Monthly Archives: October 2007

Don’t Overlook Enporion at the Emporium!

If you’re looking for a corporate e-Procurement solution and you’re thinking along the lines of Ketera [acquired by Deem] or Ariba,[acquired by SAP] be sure to include Enporion [acquired by GEP] in the mix. Even though they started as a procurement consortium and technology provider for the utility industry back in 2000 when they were founded by seven utilities, and even though they used to use SAP Markets Technology, they have come a long way from their roots and now offer a fully-featured on-demand web-based procurement solution that was developed one hundred percent in house and is tightly integrated.

Their platform supports full bid management, order management, catalog management, invoice management, settlement, contract management, project management, vendor management, and basic spend reporting on all transactions executed through the platform. They have a strong technical services division that supports dozens of standard and custom data formats (including EDI, XML, xCBL, and OCI) and are capable of handling all aspects of supplier catalog management on behalf of you and your supplier.

But perhaps the biggest reason you should look at them is for their capability on the services side. Since day one they have not only been conducting sourcing events on behalf of their clients, who collectively put over 10 B in annual spend through their platform, but have also arranged numerous group purchasing contracts worth millions upon tens of millions upon hundreds of millions of dollars. Considering that few group purchasing organizations can make the same claim-to-fame, this is no small feat! With Enporion, you can be sure you’ll get the services help you need when you need it.

Getting back to the technology, certain components are deeper than you might expect given that there are providers out there with suites that do not have the depth to back up the breadth. For example, their contract manager has some best-of-breed capabilities revolving around contract creation. In addition to the standard clause library, repository, tracking, reporting, and administration – it also supports administrator, and user, defined decision trees that can be used to automatically pull together appropriate contract templates for a commodity based upon the category hierarchy, value, strategic importance, and other relevant attributes. By working through the process before the RFQ is issued, a junior buyer can be guided on what attributes are important and focus on the right issues, terms, and conditions in the RFQ and subsequent negotiations.

The entire platform is built on an underlying many-to-many hub for transaction processing that supports multiple transaction types and is capable of appropriately routing any transaction from any buyer through the platform to any supplier as required. Thus, even though it might not be much to look at (but we already know that looks can be deceiving – take BIQ [acquired by Opera Solutions, rebranded ElectrifAI] for example, any random screen on its own will not catch your eye, but ten minutes diving into its analysis capability demonstrates that it is one of the most powerful analysis engines on the market), it packs a decent punch.

Furthermore, like Ketera, they’ve also come to the realization that the future of e-Procurement is the integration of the physical and financial supply chain and they already have projects in R&D to tie the needs of the treasury into their platform. Although I don’t have much in the way of details yet, this is one upcoming development I’ll be keeping my eye on and talking to them about more in the future.

I AM SOURCING (AND SO CAN YOU)!

Site Description
Congratulations — just by looking at this web page, you become 25% more knowledgeable about sourcing best practices. Written by the doctor, your sourcing-editor-in-chief, this site is here 24/7/365 to fill all the waking moments of your sourcing day! Sourcing Innovation contains all of the thoughts and opinions that the doctor doesn’t have time to shoe-horn into other blogs and wikis. Typed directly into the most advanced text processing software available, this site contains the doctor‘s most strongly analyzed expert opinions on strategic sourcing, procurement, risk management, and more – conveniently arranged in blog form! Always educational and rarely scuttlebutt, the doctor addresses why traditional purchasing is being destroyed by today’s hot-button issues, why auctions won’t save the world, and why only you can save the future! You may not agree with everything the doctor says, but, at the very least, you’ll understand why your differing opinion is most likely wrong. Sourcing Innovation features the doctor at his most eloquent and impassioned. He is an unrelenting warrior for the soul of sourcing, and he uses this site to fight the good fight to preserve the values that have served leading sourcing professionals well.
Please bookmark this site before you close your browser!

From Blogger’s Weekly
Starred Review. Realizing that it takes more than a few random purchasing tips to fix everything that’s wrong with sourcing today, the doctor bravely takes on the forces that threaten sourcing professionals everywhere – whether they be globalization, risk, or simply the lack of a good optimization solution. His various targets include China (must they be the source of each and every blog?), the Purchasing blacklist (just because it’s not on purchasing.com doesn’t mean it’s not important), and old-school die hards (just because you’ve done it that way for thirty years, doesn’t mean you’re doing it right). the doctor also takes the time to point out the few helpful resources that exist among the Google clutter, to insure his podcast transcripts are available to one and all, and to bring you a regular dose of unique thought-provoking amusement to lighten up what might otherwise be a very heavy weak, all of which add up to a site that is sure to be the number one destination of sourcing professionals everywhere in the future!

