Category Archives: Procurement Innovation

They Terk Er Jerbs! Good for them.

Because, if they were intelligent, if they weren’t already insane, they would be! One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. But an even better one is wanting to do the same mind-numbing task over and over and over again until anyone with a modicum of intelligence would go insane.

Like screwing the same rivet 10,000 times a day. Walking up and down the same 20 aisles looking for sold out products day after day. Or performing well-defined calculations millions and millions and millions of times. This last task is something good accounts payable and procurement folk have to do over their career without AI if they want to realize the savings they should.

I say let the machines do that. And then find ways to do more intelligent actions with the results that the machines can’t do. That’s Procurement Innovation. And if you were on the ball and set up your Google Alert and noticed that the doctor was in L.A. yesterday giving a talk on Procurement, and, more specifically, Procurement Innovation. Procurement Innovation that is going to arise when you let the machines do the tactical drudge work and focus on the more strategic aspects of product acquisition. And give yourself time to get innovative … and creative … instead of just pushing virtual buttons all day. (In some P2P systems, it takes 15 clicks to actually get a product delivered when it should take 0. And how many products do you need? It’s amazing you aren’t insane! Someone should calculate the mental strength and willpower of a Procurement professional. That would be an interesting study.)

One needs to remember that AI is not I, but it is A. It is artificial, and it is extremely well suited to running lots of advanced calculations against expert defined models, well-defined variables, and big data sets to identify opportunities, outliers, and options for pursuit even the smartest of us couldn’t see because our mental calculation powers stop in the ones per second while a typical laptop’s calculation capacity is in the millions per second. Even if the best algorithms we have are, relatively speaking, dumb, the machine will outperform us in evaluating data against models and desired outcomes and identifying the best directions to pursue (which is different than being able to evaluate the perceived best options and actually pick the best ones).

And because of this, it is extremely well suited to checking invoices against POs, goods receipts, and contracts — which is one key to making sure the savings that are negotiated are actually captured. The best I2P systems today with advanced OCR can reach invoice processing accuracy (IPA) levels of 98% with no human intervention, including automatic return to supplier if issues are identified, and the proper configuration of rules can enable up to 100% of these automatically processed, corrected, and confirmed invoices to be automatically queued for payment (and paid). Considering that the average invoice “error” rate in an organization is 10% to 15% and that this typically results in overpayments of 1.5% or more, automatically processing 98% of invoices and eliminating 98% of the errors is huge.

And it’s a key component of two of the innovations — true automation and overspend prevention — that the doctor highlighted in his talk that can be addressed today, and tomorrow, and change your work, and even your life. (When you work smarter, you will get smarter.)

The Procure to Pay User Experience Should NOT be Overlooked!

The history of enterprise software systems is fraught with implementation failures. This is especially true in the ERP and MRP space, which have contributed to some of the biggest supply chain failures in history (including Hershey Foods, Adidas and Foxmeyer). But not all failures are catastrophic. The majority are just the result of (significant) project overruns in terms of time and money or the inability to deliver critical features or functions in the original system specification. And this is more common than one may think. Some estimates put the rate of project overruns in IT as high as 85%. That’s problematic.

Why are there so many failures? The reasons are many. Some are the result of poor change management; others are the result of the selection of inappropriate process automation for the company; and still more are the result of limited or low-quality information. If one goes through the list of possible reasons, we see there is one commonality across the majority of failures: the user experience. Poor change management leaves users confused. Inappropriate process selection frustrates users as it increases time and effort (rather than decreasing it), and low-quality information makes users question why they are migrating to a new system at all. (And when significant system features or functions fail to be implemented at all, that’s the worst user experience.)

