Category Archives: X-Mas

On the Twelfth Day of X-Mas … (Happy Holidays)

On the twelfth day of X-Mas

my blogger gave to me
a pound of cunning,
another vendor hyping,
blog posts worth keeping,
l’il hampsters dancing,
thoughts for a shilling,
strategies for winning,
tactics for saving,
five golden rings,
four little words,
tri-focal lens,
two boxing gloves
and a lesson in strategy.

Now use it wisely.

Happy Holiday Season.

On the Eleventh Day of X-Mas … (Introducing Trade Extensions)

On the eleventh day of X-Mas

my blogger gave to me
another vendor hyping,
blog posts worth keeping,
l’il hampsters dancing,
thoughts for a shilling,
strategies for winning,
tactics for saving,
five golden rings,
four little words,
tri-focal lens,
two boxing gloves
and a lesson in strategy.

Allow me to introduce you to Trade Extensions. Founded in Sweden in 2000, it offers an optimization-based negotiations platform to European clients (from Sweden and a base of operations in the UK), and now, American clients through its office in Houston, Texas.

Trade Extensions offers a self-service on-demand e-Sourcing platform that is available on a per-event basis and backed up by industry leading optimization algorithms designed by scientists with expertise in algorithms, combinatorial optimization, and micro-economics. Like many other platforms, it offers full featured e-RFX, e-Auction, and sourcing project management, but unlike the vast majority of e-Sourcing platforms on the market, optimization is embedded into the RFx bid evaluation and auctions. It’s your favorite sourcing platform on steroids.

The auctions are lot-based, and support as many items, associated attributes, and prices as you want per lot. In addition, pricing, and ranking, can support arbitrary formulas and comparisons can be made against bid logs and historical transactions. Lots are also color-coded, with yellow indicating fields that only the user sees, brown indicating historical data fields that only the user sees, and green indicating fields that the bidder sees. Example fields include name, description, bidder-entered, type, min-value, max-value, decimals, required, distance-to-bidder, and rank-displayed-to-bidder.

The underlying optimization is sufficiently sophisticated and qualifies as true strategic sourcing decision optimization, as per the requirements set forth in the wiki-paper. It supports a number of different types of constraints, called rules, that are based on filters that can act on any attribute. For example, it supports hard limit capacity rules, soft limit allocation rules, meta-allocation “chunk” rules, and composed rules that specify limits on specific lots or lot components. The rules are template-based, which permit them to be saved, copied to, and applied to any relevant scenario. The filters can work on bidders, lots, bids, plants, and lot fields, among others. Furthermore, it can support alternative bids … allowing tiered bids and certain types of matrix bids. And in addition to standard sourcing and freight optimization, the underlying platform can also support limited multi-level supply chain optimization … which is more than most platforms give you!

Analysis is flexibile and powerful, supporting as many scenarios, and comparisons between scenarios, as you like. The analysis screen also allows you to see the status of each scenario, the award volume, the lane allocation, historic costs, savings, applied rules, and solver data. Reporting is above average and allows you to create your own report templates using a plethora of fields, matrices, formulas, and reporting rules.

Now it’s not perfect, as it doesn’t yet support certain types of discounts through the UI that are occasionally useful (although I’m told the underlying model can support them), certain types of mixed freight bids (which, in reality, don’t occur that often), and the UI isn’t designed to support distribution network optimization (but hey, what tool is?), but it’s definitely a tier-1 solution, and it’s nice to see that there’s more than one company who understands that, to be truly useful to the average buyer at the average organization, strategic sourcing decision optimization needs to be powerful, embedded in an e-Sourcing platform and user-friendly. And, they are improving it every day, unlike some “competitive” applications that haven’t changed significantly in years.

Furthermore, unlike most of their competitors, it’s very affordable. They have an event-based model and an unlimited usage model. Their event-based model starts at 0.5% of the value of the tendered goods and services for a full-service event, and drops to as low as 0.3% of the value of the tendered goods and services for a pure self-service event (if multiple events are committed to). Ongoing licenses start at only 10,000 Euros / month for unlimited use (for up to 10 users). Considering that it was only a few years ago where events started at 100K and annual licenses at 50K a month for less functionality — just for optimization — and Trade Extensions’ platform also contains extensive RFX and Auction support built-in, it’s certainly worth investigating if you have optimization needs.

