Three Hundred and Forty Five Years Ago Today

One of North America’s oldest companies was founded when the Hudson’s Bay Company was granted a permanent charter to open up the fur trade in North America. At the time its charter was granted, it was the de facto government in parts of North America before other European states and, later, the United States laid claim to overlapping territories.

While it may not be a household Fortune 500 name anymore, and may not have participated in the fur trade since 1987, it was at one time the largest landowner in the world (with 15% of North American acreage). The trade routes that it opened up paved the way for settling, and eventually, administrating in North America, and it paved the way for the colonies. When it signed the Deed of Surrender (on November 19, 1869), its remaining territory became the largest component in the Dominion of Canada, in which the company was still the largest private landowner.

It’s primary business today is, of course, mercantile, as it owns multiple chains of retail stores throughout Canada and the US, and it is still doing fairly well, with Wikipedia listing its 2013 Total Assets at almost 8 Billion Canadian.

What Would the Acquisition of SalesForce Mean to the Procurement Market?

Who Cares?

While the doctor and the maverick see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues, and that’s why they have been collaborating on the new Spend Matters CPO site because there are important messages that are just not being communicated by the new press at large, the doctor believes that the impact this acquisition will have on the Procurement market, as summarized in yesterday’s post on “what would the acquisition of salesforce mean to the procurement market” by the maverick, is not as important as the maverick seems to believe it is.

While the acquisition of SalesForce is an important topic, it’s no more important than the acquisition of any non-Procurement technology vendor. (While some SRM vendors use the platform, one has to remember that it is, at its core, a CRM platform). It’s (primarily) upstream, while Procurement is primarily downstream. While the processes should connect, they are still distinct and, unless you are in the middle of a negotiation, there’s no reason to even think about it as a Procurement issue.

The real issue is what does the acquisition of SalesForce mean to the technology market, and the market at large?

And while the doctor knows that he’s not just stirring the pot but the entire honeycomb on this subject, it’s a subject that needs to be addressed. So what does it really mean?

Simply put, too big to succeed!

One of the biggest problems with the technology market is that the misconception that bigger is better, and too big to fail, is a reality. The whole point of big was to benefit from economies of scale. But economies of scale have a limit. A single factory with a single production line can only produce so much going 24 hours a day. To go beyond that, you have to add another production line, or even another factory. If you do so, and you only reach half of the capacity, you don’t have the same economy of scale on the overage.  The biggest economy of scale was when you were at full capacity on the one line.

In other words, if you expand faster than demand, you waste time, money, and resources. This situation is bad, but the situation that occurs in an acquisition is much worse. Not only do you have more capacity, but you have a huge debt load as a result of the acquisition. So you are paying more to produce, and then you are paying even more to service the debt that you took on to produce more than you needed to.

But even this situation isn’t as bad as the situation where you are talking about technology companies that don’t produce physical goods, don’t have demand that typically rises with population increase or market growth, and have valuations that are many multiples of annual revenue — not profit, revenue. And we all know that the misconception that the product has already been built and the residual cost of sale is minimal is incorrect. Software has to be maintained, debugged, and constantly improved in order to be saleable to the mass market. That is costly. Whereas a product has a single production cost, possibly a single repair cost under warranty, and possibly a single reclamation or disposal cost, that’s it. The cost for each product is essentially one-time, whereas the cost of software is continual and adds up everyday it is in use.

As a result, you have software that typically:

  • cost millions to build
  • costs millions to maintain

and now you want to

  • add millions to the cost just so you can change ownership and assign a different name

It doesn’t make a lot of sense. Especially when you are talking about the acquisition of an 800 lb gorilla which already has a (relatively) complete solution. In this situation the acquirer is essentially admitting that either

  • its solutions are totally inadequate and it wasted millions of its customers dollars on its solutions (versus realizing that it has some good solutions, is missing a few key elements, and just needs to acquire a few point solutions from smaller vendors to fill the holes) or
  • it has no inherent capability to enter the space (and maybe it shouldn’t be entering the space to begin with).

And the acquiree is essentially admitting that

  • it cannot maintain (rapid) growth on its own anymore (which may not be bad if it’s the dominant player and has a very large recurring revenue and could continue to increase profitability with improved efficiency) or
  • it’s shareholders are greedy and impatient and don’t care what’s best for their customers and just want a quick payout.

Neither situation is good for either party. Nor does it make sense for any of the de facto tech giants who would likely acquire SalesForce to do so. None of the six AMIGOS (Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Google, Oracle, and SAP) should acquire SalesForce. Here’s why.

