Another Decade Has Passed. How Are You Doing on the 10 Rs?

Ten years ago (yes, this blog has been around for a long time, especially in internet years), we picked up on a great article by SupplyChainBrain on Ten Steps to Green Packaging in the CPG Industry which was a great article not just because it demonstrated just how many ways there were to make packaging green, but because it gave us so many ideas on how to make our entire supply chain green.

In brief, the ten steps were:

  1. Replenish
    Purchase raw materials from suppliers who employ sustainable resource management practices.
  2. Re-use (Re-explore)
    Use recyclable material.
  3. Reduce
    Use ergonomic design and optimization to minimize the use, and size, of packaging material.
  4. Replace
    Replace hazardous and harmful substances with eco-friendly materials.
  5. Reconsider
    Use renewable materials whenever possible.
  6. Review
    Inspect, monitor, and control waste in the packaging process.
  7. Recall
    Immediately recall harmful packaging and put processes in place end harmful packaging.
  8. Redeem
    Collaborate with retailers and collect reusable and recyclable packaging materials.
  9. Reinforce
    Set up a Centre of Excellence (COE) to disseminate environmental best practices.
  10. Register
    Sign up for a carbon reduction commitment initiative and follow-through.

And they are globally applicable.

  1. Replenish
    Regardless of what you are buying, you want a supplier who is focussed on sustainability.
  2. Re-use (Re-explore)
    Modern science has advanced us to a point where most materials are reusable and recoverable. You should be working to get to 90% re-used/recycled/replenished content within a decade.
  3. Reduce
    Modern structural analytic techniques (especially with the low-cost availability of high-powered computing, low-power cores, and the ability to host data centers in naturally cooled environments) allow for the usage of much less material than before, without compromising any structural integrity
  4. Replace
    There is no need for hazardous materials in the majority of products on the market today. Science has delivered us alternatives.
  5. Reconsider
    Non-renewable materials are becoming limited. It’s not just a cost or green consideration anymore, it’s becoming a necessity.
  6. Review
    Waste should be minimized inside your organization and eliminated in your supply chain. Waste to you can be raw material to someone else. Food stuffs don’t meet your level of quality for human consumption? Might more than surpass the level of quality for animal consumption and, if not, there’s always bio-mass energy production. Metal scraps? Straight to smelting and recycling. And so on. Your waste can always be someone else’s inputs if you are smart about your process.
  7. Recall
    Whatever you are creating should be benefiting the consumer, not harming them. If you screw up, recall the product, immediately fix or recycle it, and improve your processes so it doesn’t happen again. (Don’t reprimand the workers, but fire the pointy haired idiot who requested it or was responsible for guiding the workers. And yes, SI still disdains the average Master of Bullshit Administration.)
  8. Redeem
    Make all of your packaging reusable and get it back. (Considering how many empty miles exist in the trucking industry, this is not a big deal or big cost if properly planned. Coupa Sourcing Optimization and Jaggaer One Advanced Sourcing Optimization in particular have models customized for transportation and reverse transportation. USE THEM!)
  9. Reinforce
    … and mandate! Set up the COE, make an executive mandate that policies must be followed, and green your operation.
  10. Register
    Make a public commitment to carbon reduction, waste reduction, and energy usage reduction, measure annually, publicly report, and follow-through. (And don’t just buy carbon credits or carbon offsets. Don’t make your problem someone else’s.)

Sustainability isn’t hard anymore … and the organizations that start now will be the ones that will be around in the decades ahead.

One Reason Why PE-LED M&A May Be A Good Thing

M&A Mania seems to be at an all-time high! It’s crazy days and crazy nights.

But as per a classic post from 10 years ago, sometimes there’s something to be said for private equity …

and the ability to tell Wall Street to take a hike!

Ten years later, the situation described in a classic piece on the intersection of Wall Street and Private Equity with the Supply Chain from the Supply Chain Digest still exists. And sometimes, the situation is even worse.

To jog your memory:

… one large retailer had the opportunity recently to save an expected $50 million from a supply chain network redesign project, included shifting from a number of smaller distribution centers to larger ones. The project had a great ROI and the capital was available — but the company delayed the project just because of the potential for Wall Street to view the project as too risky operationally and financially …

There’s wanting a good return on assets and there’s pure stupidity. And sometimes, all VCs and Wall Street care about is pure stupidity! The best returns come from a long term outlook, not a current quarter outlook.

So PE inspired acquisitions and roll-ups might actually be a good thing. But of course, only time will tell.

Dear Vendor: Your Code is Ugly …

You heard me! Your code is ugly! Butt Ugly! And if it’s not, then your UI is ugly. And if it’s not, then your functionality is ugly. But trust me. Something is ugly … and uglier than that horrendously ugly sweater you are wearing with pride this holiday season.

