complete without the ability to enhance the data with supplementary data that makes it meaningful (like index data for raw materials / components, inventory cost data from an ERP, services spend from a third party management [3PM] system, etc.), Iasta has developed native in-house capabilities to pull in data from a plethora of ERP/MRPs, e-Procurement/P2P systems, and third-party data feeds (like D&B, etc.) as well as custom feeds from sources you already use.

P2P Integration Capabilities
Iasta knows that the best sourcing event is all for naught if the sourcing plan, ultimately embedded in a contract, is not properly implemented and followed through and 40% of the negotiated savings leaks and goes down the drain. Thus, they have developed powerful P2P integration capabilities in-house and can suck in all of the transactional data from your e-Procurement and/or P2P systems, map it against your contracts, and let you monitor spend in near-real time as the contract progresses. This way, if the contract is being neglected, the buyer can detect that after the first or second purchase, and not three years down the road during the re-sourcing event when all of the negotiated savings have been lost due to maverick spending or dishonoured discounts and/or rebates on the part of the supplier.

Customizable Reporting and Dashboards for Users and Executives
While Iasta, like other (e-)Sourcing and (e-)Procurement providers has always had sourcing dashboards, by module and by suite, it has developed the ability for users to create their own dashboards using pre-configured reports and widgets, custom reports (which can be created by its custom reporting engine), or existing dashboard templates. Most clients don’t, choosing to have Iasta do it for them, but the extensive reporting and dashboard configuration capabilities allow Iasta to create extensive summary dashboards to meet any need or desire in a matter of hours. Buyers can see what they need to see to be most effective on a daily basis, supervisors can see what they need to see to make sure all of their buyers’ programs are progressing appropriately, and high-level executives can get their traditional 6-gage 30,000 foot view dashboard and see that everything is, or is not, under control.

A Broader Services Offering
Iasta is finding what many other software and services providers are finding, that most organizations that (still) don’t have a (modern) (e-)Sourcing platform don’t have the resources to manage one, the skills to fully apply one, or the support to acquire either. The fact that an average organization still is not hiring or putting money back in the training budget means that a new supply management software acquisition is not beneficial to an organization without vendor or third party support. Due to the lack of talent, and training, most of the advanced functionality ends up being shelf-ware unless it’s used by an appropriately knowledgeable third party. So, like BravoSolution, Iasta has extended their suite of services and are now doing as much, or more, services work than software support. In addition to being able to fully manage events, they can fully manage sourcing programs, spend analysis efforts, integrations with P2P or ERP systems, and training efforts.

Other changes include enhanced category management and sourcing pipeline management capabilities, built-in trend reporting and variance analysis, geographic reporting, enhanced project management with milestone-level tracking, and built-in supplier scorecards.

It’s an extensive suite, and exemplative of why Iasta is now a clear-leader in the e-Sourcing mid-market.


We are the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx
Our great computers fill the hallowed halls!

Iasta: Smart Source-Style! Part I.

Iasta: Smart Source-Style! Part I.

It’s 2012 and your fiscal year is coming to an end.
It’s time to get a handle on organizational spend.
Because if you don’t, you will find that the Mayans were dead on.
And in 2013, your organization will be gone.

But there’s no need to worry because, Iasta’s got (To the tune of Gangnam Style)

Sourcing Smart-Source Style.
Smart-Source Style.

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!

So what’s changed since we last covered Iasta in depth in 2008/2009? Especially since the solution footprint looks the same from a cursory review of their web site? If you’re taking a thirty-thousand foot view, not much. But if you take the time to get down in the weeds, everything!

The biggest changes are:

  1. Native Analytics Capability
  2. Improved (Native) Contract Management Capability
  3. Better, Integrated, SIM and SPM Capabilities
  4. Extensive Support for Third Party Data Feeds
  5. P2P Integration Capabilities
  6. Customizable Reporting and Dashboards for Users and Executives
  7. A Broader Services Offering

Native Analytics Capability
A few years ago, Iasta was dependent on third parties like BIQ, now part of Opera Solutions and Spend Radar, now part of SciQuest for their spend analytics capability. And while they still make use of third parties for initial cleansing and classification in new initiatives, they now have the same slice-and-dice reporting capability that you’ll find in any other sourcing suite on the market. (And while it doesn’t have the data analytics power of best-in-class solutions like BIQ, it is the 80% solution for most sourcing departments, especially in the mid-market, which typically have very little insight into spend.)

Improved (Native) Contract Management Capability
A few years ago, Iasta’s contract management capability was limited to the definition of a few meta-data elements. Now, it’s a fully featured contract management offering that allows for storage and indexing of all your contracts, authoring of new contracts, and automated reporting for SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley) to keep you out of stripes like Fox.

