In Part I, we discussed how b-pack, who packed it in for a brave new world back in 2010, crossed the Atlantic in their quest to spread some of their French Procurement bohemian revolution to the rest of the world, bringing with them a suite of Procurement solutions that take you from the start of a traditional sourcing cycle (RFx), through a contract, to a requisition (which may be from a catalog), against a budget, to receipt (which can include asset tracking information), and an invoice, to payment, reporting, and supplier management.

Then, in Part II, we noted that b-pack has spent the last three years implementing (or significantly improving) (collaborative) contract authoring and advanced contract management (coming out in the next release this quarter), advanced requisitioning and services procurement, OCR (Optical Character Recognition) integration, project management and project support across requisitions and budgets, an enhanced collaboration portal, a GPO (Group Purchasing Organization) module, and enhancements across the board to all core and supporting modules while at the same time extending their out-of-the-box integrations with ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and AP (Accounts Payable) systems, increasing usability, and taking (RAD) rapid application development to a whole new level with respect to the degree to which the platform can be customized for a new client. In addition, we did a deep dive into their requisition, budget, and project-management functionality.

Today we want to talk about their new RAD (Rapid Application Development) capability and their ability to customize an implementation for every customer off of one common platform. In the new version of their platform, each of their 30+ components have been implemented as stand-alone modules. This allows a customer to choose just the modules that make sense for their organization. In addition, each module can be custom configured to the client’s need. As discussed in yesterday’s post, the customer can choose just those requisitions that make sense for their Procurement processes in the 1Cart & Requisition Module. A customer that already has a BoB (best-of-breed) strategic sourcing module can exclude the sourcing module, a customer that has a multi-channel invoice solution can turn off the OCR module, and a customer that doesn’t have an ERP can leave the integration out.

In addition, the options that are presented for configuration in each module are then restricted to those that are related to the modules that are selected. For example, the user will not be able to configure OCR receiving rules in the invoice module if the OCR module is not part of the solution. Furthermore, the configuration of each module is workflow driven, so the user will only be presented with configuration options that make sense based upon previous selections. So, if a user selects that only user-initiated requisitions and invoice-free requisition workflows are supported, the user will not be presented with, or be able to access, configuration options for check-requisition.

Finally, the workflow-driven dashboard is extensively customizable and can be pre-configured for each user type. The user, which is only presented with the workflow elements and analytics associated with the modules the user has access to, can select what workflow elements (such as outstanding approvals, requisitions, etc.) she wants to see on the dashboard, and in what order, as well as what reports should be generated and loaded upon application log in.

Using the extensive configuration capability in their platform, b-pack is able to rapidly configure a custom-installation for each customer, that exactly mirrors their current processes, in a matter of days and deploy an appropriate instance of their platform from the start, that includes out-of-the-box integrations with ERP and AP systems and third-party punch-outs for catalog purchases. Then, all that is required to get a customer fully operational is to load any master data elements that do not exist in the ERP or AP systems and, optionally, define the requisition, project, budget, invoice, etc. templates used by the organization. In a matter of weeks, the organization is running on a fully configured, fully featured, customized e-Procurement solution that runs on one common code base that can be updated on-demand in a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) environment, giving the customer the best of both worlds (rapid deployment and extensive customization).

In our next series, we will dive deeper into some of the new capabilities of Version 4.0 of the b-pack platform that is coming out this quarter.

In Part I, we discussed how b-pack, who packed it in for a brave new world (Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV) back in 2010, crossed the Atlantic in their quest to spread some of their French Procurement bohemian revolution to the rest of the world, bringing with them a suite of Procurement solutions that take you from the start of a traditional sourcing cycle (RFx), through a contract, to a requisition (which may be from a catalog), against a budget, to receipt (which can include asset tracking information), and an invoice, to payment, reporting, and supplier management. Three years ago their Procurement suite, which also included document management, expense and travel management, asset management, inventory management (which is integrated with asset management), fleet management, dispute resolution, a supplier portal and procurement business intelligence reporting in a solution that was extensively internationalized, was one of the most in-depth solutions available, and it has been developed considerably since then.

In the past three years b-pack has added (or significantly improved) (collaborative) contract authoring and advanced contract management (coming out in the next release this quarter), advanced requisitioning and services procurement, OCR (Optical Character Recognition) integration, project management and project support across requisitions and budgets, an enhanced collaboration portal, a GPO (Group Purchasing Organization) module, and enhancements across the board to all core and supporting modules while at the same time extending their out-of-the-box integrations with ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and AP (Accounts Payable) systems, increasing usability, and taking (RAD) rapid application development to a whole new level with respect to the degree to which the platform can be customized for a new client.

Today we are going to discuss the enhancements to requisitions, budgets, and project-management.

As discussed in yesterday’s post, one of the things b-pack has learned while servicing over 100+ global clients in 20+ industries in the public and private sector is that every company has their own unique Procurement process, which starts with the requisition. For example, some companies start with a requisition, which must be approved before a PO can be generated, some companies start with a PO, and some companies, where most of the spend is for small amounts, start with the invoice. In addition, and this is true in the public and health-care sectors, some processes start with check requisitions for employee (travel) expenses and study participant payments. Each of these requisitions requires a different (approval) process. In addition, while some requisitions are for one time product or services buys, some are for repeating, regularly scheduled buys, and some are for products or services that are to be delivered over multiple phases of a project, and multiple POs, invoices, and receipts need to be managed against the same requisition over the course of the project.

