Category Archives: X-Mas

On the Tenth Day of X-Mas (Best Blog Posts of 2006)

On the tenth day of X-Mas
my blogger gave to me
blog posts worth keeping,
spend vendors lancing,
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* [WayBackMachine] Blog Posts Worth Keeping

Optimization Should Drive Complex Direct Materials Decisions
Building Global Sourcing Skills and Talent in Your Organization
The Spend Management Platform
The Top Ten Myths of Analyst Relations
Hitting the Spend Management Wall — and Getting Over It
The Spend Management Talent Game (Part 1)
Integration: The New, New Thing
Sourcing Innovation: Securitizing Direct Materials
Global Sourcing: Does Innovation Matter?
On-Demand: The Next Generation

10 e-Sourcing Forum [WayBackMachine] Blog Posts Worth Keeping

Reverse Auction Selection Criteria 101
Spend Analysis: MacroMap and MicroMap
Build it and they will come
Sustaining and Growing e-Sourcing Success
Most Favored Nations – Part II
“Change” does not equal “Refresh”
The Future of Sourcing?
The Three Deadly Myths of SPM
Dave Stephens on Procurement, Open Source, and Doing What You Love
Aberdeen Responds to E-Sourcing Forum

10 Supply Excellence [WayBackMachine] Blog Posts Worth Keeping

If Opportunity Doesn’t Knock, Build Your Own Door
Your Company is Being Acquired. Now What?
Top Supply Strategy #5: Getting Organized
Top Supply Strategy #4: Grabbing the Supplier Performance Ring
Top Supply Strategy #3: Sourcing Grows Up
Top Supply Strategy #2: A Compliance Tale
Top Supply Strategy #1: A Spend Intelligence Short Story
The Perfect Pitch In Action
Predicting the Future of Strategic Sourcing: Part II
Sourcing Innovation: Prediction for Future of Strategic Sourcing

10 Procurement Central [WayBackMachine] Blog Posts Worth Keeping

Use “Use Cases” to Evaluate Procurement Software
Performance Based Pay – Thoughts from a Silicon Valley guy
The Future of Sourcing
So Your Supplier Has Been Acquired, What Next?
The Problem with Procuring Open Source
Hiring the Best
Software Patent Pirates
The Other Side Of On-Demand & SaaS
Indirect Procurement Risk Factors
Supplier Onboarding Costs

10 Purchase Realm [WayBackMachine] Blog Posts Worth Keeping

Top 7 Things I Learned About Buying Software
4 Sites for Creative and Quirky Purchasing
Supply Chain Vulnerability
Procurement Succession Planning
When Should Suppliers Get Involved
Managing Global Sourcing
How To Become A Buyer
Purchasing Case Studies
Smarter Purchasing Equals More Profit
Top 7 Signs Your New Co-Worker is a Purchasing Dud

10 Vendor Management (renamed Contract Capital Management) [WayBackMachine] Blog Posts Worth Keeping

Measuring the performance of a procurement department
Rogers and Hammerstein: The Future of Sourcing
Your most valuable asset
Blue Ocean Strategy and The Tawny Scrawny Lion
Are your vendors the Spice Girls or Arcadia?
Quick and dirty financial model: Efficient RFT processes v. contract management: Part 1
Outsourcing contracts: Not all fairness is equal
Trust, service delivery and contract management
Are we focusing too much on procurement?
Cult Contract Management

10 Purchasing Certification (now the NLPA blog as Next Level Purchasing, acquired by Certitrek, was renamed the NLPA) Blog Posts Worth Keeping

CPO’s & The Talent Search
Purchasing Education & Being Open-Minded
Skills For Purchasing Positions
Qualities of a Successful Buyer
Procurement Benchmarking
Talent Management
Sourcing Innovation For Enterprise-Wide Contracts
Sourcing Innovation for Single-Customer Contracts
Government Procurement Ethics & The Slammer
A Common Buyer Training Omission

10 European Leaders Network [WayBackMachine] Blog Posts Worth Keeping

The Future of Work
Spend Analysis: One Company’s Story
What’s Your Problem? Top Hurdles to Supply Management Success
Success Factors for Professional Purchasing
Procurement Benchmarking – Where do you start?
Taking Advantage of the Global Service Delivery Model
Procurement Outsourcing – Where Next?
Strategic Purchasing – Overused and Undervalued
Why e-Sourcing is Good for Suppliers
Low-cost countries sourcing trends

10 CombineNotes Blog [WayBackMachine] Posts Worth Keeping

Optimization Enabled Performance Management
Finance’s Contribution to Sourcing Optimization
Remove Uncertainty from Spend Management
Configuration vs Customization
Media Planning – Optimized
The Make vs. Buy Dilemma
Perspectives in Puzzling
Project Zander and Comprehensive Network Design
Analytics Support Negotiations
Expressive Commerce and The Long Tail

* All posts prior to 2012 were removed in the Spend Matters site refresh in June, 2023.

