Category Archives: Market Intelligence

The Revolution of Purchasing: Part II

Yesterday, in Part I, we noted that even though Purchasing has been evolving in the leading Supply Management organizations, thanks largely in part to some great technology platforms outlined by Lisa Nyce of Source One Management Services in her guest post three years ago on The Evolution of Purchasing, it has been an evolution to more strategic purchasing on select categories, and not a widespread revolution.

And this is problematic in SI’s view because we’ll never have a true purchasing revolution until all Spend Under Management is truly Managed Spend. Right now, many Procurement organizations have the fallacy that just because the spend goes through the e-Pro/P2P/I2P system, that doesn’t mean it’s managed. It just means it’s tracked and available for analysis. And, more importantly, the spend strategy and decision has to be enforced. Negotiation a contract with Supplier X for 10% below current prices is useless if everyone keeps buying from Supplier Y. Deciding to go three bids and a buy is useless if the buy is from the highest price / lowest book value supplier just because the buyer knows they’ll deliver. Directing a user to a catalog with preferred items is not spend under management if the user can just punch-out to Amazon and buy from an overpriced third party because they want a non-standard product. And so on.

For all spend to be managed spend, at least things have to happen:

  1. All spend has to be categorized.
    Uncategorized spend is unmanaged spend. It gets shoved into the tail spend, and is left for anyone with budget authority to manage as they see fit. Catalog buy. Spot buy. Non-preferred vendor spend. Big barkup store down the street spend. Etc. If it gets into a category, and that category is a managed one, there’s a chance it will be managed.
  2. All categories have to properly purchased.Every category has to have an associated bucket. Strategic. Non-strategic 3-bids and a buy due to high spend volume. Catalog. Just categorizing is not good enough — categories must be mapped to preferred strategies. And bought according to those strategies.
  3. All purchasing decisions have to be enforced by a platform.Once a purchasing strategy is selected for a category, it must be executed. And once an award or decision has been made, it must be enforced. The platform should not permit a strategic category purchase to go through punch-out catalogs or a catalog buy for an on-contract item to be made with an off-contract supplier.

And, since there just isn’t enough manpower for a Procurement department to tackle 100% of Spend Under Management (as the average organization struggles to tackle 1/3 of strategic spend each year), the platform must support automation of tactical 3-bids and a buy, catalog buys, inventory re-orders, etc. Modern cognitive solutions, with enough rules, data, and market intelligence can buy low-dollar, non-strategic categories as good, if not better, than overworked purchasing professionals. Automate 3-bids and a buy. Automate catalog purchases with on-contract suppliers. Automate re-orders for on contract product and services when inventory gets low. Automate that where your strategic insight provides little value, and then increase the percentage of strategic spend that gets strategically sourced every year and you will have a real purchasing revolution.

The Revolution of Purchasing: Part I

Three years ago, SI published a guest post on The Evolution of Purchasing from Lisa Nyce of Source One Management Services, a provider of sourcing consultancy and category management services that has been in the game for a very long time compared to many of the niche consultancies out there.

In this post, she noted that purchasing has become more strategy-oriented, rather than transactional, but needed better tools to to their jobs. Specifically, if these Procurement pros wanted success, they needed to adopt:

  • Spend Analysis Software,
  • Cost Savings Tracking,
  • Supplier Report Cards, and
  • Stronger Legal Controls.

And they do for strategic sourcing success because:

  • you can’t wring savings from a category with no savings potential
  • savings aren’t real until they materialize
  • a supplier isn’t better until you have hard data to backup your claim
  • a lack of compliance can wipe out all of the negotiated value with one product seizure, fine, or consumer boycott

But when you think about it, while this is an evolution of the function into strategic procurement, it’s not the revolution we need for widespread success. Why?

In Procurement, most of the Spend Under Management is NOT Managed Spend.

For a decade or so, we’ve been hearing that one of the keys to Procurement success is getting more of that organizational spend under management because not only can the organization not save on spend that Procurement doesn’t manage, but Procurement can only wring so much in savings out of a limited spend bucket. And this is true. But merely dumping more spend on a Procurement organization not ready to handle it doesn’t generate savings.

There is a common fallacy that spend in the system is spend under management. It’s not. Just because the spend goes through the e-Pro/P2P/I2P system, that doesn’t mean it’s managed. It just means it’s tracked and available for analysis. That’s a great first start, but that’s all it is, a start. All spend has to be strategically allocated and appropriately sourced to really claim spend under management. And, more importantly, the spend strategy and decision has to be enforced. Negotiation a contract with Supplier X for 10% below current prices is useless if everyone keeps buying from Supplier Y. Deciding to go three bids and a buy is useless if the buy is from the highest price / lowest book value supplier just because the buyer knows they’ll deliver. Directing a user to a catalog with preferred items is not spend under management if the user can just punch-out to Amazon and buy from an overpriced third party because they want a non-standard product.

The Revolution of Purchasing will only happing when all Spend Under Management is truly Managed Spend.

BFC or IND? Which is better? And Why Does Procurement Care?

If you want to increase market share, the standard strategies employed by marketing typically fall into the:

  • BFC: Better, Faster, Cheaper bucket and the
  • INP: Innovative New Product bucket

In the first case of BFC, you pick a product out there (which could be one of your own) that people like, and figure out how to make it better, faster, cheaper and sell them a must-have upgrade.