In response to this need, b-pack has extended their platform to support a slew of requisition types and processes, and each customer can select just the types, and processes, that they require. In addition, each step can be customized as needed and the approval process, which is rules-driven, can be as simple or complex as required. This is what allows them to meet the needs of Sony Music UK, for example. In the music industry, requisitions are for projects which can include CD recording and CD promotion. A CD recording will require studio costs, producer advances and fees, artist advances, flat fees and payments, post-production costs, etc. A CD Promotion will include promotions for multiple singles, which will have associated production costs, advertising costs, and special event costs (for artists appearances). And while the CD recording requisition might be a single-phase project, the promotion will generally be multi-phase, with each phase centred around the release of a single. The b-pack platform not only supports the requisitions required for these types of projects, but also supports templates for each project (or recurring order) that is required. So, all a talent, or project, manager, needs to do to set up a project is select the type of requisition, select the template, input the expected costs (against the pre-populated expense groups and project codes), and send it off for approval.

It’s budget creation and tracking capability is also quite advanced. It allows you to set up a budget that is as detailed as necessary and track it monthly or against project phases. The budget can be compared against the appropriate project(s), requisitions, invoices, and receipts and the user can see how they are doing at any particular time. This real-time visibility into the budget allows them to track the success of the project.

After requisitions, the next biggest enhancement to the platform is probably in respect to its project definition and management. In the b-pack platform, projects can be as simple or complex as required. They can be single phase or multi-phase; associated with a budget; linked to zero or more documents and contracts; associated with the relevant requisitions, invoices, and receipts; associated with one or more users including the project manager; and updated automatically when any associated requisition, invoice, receipt, etc. is updated.

And, as with previous versions of the b-pack platform, all of the data fields are driven off of master-data and the suppliers, approvers, account codes, project codes, etc. can all be selected from drop-down lists after a few characters have been entered. In addition, all of the master data tables (that are not pulled from associated ERP, AP, etc. systems) can be updated using Excel spreadsheets – making it easy to administer.

b-pack has put a lot of thought into usability and worked hard to make sure the platform meets the needs of its international users. Tomorrow, we’ll dive deeper into its new, relatively unique, RAD architecture.

When we first introduced you to b-pack in 2010, they were packing it in for a brave new world (Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV), hoping to spread some French Procurement bohemian revolution to the rest of the world.

Unlike other e-Procurement systems of the day, b-pack understood that e-Procurement was more than just requisitions, catalogs, and invoices. Good e-Procurement solutions take you from procurement through purchase through receipt, payment and supplier management to begin the cycle anew. To this end, b-pack brought with them a suite of solutions that take you from the start of a traditional sourcing cycle (RFx), through a contract, to a requisition (which may be from a catalog), against a budget, to receipt (which can include asset tracking information), and an invoice, to payment, reporting, and supplier management. In addition to these core e-Procurement modules, they also brought document management, expense and travel management, asset management, inventory management (which is integrated with asset management), fleet management, dispute resolution, a supplier portal and procurement business intelligence reporting in a solution that was extensively internationalized.

So what have they been up to since then? Quite a bit. In addition to (collaborative) contract authoring and advanced contract management (coming out in the next release next quarter), advanced requisitioning and services procurement, OCR (Optical Character Recognition) integration, project management and project support across requisitions and budgets, an enhanced collaboration portal, a GPO (Group Purchasing Organization) module, and enhancements across the board to all core and supporting modules, b-pack has been working hard to extend their out-of-the-box integrations with ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and AP (Accounts Payable) systems, increase usability, and take (RAD) rapid application development to a whole new level with respect to the degree to which the platform can be customized for a new client.

One of the things b-Pack has learned serving 100+ clients globally across 20+ industries in the public and private sectors over the past 13 years is that every single company is different when it comes to the Procurement processes that they use. Furthermore, not only are the procurement (inventory, and receiving) processes (just to name a few) different, so are the types of requisitions, budgets, and projects that they use. And if you try to meet their needs with a one-size fits all platform that doesn’t mimic organizational processes exactly, what ends up happening is that the employees, used to doing things a certain way, do everything they can to bypass the platform, no matter how easy it is to use or how consumer-oriented it is. And what ends up happening is that, instead of Supply Management getting their spend under management (SUM), maverick spend actually increases after the e-Procurement platform is implemented. In response to this realization, b-pack has been very heavily focussed on not only increasing the customization capability of their platform over the last few years, but in doing it in such a way that the platform can be custom configured through user-driven administration options. This achieves three very important goals in the enterprise software world. One — there is only one instance of the b-pack platform – which makes it very easy to maintain and update as every customer runs the same core code base. Two — every customer (administrator) can configure the platform themselves as their needs change. Three — a custom instance can be configured for even the most complex Fortune 500 in a matter of days by a b-pack product manager who sits down with the customer and walks through all of their Procurement processes with them.

In the posts that follow we will discuss some of the unique customization capabilities in the new b-pack solution in detail.