On the Ninth Day of X-Mas (Emptoris vs. BIQ)

On the ninth day of X-Mas
my blogger gave to me
spend vendors lancing,
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.

In this corner, hailing from Burlington, at a whopping 800 lbs, the heavyweight champion of the space, Emptoris (acquired by IBM, sunset in 2017) and in this corner, hailing from Southborough, at a lean and mean 200 lbs, the lightweight contender, BIQ (acquired by Opera Solutions, rebranded ElectrifAI).

Amidst a flurry of Much-Ado-About-Something, all started by a few innocuous postings over on Spend Matters in the month of Shimo tsuki, the spend visibility debate has been kicked into sixth speed maximum overdrive as the result of an all-out-melee sure to satisfy even the most staunch of Stephen King fans. Even my declarative proclamation that Spend Matters Not!, as a rebuttal to my inquiry as to whether or not Spend Matters Most? has been lost in the virtual mortar fire between Emptoris and BIQ’s legal quests to prove that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword.

Emptoris, the apparent Victor Von Doom of the Spend-Analysis-Driven-Intelligent-Savings-Targets mindset, or S.A.D.I.S.T, has the most extensive offering of any contender on the playing field, with its various spend data manager, real time classifier, spend analyzer, data enrichment, and reporting engines which combined appear to provide more raw power than the Human Torch, the Thing, the Invisible Woman, and Mr. Fantastic put together. In comparison, BIQ, your friendly neighborhood Spiderman, is clinging to the field with its single Veg-O-Matic offering (It Slices! It Dices!) and its unique Meta-aggregation-Shifting-of-Classification-Hierarchies-in-Subsecond-Time capability, or M.a.S.o.C.H.i.S.T., which has me singing the praises of Mr. Popeil.

Both have their virtues. Emptoris is probably the only solution that can allow you to analyze not only your relative spend internally, but relative spend against the rest of the market – and maybe help you break through the curse of those rose colored glasses normally worn by your executives. In comparison, BIQ is probably the only solution that can allow a buyer to look at her data any way she wants to, at any time, allowing her to find and exploit hidden relationships with its transmutative engine, helping her break out of The Metamorphosis she will someday awake to find herself in without it.

Both have their failings. The S.A.D.I.S.T. view of the world is a single view from within the walls of a single, but complete, cube, boxing you in to one vision of the world. In comparison, the M.a.S.o.C.H.i.S.T. view, borrowing a piece of technology from The Guide, Mark II permits you an infinite number of views of the world, with the caveat that they are all potentially incomplete. In short, if you asked mirror-mirror-on-the-wall, who’s the fairest of them all, I would be tempted to say that even he would not be able to answer you. The fact of the matter is, for all you techies out there, (and maybe even a few of you Trekkies), that while Emptoris wins on breadth of solution, BIQ wins on depth, and the best single solution for you depends on your view of the world and the best solution overall is probably the adoption of both types of solution. The single world view to please your executives who like to stare into space with their rose coloured glass intact and the changing world view for your sourcerers to gain the insight they need to make better buys.

But all I can say, is when it comes to legal sparring between two obviously different solutions, even though they both exist on the same coin, is the offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil water-way leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky. For if the fight continues, only Wolfram and Hart will win in the end.

For those of you who want to review the debate-to-date, here is a brief history in time:
“Spend Management and M&A”*, Spend Matters [WayBackMachine], (Nov 3, 2006)
“It’s Only the Beginning for Spend Visibility and Analytics Growth”*, Spend Matters (Nov 17, 2006)
“Emptoris: Readying the Spend Visibility Armaments for Battle”*, Spend Matters (Nov 28, 2006)
“A Spend Visibility Smack-Down”*, Spend Matters (Nov 30, 2006)
“Ariba: Not Sitting Still in the Spend Visibility Arms Race”*, Spend Matters (Dec 1, 2006)
“Spend Visibility Gets Legal: Emptoris vs. BIQ”*, Spend Matters (Dec 5, 2006)
“BIQ Respond to Emptoris’ Lawsuit”*, Spend Matters (Dec 6, 2006)
“Sourcing Innovation Adds to the Spend Visibility Controversy”*, Spend Matters (Dec 11, 2006)
“Emptoris: Blurring the Legal and Marketing Line”*, Spend Matters (Dec 12, 2006)
“What is the ROI of Spend Visibility and Analysis Solutions?”*, Spend Matters (Dec 13, 2006)

Merry Christmas Spend Fool!