In the second case of IND, you pick a product (like a cell phone) and figure out how to revolutionize it (like a smart phone) or how to add a feature (like facial recognition) that no one has yet and make it a must have.

In the first case, if the company makes a version of the product, Engineering picks the preferred supplier and starts a collaboration to try and take cost out of production while adding quality and features. In the latter, they undertake research into current products, production processes, and material requirements and try to find a design and a production process that can lower costs and improve quality or attractiveness to the market.

In the second case, a brainstorm is done to figure out what the market would want that might be possible, R&D is called in to see if it can be made a reality, Engineering is called in to get some production data for costing, research is done to see if the market will bear it, and a decision is made.

Sounds like it’s all Marketing, R&D, and Engineering — so why do you care? Because if the stakeholders involved decide something can be produced at cost X, they are going to expect you to beat that cost, whether or not its reasonable.

Moreover, when they have the option of BFC vs INP, they will often choose based upon their market projections of profit which comes down to their views on cost. So if you can’t meet the cost, the organization will lose and will be blamed. But more importantly, they can overestimate one cost and make the wrong choice, where you could win big, or, even worse, they can overestimate the supply market when there are really only two or three suppliers, all at capacity, and all without the time to do the necessary production line upgrades. Not only do you have a cost issue in the latter situation, but you also have a supply base issue.

Procurement needs to be at the table as part of all BFC and/or INP product considerations, especially when pricing and projections of market AND supply market are being made. Only Procurement can bring the proper knowledge, calculations, and projections for the company to make the right bottom line decision. And while Procurement will likely want to, and probably should, stay out of discussions of what the market will want, what R&D can do, etc., it can’t stay out of the cost and projection discussions. Otherwise, it’s the organization that will get burned in the end — even though it’s not at fault.

How Do You Identify a Truly Stellar Supplier

Assuming one exists, how will you know one when you find one?

Five years ago, we asked how do you identify a stellar supplier? One way, as we pointed out, was to find a supplier that actively self manages. A supplier which measures, tracks, and even reports its own performance against SLAs and KPIs, accepts — and even helps to identify — the corrective actions it needs to take, actively works to not only meet expectations but exceed them, and communicates as soon as something happens that could threaten a KPI, SLA, commitment, or expectation.

Then, if you find multiple candidates, find a supplier that wants to collaborate. Find a supplier who will work with you to jointly identify opportunities for efficiency improvements and cost reductions and help keep costs down for all. This is even better. But is it as good as it gets?

No. You want a supplier who will open its books, at least so far as what it’s costs are that affect you. And what you can do to bring those costs down. That dives into its overhead costs and lets you know if energy, manpower, or cost of capital (if it needs to borrow to meet daily cash flow needs until you pay for finish goods 30 days after shipment) and what it could use from you to lower costs — such as faster payments, help with de-regulated energy negotiations, or production line improvements and lean initiatives to keep manpower costs steady. And into raw material costs, and where it needs more volume or negotiating leverage to keep costs down.

And then a supplier that helps you identify your tier 2 supply chain risks. What good does it do for a buyer to know it’s tier 1 risks when most disruptions begin further down the chain — and when the only way to possibly recover against them is to get early warning. A truly stellar supplier also works with you to put in place systems that will allow the supplier to report on potential disruptions in its supply chain (when raw materials don’t show up in time, when the quality of components it gets goes down, etc.) so you know when trouble might be brewing and, if your supplier needs help, when you can help it to prevent troubles later.

A truly stellar supplier doesn’t hide its risks and costs from you — it shares the and allows you to work with it hand-in-hand in lean efforts to create truly stellar supply chains.

There is No Free Lunch, and There is No Free Shipping Either!

Even though shipping is not, or should not, be that complicated anymore, it’s still relatively human intensive (as even technology-driven shipping requires someone to scan the labels, read the response, and load the products into the right boxes and then into the right truck for delivery to the right recipient) and will always costly. Why?

  • Every form of transportation requires a vehicle

    and all vehicles have acquisition and maintenance costs

  • Every form of vehicle requires some form of power

    and all forms of power have a cost, even if they are based on some form of renewable resource (as windmills have to be maintained and biomass has to be grown) — so energy costs will never go to zero

  • Every vehicle requires an operator

    even if the operator is the programmer maintaining the system that controls the drone or the self-driving truck

And not all goods are simple consumer goods that can be put in a box on a truck and handed to you by an average FedEx delivery driver. Some are fragile and require extra packaging. Some need to stay cold or frozen. Some are hazardous materials. Sometimes shipping a single small item can cost thousands, especially when you add in the extra costs in packaging, handling, pick-up, and delivery.

In other words, shipping is expensive. And anyone giving you free shipping is including it in the price, probably at a padded mark-up. So don’t fret the shipping, fret the total cost of the purchase relative to the value received. Sometimes if you shop around you can get a better product at a lower overall price, shipping included.

This is especially true if you’re buying from online marketplaces, Amazon NOT excluded. (Going back to Amazon, as the doctor has noted before, by now consumers should have caught on to the fact that many of the less-reputable third party merchants that use Amazon Prime Shipping mark up their merchandise to cover the shipping costs. the doctor has seen $40 to $60 mark-up on small items that probably only cost $10 to ship with Amazon’s massive shipping discounts.)