Category Archives: Vendor Review

How Does Your State of Flux Measure Up?

Your SRM (Supplier Relationship Management) is in a state of flux. It’s a fact. Policies are undocumented. Processes are not automated. Critical interaction data is not captured. And the majority of your employees interacting with your suppliers on a daily basis cannot even identify five of your top ten strategic suppliers. (Finance might hazard a guess, but while dollars spent is an indicator, it’s not a guarantee.)

A strategic supplier is any supplier that supplies products and / or services that are critical to your operations and that cannot be easily replaced by going out to bid to one of three suppliers in the next state. The supplier might get 1 Million annually and might get 100 Million annually. And if you want the best value from that strategic supplier, you have to be a customer of choice.

How do you become a customer of choice? Good SRM. How do you get good SRM? Good processes, and good platforms. That’s why it’s quite appropriate that this year the annual State of Flux research report is centered around technology. In particular, State of Flux will be researching the use of SRM technology globally, the benefits achieved, and implementation best practices for commercial success.

As with previous years, the 75-question survey takes about 20 minutes and all respondents get a free copy of the annual report, released at the end of October. This report has traditionally been the most extensive research on SRM on the global market and is well worth the time investment.

This year, as a bonus, State of Flux will immediately provide all companies that take the survey a benchmark ranking of how well they are doing against their peers based upon the eight years of survey data they have collected and a standardized ranking system that they are able to use. (And if multiple parties from your organization in different roles complete the survey, they will even augment that benchmark ranking with a SWOT analysis.)

The survey is open until July 1, 2016. Take the survey here.

Determine – Determined to Conquer b-pack’s Brave New World Part II

Our last post (re-)introduced you to Determine, a name you know even if it’s a name you don’t, as this provider is the successful fusion of the mature solution offerings that have been offered by Selectica since 1996 and Iasta and b-pack since 2000. We ended by noting that the new Determine platform is the platform that many sorcerers always wanted but never knew they were missing. Today we’re going to dive a little deeper into why.

Now, even though there’s not a whole lot new since SI last reviewed b-pack in its series on Taking Root in Their Brave New World (I, II, and III) or since SI last reviewed Iasta pre-acquisition (in Smart-Source Style, I, II, and III), these platforms have been integrated, their core modules have been enhanced and, most importantly, the (core) platform has a new UI that is not only easier to use than the one that b-pack had before, but is better looking to. (It was straight-forward, and there was nothing wrong with it, but parts of it looked like it was built as a Windows application and not a SaaS application.)

That being said, there are some cool new features, including:

  • Virtual Purchasing ContractsGood invoice and payment management requires m-way matching every invoice to at least a purchase order or contract and, if possible, a goods receipt as well. For many types of recurring payments — such as rentals, utilities, etc. — Procurement does not cut a contract and there is no Procurement record for AP to refer to when an invoice comes in. This prevents an m-way match and makes it difficult to detect duplicate, erroneous, or fraudulent invoices (and this, of course, contributes to over-payments). However, in the Determine system, you can set up recurring payment contracts and define expected payment dates along with expected amounts or ranges. Then, when an invoice comes in, it can be matched to an associated virtual contract payment, and if there is already an associated invoice, if the invoice is outside of the expected/agreed to range, or if the invoice is from a supplier without a virtual purchasing contract, it can be defined as duplicate, erroneous, or potentially fraudulent.
  • Supplier NetworkOften you know who the suppliers are you want to invite to a sourcing event, and often they are already in your Source to Pay system, but sometimes they aren’t in the system and sometimes you need to invite new suppliers that you don’t know. That’s why Determine is building a supplier network to not only help suppliers centralize their data management across multiple customers, but help buyers search for new suppliers. However, it takes time to build a supplier network so Determine comes …
  • … with TradeShift Integration… so that a buyer can find a new supplier “out of the box”. Tradeshift has a large global supplier network that can be used by any customer to jump-start their supplier identification and management for new sourcing events.
  • Full E-mail Approval SupportRequisitions, purchase orders, invoices, etc. — anything that requires approval can be approved or rejected through e-mail, making it easier for buyers to get quick responses from approvers and executives who never need to log in to the system.
  • DocuSign integrationWhich allows for contracts to be created and signed electronically, eliminating the need for paper contracts (that get lost in filing cabinets), paper couriers (which can lose the contracts or fail to get them to their destination on time), and paper cuts (which are well deserved when paper is wasted).

