Monthly Archives: September 2011

Innovation in Sourcing

Today’s guest post is from Chetan Raniga, who is General Manager, Americas at Trade Extensions.

As someone who’s been in the strategic sourcing field for over ten years as a consultant and product manager, it’s been interesting to see the rapid evolution of sourcing solutions over the past few years. Leading solution companies now realize that users need solutions that feel familiar; that’s why Excel integration is common among leaders in the supply management arena. It’s the same reason Coupa has screens that almost mirror Amazon.com — providing an interface and workflow that’s both familiar and intuitive. Another example is the use of dashboards — the charts and alerts in Trade Extensions remind users of Mint.com, a popular personal finance site, though they show vastly different types of data!

Here are some other changes for the better:

Collaboration and Workflow:
The sourcing solutions of the past were extremely tactical (e.g., automating the process of running an RFQ or auction for a specific category), and therefore, didn’t give buyers the ability to share ideas, exchange documents, and view the real-time status of their sourcing initiatives. Now, platforms provide robust project management capabilities with Gantt charting, custom workflows (e.g., only have new suppliers go through the qualification step), document sharing, and Skype-like chat features. A buyer can see exactly which suppliers, team members, and stakeholders are online, and instantly communicate with them. Audit trail and logging capabilities have also gotten stronger, which is important for the confidence of both buyers and suppliers in using these platforms. Multiple teams are now using these platforms to share data. For example, a Direct Materials sourcing group can incorporate freight pricing from a tender conducted by the Logistics team. The group can use the platform to determine which items will use the suppliers’ freight (delivered pricing) and which will use the 3rd party carriers’ freight (FOB plus freight).

Flexibility:
Systems of the past didn’t provide the flexibility that we have today in collecting inputs. Labels such as ‘Price per Unit’ would be hard-coded or the cost formula would only support a limited number of operators and functions. Data entry was also cumbersome and error-prone since it involved either manually entering or copying-and-pasting vast amounts of data. Today’s solutions integrate with Excel, so that existing data and formulas can be easily leveraged. For example, item, demand, and cost component data stored on separate Excel spreadsheets can be uploaded with one click. Even better, some solutions allow users the ability to customize the supplier’s bid form. This is critical to change management since companies can continue to use their existing bid forms in the bid gathering phase but obtain the decision support and reporting benefits in the analysis phase. These improvements have led to even shorter RFQ/P creation times.

It’s also now possible to run auctions with optimization (a step forward in utility from the original concept of reverse auctions), and to run RFQ/Ps with feedback — blurring the line between RFQs and auctions but also going further by providing custom feedback (e.g., a custom message of “Not Competitive” is shown when the bid is x% greater than the median price).

Usability in the Analysis Stage:
The one sourcing area that has lagged in adoption has been the use of optimization (which the doctor has defined as the application of one or more rigorous analytical techniques to a well-defined model to generate the absolute best decision from a multitude of possible alternatives in a rigorous, repeatable, and provable fashion). It sounds complicated, and in the past it really was. For example, if a customer wanted to see what the result would be if all the business went to incumbents at their current proportions, then she’d have to create a rule limiting allocation for each item and affected supplier. That’s painstaking when you have a couple of hundred items — but most projects had thousands of items! Nowadays, in a modern optimization solution (which include the solutions by Trade Extensions and BravoSolution), the buyer just selects one rule, written in plain English (as shown below).


Even better, new platforms allow buyers the ability to create rules in Excel and then upload them. In the example below, the buyer is setting limits by plant and supplier simply by completing a table.


Reporting:
The solutions of the past didn’t offer much in terms of reporting. Most had a couple of pre-defined reports that exported to Excel. Buyers had to spend additional time modifying the reports — even changing labels and creating pivot tables — before they could present the results to their peers and managers.

