Category Archives: rants

Infinite Scroll

Infinite scroll, I just can’t abide.
Infinity is hard to comprehend.
You wouldn’t hear my screams,
Even in your wildest dreams.

Suffocation as I scroll the page.
Scared to load the next site
In case the scroll begins again.
Content changing, it will not fix.
Ever flashing, nightmare’s Styx.
Online haze, when will it end?
And will I transcend?

Restless browse, the mind’s in turmoil!
One nightmare ends another fertile.
Getting to me, too drained to surf.
But scared to leave now, too immersed.

Now that it has reached new heights,
I do not like the restless nights.
It makes me wonder, it makes me think,
How’d we get to this? We’re on the brink!
We should be scared of what’s beyond.
Someday our brains might not respond.
We had an interest almost craving,
but do we want to get too far in?

It can’t be all coincidence!
Too many things are evident.
You tell me you’re an unbeliever.
Technophobic? Well me I’m neither!
But wouldn’t you like to know the truth,
Of what’s beyond, to have the proof!
And find out just where we’re heading’?
Techtopia? Or to Armageddon?

Help me, help me to find
the true path without seeing the future.
Save us, oh save us from
torturing ourselves, unnecessarily.

There’s got to be
More to it than this.
Or tell me why the web exists?
I’d like to think that we evolved,
and our sins have been absolved,
as technology resolved,
limitations of the past
and evolved to the point where it can be grasped!

With many, many apologies to Harris.

And, in case it isn’t totally obvious, the doctor, who has already asked what idiots brought back infinite scrolling websites, would really like to see those idiots tarred and feathered. (If they can bring back infinite scroll, which is where we started back when all we had was HTML 1.0, then we can bring back tar and feathering!)

We Don’t Need Licenses, We Need Knowledge!

There comes a time in every profession where someone goes beyond screaming the need for certification and starts screaming the need for licenses and self regulation, like Engineers, Lawyers, and Doctor’s have. It doesn’t always happen (and CIPS, no, not CIPS, CIPS failed when it tried to get ISP, no, not your ISP, the ISP certification a regulatory standard in Canada), but some people (either because they like the attention or, more commonly, want the dollars that will come their way as they already offer the certification that they want to see as the foundation for licensing) try anyway.

And while the dialogue is sometimes useful, because it usually results from a lack of appropriately skilled individuals to fill industry need, sometimes it isn’t. Where Procurement is concerned, it isn’t. The problem isn’t lack of regulation, it’s lack of knowledge. As implied by SI’s recent repost on Why Your Organization Can’t Find Top Supply Management Talent, it’s because there just aren’t enough talented individuals out there. And the reason, they just don’t know everything they need to know.

Why?

First of all, most people still see Global Supply Management as backroom Procurement, a function that is so unsexy that the only place in the organization that is worse is the mailroom. As a result, they don’t study Procurement or anything seen as related to it in College.

Secondly, even if they decide to retrain, they are looking at what they can train for quickly, easily through a plethora of courses, and be pretty much guaranteed of getting a placement. Most private colleges focussed on getting people to work quickly with 4 to 8 month programs focus on traditional accounting, IT support, medical transcription, physician / dentist office manager, etc. Procurement isn’t even on their radar. As a result, the (re)training (& certification) offerings are, with only a couple of exceptions, limited to the professional associations, which the average non-Procurement individual isn’t going to know about.

But third, and most critically, you don’t train your people! (And neither do your peers!) Year after year after year your organization will rank lack of talent as one of the three most critical Procurement issues, but year after year you will slash the training budget. If you want talented people, you need to start with knowledgeable people. And if you want the people to have the knowledge they need, you need to give it to them, because they’re not going to get it anywhere else.

And once they have the knowledge they need, they’ll have a much better chance at reaching the level of success you expect. So forget about licensing when the average individual doesn’t even have the knowledge to pass the most basic of certifications, and just give them the knowledge they need. And do it for free if you really want to effect a wide-spread change.

Talent IS the Biggest Issue Facing Procurement Today.

the doctor follows a wide-range of Procurement topics and channels. There’s a lot of noise. There’s a lot of repeat messaging. But sometimes there’s not enough repeat messaging. One area where there’s not enough repeat messaging is with respect to talent: the lack of talent, the difficulty in retaining talent, and, most importantly, the lack of necessary investment in talent by companies that need it the most.

