Don’t Get Sucked in By Impressive Words!

It’s conference season, and that means marketing overload for many vendors. And there’s a few words the doctor is hearing a bit too much and he’s NOT impressed! So what are these words?

Digitization

Digital. Digital Procurement. Digitized. Digitized Procurement. Digitization. Ugh. They’ve been using variations of the same word for almost 20 years — and despite claims to the contrary, the meaning hasn’t really changed. You’re analog, or you’re digital. There’s no degrees to digital.

Look at the dictionary definition for crying out loud! Of, relating to, or using data in the form of numerical digits. What’s new, or even enticing, about this? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

Internet of Things

The internet has ALWAYS been an internet of things. Computers are not people. They are computers. The only difference today is that we are sticking computers in more things to collect and transmit sensor data automatically rather than reading it, and entering it into the computer. It’s not the big whoop most companies are making it out to be as most companies haven’t developed much that uses that near real-time in a truly useful way.

Cognitive

It’s not artificially intelligent. It’s cognitive. And the bull crap has reached a whole new level. Let’s look at the definition.

Of or relating to the mental process of perception, memory, judgment, and reasoning.

Yes computers can perceive through sensors, store data in memory, use algorithms to assign, or judge, and use very advanced automated algorithms to reason, but we’re overlooking one key word here. Mental. Computers don’t have a mind, and they are not intelligent. The implication here is that which is cognitive is intelligent, and they are not intelligent.

We haven’t even reached true AI yet in any field and we are supposed to believe that a little Sourcing or Procurement vendor has reached the next, cognitive level of AI development? While a best in class vendor may have a few algorithms that are almost cognitive for a few, select, situations, considering the billions going into AI research and the limited progress most specialist vendors are making, you know we’re not ready to be throwing this term around.

And, an honorable mention (because, while not common in our space yet, it’s coming):

Postmodern

the doctor‘s been seeing this word a lot on social media in marketing and commentary, and, unfortunately, it seems like it’s starting to creep into our space. For those of us that actually went to a real University and have a sound (classical) education, we know that Postmodernism is a rather broad intellectual movement across the arts and fields with applied arts (like architecture and archaeology) based on a philosophy that takes us from the literary-influenced philosophy of modernism to a post-modern way of thinking that developed in the middle of the last century and reached wide acceptance in the 1980s, when it was a Land of Confusion.

This was the time of the MRPs (and not the ERPs). Do we really want to be associating our new and innovative solutions with that era?

So please, please, please don’t get sucked in by the the impressive words. Instead look for impressive, time-saving, value-adding functions (and forget the feature lists). (But that’s another rant.)

Will Trump’s America First Policies Put America Last?

Trump wants to bring production back to America, and that’s a noble effort and, for many companies, a smarter thing to do than they realize as escalating logistics costs and global uncertainty make near-shoring and, even better, home-shoring much less risky (and, in the long run, often more cost effective) than off-shoring, especially when there’s no good reason to off-shore.

But Trump’s recent almost across-the-board tariffs are going to cost some American manufacturers anywhere between millions of dollars to hundreds of millions of dollars as, simply put, due to a lack of availability of certain resources, Americans have to import. The net effect of so many lower-cost global options over the years is that American companies went off-shore for just about everything they figured they could get cheaper, and as a result not only has there been little to no growth in raw-material extraction and production at home, but some industries have actually lost capacity. And that capacity can’t be turned on and ramped up over night.

As a result, Americans need to import aluminum, steel, and other metals, at least for the short term. And while most of that importation should come from near-source locations (like Canada and Mexico, especially if the US wants to maintain NAFTA, which, for the most part, is better for it than Canada and Mexico [combined]) to decrease risk and increase border security (after all, it has two borders — Canada and Mexico; working with Canada and Mexico on security issues makes the entire North American continent safer), Americans have such high demand in some categories even Canada and Mexico can’t meet it all.

For now, American manufacturers have no choice to but import their raw materials from other (non-exempted) countries. It’s unfortunate, but it’s the reality. And if any of these companies have access to good global strategic sourcing optimization and supply chain planning tools, they’re going to start modelling and realize that it’s cheaper in the mid-term, and maybe even the short term, to manufacturer whatever is intended for the global market outside the US. Rev that factory back up in Mexico and serve the world from there. Only manufacture at home what is needed at home.

And what happens if companies shift their operations to other jurisdictions? America loses jobs, tax revenue, and it’s share of the global GDP. That’s, hopefully, not what Trump, or anyone inside North America, wants.

And while there should be tariffs on goods imported from jurisdictions a country can’t compete with and, in particular, a country that allows its corporations to pay it’s employees $2 a day for a job an American would have to be paid at least $58 a day for (as there’s no way America could compete with imports otherwise), those tariffs should be designed not to hurt the manufacturers who depend on raw materials they can’t get at home, or at least be used to fund local raw material extractors / producers to give those companies at home a local option. For instance, all tariffs collected should go into a fund to help local raw material extractors and producers expand or increase production, and until that happens, companies that need to rely on imports in the interim should at least get tax credits until such a time as they have a local option. Or they are just going to find ways to take as much of their business as they can elsewhere.

And that won’t make America great again, or even competitive. While I actually agree with the premise that, especially when it comes to manufacturing and agriculture and staple industries, America needs to be great again, unfortunately, just slapping import tariffs without a broader plan to achieve that goal is not only not going to help, but it’s going to hurt.

Ninety Five Years Ago Today …

TIME magazine was published for the first time, and, to date, has stood the test of time. It was the first weekly news magazine in the US and today has the world’s largest circulation for a weekly news magazine (with three quarters of its readers in the US).

