Category Archives: Market Intelligence

It’s NOT the Marketplace or the Network … it’s the Facilitation!

Ten years ago SI ran a piece on how it’s not the portal or the network … it’s the facilitation in response to a piece in Global Logistics & Supply Chain Strategies, now on supply chain brain, that asked if supplier portals were so great, then what went wrong?

The article concluded, somewhat correct, that most suppliers who originally embraced the “portals” pushed back because they quickly realized that a “portal” offered little value and was just another way for a buyer to boost a discount. But more accurately, it turned out to be yet another system they had to access to receive orders and send invoices in a buyer’s own custom format, and instead of having to deal with a common XML or EDI format, they now had to deal with dozens. It was an amplified nightmare, even more so when they not only had to deal with a different portal for each customer, but multiple instances of each customer’s portal as early portals didn’t even have the decency to provide suppliers with centralized access to their customer requests — they had to log in separately to check the status of every customer!

The article also claimed that the survivors have evolved into networks with real value, which SI questioned, and still questions, as many networks were just searchable supplier directories with the ability to send electronic communications, and did not really enable any value for the supplier. They would have to enter their profiles in multiple networks, hope to get discovered, check and answer queries in each network and then, when selected for a contract award or PO, they would have to … you guessed it … use the portal associated with whatever Sourcing or Procurement system the buying organization used to submit the signed contract or order acknowledgement, submit the invoice, and generally interact with the buying organization.

So why are we bringing the subject up again? Because marketplaces and networks are on the rise again. With respect to marketplaces, we’re not sure if it’s because a number of the instigators see the recent M&A frenzy as an opportunity to fulfill a need and are thus trying to bring marketplaces back or if there are actually silent screams from pending customers that a select few hear. But in the case of networks, it seems that all the S2P players either believe that they need a network to compete with Ariba or that it will make their platform a lot more valuable.

We don’t agree with either. Marketplaces didn’t really work before, so there’s no reason to think that they’ll work now if nothing changes. And we don’t see anything changing. And another network doesn’t add value just by its existence as it’s just another copy of the half dozen that came before it.

If you’re going to build another marketplace or network, please, please, please remember the following:

  • no one cares about a marketplace or a network anymore, they care about doing business
  • the platform needs to make the supplier’s life easier — it should be less work to communicate, interact, and process e-documents
  • the platform should be differentiated and probably industry focussed — not another generic be-all end-all consumer-like marketplace (that’s what Amazon is for, right)

Because another copy-cat platform is just going to follow it’s brethren to the bit-bucket. That’s just the reality.

Finding Wealth in the Year of the Pig

In yesterday’s post we noted that next year is the year of the pig, and that it could bring greed and obnoxiousness to Procurement, as per the western stigma, or it could bring wealth and good fortune, as per the eastern stigma, but that your fortunes all depend on whether or not you make the effort to acquire a next-generation best-of-breed system. If you acquire a next-generation best of breed system that uses analytics, optimization, advanced modelling, machine learning and/or AI, you can realize value and wealth. If you don’t, well …

So what should you look for? As per our upcoming series on AI in Procurement Tomorrow on Spend Matters Pro [membership required], there are a number of advanced functionalities coming your way that will add value. These include [but are not necessarily limited to]:

  • Overspend Prevention
  • Invisible Buying (of all types of MRO products and services)
  • Automatic Buying (including basic sourcing)
  • Automatic Opportunity Identification
  • Automatic Category Analysis and Emergent Category Identification
  • Procurement Method Identification

To convince you of the need for advanced (AI-based) applications to find the wealth you need to make Procurement profitable again, and the importance of reading the doctor‘s in-depth thought leadership pieces (if you have Spend Matters Pro membership), we’re going to give you a preview of the power of a platform with invisible buying capability.

While current systems can automatically re-order MRO and stock room items when minimum inventory levels and EOQs are defined, the reality is that MRO and stock room items change over time as old products are retired, new products are selected, and organizational needs change. And it can be a lot of work to maintain these items accurately over time.