Better, Integrated, SIM and SPM Capabilities
You wouldn’t know it from their web-site, but Iasta has developed some fairly extensive built-in SIM/SPM capabilities that your organization can use to track compliance, performance, sustainability, and risk data elements that can have an impact on your sourcing events. In addition, this is integrated with the supplier data that has always been collected in the RFX module and the contract data in the contract module and all of this data can be sliced and diced by Iasta’s built-in analytics and reporting modules.

In Part II we’ll cover the remaining significant changes.

Wallmedien Puts Another Brick in the Wall – With Contract Management!

When I was hired in Procurement there were certain people who would lay bare our spend anyway they could by pouring their derision upon anything we bought exposing every weakness however painfully skilled it was wrought

But among us it was well known that when they went home at night
they too were paralyzed with fright that gripped them fully throughout their work life.

… because …

We don’t have no contract system.
We don’t have no price control!
No spend monitors in the software,
buyers left in a black-hole
Yes, Buyers, left in a black-hole!

Without contract management and monitoring, most buyers are in a black-hole as they don’t know whether their carefully negotiated savings-laced sourcing strategy is being properly implemented. Every organization needs (near) (real-time) contract management, even if it already has a sourcing suite. That’s why, noticing the dearth of stand-alone contract management solutions on the market (as the best-of-breed vendors keep getting acquired), Wallmedien decided to release a stand-alone contract management solution for those who already had a (partial) sourcing or procurement solution and just needed to fill a gap or two.

Like any good contract management system it supports all organizational contracts (buy and sell side), roles-based access, reporting, inventory and spend tracking, early-warning of upcoming terminations or automatic (evergreen) renewals, automatic identification of contracts that are no longer linked to products or services (or that have not been purchased against in the last x-months), and extensive contract authoring features for framework, services, purchase, maintenance, license, telecommunication, and rental contracts. It can also track warranties and alert a user when a return can be made against a contract. And it seamlessly integrates with numerous third party systems, including the big-name ERPs and MRPs.

Since we all know what contract management systems do and how they work, there’s no need to go to deep into any of these points as the whole point is to let you know that if you need a BoB point-solution to augment an existing sourcing or procurement solution, and are having difficulty identifying a stand-alone contract management solution that meets your needs, Wallmedien is one option that you can definitely consider.

Robbie and the Coupa Factory, Part II

Oompa Loompa Doom-pa-dee-do
We can’t stop building products for you!
Oompa Loompa Doom-pa-dah-dee
If you are wise you’ll try it tout-de-suite

What do you get when you’re UI obsessed?
Teams of coders who are distressed
Until they reduce the clicks to one or two
That’s what the ‘loompas will do for you.

Coupa is still trying to make the easiest end-to-end e-Procurement platform on the market, and still innovating new releases on a quarterly cycle.

So what’s changed since our last update in July?

  1. A greater focus on the front office.
  2. A stronger focus on supplier support.
  3. Better Inventory Management.
  4. Universal Search.
  5. Transactional Spend Analysis.

A greater focus on the front office.
This shows up in the form of better budget visibility and better contract management. In Coupa, a user can see what the budget impact of a requisition will be before they submit it, not after the fact. This feature is more powerful than it appears to be on the surface. For example, in one large retail client, every department that used Coupa was under budget, while every department that did not use Coupa was over budget. When people see the impact of a purchase before they make it, they are much more frugal.

With respect to contracts, Coupa has set up a “contract dropbox” where all contracts can be uploaded to the system and real-time spend dashboards by contract. Again, this may not sound that important until you realize that without such dashboard, the average user in an organization does not see the importance, and impact, of a contract. When spend quickly adds up, it becomes clear not only which products and suppliers are critical to the organization, but which contracts — and it also becomes a trivial exercise to determine the cost of buying off contract, which is where a lot of the savings leakage occurs in an average organization. The reality is that most savings available to an organization in the majority of non-strategic and non-high dollar categories lie in off-contract spend. In many organizations, just getting the majority of spend on contract can increase savings 50%. (Given that, on average, savings leakage is 40%, and the majority is due to maverick spending, shifting another 30% of spend on-contract where only 60% of spend was on-contract before increases savings opportunities by 50%.) For example, one company saved 120K in one year just be getting bottled water on contract with Staples!

A stronger focus on supplier support.
Suppliers, who are never charged by Coupa (as this greatly increases the odds that they will use the system) will soon be able to invoice their Coupa clients any way that they want to. In addition, a lot of effort has been put into insuring that their UI is as easy to use as the buyer’s UI.

