Category Archives: Services

A Great Guide to Outsourcing Risk Management, Part IV

In Part I we discussed the starting point of your outsourcing project and how you go about selecting service providers to issue RFPs to. In Part II we discussed proposal evaluation and in Part III we discussed the dispute resolution process that needs to be addressed up-front in the contract. Today we will discuss the service level agreements, and remind you to check out the full series on outsourcing risk management by Alsbridge, as printed by SourcingMag.com, that this series is partially based on.

So What Do You Need With Respect to Service Level Agreements?

Vague, optimistic promises of a happy life together may work for some personal relationships, but they don’t work between two companies. Creating a well-defined SLA to define your organization’s needs and expectations has many benefits, including the:

  • provision of a common understanding of exactly what service is being provided (how, when, where, when, by whom, etc.)
  • definition of common realistic expectations
  • simplification of complex issues by focussing on what is important
  • reduction of conflict by eliminating what’s not important
  • clarification of the bonuses for exceeding SLAs and the ramifications for failing to meet delivery requirements
  • framework for later modification and improvement as the need arises

When deciding what to measure, remember that you shouldn’t measure anything that shouldn’t be quantified. For example, use phrases like “99.99% uptime” not “make our customers happy”. The first is objective and a measurement can be clearly defined. The second is subjective, and there’s no way to objectively measure it. Response time is important, but instead of saying “respond rapidly to customer inquiries”, define a maximum hold time of 10 minutes and then you can define a penalty metric if more than five calls per week exceed the maximum hold time.

Also be sure to clarify your responsibilities and the support a provider requires to meet their metrics. For example, if they are expected to investigate any issues that arise relating to the integration of their external systems with your internal systems, you must ensure that they have the right level of access at all times. Otherwise, they can’t be held responsible for missed delivery targets.

And make sure the number of metrics tracked is reasonable. Too few, and you can’t really measure how well the provider is operating (or define penalty clauses if more than a certain percentage of the metrics are missed in an evaluation period, since 20% of the metrics will always be missed every time the provider misses 1 metric if you only track 5). Too many, and the bookkeeping requirements are too costly and onerous for both parties. Somewhere between 10 and 20 is usually just fine if you focus on the right metrics. (And if you’re not sure what metrics to select to diagnose a sick patient, call the doctor.)

Finally, don’t forget that you need a baseline period. Typically, the first quarter is used to define a baseline and the provider is then measured starting in month four. (It typically takes two months of “transition period” where control is shifted to the provider and the “kinks” are worked out before you can extract a solid baseline in month three.)

When it comes to defining bonuses and penalties, you need to be somewhere between a new mug and a vacation in Hawaii for the former and somewhere between a slap on the wrist and the electric chair for the latter. Bonuses that are too trivial won’t entice the provider to step up their game, but bonuses that are too extravagant will end up costing you dearly as the provider will go out of their way to insure they do everything in their power for free money. Similarly, if all the provider gets is a slap on the wrist, they’re not going to care whether or not they hit a performance target or not. But if you threaten the electric char, if the provider even signs the agreement, you can be sure the fees for the service level guarantees will be exorbitant as they will have to build in a financial safety net. Be fair, and you’ll get the best possible deal.

In the next, and final part, of this series, we’ll talk about what you do after the contract is signed.

The Sourcing Maniacs 2008 Vendor Tour Part 19: Servigistics

Today’s post is a little length, so it’s been broken up into Survey, Service, and Servigistics.


