Category Archives: Procurement Innovation

5 Reasons Why You Need to Take the Direct Procurement Challenge!

Hopefully you attended last week’s webinar on the Direct Procurement Challenge, hosted by the ISM and featuring the doctor and the prophet, where we explained how a sourcing platform cost-centric perfect for indirect doesn’t meet the needs of direct sourcing. But in case you missed it, here are some key requirements not met by typical indirect procurement platforms.

Requirement Indirect Platform Direct Platform
Bill of Materials NO BoM Support Deep multi-level Bill of Materials Support
Cost Breakdown Analysis Limited to ancilliary costs (shipping, taxes, storage, etc.) Deep cost breakdown support across the bill of materials which allows costs to be broken down and spread out across components, the production process, distribution and inventory management, and overhead
EDI, WebEDI, & XML XML data exchange only (maybe) XML, EDI, and WebEDI and direct integration into supplier systems
Quality Management RMA & account credit request (maybe) APQP, sample test reports, standard 8D & QDX complaints report;
goods issue documents
PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) No PLM Support Integrated project management and product lifecycle management
from cost breakdown analysis and BoM definition in the
sourcing phase to production and inventory management in the
supply chain phase to quality management and return management
in the support phase

And in Sourcing Innovation’s latest paper on The Direct Material Procurement Challenge: An Indirect Tool for Direct Procurement is Mission Improbable – Direct Procurement Requires Different Capabilities, the doctor discusses 10 (ten) additional reasons why an average indirect platform cannot solve direct Procurement needs. Check it out!

The Direct Procurement Challenge Webinar is TOMORROW!

Hopefully you’ve registered by now. If you haven’t, there is still time to register. It’s free. It gives you one CEH. And, for the first time ever, you can ask questions of both the doctor and the prophet in the same webinar! (Downloading The Direct Procurement Challenge is good, but this is an awesome bonus.)

Remember, the doctor is the expert on Complex Sourcing and Procurement and when he says that you shouldn’t use a Chihuahua to herd sheep and asks why are you trying to use a mouse to herd cats (which is mission improbable anyway), you should know that there is something someone is not telling you. That’s why he’s joining a tag-team to bring you this much needed education for free. But as he doesn’t have time to repeat himself (so much to educate on, so little time), like most webinars, this is a one-shot deal. Show up. Or possibly miss out on that one secret that could help you secure the budget you desperately need. Your call.

As a reminder, in this webinar, the doctor and the prophet will discuss:

  • the direct procurement lifecycle
  • how it is different from the classic indirect procurement lifecycle
    (which was cost-centric perfect for indirect)
  • key requirements to support direct procurement that indirect procurement platforms lack
  • key technological capabilities to truly manage the direct procurement lifecycle
  • 15 ways your platform likely isn’t up to snuff
    (especially if it’s a platform built for indirect)
  • the consequences of using the wrong platform for Procurement platform
    (which can leave a lot of blood on your hands)

Sign up. Join in. And learn the questions you should be asking and not the answers you should be accepting without digging a little deeper.

Remember, what you see on the surface:

Is not always the full picture:

Is Your Procurement Platform Cost Centric Perfect for Indirect Only?

We’re all familiar with the standard 5-Step Sourcing Process:

  • Category (Spend) Analysis
  • Category (Sourcing) Strategy
  • Supplier Identification & Invitation
  • Sourcing Strategy Execution
  • Award and Contract

(which is covered in detail in the doctor‘s e-Book on The Strategic Sourcing Lifecycle: A Brief Introduction [registration required])

and we’re all familiar with the core capabilities of e-Sourcing and e-Procurement tools for supporting this lifecycle, namely:

  • Spend Analysis
  • Supplier Network
  • RFX / e-Auction
  • Optimization
  • Award & Contract

… for Sourcing and

  • Requisition & Order Management
  • Invoice & Receipt Management
  • Payment & Tax Management

… for Procurement.

And we’re very familiar with what each of these technologies has to offer for each of the strategic sourcing (execution) lifecycle phases.

But is it enough? For the majority of your indirect (finished product, MRO supply, temp labour, etc.) categories, it is more than enough. Compared to what you had a decade ago, it’s the answer to all your dreams (and, for the religious among you, prayers).

