Category Archives: Market Intelligence

Procurement and Finance is not a P2P Love Story …

… it’s a bitter rivalry to the bitter end. It’s a feud that makes the Hatfield and McCoy war look like a bitter spat. And you know what, that’s just the way it should be.

Simply put, it’s the CFO’s job to stop spending and it’s the CPO’s job to spend … spend as wisely as possible, but, in a perfect world, spend every dollar that goes out the door that is not a payroll dollar, a lease dollar, a tax dollar, or another dollar that is completely out of negotiable control.

Those job are opposites. Yes, the ultimate goal of the organization is to maximize shareholder value and that is done by maximizing the value of each dollar spent, and both parties are supposed to be working towards this goal, but the CFO, like the CEO, is also beholden to the shareholders, and their value is typically maximized when profit is maximized, and profit is maximized when revenue — spending is minimized, or, in other words, when the CFO succeeds in forcing the CPO to spend less.

And, as we know, spending less is not always the right decision. If the spending less decision results in lower quality, lower reliability, or higher risk, it’s the wrong decision as it will, ultimately, increase (warranty, replacement, service, stock-out, etc.) costs, decrease customer satisfaction, and damage the bottom line to an extent that is many time the short-term cost savings that was obtained from spending less.

But still the CFO will beat the spend less war drum while the CPO beats the give me more budget and more spending control war drum — and this will continue until the end of corporate time. It’s not a love story … it’s a never ending war. And the only hope for tense peace is to find a common enemy — like the enemy of brand damage that can occur if both parties don’t insure that all spend and decisions are made responsibly.

The More Things Change … Roll On!


Roll on highway, roll on along
Roll on daddy till you get back home
Roll on family, roll on crew
Roll on momma like I asked you to do
And roll on eighteen-wheeler, roll on (roll on)
Alabama

We’re still being promised drone delivery, but the reality is most goods still move over land by truck (even if rail is more environmentally friendly and uses less fuel and could be built to use renewable energy, especially for short haul or common lanes, if we went back to a powered track … ) … and those trucks Roll On!

Ten years ago we noted that, despite the fact you need those trucks to Roll On, your logistics could come to a screeching halt. You could wake up and there could be no one to drive the truck (due to a continuing driver shortage or a unionized strike), no fuel to gas it up (due to shortages caused by a natural disaster, etc.), or, worse yet, no truck at all (because your delivery company can’t afford the new insurance premiums, which is a harsh reality — a few years ago minimum insurance requirements were jacked up across the board and small mom-and-pop shops had to shut down, and it could happen again).

And the situation has’t changed. The sky isn’t falling, but without proper planning, that includes contingency plans, with the continual driver shortage, constantly rising fuel prices (and seemingly regular shortages due to poor planning and resiliency on the part of the providers and an increasing array of governmental regulations in developed countries), and increasing thefts of expensive automobile — and truck — parts (with restricted supply) to take advantage of high (scrap) metal prices, any company could find itself in a situation where the sky might as well be falling.

And the eight pieces of advice given by Lora Cecere (the supply chain shaman), then of AMR and now of Supply Chain Insights, are just as relevant now as then.

  • Plan for tighter capacity
  • Make Fuel Management Part of Risk Management
  • Get the Right Supply Chain Planning (SCP) Master Data
  • Rethink Customer-PickUp (CPU) Programs
  • Diversify Entry Ports
  • Face Reality — (Re)Design Your Network for Efficiency
  • Get Help from a Good Partner
  • Make U.S. Transportation Infrastructure an Item on the National Agenda*

As are the three pieces of advice the doctor gave you ten years ago:

  • Use Decision Optimization
  • Don’t Forget Security
  • Invest in Visibility

And the only thing we’d add is that when you have to spot-buy, spot-buy smartly. Use new services like Freightos. Don’t know who they are? Better find out … NOW! (SI Freightos intro … and they are Flippin’ Freight Quotes Faster than a Fleet-Footed Feline on Guarana … Still!)

*Best of luck getting anything accomplished with your current administration — hard to buy American to build American when there are no more American-made options!

The More Things Change … Supplier Intelligence

This week we’re revisiting posts from ten years ago to demonstrate that, to date, the more things change in Procurement, the more they have, unfortunately, stayed essentially the same.

Ten years ago we published a post on what you can’t afford not to know about your suppliers that summarized some key insights from Jim Lawton (who was VP of Marketing at Open Ratings until its acquisition by D&B, where he became SVP and General Manager of Supply Management Solutions).

Jim, who noted that global supplier insight can become as indispensable to sourcing and supply management as a stage is to an actor, also noted that in order to acquire this insight, an organization has to focus on:

  • supplier performance and quality management,
  • supply risk management, and
  • supplier content and connectivity

And nothing has changed. Any organization that wants to understand total landed cost from global markets and with predictability still needs these capabilities today. Considering that the the final cost of any purchased product is ultimately dependent on the supplier and its ability to delivery a product to spec on time and on budget with minimal defects, supplier performance management is as critical today as it was a decade ago.

Similarly, considering that a single disruption can wipe out the entire identified and negotiated savings on a category (as the result of a six week disruption), supply risk management still takes center stage. (This goes double when the chance of an organization not experience a disruption is 15% or less for any 12 month period.)

Finally, without an understanding of supplier policies, practices, and the providers your suppliers employ, you’ll never know whether or not they are adhering to your corporate social responsibility standards, whether or not they are implementing six sigma and other best practices to ensure quality and keep defects down, and whether or not they are buying from, or subcontracting component development to, third parties that don’t adhere to your quality, responsibility, or ethical standards.

Supplier Intelligence is as important now as it was then, and, most importantly, many organizations don’t have the depth of intelligence they should have, as evidenced on the relative lack of uptake of modern Supplier Relationship Management solutions.