  • Amazon
    They are an online e-commerce giant, with inherent ability to be a commodity supplier to large enterprises. They are not a software provider and beyond insuring quality, and receipt of goods, would not benefit from CRM. Sure the Force.com platform would allow them to offer even more apps, but they can already offer Android apps and sell online software, so it’s not a huge leap in capability.
  • Microsoft
    They already have huge back office suites that they have made huge investments in, including investments to port these suites to the cloud. Plus, their focus, and strength*, is back-office apps. They’d be taking a huge-write off on existing technology and would have to rewrite a lot for a whole new platform. They already run on Windows and Mac, that power the vast majority of office desktops, so why do they need the Force.com?
  • IBM
    IBM already has platforms for just about everything, including Alliance for CRM, have heavily invested in Watson, and need to keep building on the workflow and integration platforms they spearheaded in the early naughts.
  • Google
    the doctor will admit that it almost makes sense for Google, but Google’s market, and expertise, is apps, and it is still learning how to make money off of enterprise apps. It’s not ready for SalesForce, would have to let it run as a completely separate division, and take a huge hit to its balance sheet to pull of the acquisition. And while it’s the one company that could probably pull of a successful integration in a reasonable timeline without bleeding blood red everywhere, it would likely be quite a divergence from its other projects.
  • Oracle
    Oracle has too many CRM platforms as it is (with Siebel, PeopleSoft, CRM on Demand, and integration to about a dozen other platforms) and needs to continue to integrate and build on what it has. What makes Oracle strong, and great, is that it has always believed in eating it’s own dog food (while Microsoft ran off of third party databases even after SQL Server was released and has demoed Windows software releases on MacBooks on more than one occasion), but even Oracle can only integrate its acquisitions so fast. It’s still catching up on acquisitions past (and it took about 3 years to integrate the majority of Sun applications into its “single instance view”), so just imagine the effort to do a true end-to-end integration of SalesForce. Plus, it’s still a database / ERP company and with SAP so aggressively pursuing its marketshare in the US, with IBM and Microsoft still aggressively pursuing its global market, and with some companies (still) proclaiming that non-relational or in-memory databases can be faster and better for the average application, it has to focus on winning that fight.
  • SAP
    SAP is an ERP company with a very heavy focus on SRM, as evidenced by the huge amount of money it has dropped on Procurement, T&E, and Supply Management vendors over the past few years. This is where it has to focus to not only break-even on its acquisitions, but generate future value. And it still has a lot of integration to do. A lot.

the doctor‘s sure not everyone will agree with him, especially since people seem to get a little blind when such big numbers start flying around, but someone has to start putting this in perspective.

And now to put up the tarps in expectation of the reactionary mud-slinging from third parties not inclined to think deeply about the issue.

* And yes, the doctor cringes when he says this because most of their software, in his view, while standard, is sub-par — but they are the de facto solution and their Office apps, when you cut through the clutter (and the ribbon), work very well.

Are Conferences Perpetuating Supply Chain Stasis?

It’s conference season, and you know what that means. Thousands of people flocking to ISM next week to hear about the “state-of-the-art” practices and technologies that will revolutionize your supply chain, take you into the modern age, and prepare you for what comes next. Except they won’t.

For the average organization that still hasn’t adopted a modern e-Sourcing or e-Procurement system, the technologies being presented by even the vendors who haven’t updated their core platforms since last decade will still be revolutionary and for the average organization that is just dipping their toes into the waters of modern supply management processes, the talks will be inspirational and progressive and, for all practical purposes, look like a transition from the industrial revolution to the information age. (And, for some organizations, it will be. But it won’t prepare you for what comes next.) It will be like seeing the world through rose coloured glasses for four days straight. By the end of the conference, the average attendee will be in awe of the possible and leave in a state of hippie bliss (until he gets back to the office and crushing reality cracks his lenses and he’s forced to again see the cold and depressing blue sky, the blood red losses, and the blackness of the bottomless pit that new ideas get tossed into).

But for a leading organization, the majority of technologies will be outdated, the practices insufficient, and the talks sleep inducing. That’s because, for the most part*, it will be the same vendors as last year, the same practices that were being presented as revolutionary five, if not ten years ago, and different speakers giving the same scripted success talk that you have heard from the leaders who have used these technologies and processes for the last five years.

the doctor downloaded the thirty-four (yes, 34) page “brochure” for ISM and didn’t see one new idea in the entire publication. Not one. Moreover, while a few of the topics only became trendy in the last few years, there appear to be only two talks focussed on TCO (Total Cost of Ownership), one on integrated supply chains, and zero on supply chain modelling.