But why should you have to? After all, the system can infer when a product is retired … as orders stopped being placed. The system can infer what product replaced it, as it’s not only in the same sub-category but ordered when the previously item would have been ordered by the same department and stocked at the same location in a similar quantity (under an appropriate metric). And so on.

But a modern Procurement platform, with augmented intelligence technology, can:

  • Auto-detect regularly needed items through repeated orders
  • Auto-compute usage schedules by tracking inventory levels and computing trends
  • Auto-predict best order quantities based on projected trends, re-order times, shipping costs, and inventory costs
  • Add the items to the MRO repository with minimum stock thresholds and projected EOQs
  • Use the embedded assisted intelligence to re-order the MRO items on schedule
  • And re-calculate the inventory levels and EOQs on a monthly basis using actual usage data to update the trends

And you don’t have to do tactical inventory review and re-ordering when that time can be better spent on value-generating strategic sourcing events.

So keep your eyes open for the doctor‘s upcoming series on AI in Procurement Tomorrow over on Spend Matters Pro [membership required] and, if you haven’t already, read the doctor‘s series on AI in Procurement Today (Part I and Part II) if you haven’t already.

The Year of the Pig

While us westerners tend to give pigs a bad stigma — they are lazy, filthy, obnoxious, greedy, and ugly — and even use their name in vain — calling those we feel are lazy, filthy, greedy, obnoxious, and even (sexually) predatorial pigs, in eastern mythology (and Chinese culture), they are the symbols of wealth, and those born in the year of the pig are supposed to have a beautiful personality and be blessed with good fortune in life.

So what is 2019, the year of the pig, going to bring us in Procurement? Is it going to bring wealth and good fortune from the East or greed and obnoxiousness from the West?

The sad reality is that it’s going to bring both, but unless you’re one of the lucky ones, you won’t see the wealth … or at least not enough to make the greed and obnoxiousness worthwhile.

Why?

Because we’re still in the age of iZombie-enabling platforms that cost too much, and often return too little. But that doesn’t mean you have to be free of return. You live through the pain (of Procurement systems that haven’t kept up), you should get the gain.

So how can you do that?

Acquire point-based best-of-breed solutions that can augment your existing platforms and make use of advanced modelling, analytics, market intelligence, machine learning, and even optimization to find ways to save more than you spend on the platforms you have and more than you lose on the manpower time it takes to do all the tactical processing the systems force on you.

This blog has covered a lot on analytics, optimization, and advanced modelling over the years, and for more insights on what machine learning / AI will do for you, keep your eyes peeled for the doctor‘s upcoming series on AI in Procurement tomorrow over on Spend Matters Pro which will help you identify next generation systems that can take your Procurement up a notch. (While no system will have all the capabilities we describe for a while, there are a few systems with fledgling capabilities that will give you value today and take you into tomorrow.)

When A Vendor is Selling (Cognitive) AI, What Are You Really Buying?

AI is the buzzword, or, more precisely, the buzz acronym. Just about every enterprise vendor is claiming they have AI, even if all they have is RPA (and even if what they have is pushing the definition of RPA). However, whether your vendor has AI or not (and the answer is that they probably don’t, as most of the best vendors just have ML, possibly enabled by AR, but probably not), it is coming, and if you don’t adopt (at least) the (precursor) technology available today, your Sourcing and Procurement organization may be left in the dust.

And by now you are probably firmly bamboozled, so let’s set the record straight, starting at the bottom of the AI technology ladder.

At the bottom of the technology ladder we have RPA, short for robotic process automation, which is generally used to automate what would otherwise be very manual processes, usually by way of a rules-based workflow engine.

On the next rung we have ML, short for machine learning, which applies (usually improvements on, or variations of) open-source or standard algorithms that can extract a model from a set of inputs to produce the associated outputs with high probability. The better platforms use machine learning to tune, if not define, the rules used by the workflow engines embedded in the platforms.

Sometimes the mix of ML and RPA is so good that for certain, focussed, applications that the platforms almost seems intelligent, and this is often what passes for AI these days. But it’s not real artificial intelligence, it’s assisted intelligence as it helps you do a better job, but your intelligence is still required to identify the right recommendations and approve the right actions.