For a commodity alarm clock radio, yes. For a bill of materials for a custom designed tablet, no. First of all, you can’t just do an RFX for all of the “standard components”. Why? For starters:

  • all of the components have to be compatible — it is often the case that components from different manufacturers, even if they are the same form factor, are not 100% compatible
  • the cost is not just the components, it’s the integration — and sometimes you want sub-assemblies, and you want to bid those against components and doing the assembly in house
  • complete composition data is key — if some products use materials that are restricted or banned in one or more target markets, they are not all equal

and when you consider a typical sourcing platform

  • there is typically no advanced strategic sourcing decision optimization or constraint satisfaction capability and no way to indicate that certain products are only compatible with certain others and, thus, it is extremely difficult to create and evaluate the cost of legal award scenarios; and even if the organization has one of the half dozen solutions with this capability, there’s typically no way to capture the data that defines compatibility or incompatibility (or help a sourceror identify potential issues)
  • not only does the average sourcing platform have no support for Bill of Materials, but there is no support for production cost models that capture overhead costs (as most procurement platforms designed for indirect focus mainly on logistics costs in addition to component costs)
  • average procurement platforms track descriptions and bids, not component and material breakdowns (and have no support for compliance and sustainability issues and regulations)

In other words, your typical procurement platform is cost-centric perfect for indirect, but when it comes to direct, the platform is sorely lacking.

So what do you need to support your direct procurement? Download Sourcing Innovation’s newest white paper on The Direct Procurement Challenge (registration required), sponsored by Pool4Tool, and find out today!

The Direct Procurement Challenge Webinar is One Week From Today!

That’s right, only one week until the upcoming ISM webinar, sponsored by Pool4Tool, where both the doctor and the prophet will discuss:

  • the direct procurement lifecycle
  • how it is different from the classic indirect procurement lifecycle
    (which was cost-centric perfect for indirect)
  • key requirements to support direct procurement that indirect procurement platforms lack
  • key technological capabilities to truly manage the direct procurement lifecycle
  • 15 ways your platform likely isn’t up to snuff
    (especially if it’s a platform built for indirect)
  • the consequences of using the wrong platform for Procurement platform
    (which can leave a lot of blood on your hands)

The fact of the matter is that you wouldn’t use a Chihuahua to herd sheep, so why are you trying to use a mouse to herd cats (which is mission improbable anyway)? (This is exactly what you are doing if you try to use an indirect sourcing platform for direct sourcing.)

Join our webinar next Tuesday on June 28, 2016 @ 11:30 AM PT, 14:30 PM ET, and 19:30 PM BST (UK Time) and find out why your procurement platform may not be doing your Procurement organization justice!

All attendees receive 1 CEH certificate. This is an ISM webinar after all.

Register today. Don’t delay!

Marketing Needs Procurement Now More than Ever!

On June 7, 2016, K2 Intelligence released “An Independent Study of Media Transparency in the U.S. Advertising Industry” on behalf of The Association of National Advertisers (ANA), and it is scary.

If you think that the antics of the Mad Men and the mis-leading management consultants in the House of Lies are bad, if only it was as bad as seen on TV. And by that the doctor means that if that was as bad as it gets, it wouldn’t be so bad. The truth is, as bad as you can imagine the situation is when it comes to agencies handling, or more accurately, mishandling your money, it is much, much worse.

Just like financial analysts, financial consultants, wealth management advisors, and other non-financiers don’t have to advise you on what’s best for them (and, in fact, usually advise you on what will add the most cash to their compensation, see this great expose by the one and only John Oliver), your agency has no legal authority to advise you on what’s best for you or spend your money in the best way possible. The most they have to do is deliver the artifacts in the contract and do so in a manner that can be reasonably justified as meeting the requirements (or at least in a manner that a lawyer can argue meets the requirements).

They don’t have to tell you that they get rebates for volume business to their suppliers that they don’t pass on, financial incentives in the form of free media or cash, and that they sometimes take on transactions as principal transactions, outsource all the work, and sell it back to you at markup. The talent they offered up might not even touch your work! Many agency principles hold equity stakes in the media suppliers they use and so profit twice off of your work. Some respondents to the survey also noted that their obligations to their respective Agency Holding Companies were in conflict with the interests of their clients (and had no problem with this). They had no duties beyond the contract. WOW!

This is a rather intensive report at 60 pages, but the summary speaks for itself. Procurement needs to take heed of what happens when agency relationships are not vetted, very well defined, carefully managed, and fully transparent — especially with respect to the cashflow.

And it needs to make sure the organization has Agency Management solution, and that both Procurement and Marketing make use of it.

To understand why, read the free report that is “An Independent Study of Media Transparency in the U.S. Advertising Industry”.