Survey

 

Wakko in a pie shop, somewhere outside of Boston
What’s taking so long?
Dot It’s only been twenty seconds!
Wakko But I want my pie now!
Dot When don’t you want pie?
Wakko When I want baloney.
Yakko Figures.
So, SupplierSoft‘s supplier management applications, built on Salesforce were really cool.
Dot Who knew that SRM, like CRM, had so many fundamental similarities … that both required extensive information management capabilities.
So, where are we off to now?
Yakko Are we still on the S’s?
How about Saqqara?
Dot What do they do?
Yakko e-Procurement and Item Master Management I believe.
Dot Anything unique on the e-Procurement Side?
Yakko I think it’s primarily catalog and content management.
Dot Probably worth checking them out. Where are they?
Yakko They’re back in California.
Dot I’m still not ready to go back yet. Who else?
Yakko SciQuest?
Dot Aren’t they working with Emptoris now?
Yakko I think so. Maybe we shouldn’t bother. I’d hate to trek all the way back to North Carolina just to be shut out again.
Dot Do you really think they’d do that?
Yakko I don’t know. I do know that the doctor hasn’t covered them, despite the fact he thinks they’re important enough to make his Vendor Day listing, so I’m not taking that as a positive either.
Dot Okay. So we’ll leave them until we happen to be back in the area. Who else is there that starts with S? Didn’t the doctor tell us the name of a company that starts with S that we were supposed to check out?
Yakko I think he did! Let me check my notes.

Here it is … Servigistics!
Dot SERVIce loGISTICS? What on earth would they do?
Yakko I haven’t a clue. Maybe we should check out the doctor‘s posts for some background. I’m getting a little tired of looking stupid …
glaring at Wakko
Wakko What I’d do now?
Yakko ignoring Wakko
According to the doctor, in his post Servigistics – Tomorrow’s Strategic Service Management Today, Servigistic’s does strategic service management, particularly in the areas of parts, pricing, and workforce management.
Dot What’s strategic service management?
Yakko According to his wiki-paper, it is a proactive approach to satisfying the customer in a manner that is both efficient and profitable while balancing organizational strategy, resources, commitments, and pricing. Strategic Service Management supports the integration, optimization, and management of core business processes, adds to your overall business solution, and helps to differentiate your offering from that of your competitors.”
Wakko That’s a mouthful. What does it mean?
Yakko Good question. Just a sec …
taking out his cell-phone
bip-bip-bip
ring … ring
the doctor Hello?
Yakko Hello, Doc. We have a question. Let me put you on speaker.
Yakko activates the speaker phone.
Wakko We don’t want to look stupid.
the doctor We’ve been over this already, Wakko. I’m not *that* kind of doctor. You want a plastic surgeon …
Yakko No, no. What Wakko means to say is that we’ve decided to go see Servigistics and we don’t want to show up not knowing anything about strategic service management. We’re getting tired of looking stupid because of our ignorance.
We skip ahead a bit here. Part 16 filled in the blanks.
the doctor Okay. So what do you want to know?
Yakko When you say that “strategic service management is a proactive approach to satisfying the customer in a manner that is both efficient and profitable while balancing organizational strategy, resources, commitments, and pricing”, what do you mean.
the doctor That’s from the wiki-paper. Did you happen to read more than the first sentence?
Yakko The first paragraph …
the doctor If you’d learn some patience, and read the great materials that are available to you — at no cost, I might add– in full, you’d probably find that the wiki-paper answered most, if not all, of your questions.
Yakko Well can you give us the highlights?
the doctor I guess so. What, specifically, do you want to know?
Yakko Can you give us the nut?
the doctor But you already have Wakko.
Wakko Hey!

 



Service

 