Solutions today have made major strides in this area. Leading spend analysis tools (which include BIQ as well as Trade Extensions) allow users to create custom reports that can be saved as templates and re-used. The ability to choose specific dimensions (rows), columns (facts), and other information means that users no longer have to go outside the system for further manipulation. Some tools even allow the ability to drill-down/up on data (e.g., view allocation data by country first, then by region, then by state, and finally by city/plant).

We have heard buyers comment that their analysis time is shortened by three-and-a-half (3.5) weeks on average by using the new decision support and reporting capabilities mentioned above.

Thanks, Chetan!

The Advantages of Multi-Tier Supply Chains Come at a Price

A recent article over on Supply Chain Digest on The Next Big Thing: Multi-Tier Supply Chain Management did a great job of summarizing some of the major benefits of multi-tier supply chains. In brief, these are:

  • More Seamless Product Launches
    as coordination across multiple tiers helps to ensure that rapid production ramp-up is smooth and controlled
  • Ongoing Streamlined Operations
    as the ability to exchange information across multiple supplier tiers enables the rapid communication of demand (and changes) across the supply base which in turn reduces risks of shortages, lowers lead times, and improves forecast consensus
  • Reduced Planning Cycles
    as the accelerated velocity of information flow improves the quality of information used in planning processes
  • Improved Supplier Performance
    as the buyer can measure ongoing performance metrics and step in as soon as a hiccup is detected
  • Less Supply Chain Risk
    as the visibility into the extended value chain allows a buyer to see operational disruptions many tiers down as soon as they occur and take necessary mitigating actions before a minor hiccup becomes a major disruption

What it did not do a good job of was explaining the amount of effort to go from a single tier supply chain to a multi-tier supply chain. It requires more than executive commitment and a significant amount of resources. It requires time and considerable technical and educational prowess. Chances are that the further down you go, the less technically capable the suppliers will be. If a raw materials supplier still does business by fax and telephone, it doesn’t matter how good your new real-time portal is as there will be no real time system to link into at the supplier’s head office. A considerable effort will need to be made to train the suppliers on the benefits of a multi-tier system. Then a considerable effort will need to be made to help them implement modern supply management systems that can be integrated into a multi-tier visibility application. Then the integration will have to take place. Typically, the exercise will be worth the effort for a Global 3000, but the effort will be longer, harder, and more costly than the organization will expect.

Feces!! Dookie!! Scheisse!! How do you define Value?

Today’s guest post is from Dalip Raheja, President and CEO of The Mpower Group (TMG) and a contributor to the News U Can use TMG blog.

Let me answer the question first. It doesn’t matter how you define value. That definition is actually worth a bucket of crap (I missed that one). But I digress and will come back to that question later. Let me address the other part of my title first by asking you a hypothetical question. Regardless of whether you believe in climate change or not, if I were to tell you that there was a way to provide you with water that you could bathe in and drink with a 100% certainty that it was cleaner than any other water source, would you use it? Now, if I were to tell you that it was actually recycled water but was still able to prove to you scientifically that it was absolutely clean, would you still use it? Would your answer still be the same if I were to tell you that it was waste (sewage) water from where you live?

It turns out that people strongly resist the 3rd option of using local waste water, even if they are facing a drought. Water prices are going up and scientists have categorically proven that it is cleaner than almost ALL other water sources (including natural springs). In addition, it has a significant positive impact on the environment, preserves water sources, eliminates the need to dispose of waste water, etc. etc. etc!

According to Alix Spiegel, from NPR on “why cleaned wastewater stays dirty”, “No matter what the scientists or environmental organizations said, the public saw it differently: They thought that directly reusing former sewage water was just plain gross.” It turns out that you can take the physical excrement out of the water but you cannot take the cognitive crap out of it! The technical term for this is psychological contagion. The fact that ALL water has someone’s feces in it (upstream sewage) and the fact that birds and fish are contributing their feces is irrelevant. It just cannot be my scheisse. And it turns out that the only way you can get rid of my psychological dookie is to process the water through a natural aquifer, even though that will take 10 years AND it actually makes the treated water less pure!