* All posts prior to 2012 were removed in the Spend Matters site refresh in June, 2023.

On the Eighth Day of X-Mas (Technology Trends for 2007)

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 2007 should be Decision Optimization and Spend Visibility
  • Emerging Technologies in 2007 should be Collaborative PLM and Contract-Based Supply Chain Visibility
  • Enterprise Open Source will creep into eSourcing
  • Enterprise Open Source eProcurement will take off
  • You get a lot more thoughts for a pound than you do for a shilling.

On the Seventh Day of X-Mas (Sourcing Strategies)

On the seventh day of X-Mas
my blogger gave to me
strategies for winning,
tactics for saving,
five golden rings,
four little words,
tri-focal lens,
two boxing gloves,
and a lesson in strategy.

Seven strategies you can use to increase your sourcing success are:

  • Spend Visibility
  • Supplier Performance Monitoring
  • Smart Country Sourcing
  • Collaboration with Strategic Partners
  • Innovation on Demand
  • Empowerment
  • E-Procurement

Spend Visibility

It’s not how much you spend, how you store it, how you cube it, or how you report on it – it’s how much you get, how you profit from it, and how you improve on it. It’s all about value, profit, and continual improvement. (Spend Matters Not) And that requires visibility – otherwise, you don’t know what you’re getting, whether you’re profiting from it, and what you need to be improving on.

Supplier Performance Monitoring

Supplier Performance Management (SPM) is a business practice that is used to measure, analyze, and manage the performance of an organization’s performance in an effort to cut costs, alleviate risks, and drive continuous improvement. The ultimate intent is to identify potential issues and their root causes so that they can be resolved to everyone’s benefit as early as possible. It’s critical because Aberdeen has found that companies with formal performance measurement programs are able to improve supplier performance by 27% and that enterprises that share performance data with suppliers generate 61% greater improvements in supplier performance than enterprises that withhold this data. For more information, refer back to my three-part summer series over on e-Sourcing Forum [WayBackMachine] (I, II, and III).

Smart Country Sourcing

Low cost country sourcing is good, but smart country sourcing is better. It’s all about being able to move quickly, as Jason points out over on Spend Matters in “Global Sourcing, Does Innovation Matter?”*.

Collaboration with Strategic Partners

Remember, two heads are better than one.

Innovation on Demand

A methodology to solve your tough problems. See my earlier post.

Empowerment

Real empowerment, not just lip service.

E-Procurement

Without eProcurement, you could find yourself buried in a stack of paperwork. Although the real savings come from sourcing, without a good e-procurement system, you will find yourself spending too much time tracking purchase orders, shipments, and payments. Considering that the bulk of your savings will come from strategic activities and not tactical ones, make sure you have a good eProcurement system.

* All posts prior to 2012 were removed in the Spend Matters site refresh in June, 2023.

On the Sixth Day of X-Mas (e-Sourcing Strategies)

On the sixth day of X-Mas
my blogger gave to me
tactics for saving,
five golden rings,
four little words,
tri-focal lens,
two boxing gloves,
and a lesson in strategy.

Six strategies you can use to save are:

  • Reverse Auctions on Commodity Categories in Competitive Markets
  • Sealed Bids on Strategic Purchases of Custom Goods or Services
  • Decision Optimization on High Value Goods
  • Process Re-engineering with Strategic Partners
  • Lane Optimization
  • Distribution Center Optimization

Reverse Auctions on Commodity Categories in Competitive Markets

A good post on “Reverse Auction Selection Criteria” can be found over on e-Sourcing Forum [WayBackMachine], where you can also find a good post on “Reverse Auction Strategy” and “Reverse Auction Basics”.

Sealed Bids on Strategic Purchases of Custom Goods or Services

If the category is strategic, you should not use a reverse auction or open-bid methodology and have suppliers compete solely on price – after all, quality will be just as important.

Decision Optimization on High Value Goods

An introduction to decision optimization can be found in one of my first posts on this blog and in my optimization series (I, II, III, and IV) over on e-Sourcing Forum. Additional information can be found in my CombineNet (acquired by Jaggaer) series (I, II, III, and IV).

Process Re-engineering with Strategic Partners

Streamline processes increases productivity. This allows you to increase spend under management and the savings you can generate.

Lane Optimization

Make sure you are using the right lanes at the right service levels from the right carriers. Otherwise, you could be considerably overspending on your transportation.

Distribution Center Optimization

See the fourth post in my CombineNet Series, BoB’s Unique Talents for a description of this process.