Category Archives: Procurement Innovation

While You Were on Summer Vacation, Vendor Posts, Part I

While you were on summer vacation, SI was powering away with daily posts and continuing to cover some of the leading vendors in the space, presenting a number of deep dives on their respective technology platforms. Here is a short recap of some of the coverage you might have missed!

Ecovadis-Powered E-TASC

In our post on Ecovadis-Powered E-TASC, we reported that Ecovadis is now powering the new, and greatly improved, version of the Electronic Tool for Accountable Supply Chains. Launched by the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GESI), the new platform had over 20 ITC companies and over 1000 ICT suppliers registered, subscribed, and deployed within a month and, according to the E-TASC site, now has over 1,400 facilities in the system. By (re)launching on Ecovadis, a buyer has immediate access to deep sustainability, business practice, labour practice, human rights, and environmental assessments in one comprehensive, audited, third party verified report. (More information on Ecovadis can be found in this classic SI post on how they are Ecovating the Globe.)

Nipendo

In our posts on Nipendo, which is Bringing O2P and P2P to the Mainstream and Streamlined Invoice Management for Even the Largest Organization, we noted how Nipendo, a provider of order-to-payment automation software, recently released a new version of its order-to-payment (O2P) platform that includes automated rules-based end-to-end invoice reconciliation — which also supports automatic data normalization, completion, and matching — that allows even the largest Global 3000 to not only reach the point where 98%+ of invoices are processed electronically, but where 90%+ are processed without human intervention. Their largest customer reached this point within two years, and their average customer sees over 80% of invoices being processed electronically within one year due to Nipendo’s multi-faceted supplier onboarding process. Realizing that the necessary data is going to come from a variety of systems, Nipendo integrates with all the major ERP vendors, a large number of third party supply management platforms, and provides suppliers with a number of options to submit invoices, including a web-portal and a print-to-cloud solution that allows a supplier to install a plug-in that will allow them to print their invoice from their billing system directly into the Nipendo platform.

Fieldglass

In our post about Fieldglass, and how they are adapting to every contingency (Part I, Part II, and Part III), we noted how Fieldglass has been hard at work evolving their platform since SI last covered them in 2010 and, in addition to improving its rate guidance and extending its rate structure capability, has streamlined its job posting capability, implemented e-mail approvals, developed an “Ask- An-Expert” recommendation engine, built a powerful timesheet manager, and added extensive Statement of Work Support. The rate structure capability is one of the hidden gems of the platform. With deployments in over 80 countries, Fieldglass has a deep insight into the many varied, complex, and strange rate structures around the world that can include per diems, special bonuses, hazard and isolation pay, vacation pay, etc., with each component separately (not) taxable by multiple state (and federal) agencies – and has built a platform with enough flexibility and configurability to handle it all. Another hidden gem is e-mail approvals. While very simple in theory, and relatively simple in implementation, this simple functionality reduced the cycle time to fill a position by 66% in the customers that implemented it! And the timesheet and Statement of Work modules are just cool.

Come back tomorrow and we’ll tell you about three more recently covered companies you might have missed!

iValua: Proving Their Mettle with Source to Settle, Part IV

In Parts I through III, we noted that when we last covered iValua in 2010, they were one of the few providers tackling end-to-end sourcing and procurement in a single suite of integrated modules built on one common platform. We noted in Tackling End-to-End Sourcing and Procurement, Part I that this French company had capabilities that, at least to some degree, addressed each of the core phases of the basic sourcing-and-procurement cycle except decision optimization and tax reclamation. Since then, they have added advanced tax tracking capability, and a boatload of other features that include SIM/SPM, Risk Management, Project Management, Enhanced Analytics, and Extensive UI customization. Today, we will continue our coverage of the platform, which includes modules for Supplier Management, Sourcing, Contract Management, Catalog Management Procurement, Invoice Management, Expense Management, and Reporting that were covered in Parts I through III; and Administration that will be covered today as we wrap up the series.

Administration

Administration is very extensive in the iValua platform. Administrative users can manage users, tables, workflows, reporting indicators, units of measure, currency, alerts, menu options, content, templates (for RFX and Auctions), import, scheduled processes, notifications, (re)assignments, and information sources (as the platform can pull in RSS and XML feeds from various web sources for display on the dashboard).

The ability to define arbitrary data tables and import the data for analysis into the system is quite powerful. It makes the built-in analytics capability much more useful as the data can be augmented and enriched to also include data from the payment platform, third party supplier assessments, and optimization events conducted external to the iValua system. A classic limitation of many Sourcing and Procurement systems was the inability to import arbitrary data not accounted for in the existing schema. The iValua platform took a best practice from leading spend analysis platforms and made sure a user could import whatever data she needed anywhere in the supported source-to-settle process. The ETL screen is comparable to an advanced version of Microsoft Excel import (familiar to every Microsoft Office User) that allows the user to define the first line index and last import row, column and line separators, text qualifiers, encodings, and field template (that defines the fields and their names). The user can also define how long the data should be kept (and throw-away one-time analysis data or archive payment data indefinitely), who can see it, and what modules, plans, or anomalies the data should be associated with.

