The Black Swans are Gunning For You!

Maybe, after years of humming and hawwing you finally put a proper supply chain risk management program. Maybe you feel you’ve learned enough about disruptions to identify them early and react quickly and the threat of those black swans has been minimized. Maybe you just had the worst disruption in a decade and you know that there are few of them (outside of their native Australia), but many organizations, and the odds are that you won’t see them again for a decade. Maybe you’re safe. Maybe.

But what you don’t understand is these swans are angry. Very angry. And they have a right to be. How would you feel if you were, more or less, consider the ugly duckling compared to your white cousins. Ridiculed and reviled thanks to Dr. Taleb who called you out as the cause of every single unexpected event that few predict, especially when those events have devastating consequences. And to top it off, associated with your raging white cousins that are, the vast majority of the time, the perpetrators of the “swan attack”.

So what do you do when you’re angry? You get revenge. On the biggest targets. And what’s the biggest target? The modern, global supply chain.

And before you think the doctor‘s off his gourd, he knows that, 99.999% of the time your supply chain disruption is not the direct cause of a black swan attack, but that no matter how good you think you are at preventing and detecting black swan events, you’re not good enough. At least not yet.

How does he know this?

  1. The percentage of Procurement organizations that have dedicated risk management solutions is miniscule.
  2. The percentage of Procurement organizations that have dedicated risk management solutions and leading SRM solutions is smaller still.
  3. The percentage of Procurement organizations that have dedicated risk management solutions, leading SRM solutions, and modern strategic sourcing / supply chain optimization solutions is much smaller still.
  4. The percentage of Procurement organizations that have dedicated risk management solutions, leading SRM solutions, modern strategic supply sourcing / supply chain optimization, and six sigma level disaster planning capability is so much smaller still that it’s almost non-existent.

And the reality is that unless you’re at level 4, you’re not going to see enough of the potential disruptions headed your way to analyze their impact probability and potential severity, and you won’t even get a hint of coming big, “black swan” events, until the tsunami is right on top of you and there’s nothing you can do to get out of it’s way. As a recent post by the public defender (“black swans, normal distributions, & supply chain risk”) points out, events that seem unlikely, surprising, or virtually impossible do happen, more often than we expect, and our risk analysis, mitigation approaches and management actions should bear this in mind.

And most importantly, just because they are half a world away doesn’t mean that they won’t devastate your product line in two months when you’re supply can’t supply because their supplier didn’t supply because the raw material supplier couldn’t supply because the earthquake collapsed the mine — something you could have known two months ago with monitoring, which might have given you enough time to get your disaster recovery plan in place. You’ll still be affected. Costs will still go up. Workloads will still double. But you won’t be up the creek without a paddle (just in a more expensive boat with an un-preferred, less favoured one.)

If You Let Your Supplier Rip You Off …

Then whatever else they do to you, blame yourself!

Not long ago, over on Spend Matters UK, the public defender penned a post on “Public Sector Project Failures, Blame the Suppliers!” which, while likely deserving of some vile for having the audacity to continue to overcharge the public coffers for the products and services they deliver (something they likely wouldn’t get away with if it was a big private sector client which was a leader in strategic sourcing and supplier management), is not, in the doctor‘s view, deserving of all the vile. After all, as we penned here not that long ago in our post on whether or not your suppliers are ripping you off, if you are letting them, then they are.

But that’s not all they are doing if you let them. What else you ask? We’ll get to that, but first, let’s step back.

If you flip over to the public defender‘s post, he mentions an article by Allan Watton of Best Practice Group discusses what an organization can do if a provider exhibits problems that impacts the service to your recommendation. And this is the crux of it. If they are willing to rip you off, and you are willing to let them, then if their quality slides, they are likely also willing to send you (more) inferior/defective products, let their service commitments slip (in favour of another customer if resources are thinner than they guaranteed), and even fail to enforce necessary social responsibility and sustainability requirements that they agreed to (that will get you, and not them, thrown into boiling hot water if not adhered to).

