Digging Into Significant Sourcing Supplier Management Synchronization Part II

Earlier this week we started to describe the second most significant change to the upcoming Q2 Release of the Spend Matters Solution Map, and that is the introduction of a new common sourcing – supplier management section because you can’t do sourcing without suppliers and you don’t manage suppliers without the ultimate goal of doing business with them

This new section contains the following common sub-categories:

  • Enhanced Information Management for discovery and onboarding
  • Performance Management for tracking performance
  • Relationship Management for managing the relationship
  • Risk Management for keeping tabs on, and managing, the risk
  • Enhanced Portal for information management and collaboration

Our first post explained why these sub-categories were relevant. In our last post we covered the first three sub-categories. Today we’re going to start discussing what’s important to consider in the remaining two categories.

So what are the key capabilities we’re looking for in the risk management and enhanced portal sub-categories?

Risk Management

  • Assessment because if you can’t assess a risk, you can’t properly identify the magnitude of the risk and the need to monitor it
  • Mitigation Planning because credible risks need to be planned for and mitigated
  • Model Definition to allow you to quantify both the likelihood of the risk and the expected cost should the risk materialize
  • Monitoring & Identification to allow for the events that could (potentially) materialize to be monitored for and detected
  • Regulatory Compliance to quantify the extent to which the platform can track compliance requirements and a supplier’s ability to conform to them
  • Supplier Risk Management to model overall supplier risk based on assessment, models, external monitoring, third party data, compliance, and performance

Supplier Portal

  • Information Management to allow a supplier to maintain, or at least comment on, their data (and data related to them)
  • Performance Management to allow a supplier to respond to their performance review’s and conduct 360-degree reviews on the buyer
  • Relationship Management to allow the supplier to raise issues, respond to issues, and collaborate on corrective action plans
  • Collaboration to allow full interaction and feedback

These are also all key capabilities for sourcing and for successful supplier management.

Digging Into Significant Sourcing Supplier Management Synchronization Part I

In our last post we started to describe the second most significant change to the upcoming Q2 Release of the Spend Matters Solution Map, and that is the introduction of a new common sourcing – supplier management section because you can’t do sourcing without suppliers and you don’t manage suppliers without the ultimate goal of doing business with them

This new section contains the following common sub-categories:

  • Enhanced Information Management for discovery and on-boarding
  • Performance Management for tracking performance
  • Relationship Management for managing the relationship
  • Risk Management for keeping tabs on, and managing, the risk
  • Enhanced Portal for information management and collaboration

And our last post explained why these sub-categories were relevant. Today we’re going to start discussing what’s important to consider in each of these categories.

Enhanced Information Management
There are three main categories of functionality we are looking for:

  • Discovery and the ability to find suppliers beyond the platform
  • On-boarding Support and the ability to get new suppliers quickly into the platform
  • Supply Base Profiling and the ability to create holistic supplier profiles

Performance Management

  • KPIs and the ability to define and manage them
  • Preferred & Blacklisted Suppliers and the ability to define and manage them appropriately

Relationship Management

  • Issue Management and the ability to define, track, and manage issues
  • Plan Management and the ability to define, track, manage, and resolve plans to manage and resolve issues

These are all key capabilities for sourcing and for successful supplier management. Tomorrow we’ll review the last two joint categories.

Significant Sourcing Supplier Management Synchronization

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve been laying the foundations for the significant changes coming in the upcoming Q2 release of Spend Matters Solution Map, with the new common-foundations and the Sourcing, Supplier Management, and Analytics Maps designed by yours truly, the doctor of Sourcing Innovation.

While the biggest change was the introduction of a new common platform section, which evaluates solutions based on the underlying platform (which is becoming more and more important now that more players are offering “suites” and the longevity of a platform without a good platform is limited), the next biggest change is the introduction of a new common section that overlaps sourcing and supplier management because you can’t do sourcing without suppliers and you don’t manage suppliers without the ultimate goal of doing business with them. (And while this is not yet common to e-Procurement, it may soon be a common requirement for any catalog providers as more and more such providers offer enhanced supplier management and interaction.)

So what are the common elements that one needs to consider?

  • Enhanced Information Management for discovery and onboarding
  • Performance Management for tracking performance
  • Relationship Management for managing the relationship
  • Risk Management for keeping tabs on, and managing, the risk
  • Enhanced Portal for information management and collaboration

And why are these important cross application elements?