The next rung up is AR, automated reasoning, which can take a set of assumptions, encodings of logical rules and predictive models, and compute derivations that can surpass even a human expert most of the time for very well (and narrowly) defined applications or problems. It’s basically the modern equivalent of an expert system that can compute millions of inter-related logical inferences until new realizations are discovered.

The next rung up is the version of AI that exists today, augmented intelligence, which expertly integrates RPA, ML, and AR to produce applications that more-or-less mimic what an expert would do the majority (but not all of) the time. And that allows an organization to automate some low-value tasks that would otherwise require manual effort as they were generally identified as strategic, but not always worth the effort.

If it existed, the next rung would be the AI that is touted, true artificial intelligence, which does not exist today. (And that’s a good thing, because if there was true AI, would the C-Suite need you? Yes. But would they realize it? Probably not.)

But the final rung, and where everyone wants to get to, is cognitive. AI technology that is not only intelligent, and that can make great decisions unassisted every time, but make the decisions the best human buyer for every situation would make considering all hard and soft variables.

And that’s the technology ladder you are dealing with, and now you know that where you are is likely not where you want to be. But don’t fret, things are getting better. Stay tuned!

Detecting that Fraud Permeating Your Supply Chain!

As per our last post, fraud is permeating your supply chain and your current iZombie platform needs to take a lot of the blame as it lulls you into a false sense of security when it should be sounding all the warning bells and sirens at its disposal.

So what kind of platform do you need?

Simply put, a platform with good market intelligence, encoded expert intelligence, (hybrid) AI algorithms, and other modern features that can detect common types of fraud and stop it dead in its tracks. To give you a better idea of what these platforms look like, we’re going to address each type of fraud an organization may encounter and what a platform would need to detect it.

Unacceptable Cost Inflation via Metric Inflation

If the platform monitors all historical performance metrics and computes trends, it will be able to detect when a quality or reliability metric is out of whack.

If the platform also monitors market costs for the product or raw material according at different volume tiers, it will be able to detect when a cost is most likely more than percentage point above average.

If the platform uses smart algorithms, it will be able to compute a high probability of something being off when the two factors coincide on a category being sourced and alert a senior manager or executive to explore and verify the situation before a buy is made.

Double Fuel Surcharges

A good platform will also integrate with fuel price indices and transportation exchanges and know the average surcharge on fuel for any given region as well as the limits imposed by the organizational contract and immediately detect when a surcharge is out-of-whack, unjustified, or against the contract and prevent a buyer or AP professional from paying the invoice until it is corrected.

Duplicate Invoices

When an invoice comes in, a smart platform will not only insure there is a corresponding PO before it is accepted, but that the total sum of invoices against the PO doesn’t exceed the total value of the PO (and the total number of any unit invoiced doesn’t exceed the maximum authorized amount). Furthermore, it will not allow payment until the total sum of unpaid goods received at least equals the amount invoiced. This will not only make it easy for a human to identify duplicate invoices (where only the invoice number is changed) but duplicate billings, where similar invoices (for unshipped goods) are submitted with only minor changes.

T&E Fraud

You need a T&E system that can enforce spending limits, match establishments with blacklists, find duplicate charges for similar expenses on the same day, pull in expected airline fares in the proper bracket to identify policy violations, and other capabilities that can detect policy violation or over spend.

Distribution Theft

Now, if your organization is large enough, it’s pretty much a guarantee there is going to be theft somewhere along the chain. And if its external theft, that’s not something your system is going to be able to predict. But internal theft, that’s something it should be able to detect.

The fact of the matter is that if there is repeated internal theft, it will follow a patter. Similar types of inventory, coming from similar suppliers, on a small set of routes used by a smaller set of carriers — usually with a small set of common drivers involved. With enough data and data mining, a good platform can identify patterns indicative of inside jobs that can be investigated, identified, and stopped.

 

While platforms aren’t the entire answer, as they can’t detect, for example, true inside jobs by an employee cutting a camera feed or power feed (in a blind spot) on the way out, they are a very large part of the answer.