The idea behind the magazine was brevity, with the original intent that a busy man could read it in an hour. The original slogan was Take Time — It’s Brief. Maybe that’s why it’s still around today, since it seems all the younger generation has time to read are short LinkedIn articles and Facebook Posts, and if they are on the go, you’re lucky if they get through the new, double length, tweet.

But it teaches us something … if you want to be widely read, or at least widely acknowledged, get to the point … fast. Add more in depth later when you have attention, bur brevity sells. Advertising revenue may be down (but it’s down in print across the board), but TIME is still surviving, and looks like if it does go down in the future, it will be among the last major print publications to fall. It’s a communication lesson for all of us, so let’s take time to understand it.

The Revolution of Purchasing: Part II

Yesterday, in Part I, we noted that even though Purchasing has been evolving in the leading Supply Management organizations, thanks largely in part to some great technology platforms outlined by Lisa Nyce of Source One Management Services in her guest post three years ago on The Evolution of Purchasing, it has been an evolution to more strategic purchasing on select categories, and not a widespread revolution.

And this is problematic in SI’s view because we’ll never have a true purchasing revolution until all Spend Under Management is truly Managed Spend. Right now, many Procurement organizations have the fallacy that just because the spend goes through the e-Pro/P2P/I2P system, that doesn’t mean it’s managed. It just means it’s tracked and available for analysis. And, more importantly, the spend strategy and decision has to be enforced. Negotiation a contract with Supplier X for 10% below current prices is useless if everyone keeps buying from Supplier Y. Deciding to go three bids and a buy is useless if the buy is from the highest price / lowest book value supplier just because the buyer knows they’ll deliver. Directing a user to a catalog with preferred items is not spend under management if the user can just punch-out to Amazon and buy from an overpriced third party because they want a non-standard product. And so on.

For all spend to be managed spend, at least things have to happen:

  1. All spend has to be categorized.
    Uncategorized spend is unmanaged spend. It gets shoved into the tail spend, and is left for anyone with budget authority to manage as they see fit. Catalog buy. Spot buy. Non-preferred vendor spend. Big barkup store down the street spend. Etc. If it gets into a category, and that category is a managed one, there’s a chance it will be managed.
  2. All categories have to properly purchased.Every category has to have an associated bucket. Strategic. Non-strategic 3-bids and a buy due to high spend volume. Catalog. Just categorizing is not good enough — categories must be mapped to preferred strategies. And bought according to those strategies.
  3. All purchasing decisions have to be enforced by a platform.Once a purchasing strategy is selected for a category, it must be executed. And once an award or decision has been made, it must be enforced. The platform should not permit a strategic category purchase to go through punch-out catalogs or a catalog buy for an on-contract item to be made with an off-contract supplier.

And, since there just isn’t enough manpower for a Procurement department to tackle 100% of Spend Under Management (as the average organization struggles to tackle 1/3 of strategic spend each year), the platform must support automation of tactical 3-bids and a buy, catalog buys, inventory re-orders, etc. Modern cognitive solutions, with enough rules, data, and market intelligence can buy low-dollar, non-strategic categories as good, if not better, than overworked purchasing professionals. Automate 3-bids and a buy. Automate catalog purchases with on-contract suppliers. Automate re-orders for on contract product and services when inventory gets low. Automate that where your strategic insight provides little value, and then increase the percentage of strategic spend that gets strategically sourced every year and you will have a real purchasing revolution.

The Revolution of Purchasing: Part I

Three years ago, SI published a guest post on The Evolution of Purchasing from Lisa Nyce of Source One Management Services, a provider of sourcing consultancy and category management services that has been in the game for a very long time compared to many of the niche consultancies out there.

In this post, she noted that purchasing has become more strategy-oriented, rather than transactional, but needed better tools to to their jobs. Specifically, if these Procurement pros wanted success, they needed to adopt:

  • Spend Analysis Software,
  • Cost Savings Tracking,
  • Supplier Report Cards, and
  • Stronger Legal Controls.

And they do for strategic sourcing success because:

  • you can’t wring savings from a category with no savings potential
  • savings aren’t real until they materialize
  • a supplier isn’t better until you have hard data to backup your claim
  • a lack of compliance can wipe out all of the negotiated value with one product seizure, fine, or consumer boycott

But when you think about it, while this is an evolution of the function into strategic procurement, it’s not the revolution we need for widespread success. Why?

In Procurement, most of the Spend Under Management is NOT Managed Spend.

For a decade or so, we’ve been hearing that one of the keys to Procurement success is getting more of that organizational spend under management because not only can the organization not save on spend that Procurement doesn’t manage, but Procurement can only wring so much in savings out of a limited spend bucket. And this is true. But merely dumping more spend on a Procurement organization not ready to handle it doesn’t generate savings.

There is a common fallacy that spend in the system is spend under management. It’s not. Just because the spend goes through the e-Pro/P2P/I2P system, that doesn’t mean it’s managed. It just means it’s tracked and available for analysis. That’s a great first start, but that’s all it is, a start. All spend has to be strategically allocated and appropriately sourced to really claim spend under management. And, more importantly, the spend strategy and decision has to be enforced. Negotiation a contract with Supplier X for 10% below current prices is useless if everyone keeps buying from Supplier Y. Deciding to go three bids and a buy is useless if the buy is from the highest price / lowest book value supplier just because the buyer knows they’ll deliver. Directing a user to a catalog with preferred items is not spend under management if the user can just punch-out to Amazon and buy from an overpriced third party because they want a non-standard product.

The Revolution of Purchasing will only happing when all Spend Under Management is truly Managed Spend.