SIM? Is It Old News or a Shiny New Pair of Shoes? Part II

As per our last post, SIM (Supplier Information Management) is a mature and stable technology with a large number of suppliers not only providing the tools and best practices to manage supplier life-cycles, but to manage risk, compliance, receivables, and even spend repositories for spend management. It’s almost a commodity in the Supply Management Space, and an acquisition thereof is not likely to get baby that new pair of shoes anytime soon. Or is it?

As great as they are, most SIM products — stand alone best-of-breed or integrated suite offerings, have at least one weakness — and often two. In particular, the data model and the workflow. Just like early spend analysis solutions were often tied to one, rigid, UNSPSC data model, most current SIM solutions are also tied to one, rather rigid, data model. In addition, most of those solutions with some SLM (Supplier Lifecycle Management) also have rigid workflows.

This worked well when business processes were predictable and stable and corresponded to products with long life-spans. But the times they-have-a-changed. These days, product life-spans are measured in quarters, and not years, if we are lucky. Associated processes change to not only accommodate the new product demands but to adapt to new technologies and new business requirements. If the workflow can’t adapt, the capability, and overall usefulness, of the tool is limited.

A SIM product that could not only allow a user to define, and redefine, data models as necessary but define, and redefine, workflows as necessary would offer more value than current SIM platforms. And if that product could also maintain full audit trails, which not only track data changes but model and workflow changes, and insure that old records and workflows can still be seamlessly accessed when the data model or workflow changes, then that would be even better.

And if that SIM product went even further and allowed for dynamic organizational, supply base, and user-defined hierarchies, that would be icing on the cake. Supply Chains are not boring because they are not static. They are constantly changing. The supply chain can not only change from product to product, but batch to batch as a primary raw material or part supplier runs out of material, becomes unreachable due to a political or natural disaster, or simply gets greedy and forces the higher tier supplier to find a new source. A good SIM solution will allow the supply chain map to evolve in real-time as the supply chain evolves. Moreover, with acquisitions, mergers, and spin-offs being the normal modus operandi for many businesses, a SIM solution that can easily adapt the organizational data model is also required. Finally, for maximum productivity, a user needs to be able to maintain their own view of the supply chain, back and front, relevant to them. They need to maintain their view of the relevant multi-tier supply base and the relevant hierarchies in their organization that they have to report to and serve.

In other words, a SIM tool that allowed for a truly dynamic data model, workflow, and supply chain organization map could bring a new wave of value to a modern Supply Management organization and the individual with the foresight to acquire such a tool might just get baby a new set of shoes. But is there such a solution?

Stay tuned!

SIM? Is It Old News or a Shiny New Pair of Shoes? Part I

Supplier Information Management, also known as SIM (but which has almost nothing to do with your Subscriber Identity Module card in your cell phone), is not new. The early leader in this space, Aravo, which boasted the likes of GE and CISCO as clients, was formed in 2000 and followed not only by a slew of companies trying to be best of breed in SIM (including AECSoft, now owned by SciQuest, Hiperos, and Lavante, to name a few) but by a slew of suite vendors that began to implement enhanced SIM into their platforms (including Ariba, Iasta, and Zycus).

And most of the basic features are now commodity. Try to find a vendor that sells SIM that doesn’t track all headquarter location, financial, core product, service, insurance, and third party risk information associated with a tier 1 supplier. Most of the good vendors also track third party credentials, compliance information against all relevant laws and directives, internal performance metrics and third party ratings, and even integration with third party supplier directories and databases.

And the uses are well known.

  • Where are the bulk of my suppliers located?
  • What is the financial health (risk score) of my top 100 suppliers?
  • Are any of my products out of compliance with regulations in one or more countries?
  • Do all of my suppliers have their relevant insurance certificates up to date?
  • Who are my riskiest suppliers?
  • Have all of my suppliers verified their primary contacts in the last six months?

And the more mature companies, to try and maintain an edge, maintain their customer base, and expand into new companies and additional verticals have started to integrate additional, and related, functionality. Aravo evolved into a full Supplier Lifecycle Management solution that balanced compliance, performance, and risk management. Hiperos is focussing on Third Party Management and on Compliance and Risk Management in particular. For example, their compliance management solutions include code of conduct, diversity management, insurance attestation, social accountability, and sustainability. Lavante is focussing on on-boarding and integrating SIM with audit recovery services.

When all is said and done, SIM seems like a mature space that is old news in Supply Management. And betting on it probably musters the image of an old gambler clutching dice in one hand and his last dollar in the other mumbling “baby needs a new pair of shoes“. But is it a bet you would lose?

Procurement — Why We Matter Even More!

Last week, we re-ran a post by David Furth, former VP of Marketing at Hiperos and current President of Leap the Pond, on Procurement – Why We Really Matter. In this post, David explained that Procurement is on the verge of its next major transformation where it will continuously assess risk and introduce integrated processes and controls across the company to mitigate the risk by working closely with other functional areas, business lines, and geographies. In addition, Procurement will implement management control programs that actively monitor both performance and compliance to help ensure suppliers are meeting all their obligations.

