Category Archives: Procurement Innovation

How Do We Fix The Procurement, Logistics and Supply Chain Disconnect? (Part 1)

First, a history lesson.

Back in the beginning, in 1885, Railroad Barons were building the nation during the Gilded Age, writing the first handbook on purchasing, and managing their logistics and vertically integrated supply chains in house.

But as technology advanced, so did the need for mass production and specialization, and production of components that could be easily, and more economically, produced by a third party started to be done by the third party so the firm could focus on more specialized production in house. But then the Panic of 1893 set in, the Guilded Age began to come to an end, and the Progressive era began.

The Progressive Era, which focused on social and political reforms, also saw continued technological progress as well which occurred as the railroad era gave way to the automotive era (symbolized by the Ford Model T in 1908), the introduction of the first production line, and the need for improved logistics (enabled by Autocar Truck, one of the first motor truck companies) as supply chains slowly lengthened and became more complicated.

These functions were still managed in-house as part of a single function, buying from American companies, even if the materials were coming from halfway around the world (as the American company would buy from the American importer), and everything worked well (unless unions got in the way — but that’s not the subject of this post). Then we saw the New Era, which lasted a little over a decade until the Great Depression happened, which was bad, but it led to the New Deal, which saw more political reforms, and then we got World War II, which, when it ended, led to the post-war economy which ushered in the American Dream for the Consumer and the rise of the management consultancy (and marketing agency) for the Business — where the former had just began two decades earlier.

During this era, we saw the rise of McKinsey that revolutionized corporate structures through the institution of professional management, performance-based pay, and strategic planning. This led to the introduction of downsizing (unnecessary middle management) in the 1960s, the 7S framework in the 1970s (that focussed on aligning strategy, structure, systems, shared values, skills, style, and staff) that introduced the importance of systems, and then the 1980s brought outsourcing of talent and offshoring of unspecialized supply.

This led to the split of logistics from supply chain to manage the transportation from global countries, and the split of Procurement from Supply Chain as that was a back-office function that could be outsourced, and the great divergence began. Once costs started soaring, we saw the introduction of the first dedicated Procurement software in the 1990s, the proliferation of platforms and the rise of Procurement in the 2000s, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Procurement became a completely standalone process, and purchasing became completely separate from supply chain and logistics. During the age of globalization where conflict was low, free trade flowed, and stagflation ruled, everything worked well. But then we got COVID, tariff/trade wars, global instability and increased conflicts, critical strait closures, and supply chains breaking on a daily basis. Decisions made by Procurement months, or years, ago in isolation don’t hold up any more. Neither do processes that assumed sourcing events could take months. Neither do risk mitigation plans that assumed you could just switch to the other supplier in the region (who you gave a volume minority contract to) when the region has been cut off.

The days of Procurement succeeding stand-alone are gone. It must operate in a supply-chain-aware, logistics-aware, and geopolitical aware context. But, for the most part, except for supplier selection in the seven-step-sourcing process of your choice, it doesn’t do any of this. So how do we fix the disconnect?

There’s No Cost Management UNLESS It’s By Organizational Design

Cost Management is what thought leaders and analysts have been talking about for 25+ years in Procurement (and is something that has been discussed on SI since its founding in 2006), but not something that is typically realized.

It’s more than just strategic sourcing, contract [lifecycle] management to capture the agreements and obligations, e-procurement, and 3-way matching for cost assurance (and obtainment), but rarely does an organization even achieve these (and that’s why up to 30 to 40 cents of every negotiated savings dollar never materializes).

It’s even more than including Procurement in NPD and NPI (which is where 80% to 90% of the cost is baked in), or in supply chain / logistics network (re) design, which still isn’t the case in the majority of organizations.