the doctor Well, when I say that strategic service management is a proactive approach to satisfying the customer in a manner that is both efficient and profitable while balancing organizational strategy, resources, commitments, and pricing, what I am effectively saying, if you’re a procurement organization, is that services are as important to your cost management initiatives as direct and indirect goods, and that, properly managed, they are a point of savings and revenue generation, and not just a cost.
Dot But how does that work? Services require people — who cost money, and tools — which cost money, and parts — which cost money.
the doctor Let’s break it down.
Wakko Break it down?
the doctor Yes. Let me ask you this. How many people? What tools? And how many parts?
Dot What do you mean?
the doctor Let’s say you have 10 people, but you could provide the same level of service with only 7 if you managed them better, or, preferably, manage service for a customer base that is 40% larger with the same number of staff! Let’s say you’re using an expensive ERP-based enterprise CRM but you could get away with a SaaS solution based on open source. And let’s say that you currently stock ten 225 KVA three-phase transformers, when you only use an average of two in any given month. How much more are you spending than you need to?
Dot A few thousand?
the doctor Try a few hundred thousand. A good service professional, depending on what you’re servicing, costs you somewhere in the 50 to 150 K band annually; ERP-based enterprise CRM systems often cost in the millions annually when the TCO is fleshed out, while a SaaS solution will often cost less than 100K; and those transformers list for 15K a-piece, storing eight more than you need at an annualized overhead of 35% is almost equal to one person’s annual salary.
Dot So good service management can really save you a bundle.
the doctor And make you a bundle too. What do business customers pay for?
Dot Goods and services.
the doctor And what goods and services do they pay more for?
Dot Uhmm .. the ones that provide more value?
the doctor That’s right. And how do you provide more value?
Dot Better products and services?
the doctor Yes, and value-added services to be precise. Good service management will allow you to deliver a better level of service than you do now, for less than it is costing you to deliver your current service level. And customers will not only pay for that, but they’ll likely pay a little more for that if you reduce their workload.
Wakko So strategic service management is about managing your people, parts, and technology in a way that allows you to do more with less and deliver more with less, decreasing your costs while increasing your revenues. It’s strategic sourcing, on steroids, for services.
the doctor stunned
You’ve got it, Wakko!
Yakko, does that answer your question?
Yakko I think so. Now can you tell us what Servigistics does?
the doctor I don’t want to spoil your fun. Go find out!
click

 



Servigistics

 

Yakko So now that we know what strategic service management is, let’s see if we can piece together what Servigistics does. In his post Servigistics – Tomorrow’s Strategic Service Management Today, the doctor indicates that Servigistic’s does strategic service management, particularly in the areas of parts, pricing, and workforce management. Then, in Workforce Management: A Servigistics Approach, the doctor dives into workforce management and says it is “a software-based solution that optimally plans and dispatches field service technicians and their properly stocked vehicles to a customer’s location in a timely manner in order to deliver on their service commitments” and that it will “typically addresses demand management, workforce scheduling, workforce dispatching, and mobility solutions”.

