Category Archives: Vendor Review

RollStream: Steamrolling Your Compliance Problems into Submission

Just before the last summer solstice, I introduced you to Rollstream, a provider of a new SIM-centric Enterprise Community Management platform you can roll out to your community. Since then, they’ve been hard at work extending the capabilities of their Enterprise Community Management platform to be more useful and solve new problems.

Specifically, after listening to their customers, they decided to tackle the recurring problems of dispute management and compliance management, the latter of which is becoming a big issue with the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act that came into effect on January 15. (That’s right, if you’re importing consumer goods you have to worry about the 10+2 security filing and CPSIA because violations of either can result in six figure plus fines. That’s right, a single violation of either can result in fines in excess of $100,000!)

Building on their new workspace capability that was launched last fall, which is conceptually similar to Salesforce Chatter, Microsoft Sharepoint, and business-focussed social networks like Linked-In (but implemented in a manner more conducive to their unique ECM platform), these new applications allow these often difficult and time-consuming problems to be solved simply and efficiently in a collaborative on-line environment where all parties can participate.

The workspaces capability, which builds on their base platform that allows you to manage suppliers and partners, their profiles, and associated data, attempts to bring together the best capabilities of modern social networking sites to allow you to hold, manage, and keep track of online conversations that, without the platform, would need to happen offline. It incorporates forum capabilities that allow for conversations, multimedia — which allows you to include audio and video for training purposes, survey capabilities, task and project driven event calendars, file management capabilities, and activity state tracking capabilities. It enhances the supplier on-boarding experience as your supplier can feel like it’s part of the initiative and interact with your global team on-line, 24 hours a day.

Based on this new workspace capability, Rollstream has built it’s new dispute resolution management solution, which will hit general release in a month or two. Based on the repeated observation from their customers that there are millions to be saved if shortages, damages, and mis-shipments can be identified immediately on delivery and resolutions reached before an overpayment is made, Rollstream has developed a collaborative environment where a warehouse worker can raise an issue as soon as it’s noticed and kick-start a resolution process before a payment is made. While it won’t solve all overpayment issues (since off-contract pricing — especially in “best price” contracts, prohibited substitutions, and downright fraud can be difficult to detect at time of delivery), a number of their customers expect to save a few Million a year simply by preventing overpayments for short, damaged, or incorrect shipments. The solution is built around a configurable dashboard that allows you to automatically sort and prioritize issues according to your rules (which can be based on status, merchandise disposition, issue date, and / or value and other attributes) which can be searched on any attribute. All affected parties can query, see, and comment on issues until an owner or administrator determines that the issue is resolved. It’s quite simple in implementation, but getting an open dialogue on the issue started as soon as possible is a powerful tool in the quest for a successful resolution.

The new compliance solution, which will be released next quarter, is based on their new Certificate Exchange Network which solves the major problem with most current compliance solutions. In most SIM platforms, a buyer ensures compliance by having their supplier upload their compliance certificate. This sounds fine until you realize that large CPG suppliers have thousands of customers that need compliance certificates for dozens, hundreds, and even thousands of SKUs. With a buyer-focussed solution, a supplier needs a team of data entry clerks who do nothing all day but upload copies of compliance certificates until they start the process all over again when the compliance certificates are renewed. To try and solve this problem, some larger CPG suppliers have created their own compliance certificate portals that their customers can log into to search for compliance certificates on their own, but since CPG suppliers are not software companies, this solution usually isn’t any better. Customers don’t always know the right SKU or search term, the supplier’s compliance team is not automatically notified when a certificate expires, and poor processes often result in compliance certificates not getting included in a timely fashion. Customers waste time, don’t find anything, and still have to contact the supplier team to help them find, or, in many cases, upload the certificate. And since not all suppliers have this portal, the customer still has to maintain their solution, download the certificate from the supplier, and include it in their own portal to track status, receive expiry notifications, and generate accurate reports.

In the Rollstream solution, it’s a certificate exchange network and a buyer can simultaneously see, and search, all certificates from all suppliers it does business with (who only have to set a flag to give a buyer access) and a supplier has single-point access to all buyers it does business with (to which it can push updates or check the existence of any compliance certificates a buyer might need to import the product into a country). Like the dispute resolution management solution, it’s a very simple solution built on profiles and dashboards that is easily searchable at the global, supplier, and item level across all company, product, and component fields. But sometimes, that’s what’s needed.

