Monthly Archives: May 2010

b-Pack: Packing It In for A Brave New World, Part II

Last week, in Part I, we told you how b-pack, hot on the heels of Ivalua, had decided to cross the Atlantic and join in the conquest to bring the bohemian revolution to the world of Procurement and P2P with their extensive solutions that actually close the loop.

As noted in Part I, b-pack brings with it a suite of solutions that take you from the start of a traditional sourcing cycle (RFx), through a contract, to a requisition (which may be from a catalog), against a budget, to receipt (which can include asset tracking information), and an invoice, to payment, reporting, and supplier management. Plus it has a number of supporting modules that are unique compared to most of the competition (but that will be the subject of the next post).

Since Part I described the core procurement cycle support in detail — requisition, purchase order, receipt, invoice, payment, and budget update — this part will detail the integrated applications that build on the core capabilities to provide the organization with expense and travel management, asset management, dispute resolution, and procurement business intelligence reporting.

The expense management solution allows you to create a requisition for a trip before you take it, and before you incur the first expense, and have it, and associated expenses within budget, pre-approved. Then, as expenses are incurred, they can be added to the report. When the expense report is complete, it can be submitted for reimbursement. In addition, not only can it be exported to excel for printing or manual submission for a third party, but it can be imported from a predefined template that can be exported from the approved requisition. The expense management solution supports dates, cost centres, invoicing companies, multiple currencies, and notes at a line item level.

The integrated dispute resolution solution can be launched on the receipt of goods, on the receipt of an invoice, or later when an issue is encountered and the dispute can be related to a purchase order, goods receipt, invoice, asset, and/or contract. The dispute can be assigned a type and a level. The supplier is notified by e-mail and alert next time they log into the system. In addition, it appears in the appropriate supplier representative’s todo list until it is addressed. (If they choose to respond by e-mail, the response can be recorded by an individual with the appropriate authority to certify the response came from the supplier.) Once the supplier has responded, the appropriate buyer representative(s) is (are) notified, who can choose to either respond to the supplier, and continue the dispute, or close the dispute.

The asset management system, which is deeply integrated into the system, is also one of the most extensive non-standard modules in the platform. As a result, it’s a considerable value add for organizations that make a considerable number of expensive purchases for internal use that need to be tracked and managed. Asset management starts with the requisition when the user selects a commodity from the integrated catalog where it is assigned a pre-defined asset type. Each asset type is associated with specific properties. Then, when the commodity is received, the receiver can define the asset specific properties — such as serial number, internal tracking number, and assigned user — in addition to overriding the automatically defined fields — such as description, manufacturer part number, and assigned corporate unit. In addition, assets can be linked together. This is especially relevant when assets need to be used together, such as hardware and software. The module also supports specific approval rules, and chains, based on the type of asset … so that IT can review computer purchases, marketing can approve local printer selection, and engineering can approve widgets. In addition, the software maintains a complete assignment history, which is useful in tracking the lifespan of a product — such as a demo unit that gets reassigned to multiple teams over its lifespan. Finally, the asset database is searchable on every attribute, which makes it easy to find assets by type, assignee, department, etc.

This brings us to the procurement business intelligence reporting capability. The reporting module is tightly integrated with the base system and allows you to build your own reports across any data elements in the system using their own visual query builder. Using their application, you can define your own queries that will generate any list or cross-tab report of your choice, with sub-groups and rollups. The visual query builder, which also includes filter support against any pre-defined data grouping built into the system, allows you to select the rows of interest, calculations to be applied against the rows, and functions to be defined. The filters are and-or boolean clauses of arbitrary complexity and any where clause that can be defined in SQL can be defined as a filter. This gives the report builder a significant degree of power. The results can be presented as a table, or, where calculations or formulas are defined, as a chart or graph. The business intelligence is provided by way of built-in trend analysis that allows the user to track trends and define comparisons against baselines, predefined expectations, floors, and ceilings. This allows the user to determine when budgets and spend under management aren’t tracking against expectations and then create custom reports to determine why. Finally, every user can build custom dashboards using any built-in or custom defined report. If the dashboards are designed to identify unexpected trends, this can also be a useful feature.

In summary, b-pack provides a comprehensive P2P e-Procurement solution that also includes some very useful capabilities above and beyond the basic procurement cycle requirements that can provide significant additional value to many buying organizations.

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Three Rules of Productivity to get the Most Out of Your Day

Just about all of us are overworked these days. There are two primary reasons for that. One, due to the recession and the jobless recovery*, we’re all being asked to do more than before. Two, we’re constantly having our time wasted by Maury the Management Moron and his imbecillic twins. The latter case can be rectified by following three simple rules of productivity, which will negate most of their efforts to waste your time and suck the soul out of you.

Rule #1: If you are invited to a meeting, and in the first five minutes it is wholly unclear why you are there, leave. Indicate that you’ll be back in 30 seconds if summoned.

If the organizer can’t be bothered to organize a successful meeting, why should you bother to be there?

Rule #2: If you are copied on an email that you do not need to be copied on, ask the email originator to re-send the email without you copied on it. (Or at the very least, to exclude you on all future messages on the topic.)

Enough spam gets through our spam filters and clutters our inbox as it is, which is already full of e-mail we have to deal with. No point adding to the mess.