  • Suppliers are the life-blood of your organization, but they don’t consistently perform over time and new suppliers are sometimes vital. That’s why discovery and on-boarding are so vital.
  • The key to good performance from your suppliers is monitoring and managing that performance.
  • The key to correcting performance and preventing problems in the first place is often the result of good relationship management.
  • The key to preventing unexpected supplier-based disruptions (which affect a significant number of supplier chains every year) is to keep a tab on risks and prepare for the significant ones with mitigation plans ready to go.
  • They key to keeping information up to date is to let the supplier help you with a portal that is built to do so (and that they want to use).

So what should you look for? While we won’t dive into every detail (but you will be able to with a custom Solution Map if you want to (just contact Spend Matters to find out more), we will highlight some of the more important details ( so you can know that when we evaluate a vendor’s technology, we truly evaluate the technology from the point of view of a technology analyst, not an industry analyst (see our recent post on Industry Analysts vs Technology Analysts) and this is absolutely critical if you want to select the right technology.

Fifty Years of Monty Python

Fifty years ago today, the Monty Python Comedy Troupe formed.

A mere 148 days after the troupe formation, the first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus airs on BBC One! And the world was never the same.

(As an FYI, This is a historic day for Canadians everywhere as it was the Monty Python Comedy Troupe that first exposed the world to the inner mind of a Canadian lumberjack! 😉

Follow the link for the Monty Python Lumberjack Song.

It may not have been the image Canadians wanted to project, but at least the world knew that there were Canadian lumberjacks after its release! [Better to have a message with some impurity than to fade into obscurity.])

(One thing the Troupe didn’t tell you is that a Canadian Lumberjack’s favourite pet is a House Hippo [and a cousin of the West African pygmy hippo], native to, and now only found in, Canada due to the changing hunting habits of the eastern wildcats.)

I am the very model of a modern Global Sourceror! (10 year anniversary)

The Global Sourceror’s Song


I am the very model of a modern Global Sourceror,
With information analytic, subjective, and objector,
I know the rights of charter, and I quote the rates historical
From Vancouver to Singapore, in order categorical;

I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the lin’r and quadratical,
About scenarios optimized, I’m teeming with a lot o’ news,
With many baseline costs for the choice of the blue ocean routes.

With many baseline costs for the choice of the blue ocean routes
With many baseline costs for the choice of the blue ocean routes
With many baseline costs for the choice of the blue ocean routes


I’m very good at direct and indirect spend analysis
I know the HTS codes of products electronicalculous
In short, in matters analytic, subjective, and objector
I am the very model of a modern global sourceror

In short, in matters analytic, subjective, and objector
He is the very model of a modern global sourceror


I know our mythic history, Free Markets and Markets B2E
I answer hard acrostics, I’ve a pretty taste for oddities
I quote in elegiacs all the crimes of the major analysts
In auctions I can floor peculiarities ridiculous

I can tell undoubted RFPs from RFQs from RFIs
I know the croaking chorus from the mouths of the vendor sales guys
Then I can hum a fugue of which I’ve heard the vendor’s pitch before
And whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense we abhor

And whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense we abhor
And whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense we abhor
And whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense we abhor


Then I can write a shipping bill in Babylonic cuneiform
And tell you ev’ry detail of Custom’s CBP import form
In short, in matters analytic, subjective, and objector
I am the very model of a modern global sourceror

In short, in matters analytic, subjective, and objector
He is the very model of a modern global sourceror


In fact, when I know what is meant by “Dutch Auction” and “Japanese”
When I can tell at sight a credit letter from a guarantee
When such affairs as sorties and surprises I’m more wary at
And when I know precisely what is meant by “commissariat”

When I have learnt what process has been made in modern procurement
When I know more of tactics than a novice in an internment
In short, when I’ve a smattering of arbitration strategy
You’ll say a better Global Sourcerer had never sat a gee

You’ll say a better Global Sourcerer had never sat a gee
You’ll say a better Global Sourcerer had never sat a gee
You’ll say a better Global Sourcerer had never sat a gee


For my global sourcing knowledge, though I’m plucky and adventury
Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century
But still, in matters analytic, subjective, and objector
I am the very model of a modern Global Sourceror

But still, in matters analytic, subjective, and objector
He is the very model of a modern Global Sourceror!

As posted ten years ago!