On the Tenth Day of X-Mas … (Supply Chain Blog Posts Worth Keeping)

On the tenth day of X-Mas

my blogger gave to me
blog posts worth keeping,
l’il hampsters dancing,
thoughts for a shilling,
strategies for winning,
tactics for saving,
five golden rings,
four little words,
tri-focal lens,
two boxing gloves
and a lesson in strategy.

10 Sourcing Innovation Blog Posts Worth Keeping

10 Spend Matters Blog Posts Worth Keeping

  • Watch Out For Spend Management Pirates
  • Spend Management Software — Now is the Time to Buy
  • A Supplier Bankruptcy Checklist
  • Reverse Auctions — Is it Hammer Time?
  • One Recipe for Attracting Top Talent into Procurement
  • The Total Cost Angle: Understanding Your True Energy Spend
  • What Does the Potential of “the Mother of all Meltdowns” Mean for Procurement?
  • Your e-Procurement Implementation Sucks (and What You Can Do About It)
  • Package Engineering — Going Green and Saving Green
  • Supplier Sustainability: Is Your Brand at Risk?

10 e-Sourcing Forum Blog Posts Worth Keeping

  • Kryptonite for e-Sourcing Software Selection and Success
  • Supplier Risk Assessment Best Practices
  • Gloomy Short Term Future for SaaS?
  • e-RFx — It’s Not Just About the TCO
  • Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Telecom Savings
  • Two-Way Scorecarding Best Practices
  • Let the Market Decide!
  • Surefire Strategy For Producing a Consulting Train Wreck: “Just Focus on What You Can Control, You Can’t Be Blamed for the Actions of Others”
  • Strategy in Emerging Markets
  • Can You Really Afford to Leave Millions on the Table?

10 Supply Excellence Blog Posts Worth Keeping

  • What’s Your Bailout Plan? Indirect Spend is a Good Start (Part 2)
  • 6 Keys to Getting More from Your Purchasing Staff
  • Is Renegotiating During a Recession Ethical
  • Managing Exceptions Instead of Pushing Paper
  • The Four Core Aspects of Category Assessment
  • 3rd Party Financing — Cut Costs or Raise Prices?
  • Credit Crisis Collaboration: The Best Cash Flow Alternative
  • Spend Management 3.0 and Beyond …
  • Regulators vs. Profitability: How Can Buyers Help?
  • On Demand: What Software Companies Don’t Want You To Know

10 Purchasing Certification Blog Posts Worth Keeping

  • Supplier Partnerships Mean You Have to Contribute Too
  • The Recession & Supplier Stratification
  • Supplier Financial Risk & Purchasing/AP Collaboration
  • LCCS and Cultural Considerations
  • Turn The Other Cheek? Not When It’s A Supplier Slapping You!
  • Reverse Auctions STILL Controversial? Come On!
  • Supplier Collaboration – Tales of Two Different Approaches
  • Cost Savings Potential
  • Tough Negotiating: What’s The Worst That Can Happen?
  • Purchasing Principles From The Stanley Cup Finals?

10 Supply Chain Matters Blog Posts Worth Keeping

  • Prescriptions for Difficult Times
  • A Perspective on China’s Business Culture
  • Insuring Your Supply Chain Professional Development
  • Supply Chain Management Challenges in the Post Financial Crisis Era
  • Seven Grand Challenges for Supply Chain Management- Part Three
  • A New Look at Inventory Planning Urged
  • Another Lesson of Supply Chain Risk for Food Supply Chains
  • Investing in Supply Chain Technology during Uncertain Times
  • Supplier Portals — The Value Proposition
  • Navigating Through Economic Downturns- the balancing of sourcing strategies

10 Safe Sourcing Blog Posts Worth Keeping

  • Consumers care about the environment and safety; not so much about your profitability.
  • Twenty steps to running high quality e-procurement events.
  • Here are nine steps to safer and more eco-friendly procurement.
  • How can retailers creatively use e-procurement tools to limit upcoming losses from below normal holiday spending?
  • How can the procurement department lead the way in company green initiatives?
  • How do suppliers benefit from participation in e-procurement events such as reverse auctions?
  • Should Retailers conduct e-procurement events as Full Service or Self Service? Are there other alternatives?
  • Supplier selection! This may be the most important decision you make.
  • Collaboration. What appears to be common sense obviously is not.
  • Twenty steps to running high quality e-procurement events.

