Monthly Archives: October 2007

Don’t be Cruel

What industry produces more greenhouse gases than any other?
  Hint: it’s not the transportation industry!
What country kills more than 100 million animals in laboratories alone every year?
  Hint: it’s not China
Did you know you don’t have to log-on to see Alicia Silverstone naked?*
  Now I know that got your attention!

For the last three months I’ve been sticking to sustainability Sundays, and today will be no different. But today I’m going to talk about animal rights. You’re probably thinking “what rights?”, and I have to admit I see your point, considering, in even most of the developed world, they don’t have any. Furthermore, even in many places where there are animal cruelty laws, they aren’t heavily enforced unless they involve cute little puppies or kitties and the local media makes a story out of it.

And that’s the problem – there’s an utter lack of legislation and directives stating that we care. Today’s consumer is a Gen-X or Gen-Y consumer, and as I mentioned in last week’s post Design for Recycle and, whether or not you want to admit it, we care. And we’ve even convinced most of the Baby Boomers that animals should be treated fairly. (A recent poll by PETA found that 90% of americans feel that farm animals need to be protected about abuses.)

Now, I’m sure most of you are reading this and thinking “we don’t have any contact with animals, so this doesn’t concern us”, but I’m here to tell you You’re Wrong. Do you buy meat or cover meal expenses? Do you buy furniture? Do you buy laptop bags? Do you cover corporate expenses? The answer is yes. All of these decisions impact animals.

Most of us are omnivores. Where are you buying your meat from? Probably the local supplier. Where do they get their meet from? Probably a slaughterhouse. Where’s the slaughterhouse? Chances are it’s somewhere where there are no animal protection programs and where chickens are skinned alive and cows carved up before they’ve bled to death from having their throats slit. I am an omnivore. I do eat meat (although lately I’ve been trying not to eat too much). I believe in your right to eat meat. And I realize that this means we have to ultimately kill animals we raise for food. But face it, serial killers on death row get better treatment – and it’s not like we don’t know how to give them a quick, painless, and (for those of you who only care about the bottom line) cost-effective death.

Furniture … laptop bags … same issues. If it’s leather, there’s a small chance it could be the by-product of a slaughterhouse that doesn’t put it’s animals through cruel, barbaric, tortuous deaths … but there’s a much greater chance it’s from a factory just outside of India’s borders where the cows, like chickens in some places, are skinned alive.

Advertising … if you use animals, you could be promoting abuse. TV animals, like circus animals, don’t live glamourous lives. They are often identified young, snatched from their parents, kept in small cages, and regularly shocked or beaten until they become docile. Then, when they’ve reached the end of their “useful” life, sold to a small zoo somewhere where they get to live out the rest of their lives in another small cage.

Horrified yet? Good. Because you don’t need to be a part of this … and … more importantly … can be animal friendly without increasing your corporate spend. Better yet, animal friendly decisions often decrease spend while increasing brand visibility, product recognition, and consumer loyalty. Today, fake products, such as pleather, are often cheaper, more environmentally friendly, and more durable than the real thing. The same goes for other synthetics.

You have choices. You should use them. And, more importantly, you should tune into Next Level Purchasing’s (now the Certitrek NLPA) new podcast, “Purchasing, Social Responsibility, & Animals” when it hits the wire on Tuesday. In this podcast, NLP’s President, Charles Dominick, sits down with Stephanie Downs, PETA’s Director of Corporate Affairs, and they dive into the issues in much more detail than I can in this short blog post.

*Unless you’re in Houston. Bad Houston. Bad, Bad Houston.

The King is right.

The Future of Purchasing Certification

Next Level Purchasing (NLP) [now the Certitrek NLPA] launches their new “SPSM Certification and Enhanced Results Program” which, in addition to the basic SPSM Certification, which I have reviewed previously, includes additional certification components – namely a 30-minute implementation consultation by phone with the instructor, the “Supply Management in the Real World” e-book, and NLP’s new SPSM Multimedia Study & Implementation Guide which is a collection of 50+ audio and video clips – and an iPod preloaded with all of the multimedia material that the student gets to keep upon course completion.