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Bravo: Analysis and Supplier Performance Management for Contract Compliance

Last month, I told you how BravoSolution Collaboratively Optimized Its Way onto the doctor‘s Short List. Today, I’m going to discuss their (Spend) Analysis, Supplier Performance Management, and Contract Compliance Solutions to give you a broader view of their solution suite.

To get straight to the point, their spend analysis (console) solution, which takes a standard reporting-based approach, and which includes over 60 standard report templates, is nothing special, but their analysis administration tool, the Transformation Designer, is one of the most powerful administration interfaces I’ve seen in a web-based analysis solution. Most providers tout their “leading auto-cleansing, auto-classification, and auto-enrichment” solutions as if they’re the be-all-and-end-all, but those who truly understand spend analysis realize that you can’t auto-cleanse, auto-classify, and auto-enrich everything, no matter how many rules are in your repository or how many billions of transactions your provider has classified. (And those who fall for that line are lucky if mapping accuracy even approaches 80%.)

Every company is different, every department is different, every employee is different, and every transaction is different. That’s why you have 19 different representations of IBM in your supplier master. Furthermore, you don’t buy the same SKUs from the same suppliers with every order. So even if you had a “perfect” set of automatic mapping rules today, they’d be broken tomorrow. You have to continually manage and maintain your data or your reports will be useless. And Bravo’s Transformation Designer allows your data administrator(s) to do all that.

Bravo’s Transformation Designer allows you to select your data sources, define the raw data tables, capture the raw data fields, profile the data, and define custom mapping and transformation rules on the data before it populates your repository. You can also define a bevy of checks (null, range, date, acceptable values, duplicate, etc) and define your rules based on transformations (that can use substrings, calculations, and lookups). The rules can be layered, with higher priority rules taking precedence and lower priority rules kicking in when there are no higher priority rules. (So you can start with the classic “secret sauce” of map the vendors, map the GL codes, map the vendors + GL codes, and map the exceptions and have the rules applied in reverse order.)

In addition to supporting your standard “knowledge base” of auto-classification rules (which includes mappings, and families, for tens of millions of suppliers and even more standard items), which you can use to start your mapping journey, it also supports automated text classification methods based on advanced statistical algorithms. A proper combination of all three rule types — knowledge base for standard vendor and GL code mappings, statistical rules for automated mapping of unrecognized transactions (that can be mapped with high statistical accuracy), and custom hand-coded direct mapping rules for the exceptions — will get you very high classification accuracy with very little work. Especially since you can use their rules engine to quickly identify exceptions and define direct mapping rules that take care of them. And any time you identify a mis-mapping, you can define a new rule to re-map it. (New rules are immediately added to an asynchronous mapping queue and the queue is processed continuously, which allows for near real-time updates. No waiting for the monthly refresh.)

The Analysis Console also works on their supplier performance data. Bravo Solution is a mature provider of SPM, having been offering a solution since 2001. While it might not be broader or deeper than any of the newer pure SPM solution plays (SupplierSoft, Aravo, Hiperos, etc.), they have a history of successful implementations. (And more importantly, how deep is a SPM solution anyway? As long as it captures data, calculates metrics, allows you to create month-over-month, quarter-over-quarter, year-over-year, and trend reports on the metrics, allows you to share that data with your supplier(s), and allows you to collaborate on action plans in a virtual collaboration environment, what else is critical to your average organization just starting on an SPM journey?) With regards to SPM, Bravo has your bases covered. It’s nothing fancy, but it will more than get the job done.

This brings us to Contract Compliance. Their solution can automatically load cleansed GPO contract data, normalize the data based on supplier families and parent-child company organization relationships, and extract line-items and SKUs. If you integrate with your purchasing system, the solution will automatically match purchases to contracts and flag exceptions. It also supports deep embedding with your e-Procurement system and can be used to identify contracts, price levels, and exceptions before a PO is issued. But the best part is the deep integration that is currently being developed between the Analytics Console, SPM Module and Contract Compliance Modules. You’ll be able to analyze contract compliance against supplier performance at any time, over any time period, and see if you’re getting the value you expected from the contract — and then use this information at contract renewal / resourcing time.