Design Mode

Design Mode is a new capability in the iValua platform that allows a user to dynamically redesign the layout of their menus, screens, and dashboard widgets. Each user can customize the look and feel of the application in a way that makes them most productive using simple drag-and-drop and checklist-based / mouse-click component and option selection. It is quite slick. It also allows iValua to customize a configuration for a new client extremely rapidly based upon the particular needs of the different users of the application.

In summary, the iValua is a very extensive Source-To-Settle platform and an extremely viable option for a mid-size or large organization that is looking to update their sourcing and procurement capabilities in an integrated end-to-end source to settle platform. It is especially suited to a multi-national that has to operate in a significant number of countries and languages as iValua, which already supports 15 different languages, is used daily by more than 150K users and 500K suppliers in over 70 countries.

iValua: Proving Their Mettle with Source to Settle, Part III

In Parts I and II, we noted that when we last covered iValua in 2010, they were one of the few providers tackling end-to-end sourcing and procurement in a single suite of integrated modules built on one common platform. We noted in Tackling End-to-End Sourcing and Procurement, Part I that this French company had capabilities that, at least to some degree, addressed each of the core phases of the basic sourcing-and-procurement cycle except decision optimization and tax reclamation. Since then, they have added advanced tax tracking capability, and a boatload of other features that include SIM/SPM, Risk Management, Project Management, Enhanced Analytics, and Extensive UI customization. Today, we will continue our coverage of the platform, which includes modules for Supplier Management, Sourcing, Contract Management, and Catalog Management that were covered in Parts I and II; Procurement, Invoice Management, Expense Management, and Reporting that will be covered today; and Administration that will be covered tomorrow in the series finale.

Procurement

Procurement, in the iValua suite, is the process of creating requisitions (and having them approved), managing the resulting orders, managing budgets, managing receipts, and managing services deliverables. Requisition management, order management, and budget management are standard fare for Procurement platforms and work as you would expect, but the ability to create and mange receipts and manage service deliverables is a more unique offering for a Procurement platform. This allows for m-way matching in the platform, which is key to ensuring that not only are negotiated savings realized, but that overpayments, and more importantly, fraudulent payments, are not made.

Invoice Management

Invoice Management revolves around invoice creation, management, and reconciliation to receipts. It all works as you would expect, and there is nothing fancy here. Just a well-designed platform designed to make the process as smooth as possible.

Expense Management

Expense Management is the process of requesting cash advances, managing requests, creating expense reports, reviewing expense reports, rejecting lines or entire reports, and approving lines or entire reports. The expense management process is fully defined, and consists of creation, validation, accountant validation, threshold checking, finance or external department approval, (final) accounting approval, and settlement. As with invoice management, the process, and the application, works as you would expect.

Reporting

Reporting is the process of creating analysis reports, browsing them, creating queries, managing them, and then, as a result of the analyses, creating strategic action plans. The analysis capability is quite good. Users can create their own cross-tabs and pivot tables in the browser by dragging-and-dropping dimensions into chosen row and column positions. The analysis can be on any type of data stored in the system — surveys, questionnaires, RFX bid events, e-auctions, budgets, invoices, etc. But the most unique capability is the ability to create strategic action plans, which can serve as the foundation for future sourcing events. Like improvement plans, they can be quite detailed and are generally setup to support savings initiatives.

Each strategic action plan / savings project has a breakdown that allows a user to quickly access the definition data, the team and associated tasks, the financial overview, and detailed analysis through a sequence of tabs. The definition data will indicate the current status, related sourcing projects, and notes added by the team. The financial overview will capture the budgeted savings when the project was approved, the planned savings at project initiation, the current savings forecast, and the amount of savings captured to date. The actual savings (and forecast) will come from the data gathered during Procurement and be calculated using a user-defined formula (which could be as simple as $1 per unit, based upon negotiated rates).

Come back tomorrow when we’ll cover Administration and wrap-up the series!

iValua: Proving Their Mettle with Source to Settle, Part I

When we last covered iValua in 2010, they were one of the few providers tackling end-to-end sourcing and procurement in a single suite of integrated modules built on one common platform. We noted in Tackling End-to-End Sourcing and Procurement, Part I that this French company had capabilities that, at least to some degree, addressed each of the core phases of the basic sourcing-and-procurement cycle except decision optimization and tax reclamation. The platform still doesn’t address decision optimization, but in the past three years, in addition to adding considerable intelligence for tracking and managing taxes, ASN (Advanced Shipping Notice) support, and customizable pivot-tables for bid and auction analysis, they’ve made extensive additions to many of their modules, added powerful workflow capabilities, extremely powerful UI customization capabilities in Design Mode (considering the platform is accessed through a standard web browser), drag-and-drop document authoring capability (also through the web browser) and round-trip integration with Microsoft Word, a comprehensive supplier view (that integrates all of the data related to the supplier across all of the modules), and the ability to easily define and load custom data tables for surveys, questionnaires, tracking, and reporting through built-in native ETL tools, among other enhancements.