That’s why the user experience (UX) is important, and why the doctor has been writing tomes on it this year, starting with a number of multi-part series co-authored with the prophet over on Spend Matters on:

What Makes a Good UX? Part I
What Makes a Good UX? Part II “Smart Systems”
What Makes a Good UX? Part III “Mission Control Dashboards”

The UX One Should Expect from Best-in-Class e-Sourcing, Part I
The UX One Should Expect from Best-in-Class e-Sourcing, Part II

The UIX One Should Expect from Best-In-Class Auctions, Part I
The UIX One Should Expect from Best-In-Class Auctions, Part II

The UX One Should Expect from Best-In-Class Optimization … Part I
The UX One Should Expect from Best-In-Class Optimization … Part II
The UX One Should Expect from Best-In-Class Optimization … Part III
The UX One Should Expect from Best-In-Class Optimization … Part IV

The UX One Should Expect from Best-in-Class Spend Analysis … Part I
The UX One Should Expect from Best-in-Class Spend Analysis … Part II
The UX One Should Expect from Best-in-Class Spend Analysis … Part III
The UX One Should Expect from Best-in-Class Spend Analysis … Part IV
The UX One Should Expect from Best-in-Class Spend Analysis … Part V

… with SRM & CLM on the way …

But that is just the beginning. Now that we have fairly adequately covered the core Sourcing technologies, we need to cover P2P, and that, as we all know, is the domain of the revolutionary. So, starting last week, the doctor teamed up with the revolutionary and, in the months to come, we are going to bring you deep, deep insight into Procure-to-Pay, both from a UX and a FX viewpoint so that at the end of the day you have deep insight into not only what P2P has to do, but how it should do it.

Our first instalment of “The Procure-to-Pay User Experience” premiered last Thursday over on Spend Matters Pro (membership required), and more will be coming.

Stay tuned!

It’s Hard to Find Fraud in Big Spend Stacks …

Let’s start with T&E spend. While most organizations might believe that this spend, which is primarily for low value amounts on fairly well understood products and services, does not hide much in the way of fraud, that’s not always the case. Nor is the fraud limited to employees upgrading to business class, upgrading from rooms to suites, and spending a bit too much on drinks at the client dinner. (But even this can be very expensive. If this off-policy spend results in negotiated volume-based rebates failing to materialize, this can be very costly.) But that’s not the case. It cal also contain:

  • the same receipt for a $500 business entertainment submitted two (three, or even five) times, one month apart, on different claims and never noticed
  • a pet hosteling bill that looks just like a hotel bill
  • an invoice from Benny’s buddy Bob for 20% above market rates who drove him to the airport (instead of a licensed service at market rates)
  • that double billing by your no-longer favourite hotel for a room charged to your guest and then charged on your tab is really hard to spot (especially when some rooms were picked up and some rooms weren’t at your recent event)
  • collusion between an employee and a spouse who owns a travel “services” company can account for a lot of extra travel “services” billings that weren’t delivered
  • suppliers who know you have holes in your T&E monitoring can submit fake invoices for services never delivered
  • etc.

It’s really hard to find these low-impact fraud needles in a T&E haystack, but these needles can add up quickly — especially for products and services never even delivered! Only automated processing that can compare multiple entries across multiple dimensions and learn typical patterns can identify the majority of errant fraud that passes through your T&E system.

Moreover, as an organization learns to detect certain types of fraud, the fraudsters get smarter. No static system can keep up! AI based systems are key to an organization’s success.

In particular, AI-based systems that can work on multiple types of spend. T&E is just one category. There’s also invoice data for sourced and procured products and services that can be six to eight times the T&E volume in an average organization. And when we go broad, there are even more options for creative fraud from less-than-honourable parties. For example, you could see things like:

  • $4.95K shipping fees for $5 items because the tolerances in the system don’t kick anything up for review with shipping less than $5K
  • invoices from fake suppliers with the same name as your tendered suppliers with faked registry numbers and different bank information for payment
  • invoices from corporates owned by spouses of employees for services not delivered submitted by the employees and approved by colluding associates doing the same thing
  • etc.

For some of these instances, humans have almost zero chance of surfacing the infraction when its 1 invoice in 1000. A new solution is needed. A number of players are tackling the problem with modern AI solutions, but do the approaches have what it takes to find the gold in them there hills? Only time will tell.

How Do You Identify The Day After Tomorrow’s Supply Chain Paupers?

Well, assuming the day after tomorrow comes and they are still around the day after tomorrow, they will be easy to spot. Not only will they still be trying to use Excel, but they will still be using Excel and will only recently have started exchanging documents using XML, using last decade’s e-Procurement technology.