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iValua: Tackling End-to-End Sourcing And Procurement, Part II

In my last post, I described how iValua, a ten year old French software and solutions company, has one of the broadest supply management suites on the market today. From RFX to payment, the majority of the key steps in the sourcing and procurement cycle are covered in one of iValua’s many solution modules. And while it is true that most of the modules aren’t very deep, it’s also true that many small and mid-sized companies, and even some of the larger Global 3000’s that don’t have that many complicated buys, don’t need deep functionality where sourcing and procurement is concerned. Over thirty of France’s largest companies use the solution, including Air France Industries, La Poste, and Arcelor Mittal, the largest steel company in the world.

In this post, I’m going to describe some of the capabilities of the product in more detail. But first, some global capabilities. The platform, which is built on .Net, is delivered via SaaS through your browser. As a result, it is accessible anywhere. Many of the screens are built using a widget-based architecture and, like dashboards, the layouts are customizable by each user. The user can sort by, show, and hide any column of any table. Quick search and advanced search is available for every screen (and table), a navigation history is maintained for quick back-tracking, and the user can customize a favorites link for quick access to specific screens and reports. Finally, all data can be exported to Excel and all supported objects (bids, contracts, purchase orders, invoices, payments, reports, etc.) can be imported from Excel as well.

But the best platform-wide capability is the ability for the platform to be integrated to any ERP, Database, or external data source (due to the existence of appropriate abstraction layers in the platform). Before iValua decided to become a provider of a SaaS supply management platform, they were a custom software development shop. As a result, they had deep development skills and broad experience with a number of platforms. Thus, when they decided to focus on supply management, they were able to do custom integrations for each client. Now that they have over 100 customers, they have integrated with almost every major ERP and Relational Database in France, most of the major ERPs and Relational Databases in Europe, and some of the major ERPs and Relational Databases in North America. If they haven’t integrated with your environment yet, it probably won’t take them long to do so. Plus, using their partnerships with Bureau Van Dijk, D&B/Altares, Vigeo, and EcoVadis, they can enrich your supplier related data when they pull your data in.

Sourcing

Sourcing starts with the definition of a project. Once basic information is defined (type, process, owner, dates, and scope), the owner can define a team, create a message center, define currencies, outline a schedule, and keep track of relevant documents. Then the user can invite suppliers, create RFXs with selection and evaluation criteria, track responses, save analysis, create awards, and create an implementation plan. RFXs and Auctions support multiple lots and multiple rounds and the buyer can determine whether or not suppliers can see bids, whether or not the bids are displayed anonymously, and when they can see the bids.

Procurement

In addition to requisitions, budgets, purchase orders, expense reports, invoices, goods receipts and recurring receivables, the procurement application supports catalog-based buying. The system can be integrated with any EDI, XML, or punch-out catalog, which can be augmented with user-defined items (which could include custom items or services defined in contracts). The expense reporting module supports p-cards, advance requests, standard expense, and travel expense reports. In addition, a supplier evaluation form can be attached to every purchase order (in addition to every award and contract) and reports can be run at the purchase order level, award and contract level, and global supplier level.

Reporting

They have a very extensive reporting tool that allows you to look at data over the time periods of your choice (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly), in the organizations of your choice, in the spend category families of your choice, for the suppliers of your choice, along the dimensions, or axes, of your choice in a wide variety of tabular and graphical formats. Basically, the application builds a master spend cube and allows you to view any sub-cube, or sub-cube summary of your choice. While it might not allow you to do arbitrary spend/data analysis, it will more than satisfy your average procurement professional and manager. (And you could always augment the suite with off-line analysis for your senior analysts if you needed.)

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iValua: Tackling End-to-End Sourcing And Procurement, Part I

By now, you’ve probably heard the foreshocks of the latest vendor to enter the supply management space in North America, iValua. iValua is a ten-year old French software solutions company that has slowly built up a broad e-Sourcing and e-Procurement solution that covers most of the bases that I outlined in my post where I reminded you that it’s sourcing and procurement, in which I also reminded you that you don’t have your supply management bases covered unless you have a solution, or set of integrated solutions, that cover the basics.