And in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I Am America (And So Can You!) is in stores everywhere today!

It’s a Colbert Nation … and that includes Canada too!

Not all Gaps are Good! (Especially When Your Supply Chain is Involved)

Some Gaps sell clothing, and as long as that clothing is made and distributed in a socially responsible fashion and sold for a fair price, that’s probably a good thing, but some gaps identify gaping holes in your supply chain, and that’s not a good thing!

According to “Getting ready for tomorrow’s supply chain” in the Supply Chain Management Review, many supply chains have six significant gaps. These are:

  • Lack of Strategic Visibility and Alignment
    Supply chains are global – and visibility is key in Global Trade Management. Improving the performance of the supply chain requires an increased awareness of its operation and overall contribution to the corporation’s bottom line.
  • Lack of Supply Chain Models, including Risk Management and Optimization
    51% of companies don’t understand risk. 79% of companies are not even considering optimization as per an Aberdeen Study on Advanced Sourcing. Decision optimization is the only way to optimize TCO and consider risks, and risk management is the only way to reduce your odds that a single snafu won’t occur and hit you with millions, tens of millions, or hundreds of millions in losses. Model your supply chain – and start now!
  • Inadequate Processes, including Measures, Information, and Integration
    Even innovation can be measured – but yet many companies don’t even capture, trend, and analyze basic operational and financial measures. Measure, find your inefficiencies, implement lean, and improve.
  • Insufficient Trust and Relationship Building Skills
    All I can say is that you need to:
    Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate
    Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate
    Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate
    Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate
  • Lack of Ongoing Frameworks for Supply Chain Architecture
    In some corporations, there are as many as four supply chains: the product chain that deals with the design, manufacture, and delivery of goods; the financial supply chain that follows the flow and ownership of money; the information supply chain that follows the flow, management, and ownership of information; and the physical supply chain that deals with the location of supply chain partners, the physical linkages that exist between partners, and the number/type of supply chain nodes. In order to take your supply chain to the next level, you need to take your ONE supply chain to the next level, not your four partial uncoordinated chains.
  • Insufficient Management Talent & Leadership
    There’s a talent war due to the crunch in available talent. It’s almost guaranteed that you will lose your top talent and that Got Talent? will be first question on everyone’s lips in the near future. Not only do you need to implement talent acquisition and management today, but you need to develop effective incentive strategies before it’s too late.

So You Want To Be Socially Responsible

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), also known as corporate responsibility, corporate accountability, corporate ethics, corporate citizenship, sustainability, and responsible business, can be defined as the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of that of the local community and society at large. It’s about responsible production processes, socially responsible employee relations, community involvement, and sustainability. It’s about doing things right. (eSourcing Wiki [WayBackMachine])

Furthermore, it comes with a plethora of benefits that include risk management, reputation management, talent retention, ROI, operational cost savings, innovation, and eased investor and government relations when done right. It’s the way of tomorrow, you realize it today, and you want to know what to do next.

It’s simple. Conduct an assessment to figure out where you are today, define your strategy, foster a corporate culture to get buy-in, make some commitments, implement those commitments, measure your progress, and regularly evaluate your progress and identify paths to improvement.

A good assessment will determine who’s currently in charge of corporate donations, whether or not all donations made can be defended, whether or not thorough standards for transparency were applied to current philanthropy programs, identify the firm’s values and ethics, internal and external CSR drivers, key issues that are (potentially) affecting the firm, key stakeholders whose input will need to be gathered in strategy formulation, current inadequacies in relevant decision making processes, the human resources available, and relevant budgetary initiatives.

A good strategy will define the overall direction the corporation is taking with respect to CSR, outline the basic approach, focus on key areas, and detail the next steps. The identification will involve asking, and answering, a lot of hard-hitting questions, including those summarized in the wiki-paper.

For more information on the process used to define specific commitments, implement those commitments, measure progress, and identify improvements, please refer to the new wiki-paper over on the eSourcingWiki and the bibliography.