10 e-Sourcing Place Blog Posts Worth Keeping

  • Reverse Auction Guidelines
  • Gartner Magic Quadrant for Sourcing Application Suites – A Reaction
  • Spreadsheet Worst Practices
  • Where Next? Has Changed
  • e-Auctions in the News
  • On Reverse Japanese Auctions
  • e-Auctions in Supply Management
  • Does Procurement Auction Design Matter? (Part 4)
  • Does Procurement Auction Design Matter? (Part 1)
  • Another reason why enterprise software is generally so bad

10 Transformation Leadership Blog Posts Worth Keeping

  • The Mark of a Leader — Part II
  • Corporate e-Harmony
  • Transformation Insights I
  • Payment Terms IV
  • Deliberate Supply Chain Interruptions
  • Low Cost Country Sourcing
  • TCO — Total Cost of Ownership — IV
  • Supply Chain Components of Natural Gas Cost — II
  • Supplier Risk Management VII
  • The ROI of Supplier Recognition

10 European Leaders Network Blog Posts Worth Keeping

  • Food for thought
  • Psychology the key as survival instincts kick in
  • Lessons from the world’s largest supply chain
  • Suppliers strike back as big boys stick boot in
  • Procurement on the sales radar
  • Europe Catches e-Sourcing Fever
  • Viral marketing hones in on supply chains
  • Tier two cities could put India on the map
  • Research points to new focus on services procurement
  • Supply chain management and the war for talent

On the Eighth Day of X-Mas … (Supply Chain Trends in 2009)

On the eighth day of X-Mas

my blogger gave to me
thoughts for a shilling,
strategies for winning,
tactics for saving,
five golden rings,
four little words,
tri-focal lens,
two boxing gloves
and a lesson in strategy.

Hot Technologies in 2009 Will Be Spend Analysis and Decision Optimization

Given the current economic climate, organizations will start to adopt these technologies despite their concerns that they are too complicated (which has not been true for years) or too expensive (which is also not true). The emerging leaders in low-cost self-service optimization, like Iasta and Trade Extensions, will take off, as will services companies, such as Lexington Analytics and Opera Solutions, that use leading spend analysis software like BIQ.

Emerging Technologies in 2009 Will Be Specialized Marketplaces and Focussed e-Sourcing Offerings

You’ll not only see an emergence of vertical specific marketplaces like MFG and Co-exprise Energy, but commodity specific marketplaces like cBoxBid.

Sustainability Will Be a Component of Every Sourcing Event

Thanks to Walmart, customers are demanding sustainability, and thanks to the EU, many nations around the globe are in the process of defining and implementing environmental regulations like RoHS and WEEE.

Your Favorite Vendor Will Not Be Around in a Year

This year has seen a couple of big vendors, with credit lines cut off due to bank failures, lost lawsuits, and VC belt-tightening, go through a number of layoff rounds. Two of the largest vendors in the space, despite claims of “regrouping”, are in serious trouble and could soon be on the block … along with a dozen small companies that took too much VC money, and sold too little product, in the last few years. Some have great products, and will be sorely missed if they don’t get sold and close their doors, but it’s a harsh reality when you don’t manage for frugal growth, don’t continually focus on innovation not just in products but internal operations as well, and don’t bring in outside expert help when you need it. (It’s too bad that some of these companies don’t understand that consultants are cheap. Unfortunately, many of these same companies are being run by first-time entrepreneurs — who don’t really understand the difference between a start-up, a small company, and the mid-size or large company they came from.)

You Get More Thoughts for a Pound Than You Do for a Shilling

Twenty times more, to be precise.