And, frankly, as far as Si is concerned, if this happens, if you are not watching them and working with (or, if necessary, replacing) them, then it is all your fault and you only have yourself to blame. Yes, they are deserving of vile for being such scumbags in the first place if they do any of this, but it’s your supply chain delivering your product to your customers, so it’s your responsibility to monitor and if anything happens, as per legislations being introduced around the globe, unless you took reasonable measures to monitor, it’s your fault. So the ultimate blame rests with you.

But, as the public defender points out, sometimes monitoring and managing won’t be enough. Often time the suppliers, while a little bad, aren’t truly rotten and can be improved with monitoring and management, but sometimes you truly do have a truly rotten apple that you can’t do anything with. In this case, you will need to switch, and to do that quickly and effectively, with as little disruption as possible, you will need a disaster recovery plan, an extreme mitigation plan where you are not dealing with a temporary disruption due to weather, equipment failure, etc. but the need to replace an entire supplier permanently. And that’s why risk management is discussed regularly on this blog, because it does no good to identify millions of savings with optimization and analytics only to lose it because you weren’t prepared for that eventual black-swan mega-disruption that is coming your way!

Is UNSPSC Really the Best Route? 3 Reasons … ‘Against’


Today’s guest post is from Brian Seipel, Spend Analysis lead at Source One Management Services focused on helping corporations gain a clear view of their spend data to derive actionable budget optimization strategies.

In Part I, we discussed three reasons for the standardized taxonomy of UNSPSC. But it’s not always all sunshine and roses. Today we will discuss three reasons against.


The Downsides of a Standardizes Taxonomy

Recall I mentioned that standard taxonomies are a great start. However, we will want to move beyond the confines of these models to compensate for a few critical problems you’re likely to face.

  • Alignment to organizational needs and strategic sourcing goals may be lacking
  • Structural rigidity may not align with organizational profile
  • Contain a good degree of built-in granularity (yes, this is both a strength and a weakness)

All three problems above come down to a lack of proper fit – both in terms of organizational usage and an action-oriented focus.

First, let’s return to our overarching goal: to make sense of spend and identify areas of focus for future savings initiatives. Looking at UNSPSC through this lens, you may find that it difficult to source strictly according to this taxonomy. I’ll give an easy example – when organizations bring in commercial printers for promotional materials, they tend to also buy branded tchotchkes from these same vendors. It makes sense; both items are planned for and purchased at the same time to be used at the same events. Suppliers often work in both of these spaces for this reason, but you wouldn’t know it following UNSPSC strictly. We’re in two separate areas of the code. As a harder example, think about your trusted, value-added IT vendor. This supplier may provide hardware and software across a range of departments, integration and engineering support, and handle your maintenance contract after installation. Draft up a list of products and services, and pull a UNSPSC code to cover all aspects of this supplier relationship – go ahead, I’ll wait. If I had to guess, you likely quit halfway through writing up a pretty long list.

Second, these are rigid structures are inherently one-size-fits-most in nature. UNSPSC can be great for some industries, but may not align well to others. I mention earlier that UNSPSC did tend to get detailed in a number of areas and, if you’re primary focus leans toward the machinery or MRO side of procurement, you may never need to venture beyond UNSPSC. However, any company with a more specialty focus may not get the coverage they need. The purchase of specialty chemicals may have a head start by using UNSPSC as a baseline, but the taxonomy won’t have the granularity to truly understand purchases as-is. One way to solve this issue is to blend additional supplementary detail where needed to make up the difference.

I will close this section with a word of caution. Twice now I’ve talked about the power of granularity, either already found in UNSPSC or added as a supplement afterwards. As such, it may seem odd that I’m considering categorical granularity as both a strength and a weakness – which case ends up being true for you will largely depend on what you’re doing with this level of detail. If you can use this granularity for better isolating and targeting savings opportunities, then throw this under the strength column. However, “paralysis by analysis” is a very real threat to a timely spend analysis project. Consider office supply purchases. One could easily adopt a taxonomy to drill down to a very granular level, separating black ink, felt tip pens from blue ink, ball points – but, would you ever really want to? Always ask yourself, “is more granularity truly necessary to get at the heart of this spend? Will this place of lesser detail hinder this project?” If you don’t need more detail, don’t invest the time. In this case, both pens would be purchased by the same internal groups and from the same suppliers. Spending time classifying to this level, or holding meetings on the best way to characterize paperclip groupings, is a waste.