It’s a fundamental organizational realignment from traditional budgeting, pricing, forecasting and spend planning based on historical spend and revenue to dynamic budgeting, pricing, forecasting and spend management based on real-time market data as categories come up for sourcing or renewal, internal organizational spend increases or decreases (on hires or fires; internal development projects; assets are acquired, fully paid off, or divested) where budgets are defined based on real-time market data and updated forecasts when a sourcing event is kicked-off, pricing is adjusted based on actual costs and expected market tolerance to standard margins/mark-ups, forecasts are re-run using advanced curve fitting models with the most recent data, and spend planning is adjusted based on all of the prior updates.

The “when a sourcing event is kicked-off” is the key — not when it’s planned, when it needs to happen because the company has decided to introduce a new product, accelerate a planned event due to an expected demand or cost increase, or a supply chain disruption has necessitated emergency replacement of supply.

The harsh reality is that if a chip or RAM factory was just wiped out by a natural disaster or fire (which happens about once a decade), prices are going up. Doesn’t matter what you spent last year, this year is a whole new type of ball game — especially if supply routes become cut off and your only options are longer sea routes, air routes, or new (already overloaded) suppliers in new regions that aren’t cut off.

And any savings or cost avoidance success needs to be measured against the average market price at the time.

But, as pointed out by this article in Supply Chain Digest on how to get From Supply Chain Cost Cutting to Cost Management, this is not what happens every time a market shock hits, executive pressure rises, and the organization is told to take costs out fast.

As the article continues, the danger is not the mandate itself. It is what repeated, reactive cost-cutting does to the supply chain’s long-term health. It can lead to diminishing returns on cost cuts, weaken operational effectiveness, and narrow options the next time volatility strikes.

And it’s all due to a hidden problem with the traditional approach. Namely static budgets create the wrong conversation. Because, when supply chain performance is judged primarily against an absolute dollar budget, leaders often get pulled into debates about compliance instead of outcomes and, even worse absolute-dollar metrics can also steer attention toward the biggest cost line items, even when those costs enable profitable growth.

According to the author, the solution is to ditch static dollar budgets, assess performance through an adaptive lens that aligns with margin assessment, and report costs as a percentage of revenue. Which is great advice, but doesn’t really help you transition the organization to being cost management (vs the current method of cost mandating that is completely divorced from reality and regularly results in organizational failure) focussed.

That’s where the Busch-Lamoureux Exact Purchasing model comes into play. When you align around exact purchasing, and segment your spend into the pocket cube, you realize that for all of your high complexity, high risk, and/or high impact categories, you need to either architect the cost model and the supply chain around it, monitor market conditions in real time (and possibly trigger [re]-sourcing events as a result), or continuously monitor input pricing as well as the price points an average consumer will pay across your markets at different volume levels and adjust your cost and revenue model accordingly.

You no longer plan around fixed costs and prices for the next year, that never happens, but around evolving market realities. And if your price point adjustments are limited, then you know you need to scale back on service commitments, marketing during a downward market trend (when consumers don’t have time to buy), or overpriced sales personnel just adding to expenses with no identifiable return. i.e. Spend is reallocated as appropriate to keep the organizational profitable and productive during extreme events or market conditions while other companies can’t adapt due to lack of category management structure and organizational alignment around what is actually being bought as they still operate off of a spreadsheet that represents a fictional model of non-reality.

The Kraljic Matrix is NOT a Foundation for Future Fit Supplier Segmentation

A recent piece over on Procurement Leaders noted how the author had several recent conversations about how the Kraljic Matrix has become outdated (and, as per our series last week, it has) and how one consumer goods company came up with their own approach to supplier segmentation to “leverage critical supplier capabilities to maximise value”. More specifically, he company has focused its supplier segmentation on two completely different matrices: first, the level of engagement; and second, suppliers’ ability to execute commercial growth and capabilities in an attempt to allow the company to do is to segment suppliers based on the strength of their relationship and the specific value they should bring to the business.

And, in effect, shift the Kraljic matrix from “noncritical, leverage, bottleneck and strategic” to “transactional, essential, visionary and strategic”.

It’s progress, but not much. It’s making the same error that every analyst firm (and even analyst) is making, and that’s thinking that segmentation can be appropriately captured by a 2*2.