And the following will be in the next release (end Q2 / beginning Q3):

  • Contingent Labour ManagementThe b-pack platform had a very powerful catalog management system, which has recently been upgraded and extended in the Determine platform with full punch-out support to third party catalogs, and seamlessly integrates hosted catalogs and third party catalogs like any modern catalog system. It also supports standard requisition templates that allow a buyer to order merchandising (and simply specify the quantity and colors, etc. of the merchandise), bound documents (and specify the binding, paper, etc.), and other standard make-to-order products. And with the next release, it will also support embedded continent labour / service management capability where a buyer can search for resources with select skills, request a time of service, and send it off to one or more organizational contingent labour suppliers under contract (or create a requisition that will be fired off to the appropriate buyer for a sourcing event).
  • Workflow Driven Dynamic QuestionnairesAt present, the platform has standard workflows for new supplier registration, RFX creation, and so on, but these simply present pre-made questionnaire and forms to the user. As of the next release, the questionnaires will by fully dynamic and buyers and suppliers will only see the questions and information they need to see based upon their answer to current questions and their industry, product, service, etc.
  • Universal Action PlansOne of the unique offerings of the b-pack platform was action plans, mainly used for corrective action plans in supplier management. In the next release, buyers will be able to create action plans for any process — including sourcing, procurement, and supplier development — manage them, and even tie them to appropriate metrics (built on the relevant platform master data).

And within a year Determine plans to have the Iasta platform native and all of the relevant CLM functionality native on the core b-pack platform, so not only will everything be off of one Master Data Management store, but one seamless user interface as well. And given the rapid pace at which they’ve integrated and extended the core platform so well, you can be sure that as long as Determine is determined, this will happen. In short, if you’re looking for a new S2P platform, this to know provider should definitely be on your short list.

For a deeper dive into the new Determine platform, watch for the two-part Pro coverage by the doctor and the prophet, coming soon on Spend Matters Pro (membership required).

Determine – Determined to Conquer b-pack’s Brave New World Part I

Determine is one of those companies that is a name you know even if it’s a name you don’t know (and a name you should know as it’s a 50/50 company with the doctor‘s seal of approval). It’s a name you don’t know because it didn’t exist until 4th Quarter last year. But it’s a name you should know as it is essentially the merger of the Selectica (founded 1996), Iasta (founded 2000), and b-pack (founded 2000) solutions into one cohesive whole (and not just a Frankenstein solution patched together when one company acquires two others).

Understanding that a true CLM-enhanced Source-to-Pay solution is only valuable if it is one solution that empowers one process based on one workflow, the first thing that the new company did was standardize on one platform — namely, the b-pack platform — and the next thing it did was figure out how to integrate the other two solutions on that platform. Since the b-pack platform is, at it’s core, a business process oriented workflow platform with native Master Data Management capabilities, and not a PO or invoice-driven e-Procurement platform with workflow kludged in as an afterthought, Determine was able to quickly accomplish two things:

  • Convert the Iasta Sourcing platform into an “app” on the b-pack platform
  • Rebuild and integrate all of the core CLM IP from Selectica they were missing native on the b-pack platform

which means that

  • even though you have to load the Iasta app to do your full-featured sourcing events that go beyond simple RFX and include powerful auctions, SRM, and strategic sourcing decision optimization (Iasta is one of the six sourcing samurai), all of the data is stored in the central MDM repository in the Determine core, which means it is 100% available when you start the contracting and/or ordering process (and, similarly, all historical data is instantly available in the Iasta app)
  • even though some more advanced (nice-to-have) features from CLM are still missing, there is sufficient functionality (or workarounds) to meet over 80% of CLM needs (for example, native editing and redlining is not yet integrated, but Word versioning is 100% integrated, which is the solution the Legal team wants anyway)

And the core business process workflows have been extended to cover the end to end sourcing lifecycle as well as the end to end purchasing cycle from both a line item and business object perspective (you can trace a line item all the way from initial sourcing and forward to final return and disposal and you can trace the entire history of each contract, purchase order, invoice etc.).

Plus, all of the unique, non-standard, features of the b-pack platform have been maintained and as soon as an organizational asset has been purchased, an asset record to track the lifecycle of that piece of equipment, software license, or IP can be created (and custom managed by asset type); as soon as inventory appears, appropriate inventory records are created (and pushed to the ERP and/or [W]IMS solution as necessary); as soon as a vehicle is acquired or leased, an appropriate entry in the native (or integrated) FMS (Fleet Management System) is created, and so on. The platform not only enables a true source-to-sink source-to-pay process, but also recognizes that acquisitions and artifacts of the source-to-pay process are the starting points of other business processes and supports those as well. It’s the platform that many sourcerors always wanted but never knew they were missing.

And we’ll tell you more about it in Part II.

Transcepta : Global e-Invoicing with Dynamic Discounting Support

Transcepta is an eleven year old company that provides a global supplier network for fast supplier on-boarding and e-Invoicing. Whereas many supplier networks are setup for supplier discovery, and most support e-Invoicing, not many are set-up for straight-through processing and industry-leading auto-match capability.