Rule #3: If you are a manager, and you wake up one morning and realize that the only contribution you are making to the company is accepting statuses from lower level people and providing that same status to upper level people, quit.

Let’s face it. Your job’s not worth doing. Go find one that is — otherwise, all you are doing is contributing to the time crunch and soul suck.

* Which is one of my least favorite bullcrap phrases, because there is no recovery until jobs return.

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Running a Successful Meeting

As a supply chain professional, you’re probably in lots of meetings. Lots and lots of meetings. In fact, you’re probably in meetings all day multiple days a week. And many of these meetings are most likely a complete and utter waste of time. Why? Because, unfortunately, many people don’t know how to plan and execute a good meeting. That’s why I was glad to see this recent article in the McKinsey Quarterly on “Taking the Bias Out of Meetings” that had some great tips for planning and running an effective meeting. (It purported to help you take the bias out of meetings, but considering that the bias usually comes from the participants, that’s easier to say then do when you can’t just exclude the biased participants and usually have to deal with them one-on-one to get them to see past their biases. Nevertheless, from a meeting perspective, the tips were very good.)

The articled proffered the following five tips:

  1. Make Sure the Right People are InvolvedEveryone who has to be there must be there and anyone who does not need to be there shouldn’t be. This is even more important than ensuring a diversity of backgrounds, roles, risk aversion profiles, and interests. Failing to recognize this simple fact will either waste someone’s time (if someone is there who shouldn’t be) or waste everyone’s time (as you won’t be able to go forward if the key decision makers aren’t present).
  2. Assign HomeworkEveryone should come to the meeting prepared. Everyone should already have read the background materials and come prepared with the input they are expected to provide. Otherwise, everyone’s time is wasted.
  3. Create the Right AtmosphereEveryone should be encouraged to participate and asked to speak up by the moderator. Remember, everyone is there because they have something to offer. If they keep it to themselves, you are, again, wasting everyone’s time. (Plus, they might have the key piece of insight that can help you get past damaging biases.)
  4. Manage the DebateMake sure that everyone stays on topic, that the discussion does not disintegrate to juvenile heated arguments between two key proponents who have already made all of their valid points, and that consensus / majority decisions are made in a timely manner.
  5. Follow-UpThe end result of a successful meeting should be an action plan with action items for each attendee. Follow up to make sure the attendees are executing on their action items in a timely manner.

I’d also offer up the following tips:

  1. Run the meeting against a complete agenda with a timeline.This valuable tool helps you avoid tangential (and inconsequential) discussions and keeps the meeting focusses, as one of the keys to the success of any effort is a deadline. (Just ask Richard St. John.)
  2. Don’t go in with an end-decision in mind.Otherwise, you’re putting bias into the meeting that could prevent you, and others, with stumbling upon a much better decision through collaboration.

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Reminding You of the Most Often Overlooked Risk in Your Energy Supply Chain

It’s not volcanic eruptions, which could bury or clog your production facilities with ash, as these generally only occur every few years to every few hundred years.

It’s not an unpredictable terrorist act that could blow up a pipeline in North America.

No, it’s suicidal Sciurus Carolinensis.

Last December, when I first told you about the most often overlooked risk in your energy supply chain, I told you how one little squirrel in one little circuit breaker in one little substation can knock out power to 9,000 homes, as FirstEnergy customers in North Royalton (Ohio).

Now, it seems another squirrel has went on the offensive in Florida where it caused a power outage in central and westin Destin (Florida) [NWFDailyNews.com], affecting both Gulf Power home and business customers.

Squirrels are on the attack! Are you ready?

An 11-Gun Salute for Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster

I was thoroughly impressed when I saw this recent article in the New York Times on how we have met the enemy and he is PowerPoint which contained a quote from Gen. James N. Mattis that said that PowerPoint makes us stupid.The article pointed out that Brigadier General H. R. McMaster, who led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005, banned PowerPoint presentations in his campaign and, in a follow-up military conference in North Carolina, likened PowerPoint to an internal threat.

According to General McMaster, it’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control. Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable. According to General McMaster, PowerPoint’s worst offense is not the spaghetti graphics which are becoming increasingly common (like this graphic that tops the article), but rigid lists of bullet points that take no account of interconnected political, economic, and ethnic forces. If you divorce war from all of that, it becomes a targeting exercise. The program stifles discussion, critical thinking, and thoughtful decision making … and it ties up the junior officers — referred to as the PowerPoint Rangers — in the daily preparation of slides. Think of all the time that is wasted in slide production instead of on data gathering and analysis! It’s scary!

When we’re talking about PowerPoint, the only time it comes in handy is when the goal is not imparting information. In other words, the only time PowerPoint is useful is if you want to hide something … because there’s no possible way to disclose any information with the tool. (And that’s why the doctor has strict rules when it comes to PowerPoint. He has no interest in going dumb before his time.)

Thus, in my view, H.R. McMaster deserves an 11-gun salute* for leading the battle against what, in my view, is the biggest enemy the US Military has: PowerPoint. I hope it wins the battle before it costs them a war.

* The tradition in the United States is to give the President a 21-gun salute, a deputy head of state and five star general (of the army, airforce, or navy [fleet admiral]) a 19-gun salute, a four star general a 17-gun salute, a three star lieutenant general a 15-gun salute, a two star major general a 13-gun salute, and a one star brigadier general an 11-gun salute.

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