As per our series last week on what the Busch-Lamoureux Exact Purchasing framework really is, it’s not a matrix, it’s a pocket cube* — which accomplishes the goal of the Kraljic matrix by appropriately segmenting categories in a manner that allows them to be properly managed from a supply-assurance based Procurement perspective. This is the point you need to start from if you want to create a supplier segmentation strategy for appropriate supplier management.

Then you see it’s not just

  • transactions (transactional in Exact Purchasing)
  • essential (governance in Exact Purchasing)
  • visionary (risk monitoring in Exact Purchasing)
  • strategic (architecture in Exact Purchasing)

Because

  • transactions can be low impact (and non-critical) or high impact (and create a bottleneck if they don’t show up)
  • governance can be accomplished at the spend level if the spend is low impact, but needs to be relationship level if the spend is high impact
  • risk monitoring is enough (and no vision required) for low impact spend but detailed risk management with mitigation plans that involve strategic, and maybe visionary, relationships will be key for high impact spend
  • strategic can be accomplished through cost architecture and mitigation strategies for low impact categories, but require detailed supply chain architecture with supplier participation in the high impact categories

This means that there are at least seven categories that need appropriate supplier management — all of the high impact transactions, plus the cost architecture (as you need supplier input), market risk management (as you need supplier relationships to rapidly shift demand), and relationship governance (as you need cooperation to manage obligations). And the degree of management depends on the categories.

Plus, to make matters even more difficult, some suppliers will cross multiple categories — which means that you can’t just put them into the most intense management category and treat all interactions as interactions in that category. You have to take the category into account, and focus the management on what’s critical, not what isn’t. Management requires HUMAN INTERACTION, and you only have so many people with so much time to build the RELATIONSHIPS, so you have to focus based on the category being supplied.

In other words, it’s not a matrix, it’s a cube that manages the supplier based on the category impact to the P&L, the market risk (that lies primarily with the supplier or the supply chain they introduce), and the complexity (where the supplier needs to be able to produce items that meet the complex requirements). And suppliers who supply more than one category will fall into more than one bucket.

In other words, to fix supplier management, first fix Purchasing.

(And that’s why it’s so critical to Take Purchasing.)

* and, one that’s different for every industry, which might make it a 4-polytope, but since each company can customize the pocket-cube, we’ll stick with the pocket cube

Exact Purchasing is a Pocket Cube Part 5

Today we conclude our discussion of the pocket cube for exact purchasing, focusing on the low risk, but high complexity categories.

High Complexity, Low Risk, Low Impact: Spend Governance

In this situation, which Kraljic would likely also classify as “bottleneck” and Busch as “relationship governance”, Busch is quite close. High complexity, but low risk, is all about governance. It’s not about managing generic market risk, because that’s low, but managing assurance of supply because the complex requirements dictate that there aren’t a lot of suppliers who can supply the product, part, or raw material you require to your exacting specifications.

However, because the category is low impact and disruptions are recoverable, the focus is more on spend management across a potential supply base than supply assurance across a limited supply base. This is a key distinction. You’re not going to waste time going above and beyond in relationship building for something that isn’t critical, no matter how limited the global supply base might be. You’re going to go above and beyond for what is.

Potential categories here would be data centre construction (where there are multiple providers for everything, unless it’s an AI data center and you need Nvidia processors), BPO (for standard back-office functions), and facility management (which is run of the mill).

This brings us to our last category:

High Complexity, Low Risk, High Impact: Relationship Governance

When the complexity and impact are high, but you’re not too concerned about risk, you’re managing the relationship, even though this would likely be “strategic” category for Kraljic and “cost architecture for Busch. You’re making sure that the proven product from the sourced supplier at the pre-negotiated price points flows consistently and reliably. Especially when any disruption at all will be impactful and you know you can’t necessarily replace a source overnight.

Unlike other categories where you are focussed on the end-to-end price points (transaction-centric categories), market signals (market risk categories), and BoMs (cost architecture categories), in this category you are focussed as much on the obligations and SLAs, forecasts and consumptions, associated value-add services, and factors where the suppliers deliver against the complexity that you need.