They will not have advanced to modern e-Procurement applications, yet alone modern sourcing or supply chain visibility solutions. They will be in the process of simply moving from paper to e-Paper, trying to still conduct RFIs through e-mail with Excel (and just uploading the results to the first generation decade(s)-old e-Procurement solution), and generally trying to keep their outdated procurement processes in tact.

However, as we now know, first generation procurement and sourcing, focused primarily on e-document exchange, simple RFXs, the odd auction, and basic reporting is not enough. You need modern e-catalog management for procurement spot buys, analytics for opportunity identification, optimization for at least TCO management (if not TVM), and SRM for supplier information, relationship, and performance management.

But this is not enough. These day’s, there’s never enough time to sift through all the data to identify the opportunities, never enough time to collect enough market data to qualify even the ones you have identified, and certainly never enough time to construct category specific models on even a fraction of those to determine if they opportunities will be realized with an appropriate sourcing event — which can take years of experience to properly identify.

You need a next generation solution that can automatically collect, maintain over time, and trend market pricing data; run all your data through multiple types of automatic analysis and compare your spend against historical spend and market data (and look for variances); pull out the categories with opportunities; run trending algorithms to project your demand against expected contract prices based upon projected market demand, supply / demand (im)balance, and economic factors; calculate the potential savings if nothing was done; use historical data and automated reasoning (enriched with context) to (probabilistically) identify the best sourcing or procurement strategy; and then use appropriate workflow automation to automate as much of the event as possible (and if it is a spot-buy under a threshold, automatically procure from a catalog, an approved supplier under contract, or a three-bids-and-a-buy RFQ against approved suppliers).

In modern terms, the next generation solutions will be Cognitive Sourcing or Cognitive Procurement solutions. While they are not true artificial intelligence, with enough data and great models, you don’t need true AI to automate acquisitions where there is no strategic value and no significant value to investing human time. Good examples are office suppliers, janitorial services, and sometimes even laptops. Yes, replacing laptops across a large office can be in the millions, but laptops against a standard config are commodity. Just do an automated auction [with ceilings and floors] against a set of approved suppliers and let the most aggressive supplier win.

Logistics is the new Black, but Procurement is the Rodney Dangerfield of the corporation!

the doctor recently stumbled on a piece published last year by Jeff Ashcroft over on LinkedIn where he said Logistics is the New Black where he noted that the word “logistics” has subtly worked its way further and further into the common lexicon thanks to massive marketing campaigns of courier, rail, and forwarding companies. This is making it the new black.

However, while it was never the Rodney Dangerfield of the Corporate World, as that distinction is reserved for Procurement, it was the black sheep. Needed, but kept at arms length … just in case.

However, now that savvy merchants are realizing that in their logistics function may lurk the well spring of the truly exceptional customer experience they seek, and must now deliver, logistics is taking center stage. This is good, and bad.

It’s great in that good logistics is a necessary condition for supply chain success, and if it’s not successful, the supply chain will never be, but it’s bad in that it’s only one half of the coin for supply chain success, the other being good Procurement. But, as SI has been saying for years, Procurement is the Rodney Dangerfield that don’t get no respect in the average organization (otherwise, why would almost half of Procurement organizations be without modern platforms).

When there is no easy correlation to the average consumer, when organizations like the Dairy Farmers of Canada say they are supply management, when HR organizations say they do Sourcing, and when even Apple, which has been repeatedly recognized to have the best supply chain in the world doesn’t talk about it (with the closest they come being Supplier Responsibility, probably as a result of breathing all that California smug), how is anyone to be expected to understand what a modern Purchasing, or Procurement, organization does? Especially when the term procure is often used in stories about rebels procuring supplies from the government (and this is the example of procure used on the urban dictionary, the military procuring what it needs from the private sector, or, even worse, often linked to prostitution. And purchasing, that’s what the office manager (in charge of office supplies) does.

In fact, all things considered, Procurement is probably lucky to even be the Rodney Dangerfield of the corporate world. While it might not get any respect, at least it gets recognition.

Maybe someday someone will find a way to bring sexy back to Procurement and then it will get some respect, and take the first step towards becoming the new black.