This is a serious problem. We’ve reached the point where supply chain success for the average organization is becoming dependent on preventing supply chain disruptions and failures. Supply chains span the globe, lean is the name of the game, JiT is widespread, disasters (natural and man-made) are on the rise, margins are thin, and customer loyalty and patience is thinner. It doesn’t matter how well you source if you can’t execute. It doesn’t matter how well you procure if you can’t control your costs. The best laid risk avoidance and mitigation plans are worthless if you can’t monitor for risks and implement mitigation plans at appropriate times. The best spend analysis system in the world is useless if the data is incomplete or too dirty. You can’t optimize what you can’t model. And so on.

Moveover, every savings opportunity you identify at one stage of the supply chain or management process can result in a larger loss at a different stage if the opportunity is not analyzed appropriately. Sure you can save money by consolidating supply, but if a single source is unable to deliver and the organization has to buy on the spot market at the last minute, the 5% savings could be a 10% loss. Reducing inventory can significantly reduce the 25% inventory overhead cost, but could result in stock-outs that lead to million dollar revenue losses if the organization runs too lean and a transportation strike cuts off the just-in-time supply. Better supplier oversight and management can certainly increase quality and reliability, but is the additional cost of the SRM systems and staff to manage the relationship less than the additional value generated?

True value comes from looking at an integrated supply management process, which might take the form of a full category management lifecycle or a complete strategic sourcing execution lifecycle, modelling the physical supply chain and associated costs, and computing the full total cost of ownership of the current scenario and an expected improvement.

But good luck finding anyone who looks at the supply chain as a whole from this perspective, especially when few people will even address the subject.

And this is why the doctor does NOT attend ISM. When you’re trying to identify the next evolution of supply management, or even if you are a true leader, unless you enjoy preaching from the pulpit, it’s a little depressing.

* There will be some exceptions.

Why Finance is Failing Procurement

Today’s guest post is from Pierre Mitchell, the maverick of Spend Matters, who needs no introduction.

I’m doing a 5-7 minute poll (here) on Procurement-Finance misalignment (in conjunction with ISM).

This poll is basically geared around the question below regarding what Finance needs to do differently.

The long version takes about 15-20 minutes, but gets you entered to win an Apple Watch or one of 10 Spend Matters PRO monthly subscriptions.

I’m presenting provisional results at next week’s ISM Conference, and I’m going to take a snapshot of the data this Friday and need some good provisional data to present!

So, if you are a practitioner (and I apologize for not reaching out 1-to-1) I would like to personally appeal to you to take the 5-7 minutes required to help the profession build this case for change.

If you are a provider, I would greatly appreciate if you could pass this on to any of your practitioner contacts this week.

The study link that you can forward is here: http://bit.ly/ProcurementFinanceAlignment2015.

Thanks!

And here’s the question in question …

How can Finance reduce misalignment with Procurement and unlock impactful value for your firm?

Please choose all that apply that would have a favorable and meaningful impact on your performance.

These items would have a favorable and meaningful impact:

  1. Don’t reduce working capital at the expense of supplier health and TCO
  2. Look beyond headcount reductions for project justifications
  3. Provide more resources to get spending, contract, and savings visibility in place (for mutual benefit)
  4. Include Procurement in upstream strategy & planning activities (M&A, JVs, Innovation, Tax Efficiency, Variabilization, etc.)
  5. Fix the “use-it-or-lose-it” budgeting process that encourages end-of-period spending
  6. Establish a more effective procurement involvement/approval policy and process
  7. Be an advocate, enabler, and leader for strategic cost management processes/ practices
  8. Help manage external expenditures with the same rigor that is applied to internal expenditures
  9. Provide Internal Auditors and Controllers as change agents to help Procurement
  10. Treat procurement as a true partner and a profit center rather than just another cost center
  11. Don’t try to use the General Ledger as a spend data warehouse
  12. Move A/P from a payment efficiency focus to a spend management effectiveness focus
  13. Measure Procurement on value beyond purchase cost reductions (especially PPV)
  14. Help get Legal involved appropriately in the contracting process as an enabler and partner
  15. Help coordinate and prioritize corporate risk/compliance activities that should be taken out to the supply base coherently
  16. Get a supplier master data management process and policy that works for everyone
  17. Invest in needed supply risk management capabilities to help protect the business