In that classic post, I indicated that the basic cycle was the following:

  • Spend Analysis
    Analyze spend related data and find the best sourcing opportunities,
  • RFX
    solicit an RFI, RFP, and/or RFQ and/or
  • e-Auction
    initiate an e-Auction then
  • Decision Optimization
    make the best award using available data and
  • Contract Management
    start the contract management lifecycle.
  • Requisition
    A requisition is created when a good or service is required and
  • Approval
    if it is against the existing contract, it is approved
  • Purchase Order
    and a purchase order is created off of the contract.
  • Goods Receipt
    When the supplier delivers, a goods receipt is created and
  • Invoice
    the invoice is recorded and
  • Reconciliation
    the invoice is reconciled against the goods receipt and purchase order.
  • Payment
    Payment is made after reconcilation
  • Tax Reclamation
    and if VAT is reclaimable, filings are made
  • Spend Analysis
    and after time has passed, the payments are analyzed to insure spend is on target.

With respect to this cycle, iValua has modules that cover the basics for just about every phase except for decision optimization and tax reclamation. In addition, the suite also has modules that address:

  • Sourcing Process Management
    which allows sourcing processes to be customized and managed as sourcing projects
  • Procurement Process Management
    which allow you to define your own requisition, approval, and purchase order creation and delivery processes
  • Supplier Performance Management
    which allows you to create surveys and track performance metrics
  • Budget and Expense Management
    which allows you to create budgets by organizational unit and sub-unit and capture expense reports
  • Customization
    which is an extensive administration module that allows branding, coloring, wording, dashboards, roles, permissions, security, and default processes to be configured

All-in-all, it is one of the broadest supply management suites in the market. In my next post, I’ll provide more details on some of the various modules.

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Rosslyn Analytics – Building an Analytics Visibility Platform The Massess Will Rally Around

In Part I, I discussed how I was quite impressed with Rosslyn Analytics‘ spend analysis platform and their overall approach to the problem as compared to many of the spend analysis providers in the space and how I saw vision, clarity, and execution in their offering. In this post, I am going to discuss their current platform capabilities and overview a few of the enhancements coming over the next few months.

Spend Basics: As I mentioned in my last post, they integrated with over 30 standard ERP/MRP systems out of the box, and can quickly add additional systems with about 1 day of effort as they have developed a rules-based integration platform that allows them to quickly bring additional systems on-line. Their rules-based system allows data to be cleansed, normalized, and enriched in one step during the extraction, which lets you get straight to the analytics. And they can automatically identify dimensions (categories). Like most platforms, their analytics are report (and dashboard) driven, but they have an ever growing library of reports, you can view data on (and drill down into) any dimension hierarchy you choose, and they are building in the ability to add user-defined parameters and indexes to certain classes of reports in the next release.

Accounts Payable Support: Not only do they suck in invoice data, but they have rule-sets that allow them to automatically detect overpayments and automatically generate reports that alert you to duplicate invoices, duplicate charges across invoices, duplicate payments, overpayments, payments to the wrong supplier, and other discrepancies. Some customers have recovered the cost of an annual license in a month with this feature alone. In addition, they also have similar tax reporting capabilities. Their tax reports will detect overpayments, underpayments, and, more importantly, missed payments that could cause import/export problems for you down the road.

Contracts Support: Integrated with their AP reporting / overpayment detection capabilities, their contracts module allows you to upload your contracts or integrate with an external contract repository. Either way, once you define the appropriate meta-data and triggers, the platform takes care of the rest.

Savings Analysis: Working with global partners, they have developed a savings module, complete with McKinsey-esque bubble charts, that identifies your top savings opportunities based upon your supply base, spend, and market indices. While the current version does not allow you to define your own customized savings plan, the next version will allow you to define your own indexes and support parameters that will allow you to tailor the opportunity reports to your company. And while this still won’t give you the control that user-defined measures will, for your average sourcing professional who’s still making seat-off-the-pants decisions based on total spend and instinct, it’s a great step in the right direction, as it’s the first step to truly bringing spend intelligence to the masses in your average organization.

Sustainability Support: While not yet available, Rosslyn is working hard to integrate a large number of external data feeds that go beyond standard price and risk indices and include carbon and sustainability data. Building on this data, and their ability to do trend analysis (which is currently built in for supplier and category data), they’re in the process of creating a sustainability tracking and reporting solution that will be on-line early next quarter.

All-in-all, it’s a great platform for any organization starting on their supply management journey or stuck in a rut because of the limited capabilities and reach of traditional on-premise platforms built with a single user in mind. And when you’re ready, you can use it to supercharge the performance of your power-analysts as they will have a normalized, cleansed, and enriched data source to start with in the application of their stand-alone analyst tools.

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