Category Archives: rants

Coupa = 1B? the doctor is still shell-shocked!

the doctor is still so flabbergasted that he does not know what else to write! So, in honour of their amazing, unprecedented, achievement, the doctor is reposting the classic first single from the Coupa EP: Davie and the Coupa Factory, which was originally released on March 24, 2007.

Oompa Loompa Doom-pa-dee-do
I’m building a great product for you!
Oompa Loompa Doom-pa-dah-dee
If you are wise download it for free.

What do you get when you go open source?
Straying away from the Oracle course
Where you are going terribly flat
What do you think will come of that?

I don’t like the look of it

Oompa Loompa Doom-pa-dee-dar
If you are willing, you will go far
You will live in happiness too
Like the Oompa Loompa Doom-pa-dee-do

Oompa Loompa Doom-pa-dee-do
I have a great product for you
Oompa Loompa Doom-pa-dee-dee
If you are wise you’ll take a look-see

Oracle’s fine when you have lots of cash
It stores all your data and caches it fast
But when you’re cash-strapped, you’re hung out to dry
To watch the vultures circ’ling high

Up in the dark’ning skies

Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee-dar
But now there’s Coupa, you can go far
You will buy in happiness too
Like the Oompa-Loompa doom-pa-dee-do

Oompa Loompa Doom-pa-dee-do
I have a great product for you
Oompa Loompa Doom-pa-dee-derd
If you are wise, you will spread the word

Ask who they’ll blame when your spend is off track?
Deep in the red and there’s no turning back
Contracts alone will never be enough
If your software’s not up to snuff

And doesn’t track your stuff

Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee-dar
But now there’s Coupa, you can go far
You will buy in happiness too
Like the Oompa-Loompa doom-pa-dee-do

Oompa Loompa Doom-pa-dee-do
I have a great product for you
Oompa Loompa Doom-pa-dee-derd
If you are wise, you’ll buy enterprise

Recquisitions with a click of the mouse
No more mistakes for accounting to delouse
One click receipts when the order arrives
Invoice matching that always jives

You’ll have no … you’ll have no … you’ll have no regrets

Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee-dar
But now there’s Coupa, you can go far
You will buy in happiness too
Like the Oompa-Loompa doom-pa-dee-do

Top Procurement Challenge

What is it?

We all know the CPO has a jam-packed agenda. One just has to review “What is Top of Mind for CPOs” for a list of 20 hot issues that are keeping the CPO up at night. But what is the top CPO challenge?

If you Google Top Procurement Challenge, the top hit today is Spend Matters’ post on “The Top 5 Challenges for the Chief Procurement Officer”, based on an overview of the chief findings of a 2014 survey of European CPOs conducted by Xchanging.

The survey found that the top five challenges affecting those CPOs were:

  • spend creep and cost containment
  • realized savings visibility
  • compliance to contracts
  • technology leverage
  • a lack of deep sourcing or industry expertise in the team

Even though each of these is easily solved by way of an:

  • e-Procurement platform that enforces budgets
  • analytics and reporting platform that regularly produces savings visibility reports
  • contract management platform and procurement platform that enforces rules
  • e-Sourcing technology to support strategic sourcing
  • training, training, and more training

So what’s the problem?

It most likely relates to alignment with Finance (as recently investigated by the maverick, summarized in this recent post on When it Comes to Procurement, Don’t Forget Finance!), and, more specifically their alignment on ROI. As far as Finance is concerned, Procurement systems are IT systems and IT systems cost too much, return too little, and never do what they are supposed to. They don’t understand that it’s not the early noughts where systems cost (close to) seven figures. It’s the teens where the systems barely cost six figures. The systems are not first generation systems with limited functionality. The systems are second, bordering on third, generation with extensive functionality. It’s not the early noughts where it takes months to implement an on-site system. It’s the middle-teens where it takes hours to create a new instance in a true multi-tenant SaaS solution.

Most modern Supply Management Systems — including e-Sourcing, e-Procurement, SRM, and CLM — deliver a return within six months, and some, like Spend Analysis and Decision Optimization, can deliver a return in six weeks. The ROI is there, and is often substantial, but Finance doesn’t always see, or believe it. As a result, Finance doesn’t always support Procurement with the funding they need to acquire the platforms, services, and knowledge they need to not only be effective and efficient at their jobs, but successful. Which is a shame considering how far Procurement success can take an organization.

Which would indicate that the top Procurement challenge might actually be to align Finance and Procurement on the ROI of platforms and processes Procurement wants to implement for the good of the organization.

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.