If you look at Busch’s matrix, you’d think this was just service-categories, and most of them will fall here (because services are often complex and critical to your business, but low risk since you won’t select a risky supplier or one who doesn’t have the personnel ready to be deployed), but it’s also categories where service-augmentation is common. This could be utility categories (where the supplier is both building you a power plant or data centre and managing it for you), line equipment categories (where you need the equipment to power your production lines and suppliers to step in and fix it promptly if it breaks), software categories (where the supplier selects software and installs it for you), or any other category where the product comes with a service (including computer peripherals where the supplier handles all the warranty repair). It’s a bit of a mish-mash, and one of the most difficult to define and manage in the organization as each category that falls here could need to be managed quite differently.

This concludes our initial presentation and discussion of the pocket cube of exact purchasing, and I’m sure Jason will soon have a V2 model to present to you.

Exact Purchasing is a Pocket Cube Part 4

Today we continue our discussion of the pocket cube for exact purchasing, focusing on the high risk, but low complexity categories.

Low Complexity, High Risk, Low Impact: Continuous Market Monitoring

In this situation, which Kraljic would likely classify as a “bottleneck” and where Busch would likely say the answer is “relationship monitoring”, market risk starts to take central focus. But the answer isn’t really relationship governance, because you don’t govern a relationship for an easily replaceable item (low complexity) that has limited organizational impact, you quickly replace it. You do that by continuously scanning for market risks, and taking action right away when one is detected.

It’s very similar to what you would monitor for in a low complexity, low risk, high impact item, but instead of just monitoring the cost and the supply chain, you’re also monitoring the supply base for potential risks in the suppliers, carriers, and routes that you are using. And you are monitoring relevant index prices & future curves, oil prices and other indicators of local fuel costs, tariff announcements (and threats), currency movements, current promotions, and other related signals.

Common categories here will be less critical metals, energy, and food commodities. Most metals can be relatively easy replaced, especially if a moderate cost increase isn’t that detrimental; there are usually alternate energy / grid sources (and you can always build your own plant) that you can contract, for a bit more; and unless it’s a food commodity in limited supply globally where there is no substitute (like coffee), it’s just paying more. What falls here versus in the low complexity, low risk, high impact bucket will often be industry, and even company, dependent.

Based on this, if a disruption occurs, you rapidly re-act and re-source to other pre-approved suppliers and carriers in your extended network.

Low Complexity, High Risk, High Impact: Market Risk Management

In this situation, which would likely be “strategic” under Kraljic and “cost architecture” under Busch, you graduate from continuous market monitoring to full-blown market risk management. Market monitoring and rapid reaction is not enough, because you can’t afford any potentially preventable disruptions in a high-impact category. In this situation, you’re monitoring everything you would for a low impact category, plus any ancillary data that could impact the category — such as weather for critical deliveries that need to be made on time, geopolitical signals that could indicate (escalating) conflicts or trade barriers, correlated material or commodities that often serve as indicators of forthcoming pricing changes, and any other signals that could indicate a future impactful event.

It also means that you’re pre-defining potential mitigation plans that will allow you to re-source very quickly if something happens. You’re not doing full-blown supply chain / cost architecture design because the category is not complex, and there should be lots of potential suppliers, but you are doing full blown risk-centric monitoring because you can’t risk unnecessary impacts to your business. And you’re defining what mitigating actions you can take so that you can immediately execute on one or more of them should you detect a disruption signal. This might be shifting current supply/orders 100% to the minority supplier, re-sourcing against a pre-approved supply base, sourcing a substitute item, etc.

Common categories here will be critical metals like meteoric iron, low background steel, tool steel, and ultrahigh carbon steel; rare earths which are only mined in a few countries; and critical food commodities with limited production sites (like that all important coffee bean).

Tomorrow we will conclude our discussion of the pocket cube of exact purchasing for our last two categories.