Category Archives: rants

Future Trend 34: Digital Transformation

How did SI miss this one in it’s two in-depth series on the future of procurement and it’s follow up future trends expose???

This anti-trend is as old as the internet!

But let’s back up. Recently, the procurement dynamo published a piece on the digital transformation of procurement where he asked if it was a good abuse of language. In this post he started off by noting that the digital transformation expression is an overused buzzword — which is an understatement.

Secondly, as the procurement dynamo notes, no one has a proper understanding of what it actually means. the procurement dynamo attempts to rectify this by giving a clear definition of the term with respect to the also overused digitization and digitalization terminology. According to the procurement dynamo

  • digitization is the conversion from analog to digital … atoms to bits …
  • digitalization is the process of using digital technology and the impact it has and
  • digital transformation is a digital-first approach that encompasses all aspects of business

… and, in particular, digital transformation is a digital-first approach to the extent that digital can be applied.

And this means that this is yet another anti-trend in Procurement as leading organizations have been doing this ever since the adoption of e-Auctions. The best organizations have been adopting, to the extent possible, new technologies since the e-auction hit the scene 20 years ago. RFX. True e-invoicing. Supplier Information Management. Contract Management. Decision Optimization. And so on. The leaders (which are very, very few) have pushed for, and embraced, digital transformation for the last two decades.

And, to be honest, when you get right down to it, the concept of digital transformation is, as a farmer would say, hogwash. You’re either continually adopting and using the best tools and processes available to you, or you are counting down to the days your doors close. The organizations that have survived decades have embraced multiple technological revolutions. They’ve went from carbon paper to copiers to digital transmission. Digital transformation is just the latest technological revolution, and may not be the last. (If quantum tech gets perfected, you’ll have to move to technology based on qubits … a blend of atoms and bits.)

So don’t fall for the latest fad — keep focussed on the goal. Better business building.

London Bridge Has Fallen Down!

Back in October, in our post on how London Bridge is Falling Down, we brought to your attention a post by the public defender that discussed how The Garden Bridge was, again, put on hold, which it should have been given that a review did find major breaches of good procurement process. From allowing a supplier to submit a bid after the formal deadline, to a lack of documentation, to changing the evaluation process once bids were received, to treating suppliers differently – as we said, if any unsuccessful bidder had challenged in court there is no doubt that they would have won their case.

But now it seems, as per a recent post from the public defender, that we are now at the point where “The Garden Bridge Loses Treasury Support” and London Bridge has, indeed, fallen down. And maybe this time it’s for the best.

A Properly Overhauled Visa Program Will Benefit Supply Chains

In yesterday’s post, we pointed out that a properly overhauled end-to-end visa program would be much more effective in implementing President Trump’s goals than a wall or any other initiative that President Trump has to-date proposed to keep people out and make foreigners pay for his program. But we also pointed out that this would have a number of positive side effects including, but not limited to:

  • An increase in STEM capability
  • An increase in American jobs
  • An increase in blue-collar and white-collar salaries

In today’s post, we’re going to focus mainly on the first benefit, as this is not just an American centric benefit, and the one that will most benefit the supply chain.

Supply chains are getting longer and more complex, product life-cycles are getting shorter, service requirements more varied, and supply chain pirates are getting much, much more sophisticated and capable of subverting all of the advanced tracking and monitoring technology that you can bring to bear.

As a result, you need smarter mathematicians to model the supply chain, smarter engineers to keep up with the shorter life-cycles (and get it right), smarter business and linguistic graduates to figure out how to deliver varied service requirements globally, and smarter techs to increase security to keep your products, and your supply chain, safe. Not a hundred thousand additional low-end programmers writing essentially the same old code, maintaining the same old installed systems, and doing other tasks that can be done by any run-of-the-mill programmer and even outsourced.

If the visa program is revamped, only these smarter mathematicians, smarter engineers, smarter business and linguistic professionals, and smarter technologists will get the visas. That will not only benefit the US, but the US-centric supply chains that effectively run most global supply chains.

Revamping the Visa programs will not only force IT outsourcers to think smarter and go global, but benefit supply chains as a whole.

Forget the Wall, Mr. Trump; An End-to-Edd Visa Program Overhaul will be MUCH more effective!

You’ll accomplish three of your goals simultaneously:

  • Keep People Out
  • Make Foreigners Pay for Your Programs
  • Make it easier to deport people

Let’s take this one-by-one.

1. Keep People Out

If you make it so that the only way in to the country for any extended period of time, for any reason other than vacation, or from any country that is currently high risk, especially where there is no appropriate trade program in place, is a visa, then the majority of people will be kept out.

2. Make Foreigners Pay for Your Programs

If you introduce more visas, with more requirements, and cost-based processing fees, foreigners will end up paying for your programs.

3. Make it easier to deport people

If you make it so that deportation is automatic for anyone without a visa, provided you make it so that everyone who should have a visa can get one, including people who are already in the US, possibly illegally but who should be given the chance to be made legal, then, after a reasonable grace period, you’d face little opposition to automatic deportation.

