Category Archives: Best Practices

Anchoring Doesn’t Have to be a Problem …

… or even a concern, if you approach negotiations in a fact-based manner, instead of a seat-of-your-pants manner, like most negotiations are approached.

What are we talking about? We’re talking about the tendency for us to fix our thoughts around a particular number, point, or fact rather than thinking logically and independently about a decision. In particular, the fixation that occurs when people consider a particular value for an unknown quantity before estimating the quantity. From that point on, the estimates then stay close to the number considered, even if the estimate is way, way off. The absolutely proven phenomenon discussed in detail in the public defender‘s recent pro piece over on Spend Matters + on how to hone your procurement negotiation skills by learning the right way to think (fist part free, full article requires membership).

Anchoring happens if you begin your negotiation or event with a price that is based on current price, a recent supplier quote, a market index, or some other number that may or may not have any basis in reality. Anchoring is avoided if you start with a price that is based on a should cost model, for a product, or an amalgamated index by a large analyst firm or statistics bureau for services category.

The should cost model should be based on a detailed cost breakdown that takes into account raw material costs (at market indexed rates), average labour costs for a region, average overhead costs, and any advances in production technology. A current cost, a current market cost, or even a project cost from a trusted supplier is not a should cost – and negotiations should ALWAYS be based on should cost. It might seem a waste of time for a product you’ve sourced ten times over the past ten years, or a service that you’ve paid the same rate for from three different manpower suppliers over the past three years, but that’s a very small sample of the market price at large, or the should cost price.

So do a detailed should cost model (or, for a service, detailed market research and break it down against average salaries available through a number of portals, augmented with standard contractor / manpower / outsourcer mark-up) and start your negotiations around that reasonable, logical, point — even if it’s half of what the supplier is quoting. Remember, you can scream that they take their unreasonable cost off the table or you walk because you can say “look, I have a should cost model right here that backs up the reasonableness of my number — so we’re starting within 20% of this and adjusting as necessary, or we’re not starting at all”.

Is Category Management a Prism? Or a Telescope?

Over on Procurement.World, the procurement dynamo tells us that category management is a prism. More specifically, the procurement dynamo tells us category management is about looking at spend through the prism of

  • company strategy
  • internal customers’ needs
  • supplier/supply market

Through these lenses, procurement will determine if it should be focussing on categories, value drivers, required supplier capabilities, and supply assurance. How?

According to the procurement dynamo, by going through the key components of the category management checklist and seeing where they lead.

So what are the components? You can download the checklist [registration required] and review them yourself, but, needless to say, they revolve around:

  • taxonification
  • supplier classification
  • category strategy from an organizational, stakeholder, and procurement perspective
  • sourcing strategy
  • ROI calculations
  • action plans
  • governance
  • measurement

But is it a prism, or a telescope — a linear sequence of lenses that serves to sequentially focus in on a particular category definition, strategy, execution plan, and return. By the time you go through the incremental category evaluation and strategy and execution, you typically have one view, one color on the problem — not a rainbow. Traditional category management typically ends up with one way to look at the category, not multiple.

It probably should be a prism — as the strategy should change with the market conditions, the customer needs, innovation capability, and so on — all features not considered in a fixed plan and linear workflow. But will it be? And how do we make it one? Thoughts?

eBid Systems – An Old Procurement Provider with a New SaaS Sourcing Solution

eBid Systems started out as an ASP of (custom) procurement solutions for the public sector back in 1999. While relatively unknown in the private sector, this vendor is well known in the public sector, having grown over the last 17 years to a large provider of ASP and (multi-tenant) SaaS solutions to over 200 public sector organizations of all shapes and sizes and about 100 private sector organizations (that primarily serve the public sector).

Even though the e-Sourcing market is well established, and, despite the recent M&A frenzy, there are still a handful of mature mid-market e-Sourcing offerings for a mid-market company to choose from, eBid Systems decided to re-enter the market with a new SaaS e-Sourcing solution called, ironically, ProcureWare, which has been in re-development for the last three years.

A few years ago eBid Systems realized that if they were going to accelerate their growth, and increase penetration in the private sector, they needed to get out of the custom software and ASP business and into the multi-tenant cloud-based SaaS business and rework their platforms into a nimble, quick to setup, easy to use, competitive turnkey e-Sourcing solution. And for the last three years they have been developing that suite. The result is a solid mid-market entry with solid RFX, e-Auction, Reporting, basic SIM and basic CLM and, just like ScoutRFP, enough to get the attention of new converts to e-Sourcing, especially in the mid-market. Plus, their experience in the public sector is very attractive to those companies looking to get, or increase, public sector customers.

The RFX solution allows for detailed creation of information request forms, pricing request forms, and scoring schemes — which can be split among multiple reviewers. The RFX can be sent to selected suppliers, or opened up to any supplier on the eBid network for bidding.

