Not the 30% to 40% of spend that it probably is (as this is the amount of tail spend in the average organization)!

The reason it’s so large is that, in most companies, there is strategically sourced spend and tail spend when, in fact, there should be (at least) three categories of spend: strategic, managed, and tail — and, if the managed spend is large enough, you can break out a 4th category of tactically procured spend. Each of these categories is defined as follows:

Strategically Sourced
This is the spend that is high volume, high dollar, or strategic to your organization. While there will usually be a dollar minimum relative to your total spend (i.e. 5M to 50M depending on organizational size), if the part is critical to production of a primary product or service, if it can only be sourced from one supplier (hopefully split across multiple locations), and if its absence would bring an entire multi-million production line to a halt, then it would be include, even if it was only 1M annual spend).

More generally speaking, a product or service fits in this category if the return expected from a strategic sourcing exercise (which costs manpower and technology) will be considerable relative to the cost. (I.E. an ROI of 3X to 5X.)

Managed
This is where you put the categories or buckets of spend that are not quite big enough to undergo a strategic sourcing event (as the expected return is low relative to the effort of a manual strategic sourcing event) but where not managing the spend leads to a considerable loss when you look at an average of 15% or more overspend in tail spend.

For example, in a big multi-national, 1M is not large when there are 100M categories, but 15% overspend on 1M is 150K, that’s enough to pay the salary and overhead of another junior buyer.

This is where you do mini-events and/or take steps to make sure Procurement is efficient and cost-effective throughout the category.

Good examples are

• low-value non-electronic office supplies and MOR, where you can integrate the punch-outs of two or three leading, generally cost-efficient vendors, into a federated search catalog which forces the organizational buyers to procure the lowest cost item in stock that meets the requirement without supervisor oversight (and keeps costs close to market, vs. 15% above)
• recurring tech-support services, where you can integrate master rate cards from local vendors and just have the users select a vendor with an approved rate card to perform the service (and push all spend through the system)
• one-time event spend, where you bundle up as much of the spend as possible and push out a standardized RFI to an event organization firm who makes money by aggregating event-related spend across their clients, negotiating sizeable discounts from venues and services providers, and passing those savings on to their clients in exchange for management fees … while you won’t see the full 20% they negotiate once you deduct the management fee, you might still see 10% of it, and that’s savings to you

Tactically Procured
If a category of spend is large enough that an auction or (multi-round) RFI will save money, but not so large that the savings are enough to waste a buyer’s time on a strategic sourcing event or tactical procurement event, then you can push that spend to a platform with modern automation and assisted intelligence that can automate the RFI or auction for standardized goods and services.

If the goods and services are market standard, or you have fully defined specifications that have been vetted and manufactured multiple times without issue, if you have a set of pre-approved suppliers, if you have price history and market data, why not just automate the entire process with bounds and checks?

New providers like Keelvar, Levadata, and Xeeva are realizing this and this is a great way to manage what was tail spend and keep costs down.

True Tail
These are true small, one-off, purchases that can’t be combined into a managed (or tactically procured) category and are truly not big enough to waste the valuable time of even a junior buyer on.

This should be less than 10% of your spend at most, and, in reality, with the low-cost, low-effort of automated tactical procurement in newer platforms, as well as the guided buying features of modern federated catalog platforms, should be less than 5% of your spend. A modern organization should not be overspending by more than 0.5% of its total spend (which is an acceptable margin of spend error), not the 4.5% to 6% or more it is typically overspending on the tail when 30% to 40% of the organizational spend is unmanaged.

Four years ago, during the last big M&A Frenzy, SI published a post on The First Four Questions to Ask During Any Mega-Acquisition, that is still just as relevant today as it was four years ago.

And while it was direct, it’s a good idea to be direct because sometimes you need to let the vendor know you’re not in the mood for any shenanigans and if they bought your former vendor for the sole purpose of playing such shenanigans with you, you’re ready to walk (and execute that change of control agreement in your contract tomorrow).