A recent post over on the Argentus Talent Acquisition site on what are the biggest issues facing Procurement today correctly pointed out that there are two main issues: the shortage of attracting talent, and the shortage of retaining talent. But, to be fair, that’s not the biggest issue.

The biggest issue is the lack of training for emerging and existing talent. For years, talent has made the top three issues on Procurement survey after Procurement survey and for years, the investment in talent has been minimal or non-existent. The average university does not have a Supply Chain Management / Procurement program, the average individual looking for a career and funding her own continuing education doesn’t even consider Procurement, and the average subject matter expert (SME) hired into, or transferred into, Procurement barely understands basic Purchasing policy.

So where does an organization expect to get the talent it needs if it is not willing to invest to create that talent? And how does it expect to retain the ration of talent it gets if it does not continually invest in that talent to give it a reason to stay?

Talent is the issue. And will be the issue for years. It’s not a prediction. It’s not even an observation. It’s just reality.

Are Conferences Perpetuating Supply Chain Stasis?

It’s conference season, and you know what that means. Thousands of people flocking to ISM next week to hear about the “state-of-the-art” practices and technologies that will revolutionize your supply chain, take you into the modern age, and prepare you for what comes next. Except they won’t.

For the average organization that still hasn’t adopted a modern e-Sourcing or e-Procurement system, the technologies being presented by even the vendors who haven’t updated their core platforms since last decade will still be revolutionary and for the average organization that is just dipping their toes into the waters of modern supply management processes, the talks will be inspirational and progressive and, for all practical purposes, look like a transition from the industrial revolution to the information age. (And, for some organizations, it will be. But it won’t prepare you for what comes next.) It will be like seeing the world through rose coloured glasses for four days straight. By the end of the conference, the average attendee will be in awe of the possible and leave in a state of hippie bliss (until he gets back to the office and crushing reality cracks his lenses and he’s forced to again see the cold and depressing blue sky, the blood red losses, and the blackness of the bottomless pit that new ideas get tossed into).

But for a leading organization, the majority of technologies will be outdated, the practices insufficient, and the talks sleep inducing. That’s because, for the most part*, it will be the same vendors as last year, the same practices that were being presented as revolutionary five, if not ten years ago, and different speakers giving the same scripted success talk that you have heard from the leaders who have used these technologies and processes for the last five years.

the doctor downloaded the thirty-four (yes, 34) page “brochure” for ISM and didn’t see one new idea in the entire publication. Not one. Moreover, while a few of the topics only became trendy in the last few years, there appear to be only two talks focussed on TCO (Total Cost of Ownership), one on integrated supply chains, and zero on supply chain modelling.

This is a serious problem. We’ve reached the point where supply chain success for the average organization is becoming dependent on preventing supply chain disruptions and failures. Supply chains span the globe, lean is the name of the game, JiT is widespread, disasters (natural and man-made) are on the rise, margins are thin, and customer loyalty and patience is thinner. It doesn’t matter how well you source if you can’t execute. It doesn’t matter how well you procure if you can’t control your costs. The best laid risk avoidance and mitigation plans are worthless if you can’t monitor for risks and implement mitigation plans at appropriate times. The best spend analysis system in the world is useless if the data is incomplete or too dirty. You can’t optimize what you can’t model. And so on.

Moveover, every savings opportunity you identify at one stage of the supply chain or management process can result in a larger loss at a different stage if the opportunity is not analyzed appropriately. Sure you can save money by consolidating supply, but if a single source is unable to deliver and the organization has to buy on the spot market at the last minute, the 5% savings could be a 10% loss. Reducing inventory can significantly reduce the 25% inventory overhead cost, but could result in stock-outs that lead to million dollar revenue losses if the organization runs too lean and a transportation strike cuts off the just-in-time supply. Better supplier oversight and management can certainly increase quality and reliability, but is the additional cost of the SRM systems and staff to manage the relationship less than the additional value generated?

True value comes from looking at an integrated supply management process, which might take the form of a full category management lifecycle or a complete strategic sourcing execution lifecycle, modelling the physical supply chain and associated costs, and computing the full total cost of ownership of the current scenario and an expected improvement.

But good luck finding anyone who looks at the supply chain as a whole from this perspective, especially when few people will even address the subject.

And this is why the doctor does NOT attend ISM. When you’re trying to identify the next evolution of supply management, or even if you are a true leader, unless you enjoy preaching from the pulpit, it’s a little depressing.

* There will be some exceptions.