In addition, most of the solutions that support e-Invoicing are limited in terms of the way invoices get into the system and many can only support invoices through the portal, delivered in a specific XML standard, or pushed into the ERP system the network is integrated with. For mid-size operations, this is typically good enough, but when you work for an organization that has a very large supplier base with thousands (or tens of thousands) of suppliers that use a dozen or more different formats (PDF, virtual printers, EDI, XML, cXML, Oracle Network, etc.), it typically ends up being the case that only 60% to 80% of invoices flow through the e-Procurement application automatically and the rest have to be manually entered or converted through OCR, which just adds more invoices to the exception queue for manual review. That’s where network-based e-Invoice automation solutions come in, and the best ones can easily plug-in to your current infrastructure (through the ERP). Transcepta is no exception to this rule.

Transcepta, recognizing that if you want to achieve a maximal throughput through an e-Invoicing platform, you have to support all of the standard formats used throughout your supply base, has built a platform that not only supports just about every EDI and (c)XML format that you can think of, but also supports Oracle validate integration, virtual printer drivers (that print direct to the platform, which was not a common feature of network platforms when Transcepta first offered this capability), and advanced PDF processing capability. If the invoice PDF is created from QuickBooks (or other supported standard accounting applications), the Transcepta platform will dissect and extract the electronic properties of the PDF to obtain as much information as possible about the supplier, associated purchase order or contract, and items being billed to automatically identify the supplier (from a standard database, such as D&B), and the purchase order in the organization’s ERP.

The strength of the platform lies in it’s advanced auto-match capability. It’s a reasonably well known statistic that invoice error rates are in the 10% to 15% range. SI and SM have quoted multiple studies from Paystream, Aberdeen, etc. over the past few years that consistently report numbers in this range. As a result, most e-Invoice automation solutions will bounce 10% to 15% of invoices back to the supplier or to an AP clerk for review upon first submission. This is a rather high error rate when many of the exceptions are not a result from price or order receipt discrepancies (when the invoice should be bounced back to the supplier with a clear explanation of the necessary adjustments for [automatic] approval and payment) but from missing supplier, purchase order, or line item information that is available somewhere in the organization’s e-Procurement systems.

In their effort to increase straight-through processing, Transcepta has developed advanced PO cloud-match software that implements automated reasoning, statistical matching, and other “AI” technologies that allows the organization to upload every PO and relevant piece of supplier information for processing by an advanced matching algorithm that is able to evolve over time. Using this extra data in conjunction with advanced algorithms, Transcepta is able to match about 80% of invoices that are rejected by traditional matching algorithms. One customer that received 45K to 50K invoices a month saw an 85% improvement in straight through processing from this algorithm, going from an average initial reject rate of 15% to 2%. That’s a lot of man-hours on exception processing saved.

As hinted at in the introduction, Transcepta has a number of other strong capabilities in supplier on-boarding and dynamic discounting, and for more information on these, see the recent and upcoming pieces on Spend Matters Pro (membership required) by the doctor and the prophet.

FusionOps, Supply Chain Intelligence in the Cloud

FusionOps, a supply chain intelligence company that recently raised 25M, was founded in 2005 in Sunnyvale, California (the birthplace of Ariba) to automate ERP-based business processes (like direct materials Procurement and supplier collaboration) that could not be effectively accomplished using the stand-alone sourcing and procurement solutions of the day. However, around 2009, they switched directions and started amalgamating “big data” from ERP, MRP, and other Supply Chain and Supply Management systems in an effort to extract actionable intelligence for their clients.

As part of this evolution, they realized that in order to amalgamate the data that was required to compute metrics that would lead to useful, actionable insights that would guide enterprises in cost reduction, efficiency improvements, and customer service improvements, they would have to extract “big data” from a MDM solution. But most companies do not have a MDM (master data management) solution, “big data” scientists to work on the data, or the know how. As a result, FusionOps realized that they had to focus on “big data as a service” though a “supply chain intelligence cloud” which provided their clients with the metrics and models they need for diagnostic, predictive, and even prescriptive analytics.

The FusionOps solution s a pure SaaS-based solution with an open API that can be used to integrate with any supply chain / supply management solution that can import or export data. Out-of-the-Box it can integrate with over a dozen platforms including SAP, Oracle, Infor, JDA, Microsoft Dynamics, IBM, IFS, Kinaxis, and QAD. The solution is implemented as an application suite that combines S&OP, Procurement, Finance, Inventory, Quality, Production Planning, Sales, and Customer Service data into a cohesive whole across 50+ built-in models that cover over 1,000 KPIs across the inbound, internal, and outbound supply chains.

From this data, the platform can create customized reports, dashboards, and even infographics, which can be easily extended, modified, and enhanced by the user. This makes it easy for the system to be used for day to day tactical operations planning, reporting, executive briefings, and strategic planning. Many of their larger clients use the system in C-Suite briefings and Board briefings, as the reports and graphics can be configured to use company colours and templates.

For a deep-dive on the solution — including the three-main dashboard, report builder, and reporting solutions — check out the doctor and the prophet‘s deep dive over on Spend Matters Pro (membership required) which will dive into the strengths, weaknesses, and unique capabilities.