Bids consist of all responses to the RFX, any associated documents the supplier wants to upload, questions (or clarifications) that are asked, and responses that are provided. Suppliers and Buyers can drag and drop documents into the platform and a complete audit trail of all bids, changes, clarifications, and responses are maintained in the audit log.

The (reverse) auction works like a standard low-bid auction, but the interface is RFX line-based. There is no graphical interface at this time. However, the platform also supports forward auctions for the disposal of excess inventory, which some public sector organizations find useful.

The supplier information management (SIM) is quite extensive and extremely customizeable by eBid Systems and can track not only all basic company information, financial information, and even compliance information, but can be customized to track appropriate diversity, public sector classifications, and insurance certifications. A supplier record can also be associated with all contracts and associated bids.

Contract management is all about managing and tracking awards, vendor obligations, and associated data — it is not about contract document creation or tracking of contract documents and deliverables. It’s primitive at the moment but could prove more valuable as time goes on. Contract data is primarily used for alerts, as the system can alert to expiring contracts, expiring insurance, diversity review dates, and so on.

eBid Systems market entry is solid and shows promise. SI expects that we could see a strong uptake in mid-market organizations in the private sector that primarily serve public sector organizations and continued, steady, growth in the public sector. Time will tell. Regardless, for those interested in a deeper dive, check out the recent deep dive by the doctor and the prophet over on Spend Matters Pro [membership required]. (Part I).

Why Isn’t Procurement Changing?

It’s a good question, and one the procurement dynamo recently tackled over on procurement.world. According to the dynamo, multiple factors are at play, including, but not limited to:

Big Jelly Theory

Attributed to Paul Finnerty, the ‘theory’ is that if you throw yourself and your team members, 100% mentally and physically, at the organization, in an attempt to change it, at best the organization will give a little shiver, momentarily, like a giant jelly, and then immediately return to its pre-existing shape and carry on, with business as usual, as though nothing has happened.

Irrational Actors

Attributed to Charles Jacobs, brain cience has found that human beings are anything but reasonable… When it comes to motivation, our approach is based on the view of classical economic theory that people are rational beings trying to maximize their economic return. This leads us to use the promise of rewards to motivate the behavior we need. But in direct defiance of the theory, people don’t respond reasonably or objectively to the rewards.

But are these the only reasons? There are two reasons that modern Procurement solutions aren’t adopted. The first is the people. They can resist, resist, and resist. The second is the management.

Management with Revolving Door Priorities

When Management falls for every fad of the day and changes priorities, processes, and even technologies every couple of years, employees get jaded and even more resistant to change then they’d naturally be. The Big Jelly gets bigger.

Maury the Management Moron

Sometimes the team, who want to do well and get their bonuses, will come to the conclusion they need a new solution, go through a detailed evaluation and select one they are willing to give an honest go. But, Maury the Management Moron, who will just see the price tag (and not the ROI) and correlate it with a potential negative impact on his bonus will say no. And that’s the end of the Procurement progression.

So, when trying to figure out a way around the conundrum, you have to go beyond just people and look at roles and how the values change as the role changes. And take that into consideration when applying your economic theory. (And, sometimes, wait for Maury to be shown the door.)

Precision is Contextual, But How Can You Get Precise?

Late last year, over on the public defender‘s blog, Pierre Lapree penned a post that asked “how many decimals of π does Procurement really need”? In short, the answer was, it depends on the context — some situations don’t need very precise calculations, and others need precision down to 1/100th of a decimal point. In his post, Pierre notes that in some situations, like savings, rounding can be to the closest power of 10. In others, like RFP, rounding to the dollar is more than enough, sometimes the closest hundred or thousand is enough. But in spend analysis, sometimes you need to match those financial statements down to the penny to get it right.

But how do you do that?

Your data is a mess, across multiple systems, in multiple formats, with varying levels of detail.

The financial reports are typically created from spreadsheets, which, even though they were output from the organization’s accounting systems, are typically riddled with errors.

And any hopes of matching, despite the fact that each system should be the checksum for the other, are as fantastical as J.K. Rowling’s beasts.

So how do you get precise?

You get out of the data and into the real world. When you don’t know where you are in the real-world, you geo-locate. How do you do that? In today’s world, you tri-angulate your position by taking measurements with respect to cell phone towers and/or satellites and using mathematics to estimate your position as close as possible – the more readings, the more accuracy.

In other words, you take measurements. Lots of measurements. And correlate them. The financial statements are just one set of checks.

Another set of checks are inventory levels. You’re paying for physical goods — you should have payments and invoices for the majority of physical goods and vice versa.

A third set of checks is the accounts receivable system — every part or good that was bought for (re)sale should not only have a corresponding inventory entry but an invoice, and vice versa.

In other words, every enterprise system that tracks goods and services is a data point for correlation, and should be used as such. Don’t just focus on the dollars and cents, as trying to balance erroneous totals can lead you down the wrong path — use all the data at your disposal to get it right — and precise.