So just accept it — and stop complaining every time a new analyst report comes out that doesn’t put you on top. Because, first of all, only one vendor can be on top … and that’s not going to be you. (And if it is you, it’s not going to be for long.) Regardless if it’s a pure quadrant, blended quadrant, wave or some other report, the rating system used is only going to put one vendor on top — which is the vendor with the most mature, complete, and fleshed-out platform against that rating system. Unless you picked that exact path, how could it be you? And if it is you, and you’re far ahead, it’s probably going to look like the rating system was specially designed to put you on top. (We all know the story of the One Million Dollar PO — you don’t want someone thinking that you paid for your rating, do you?)

The goal is to be in the top quadrant, wave, or other leader area, not to win!

So stop complaining every time you don’t come out on top and start learning instead. (Do you seriously think complaints are going to get you anywhere?) If the rating, or at least a considerable portion of it, is objective, then, for every factor your solution is scored on, there’s a specific criteria you can access and evaluate. Generally speaking, if the analyst firm is at least worth its weight in salt, there’s a good reason for that criteria. If you don’t meet it, why?

  • is it because you just haven’t had time to implement the functionality yet?
  • is it because you feel the functionality is too simple or advanced for the market?
  • is it because it’s an area that you don’t define as core to your solution offering?
  • is it because you don’t think it’s relevant to your customers?
  • etc.

You should have a good reason, and you should re-evaluate that reason if the analyst firm considers a specific piece of functionality to be moderately to highly relevant, because:

  • the analyst firm has a reason for including it
  • the analyst firm talks to considerably more vendor companies, that collectively have considerably more customers than you
  • the analyst firm talks to customers YOU DO NOT HAVE
  • the analyst firm has a more comprehensive read on the direction of the market

Now, you can’t win them all, can’t serve them all, and can’t do everything (and definitely can’t be best at everything), so you may want to make some conscientious decisions not to go down some paths and instead go down paths where you can win and serve the majority of the market niche, and that’s okay. But if you make enough of those decisions, you need to understand that the more you have to make, the more niche the map has to be for you to win. And that’s not a very big market.

Winning is not winning the map. Winning is surviving long enough to win the market. That means being ahead enough to win more deals than average, but not being so niche you start winning less or shrinking the market available to you.

Invoices are still costing you money!

Six Years Ago we pointed out that:

  • You’re probably overpaying your suppliers by 1%
  • There’s a 2 in 3 chance you’re being defrauded of 2% of your revenue
  • Up to 75% of your AP overhead is completely wasted
  • At least 1 in 10 invoices are erroneous
  • One Million Invoices requires at least 100 standard 4-drawer filing cabinets

But things aren’t much better.

  • PRGX and other leading recovery firms still recover 0.3% of total spend on average which means the over-payment average is still the same using the rule of thirds (1/3 not recoverable because contracts expired, 1/3 goes to the audit firm in fee based recover, 1/3 goes to you)
  • PwCs recent “Public Procurement: Costs We Pay for Corruption”, average loss to fraud is 3.5%, with a UK average of 4.76% … and while private companies might think they are better off, the cyber crime economy keeps reaching record highs (and is 1.5 Trillion in the US alone) and private fraud losses in the UK almost equal public fraud losses according to a CIPS study
  • Based upon recent data from the 2019 Payables Friction Index, a good portion of your AP overhead is completely wasted
  • The number of erroneous invoices hasn’t decreased

Furthermore, according to the 2019 Payables Friction Index, in collaboration with Corcentric, PYMNTS surveyed 2,570 firms on AP processes and found the following:

  • Paper Still Dominates
    • 81% of firms still use paper checks to pay invoices
    • 45% of firms still use cash
  • e-Cash is still in the minority
    With the exception of ACH, that has finally penetrated more than half at 62%, all other methods (including credit cards / p-cards) are still less than 50%!
  • e-Invoices are increasing
    but up to 34% of invoices are still paper (in organizations under 100M in particular)
  • OCR, on average, is still under 50%
    (as low as 37% in organizations under 10M) and, more importantly,
  • utilization of basic automation, ML, and/or AI is even less
    when modern RPA + ML systems exist that can automate e-Invoice processing through simple rules, m-way checks, bounce backs for correction, completion, and verification, to 98% … and
  • approval times of one or more weeks averaged between 16% and 45% across respondents, depending on the number of approvers needed and organization size … when the majority of invoices should be auto-processed and auto-approved …

In other words,

  • You’re losing money on overhead,
  • You’re losing money on early payment opportunities,
  • You’re losing money on over billings and duplicate billings, and
  • You’re losing money on fraud …
  • … when the majority of this loss is easily preventable!

So why not get a modern e-Invoicing solution, standalone or part of a S2P platform, and stem the bleeding and use that money to hire more A-class talent to identify long-term strategic savings build on a supply resilience strategy?