1. How will you screw us over on price?

As we said before, every acquisition brings with it the promise of economy of scale and lower price, but it typically takes years to understand and take advantage of platform overlap, redefine responsibilities and organizational boundaries, and identify staff re-assignments. And since, in the interim, change management experts, process consultants, and other resources need to be brought on board, overhead goes up and costs go up accordingly.

Or, the mega vendor bought your vendor just to retire its solution and migrate your vendor’s client base to its more expensive solution. Even if the solution is superior, it’s not necessarily superior for you and you don’t necessarily want it or the higher price tag.

2. How will we get screwed over on quality of service?

As we said before, the biggest fish in the combined company gets the best resources. And even if your current organization was a big fish in the old company, that does not mean your company will be a big fish in the merged company. Your company might just be a medium sized fish that gets the “B” Team, if it is lucky.

The fact of the matter is your current support team could be re-assigned or let go, the new team might not know anything about your solution, and without the current team your service levels might not be met. And make sure to point out the service levels the new vendor is committed to during the conversation so both parties can be on the same page about expectations from day one.

3. How will we get screwed out of innovation?

As per our last post, will the merged company continue to develop the platform your company is dependent on or will you remain locked in to a multi-year deal as the technology platform you bought withers and dies?

If the company is not going to support the platform, make sure that they are aware of the “full data export in standardized format” clause you included in the contract (and that you expect it to be honoured when the time comes) and that you expect full integration support so you can augment what you have where your platform is lacking.

4. What new and interesting ways will we get screwed in the future?

What additional layers of complexity and confusion will the new, combined, legal team try to weasel into the contract renewal and how will that bite your organization in its backside down the road?

Longer contractual terms? Non-disparagement clauses? No ability to discuss platform shortcomings when trying to find a best-of-breed solution to plug the holes. No ability to buy a non-vendor module when the vendor has one. And so on.

Not every mega-vendor is out to screw you, but make sure from day one that they’re not and that you are on the same page.

And yes, this is confrontational.  But sometimes you have to stand up for yourself.

Purchase orders have recently made the news big time, as a result of Amazon pulling the plug on thousand of vendors who suddenly had theirs cancelled.

And while this story isn’t about the latest Amazon media mess, it is about the PO. With the increase in automation since the introduction of second generation e-Procurement / Procure-to-Pay platforms that could do automated m-way invoice matching to POs, goods receipts, or contract schedules, certain vendors have argued that the need for the purchase order is declining rapidly as there are so many other ways to validate an invoice or an order, especially if there is a contract, an expected fulfillment schedule, a database of agreed upon prices, and so on.

And while they are not needed in some well defined situations, they are still needed. As indicated in our piece four years ago explaining that the dream of Hi-ho. Hi-ho. It’s Off PO We Go! is a pipe-dream.

As we noted years ago, when there is no (master) contract, or in the case of services, no agreed upon rate table, how do you verify you are paying for the right goods from the right supplier at the right time at the right amount!

Now, it’s true you won’t need it for everything that is not on a (master) contract — a T&E expense, an invoice for off-contract services under a threshold, MRO products being delivered at the previous, accepted rate, etc. — but this is not the majority (by dollar value) of the off-contract organizational spend.

Furthermore, as the prophet clearly highlighted in a Plus+ piece last year on Spend Matters [Membership Required] The Consequence of Eliminating Purchase Orders, the results of this can range from errors and mistakes to outright fraud, either supplier-driven or internal.

You see, if there isn’t another document with all of the information needed to verify an invoice, the supplier could accidentally, or maliciously, charge the wrong price. And if it’s for a new SKU, with no prior price, there’d be no way to even flag that maybe, just maybe, the invoice should be manually verified before being auto-paid.

So even if you took all of the great advice that the prophet gave you, which allows you to minimize situations where you need POs, and enable better purchase controls, implement better e-invoicing systems, allow good suppliers to qualify for discounts or early payment, etc., you’re still at a much higher risk than if you simply create, and send, a PO which, guess what, like an invoice, could, and should, be electronic.

So, while the paper should go, the PO, and what it enables you to do, will never go. So implement the right systems so it’s auto-generated, auto-sent, auto-verified, and auto-matched in all appropriate situations and then you can almost pretend it’s not there. Almost.