David was, and is, right. Now that everything is outsourced, resourced, and optimized to razor-thin JIT models, risk management — and continuous monitoring — is key. But that is just the beginning.

It’s not just risk monitoring, but compliance monitoring and performance monitoring. (Safety) regulations (like RoHS, WEEE, and REACH) are coming into effect fast and furious around the globe, as are bans on toxic substances, materials and products that can be used to create dangerous weapons, and conflict minerals and diamonds. As a result, compliance monitoring is becoming more and more important.

But so is performance monitoring. You can’t ignore the importance of quality, reliability, and safety as it is your reputation — and bank account — on the line. If the products you deliver continually break under warranty, even if you have a policy that you can return for replacement, you’re still losing the profit, the customer’s trust, and the costs associated with processing the return. If the products hurt someone — you’re getting sued, not your supplier. And if the products don’t perform up to spec, even if they don’t break, the customer ain’t coming back.

And even though savings aren’t everything, because it all comes down to ROI — value delivered by your organization. However, if your organization is to remain competitive, it still has to keep costs in check and at least keep costs in line with your competition. Often the only way to do this is to identify when you need to help your suppliers decrease their costs and increase their productivity, and this requires constant performance monitoring.

And who else in the organization can properly monitor risk, compliance, and supplier performance? Not manufacturing. Not logistics. And definitely not finance. That’s why Procurement Matters — Now More Than Ever.

1950 Years Ago Today

The Great Fire of Rome, which burned for 6 days, broke out in the merchant district and caused widespread devastation. It was an early example of how a natural disaster could bring a supply chain to its knees (as it wiped up most of the goods in Rome, which were then stored in shops).

The moral of the story is clear — Natural and Man-Made Disasters have always been with us and always will.

Are You Doing It Wrong?

If you’ve been following the media, you know that we have reached a point were most major business publications are now putting focus on Supply Chain as your top risk and your top opportunity.

You also know that these same publications, and the solution providers that follow, and reference them, have been preaching the following solutions to not only tame the risk but increase the opportunity.

Comprehensive Category Management

Spot buying individual categories at market lows or evening running reverse auctions at opportune times is not category management. And for that matter, neither is an event that covers the entire category. At this point you probably think that the doctor is losing it a little, because how could it not be category management if you are addressing the whole category?

It’s Simple. Category Management isn’t just about grouping all seemingly related items and running an event, it’s grouping items that have related characteristics that allow the items to be sourced effectively under the same strategy. For example, while it might make theoretical sense to group printers, ink, and paper together — because you use them together, from a sourcing point of view, ink and paper often go better with office supplies and printers with hardware. You can probably get them thrown in for free with a server purchase. But that’s just the start. If you source a lot of metal parts, you should probably group them by primary metal, since the price of steel, aluminum, etc. will largely dictate their prices and it might even make sense to not only source all of the parts from the same supplier but even buy the metal on behalf of the supplier with your better negotiating power and/or credit rating.

Supply Chain Risk Monitoring

Natural and Man-Made disasters devastate supply chains when they result in raw material or product unavailability for weeks or months. When a company doesn’t understand their dependence on a single source or the risks that single source is subject too, they can figuratively get caught with their pants down to say the least.

As a result, most leading companies in the Risk Management arena are now tracking and monitoring their tier 1 supply base for not only missed deliveries, but late shipment dates and inquiring immediately when something is late shipping. However, by the time a shipment is late, it’s often too late to go to another source if the reason for the lateness is the lack of an important raw material. So the smarter companies also ask their suppliers to let them know when their suppliers miss a delivery. This is better, but sometimes this is still too late. You need to track the primary sources of the raw material and their ability to produce. Not only the companies, but their locations. All natural and man-made disasters in the region and then evaluated for impact and if the producer of the primary raw material or part is potentially at risk, they make sure, or ask their tier 1 supplier to make sure, that the raw material or product can still be delivered on time and if it can’t, these leading companies immediately seek a secondary source (or lock up available supply pre-emptively) — not two weeks after the tier 1 supplier required the raw material to meet the commit date.

Big Data

The only buzzword on par with big data is cloud. According to the converted, or should I say the diverted, better decision are made with better data — the more data the merrier. This sounds good in theory, but most algorithms predict demand, acquisition cost, projected sales prices, etc. based on trends. But these days the average market life of a CPG product, especially in electronics or fashion, is six months or less, and the reality is that there just isn’t enough data to predict meaningful trends on. Similarly, every disruption impacts the cost, and these disruptions are as unpredictable as future sales predicted using trend models with insufficient data.

You use all of the data available to validate your operations, procurement, and financial situation. Not to blindly predict future sales or prices. An over-reliance on big data is often more dangerous than not having data at all.