The NPR article goes onto say that those working on the project didn’t feel that the public was looking at the scientific facts and simply rejected the water, infuriating water engineers who felt that the public was being irrational. If you replace public with stakeholders (customers) in that statement, it might represent what a large number of Sourcing/Supply Chain professionals might say. The reason is that we continue to define value as we see it, whereas our customers define value totally differently. Continuing to throw more spend analysis, decision optimizers, and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) models at them is not going to alter the fact that our definition of Value Drivers is fundamentally at odds with each other. Unless we change our definition of value to match the definition of value by our customers, we will continue to knock at the proverbial C level door as a profession. By the way, redefining the Value Drivers is only half the battle. Actually adopting and implementing them is the real challenge.

Thanks, Dalip.

I’m Sorry, but 40% is a Long Way from 100%!

Yesterday’s post lamented the poor quality of American Education as per a recent ACT survey that found that only 25% of high school students are prepared for college graduates, which followed the results of the National Assessment of Adult Literacy by the Department of Education that found six of seven of American adults are not “proficient” at math. A recent article over on SIG on the “evolution of reverse auctions and best practice tips” that stated reverse auction capability in the Fortune 500 approaching 100 percent based on an Aberdeen study which found that 61% [of companies] responded [to a survey] in 2009 that they were using eSourcing Tools, with 65% of those using e-Auctions. In other words, 39.5% of companies were using e-Auctions in 2009. 40%, or 4/10, is a long, long way from 100%. It’s not even a majority!

It’s terrible that Aberdeen implied it. It’s horrible that the author indicated it. It’s abysmal that the SIG editor allowed it. All I can say is FAIL!

How can we minimize our costs while maximizing the use of our current assets?

Modelling, Simulation, and, most importantly, Decision Optimization … and I’m very glad to see that the ISM recently ran an article in Inside Supply Management on “Improving with M&S”. Because, as the article points out, once the behaviour of a system is understood, supply managers can realign assets with the intent of finding the arrangement that will yield the most optimal measures of performance.

Furthermore, as the article points out, modelling, in its most basic form, is the creation and arrangement of representational elements that approximate reality. Simulation is the potential interaction, or playing out, of these elements over time. And optimization is the application of rigorous analytical techniques to a well-defined scenario to arrive at the absolute best decision out of a multitude of possible alternatives in a rigorous, repeatable, and provable fashion. Together, the technologies can be used to determine how to balance costs and resources.

The article gives some great tips for novices in MOS (Modelling, Optimization, and Simulation). Specifically, it notes that:

  • the goal is not to mirror the real-world system in all its detail but to represent those aspects that are expected to meaningfully affect the performance variables of most interest
    as it is impossible to model everything, there is a need to focus on what is relevant; for example, there may be 50 different cost elements in a breakdown of a component down to raw materials, but if 10 of them represent 80% of the cost, and only 5 of them are variable, focus on those 5 and wrap the other 46 into one
  • if the model and simulation are producing behaviour similar to the known real world, then the model most likely is an appropriate, or valid, reflection of that real-world system
    if the model works well, don’t second guess it; unknown is unknown and trying to guess the unknown doesn’t make it known
  • we learn through experimentation
    but experimenting with the real system is costly, counterproductive, and could meet organizational resistance
  • the process of modelling and simulating a real-world system assists in identifying major system strengths and weaknesses
    strengths which can be leveraged through targeted interventions and weaknesses which can be overcome through appropriate system redesign; the process of identifying strengths and weaknesses and virtually experimenting with changes to the system allows analysts and supply managers to see unintended second- or third-order consequences that might not have been readily apparent otherwise
  • selecting and analyzing various supply management activities and processes can be crucial in improving efficiencies and performance
    if the organization doesn’t know where its performance can be improved, then it will not be able to improve its performance

All great tips and all reasons why modelling, simulation, and optimization should be used by each and every Global 3000 organization.