Never Forget your Ultimate Purpose

It can be tempting to opt for a standard taxonomy, as is offered by UNSPSC. The value they provide is especially obvious early in the process when faced with dirty data, particularly if this is your organization’s first foray into spend analysis.

This temptation, however, will always be short-sighted. It is critical to wrangle spend and develop a clear picture of where your organization’s cash is going, true, but doing so without a clear path forward (one that leads to cost savings) is only going to stagnate strategic sourcing initiatives, leading to lost opportunity costs.

Always stay focused on answering this key question, “what is my best path forward to identifying savings opportunities?” and develop a taxonomy that will lead you there. Starting with UNSPSC can be a great foundation, but always consider where the taxonomy falls short for achieving your goals, and fold in more customized categories of spend where appropriate.

Thanks, Brian!

Is UNSPSC Really the Best Route? 3 Reasons ‘For’ …


Today’s guest post is from Brian Seipel, Spend Analysis lead at Source One Management Services focused on helping corporations gain a clear view of their spend data to derive actionable budget optimization strategies.

A common question many organizations have when delving into a spend analysis project is, “which classification taxonomy should I be using?” There are plenty of options on the generic end of the spectrum, UNSPSC being a popular choice. These standards certainly have their advantages, but choosing whether to use one of these standards or something entirely different is ultimately a matter of what will work best for the task at hand.

So, the real question is – What is your primary goal, and which taxonomy will best help you reach it?


Defining Goals

Before we begin, it is important to define what, exactly, our goals are for our spend analysis project. In this case, the spend analysis will be directly supporting the identification of strategic sourcing projects.
Certainly, we want to view our organization-wide supplier base and spend profiles using a commonly understood model so all stakeholders, departments, and C-suite executives are on the same page. One problem many organizations face is that different departments or offices speak different languages when it comes to defining supplier relationships. Add a merger or acquisition to the mix, and chaos can easily ensue.

But this isn’t our end goal – this is just a single, albeit crucial, step in the process. Our true end goal is to provide the ammunition needed to best identify opportunities for cost saving initiatives. No taxonomy, no matter how thoughtful or detailed, can be considered valuable if it can’t help promote change. As such, we should select a taxonomy based on two key parameters:

  1. The taxonomy must be universally applicable to all company spend.
  2. The taxonomy must aid in developing actionable information for future cost saving initiatives.


The Benefits of a Standardized Taxonomy

First, let’s discuss the key reasons to choose a standard model, such as UNSPSC. There are a few great aspects to these model that make them a good starting place for your taxonomy development:

  • Standards are pre-developed and ready-to-use
  • Contain a *good* degree of built-in granularity
  • Wide availability of data enrichment options exist

Right off the bat, one of the largest draws of using a standard taxonomy is that the structure is already in place, ready-to-use. UNSPSC has you covered for any spend your organization is likely to see, from office supplies (commodity code “4412”) to graphic design (“8214”) and beyond. Additionally, there is already a level of granularity at your fingertips: The telecommunications media services includes 10 immediate sublevels with greater detail, from local and long distance service, to mobile communications, and more.

You’ll note my asterisks here; while this granularity is great in many cases, it isn’t always up-to-task across the purchasing spectrum – more on that later. In any case, if you’ve been tasked with the herculean job of collecting, cleansing, and ordering a vast set of spend data covering your entire organization, being able to pick up and implement a taxonomy immediately is one less task on your plate to worry about.

What’s more, this hierarchy is both well-known and heavily utilized. There are plenty of organizations you can turn to that, for a fee, can append your spend data with appropriate categorizations. The appeal here is obvious – one of the more time intensive elements of performing a spend analysis is either developing and validating a rules-based system for categorization or slogging through the process manually.

Jump in feet first, hit the ground running … Pick your action-packed metaphor; a standard taxonomy gets your project started faster – and that’s huge.

But is it all sunshine and roses? Stay tuned for Part II!