The program is priced at $1,749 … only $600 more than the basic SPSM certification program. Considering an iPod will run you $300, it’s really only $300 more than the basic program – which is definitely worth it for many students. As a former university professor and professional trainer, I know first hand that multimedia can greatly enhance the learning experience and increase the rate of retention for many students, and thus think that it’s a great idea.

For more information on the new program, check out the NLP site. For more information on some of the standard courses, you can refer to my previous posts, linked herein.

Mastering Purchasing Fundamentals, A Review Part I
Mastering Purchasing Fundamentals, A Review Part II
Savings Strategy Development, A Review Part I
Savings Strategy Development, A Review Part II
14 Purchasing Best Practices, A Review Part I
14 Purchasing Best Practices, A Review Part II
Supply Management Contract Writing, A Review Part I
Supply Management Contract Writing, A Review Part II

As well as my review of their advanced course:

Expert Purchasing Management, A Review, Part I
Expert Purchasing Management, A Review, Part II

The Future of Spend Analysis

In this post, we welcome back Eric Strovink of BIQ [acquired by Opera Solutions, rebranded ElectrifAI].

At the incessant prodding of Michael Lamoureux, here are some prognostications for Spend Analysis in 2008.

  1. The distinction between data-warehouse-based spend analysis tools and Business Intelligence tools will erode, as it is already doing. The only requirements on the BI side are a mapping engine that can handle spend transactions reasonably, and an improved ability to import data from sources other than the ERP system. A third party may well step up to the plate and offer these (and perhaps other) add-ons for a particular BI platform, creating instant (and possibly fatal) competition for existing spend data warehouse suppliers.The consequences of this erosion will be more decisions in 2008 to use existing BI tools within the enterprise for spend visibility, rather than to acquire procurement-centric tools from an e-sourcing vendor. These decisions may well be made by IT or by Finance, perhaps overruling or ignoring Procurement completely. This erosion will mark the beginning of the end for big-ticket data warehouse spend analysis implementations.
  2. The distinction between spend analysis tools and spend data warehouse tools will widen. It is impossible to perform ad hoc analysis with a fixed-schema data warehouse, especially in a space like Procurement where many different views of the data are required before useful insight can be obtained. BI solutions to spend analysis will suffer from this problem as well.This will mean additional Procurement business in 2008 for data analysis vendors such as SAS. However, the real keys to capturing the spend analysis business will be the flexibility of the analysis tool, its approachability by business users, and its ability to quickly create and manipulate large datasets. Data analysis providers (as well as decision optimization providers) will remain niche players until business users can operate their products without assistance.
  3. OLAP technology is awkward, and presents many limitations for spend analysis. This will become increasingly apparent as more general purpose datasets (datasets which may seem simple, but whose organization is far more complex than mere A/P spend cubes) are considered by spend analysts. Spend analysis providers will need to provide simpler and easier ways to build datasets that overcome (or shield) business users from the limitations of the underlying OLAP data organization.Thus, we will see in 2008 the beginnings of an ability to cross-link loosely-related datasets, to build and control those linkages quickly and easily, and to create cross-dataset analyses and reports from a unified perspective. Although these advanced capabilities are already present from enterprise database vendors (and are featured prominently in their marketing literature), from a spend analysis perspective they are just laboratory curiosities given the huge effort, expertise, and expense required to set them up and maintain them. The breakthrough for spend analysis will come when ordinary business users with no IT skills can build and explore disparate and loosely-coupled datasets just as easily as they can link spreadsheets together.
  4. Invoice analysis and commmodity-specific analysis, such as that being performed by The Buying Triangle and Opera Solutions will dominate the “what’s new” frontier for spend analysis practitioners during 2008. Invoice analysis carries with it the promise of immediate refunds or other consideration from incumbent suppliers, and the consequent ability to fund entire spend management efforts through careful analysis of past contract compliance.Invoice analysis means negotiating with incumbent suppliers from a position of knowledge and strength, while the relationship is good, rather than dismissing the supplier outright, or blind-siding the supplier with an RFP. Even if the ultimate decision is to go to the open market, or to dismiss the supplier at the end of the current contract, there is money on the table to be recovered now. There is no reason not to go after it.