But these are not the only benefits you’d see from an overhauled Visa program.

You’ll also see:

  • An increase in STEM capability
  • An increase in American jobs
  • An increase in blue-collar and white-collar salaries

An increase in STEM capability

If the H1-B Visa program is properly overhauled, as suggested by Vinnie Mirchandani over on deal architect, then instead of getting tens of thousands of displaced Indian programmers, who likely only have a Bachelors and a few years of experience, you will get Masters and PhDs with advanced education and experience and true innovation capability — especially if you resurrect Senator Cruz’s proposal to make the minimum salary of a H1-B $110,000 a year. No one’s going to pay the equivalent of a $50,000 a year (at best) graduate $110,000 — and if they have to pay above market for a programmer, they’re going to hire an American first (which will be much cheaper than importing a $110,000 outsourced worker) — but for a real genius in physics, chemistry, bio-tech, engineering, that will be cheap. Especially since there will actually be H1-B visas available as they will no longer be sucked up in their entirety by Indian outsourcing firms.

An increase in American jobs

As indicated above, just fixing the H1-B program will increase American jobs as it will deter bringing people in that can effectively be used as indentured servants at cheap wages. But, better yet, introduce more visa categories, requirements, and fees for hiring non-Americans and, presto, you’ll do more for American jobs than lowering taxes (which never stay down anyway), building walls to keep people out, or pushing “buy American” policies. After all, your average constituent at the end of the day is lazy and greedy — if it’s easier and cheaper to hire an American than a non-American, then unless that non-American truly brings unparalleled value to the company (and, indirectly, the country). they are going to hire American.

An increase in blue and white collar salaries

The majority of your voters are in the middle class, working decent paying factory jobs (which will now be more expensive to fill with Mexican and other immigrants from poorer nations) and white collar tech-based jobs (which will now be more expensive to fill with visa program candidates). As a result, the best Americans will be in sought after, demand bigger salaries, and, guess what, owe it all to you. Going back to my comment that your voters are greedy (as the dollar comes first in America), this will only help you as they won’t care about party at election time, only the one President that fattened their pay cheque while increasing their job security.

So, Mr. Trump, forget that Wall and overhaul those Visa programs. It’s about time someone did.

Do You Need a Spend Cube to Identify Top Underperforming Products?

No, you don’t. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have one!

Let’s face it, if you have an n-step process that can theoretically be done in a spreadsheet, then it can be done in a spreadsheet — but how long will it take to do it in a spreadsheet vs. doing it in a modern spend analysis solution?

If sub-steps of the process consist of:

  1. researching and accumulating industry specific data
  2. comparing your data to industry averages
  3. repeating the comparisons with selected competitors, putting your place in their shoes
  4. looking for anomalies
  5. selecting top categories outside industry average
  6. selecting top underperforming products within those categories

How long is it going to take without a proper spend analysis product?

Industry data is going to come in many different forms, in many different tables, and will initially need to be stored in many different sheets. It will take a lot of manual effort and data formatting to get the data into a consistent format that will allow it all to be compared apples to apples. In contrast, a good spend analysis platform with ETL will allow for data to be automatically mapped to the right format will easily save hours or days of manual effort, as most good data tables will be detailed and large.

Comparisons in spreadsheets require lots of formulas and calculations, which can be tedious and error-prone to implement. Modern spend analysis packages come with lots of standard reports and templates that will allow for comparisons with industry averages and available competitor data out of the box. Again you will be saving hours, if not days, with a good package.

Anomalies are really easy to see in appropriate scatter plots, but very, very hard to spot in rows of data. If you have thousands of rows, how do you detect outliers with a manual scan? Sure you can pivot on volume or distance from average and so on, but is it really an outlier? Careful inspection and analysis is required on each potential row — but a visual glance at an appropriate scatter plot gives you results in seconds.

So no, you don’t need a modern spend analysis product or a spend cube to identify good potential opportunities, if you don’t mind dedicating a back room full of people for days or weeks to do an analysis that can be done by a good spend analysis product in a few hours.

And that’s why modern spend analysis solutions can deliver an ROI of more than 10% year over year as the expected value of analysis is typically above water, vs. under it, as it is when you do it manually. (See this classic post on .)

So while you don’t need a spend analysis solution, it’s akin to saying you don’t need modern technology for sourcing either. There’s nothing you can’t do with pen, paper, and telephone, but do you really want to remain in the dark ages?

As far as SI is concerned, there are only three reasons someone trying to sell you a sourcing suite would tell you that you don’t need a modern spend analysis solution (based on proper spend cubes):

  • they don’t have it and they don’t want you to use another vendor in case that vendor also has, or implements, a comparable sourcing solution (and they fear competition);
  • they want the services revenue (there’s a lot of billable hours to doing it manually); or
  • they truly don’t understand what modern spend analysis can do

And none of these reasons are good reasons. In fact, they are all reasons to be wary of the provider! There are only two cornerstone technologies that set leading sourcing organizations apart, and analytics is one. (The other is optimization.)