Version 8.0 of the iValua platform, being released at the start of Q4, is one of the most extensive integrated native Source-to-Settle platforms that SI has ever seen, especially considering their recent additions for the management of services. It comes as no surprise that they now have over 100 customers globally with a 99% renewal rate, that the majority of their customers have migrated to their SaaS platform, and that their current growth rate year-over-year is over 20%. Along with bPack and Wallmedien, they are making a serious play to take over the high-end of the Best-of-Breed market that was almost eliminated (with the exception of BravoSolution, that does have industry leading decision optimization) with the acquisitions of Ariba and Emptoris. (It truly looks like the European providers are starting to pull ahead of the pack where Spherical Supply Solutions — Part I, Part II, and Part III — are concerned.)

iValua divides their platform into Supplier Management, Sourcing, Contract Management, Catalog Management, Procurement, Invoice Management, Expense Management, Reporting, and Administration. So we will cover the highlights of the platform with respect to each of these categories. Note that, in addition to the application dashboard, each of these modules has their own dashboard that is extensively configurable so that a user can quickly see the status of supplier efforts, sourcing projects, contracts under construction, procurement processes, catalog integration, invoice processing, expense and budget management, and performance reports.

Supplier Management

Supplier Management in the iValua platform consists of Supplier Registration, Supplier Performance Management, Supplier (Related) Document Management, approved Supplier Lists, and Supplier Risk Profiles (called Supplier Risk Indicators). The on-boarding process is similar to the process employed by other SRM vendors, document management is the process of tracking certifications, proof of insurance, and compliance documentation, and approved supplier list management is quite straight-forward so we won’t go into any additional details on this functionality. What is interesting, and powerful, is the ability to identify and track anomalies from expected performance, create improvement plans, and access a supplier risk profile based on environmental, CSR, and other user-defined indicators, as this is functionality typically only found in SRM platforms, and not sourcing, procurement, or source-to-settle platforms.

The supplier management tab integrates all of the data associated with a supplier across the entire platform. The user can quickly access the basic info (name, address, credentials, risk score, etc.), the lifecycle workflows associated with that supplier (with respect to sourcing projects), the supplier’s credentials, associated users, pre-defined reports and analytics with respect to the supplier’s performance, current activity, commodities and services being provided, financial and risk KPIs, and overall performance and risk rating. It’s a one-stop SIM/SPM shop.

In iValua, an improvement plan, which can be created off of an anomaly (which is a user-defined record that describes an issue that needs to be addressed, such as an exceptional late delivery, quality problem, etc.) and associated with a commodity and/or organization, is an action plan designed to address an (underlying) issue (that caused the anomaly). It consists of a sequence of defined tasks that are expected to resolve the issue. Each task has a type, an associated user who is responsible for the task, a manager who will ensure the task is completed, start and end dates, and other attributes consistent with the definition of a project in a standard project management application. It’s interactive, and as steps are completed, the plan, and status thereof, are updated.

The supplier risk profile capability is quite advanced. A user can define any type of risk that they wish to track (supplier, product, sustainability, financial, product, etc.), how the risk indicator rolls up (finance, CSR, etc.), and where it comes from. iValua integrates with leading risk profile providers out-of-the-box, like D&B, and this integration goes beyond simple financial profile providers and also includes an integration with a leading provider of sustainability data, namely EcoVadis. (You can even access the native EcoVadis profile direct.)

We’ll cover the remaining parts of the platform in the remainder of this series. Come back tomorrow!

Nipendo: Streamlined Invoice Management for Even the Largest Organization

When we introduced Nipendo last month, a provider of order-to-payment automation software, we noted that they were bringing O2P and P2P to the Mainstream and that they recently introduced rules-based end-to-end invoice reconciliation. In Nipendo’s platform, invoices can come in through the portal, web services, EDI, supported supplier networks, and Nipendo’s own Print-to-Cloud solution. The invoice data is then processed and normalized into the Nipendo system, compared against purchase order data, and validated against a complete suite of rules that include data format validation, vendor data validation, referenced document (orders and receipts) validation, tax validation, quantity validation, amount validation, and total validation. If anything is off, it is pushed to a queue for manual verification or correction. These rules can be custom configured as needed and can include automatic data normalization and completion when the purchase order and / or good receipt document can be identified and the line item data accessed.

When this invoice verification and automation is combined with their supplier on-boarding process, their customers, which include a large number of Fortune 500 and Global 3000 Multinationals, quickly reach the point where:

  • 98%+ of all invoices flow through the system,
  • 99%+ of all errors are caught,
  • 90%+ of all invoices are automatically processed without human intervention, and
  • 80%+ process savings are realized and maintained.

Even their largest multi-national Fortune 500 customer reached this point within 24 months, with 80%+ of all invoices flowing through the system in 12 months. A lot of organizations offer e-invoicing, but not all offer all of the invoice submission options of Nipendo and even less reach the level of processing and automation that Nipendo has reached. It’s an impressive Order-to-Payment (O2P) solution.