Better inventory management.
Coupa has created a new API for inventory management and the system can automatically determine if the order is for internal inventory or external inventory. In addition, it now supports configurable lists for items bought on a regular schedule, which support par levels and auto-buy calculations based on current inventory to make it simple for a user to do regular re-orders. In addition, the system can auto-generate GL codes based on user, department, and commodity so that the re-order is charged against the right budget and filled by the right contract.

Universal Search.
One thing that Coupa learned is that its average user did not want to leave Coupa and punch-out to a third party site to find a product or service they needed to accomplish their day-to-day job. In response, Coupa now includes punch-out and other external products and services from partner-sites through scraping and auto-loads. In addition, they have integrated back-end reporting that lets Procurement know when prices change.

Transactional Spend Analysis.
They have implemented a basic data analysis tool (GoodData) that lets a user slice and dice spend by contract, commodity, department, and other basic measures so that they can better understand the Spend Under Management through the Coupa System. While not a replacement for a full-fledged Data Analysis Engine, it now has the same power as any package that contains a canned set of spend visibility reports and a basic report building engine, which is impressive for a Procurement platform. No more heavy lifting in Excel for the simple stuff for sure!

Oompa Loompa Doom-pa-dee-do
They can’t stop building products for you!
Oompa Loompa Doom-pa-dee-dar
They have the goal to take your spend far.

Will Resilinc Resonate With Your Supply Chain?

On Monday, we introduced you to Resilinc, a new player in Supply Management that provides a Decision Support System (DSS) for identifying and evaluating risks in your supply chain if you are in the high-tech, medical device, and automotive space and have vast multi-tier supply chains.

We noted that Resilinc is unique in that it is able to provide an overall risk score, delivered in terms of the relative revenue impact of a disruption, for each location and each product; give you the ability to determine the impact of an external event in a given location with respect to specific supplier locations and sourced products; and identify with locations and products are likely to be impacted by a significant event anywhere in the world as soon as it happens. But we didn’t address another aspect of why Resilinc is unique and why they might shake up the risk management space.

Resilinc was founded, and the technnology was designed, and built, by risk management practitioners in the high-tech / device supply chains, and they have added experts in the medical device and automotive supply chains. One of the difficult, and unique, aspects about risk management is the differences in impact and effect of a supply disruption across industries. In some industries, like automotive, bringing a production line back up is not as simple as getting the missing parts or raw materials; in others, like electronic manufacturing, it’s not as simple as substituting one microchip for another if they have different input/output and voltage specs; and in others still, like medical device, it’s not as simple as switching suppliers when one runs out of production capacity as the industry is heavily regulated and it is often the case that all suppliers must carry certain certifications and insurance policies. Without practitioners who understand the specific requirements, and the differing severities associated with each type of disruption, you never get the right models. And if you don’t have the right models, you have zero chance of producing the right metrics and measurements.

For example, the founder, Bindiya Vakil, has served as the Program Manager for Supply Chain Risk Management at Cisco and the Supply Chain Manager at Solectron. Summit Vakil has worked in product management and leadership roles in Brocade, Cisco, and 3Com.

In addition, they recognize the criticality of solid Supplier Information Management as a foundation, and brought in Jon Bovit, with a long history in SIM at Ariba, Aravo, and CVM, to insure they got their unique functionality-focussed SIM model right for the problem they are tackling, which is different from the problems the standard SIM players are focussed on. (For example, in risk management, it really doesn’t matter where the headquarters are and whether you spend 100K or 100M with the supplier. A hurricane could shut down the headquarters and have no effect on your supply chain but if a supplier is sole source, even if you only buy one part, and only spend 100K, if the absence of that part could shut down the production line, that supplier is still a huge risk if they are located in a high risk zone.)

And their CEO is formally trained in Supply Management. She has a Master of Engineering in Logistics from MIT with a thesis on Design Outsourcing in the High-Tech Industry and its Impact on Supply Chain Strategies. Not many companies these days have a CEO who is technically competent in what the company actually does. It is my belief that having a CEO who knows what the product has to do, and how it should do it, greatly increases the chances that the company will develop the right products. (Because when you don’t, you get devices that light-up when they’re off and drain the battery until they die, and million-dollar toilet paper dispensers that limit you to 5 squares. Don’t laugh. Both have happened.)

So while Resilinc, like all new technology platforms, may carry a technology risk, for those of you in the high-tech, medical device, and automotive industries, I believe that it is more likely that it will resonate with your supply chain.