Diving in, the posts says that the Servigistics “workforce planning component forecasts workload to determine the appropriate workforce size, the scheduling engine automatically sets and adjust optimal assignments based upon available data and available rules and updates those assignments in real-time if a higher-priority service call enters the system, the web-based appointment request feature allows customers to self-schedule, and the service mobility solution not only enables workforce communication, but allows the technicians to indicate where they are in the delivery cycle”.
Dot It sounds pretty sophisticated.
Yakko Sure does. Let’s go talk to them.
  the maniacs travel from Boston to Atlanta, Georgia
Wakko tap, tap, tap goes the mini-mallet
Hello. Hello.
Sharp Dressed Man a sharp dressed businessman opens the door
Hello … oh no!
Wakko looking around in a confused manner
What?
Sharp Dressed Man You!
Yakko You know who we are?
Sharp Dressed Man Of course I do! I read Sourcing Innovation every day. It’s the best blog out there! You usually spell Trouble with a capital T, and we’re a no-nonsense operation here!
Yakko We’re not here for trouble!
Dot We just want to learn more about strategic service management.
Yakko And how it can help companies.
Dot And what you do.
Wakko the doctor sent us!
Sharp Dressed Man He what?
Yakko Well, he didn’t exactly send us. He told us if we really wanted to learn about strategic service management, and what innovative companies are doing, we should consider checking you out if we were in the area. And here we are!
Sharp Dressed Man Yes you are. Well, the doctor‘s right in that respect … we can teach you about SSM … and if you really — really — want to learn, I’d be happy to talk to you. But you have to be good.
Dot We’re always good!
Sharp Dressed Man looking directly at Wakko
And put away the construction tools, roman candles, mechanical gadgets, and anything else that can be used for destructive purposes. Got it?
Wakko putting his mini-mallet away
Got it.
Sharp Dressed Man Okay. So, do you know what strategic service management is?
Wakko It’s about managing your people, parts, and technology in a way that allows you to do more with less and deliver more with less, decreasing your costs while increasing your revenues. It’s strategic sourcing, on steroids, for services.
Sharp Dressed Man Not bad. Do you know how we enable it?
Yakko You provide solutions for parts, pricing, and workforce management – the cornerstones of strategic service management. Your workforce management product, in particular, is quite extensive and includes workload forecasting capabilities, a dynamic scheduling engine, and a service mobility solution that service personnel can use to stay up to date in the field.
Sharp Dressed Man Not bad. But do you understand how these solutions provide value to our customers?
Dot They allow you to do more calls with less people through optimal scheduling, identify the most cost-effective tools and solutions to get the job done, and optimize inventory to maximize service levels while minimizing carrying costs?
Sharp Dressed Man Correct, but do you understand how we provide value to our customers? Do you understand why a customer wouldn’t just go out and buy a parts management solution from competitor Alpha, a best-of-breed price management engine from competitor Beta, and a workforce management solution from competitor Gamma?
Yakko I guess not.
Sharp Dressed Man We provide a holistic solution to strategic service management.
Wakko I like 3-D.
Yakko Not holographic, holistic — as in concerned with the whole and not just the parts?
Sharp Dressed Man Correct. You see, the full value of strategic service management only materializes when you tackle the whole problem. You can have the best workforce scheduler, but if they don’t have the parts, your personnel can’t perform the service. You can have the best inventory forceasting and management solution, but if the parts aren’t available where your service personnel need them when they need them, it’s for naught. And you can have the best pricing engine in the world, but you still need to have the parts available where the people are going to buy them.
Wakko So there’s no real value unless you look at the whole picture?
Sharp Dressed Man Correct. And that’s what we do. Through our Command Center, we unify our parts management, workforce management, pricing management, and knowledge management solution — which makes your workforce more productive — into one cohesive platform which doesn’t “improve” one aspect of service, such as workforce management, to the detriment of another, such as parts & inventory management.
Dot I never knew there was so much to good service management.
Sharp Dressed Man Now you do. And with that, may I bid you good day?
Yakko Since we’re here, we really should get an update for the doctor!
Sharp Dressed Man If it will get rid of you … and keep you OUT of my server room …
glaring at Dot and Wakko
I can do that.

Since we last spoke to the doctor, four big things have happened for us here at Servigistics.

First of all, we’ve made a number of updates to our workfoce management solution, including a web-based portal for customers to track their service status — think Fedex package tracker on a steroid shake; we’ve enhanced automatic e-mail notifications and the command center dashboards; we’ve added dispatch capability to TomTom navigation devices, e-mail, and SMS; and, probably most significantly, leveraged grid-computing technology in computation-intensive portions of the software for dramatic improvements in scalability.

Secondly, we’ve made some significant enhancements in internationalization. We now support 8 different languages, including double-byte Japanese, Mandarin, and Korean; we can add a new language in two to three weeks, and each user can see the same data in her language and custom date and currency formats.

Thirdly, we’ve added some specific aerospace functionality with respect to fleet provisioning, rotable pool planning, inventory consolidation, PBH/PBL cost-based planning, RTP and de-manufacture, scheduled maintenance planning with respect to repair BOMs, and replacement forecasting for life-limited parts.

Finally, in addition to netting a number of significant new global customers, we’ve also landed some very big aerospace manufacturers, carriers, and MROs

Anything you need elaboration on?
Yakko Uhmm … no?
Sharp Dressed Man Great! Thanks for stopping by. Have a great day!

Editor’s Note: At this point, we’ll be taking a short break for the 12 days of X-Mas, but we’ll return with the final two parts of the maniacs’ road tour on December 29 and December 30.

 

The Sourcing Maniacs 2008 Vendor Tour Part 17: Power Advocate

This post is a bit lengthy, so I’ve broken it into Prelude and Power.

Prelude

Wakko Faster! Faster!
The maniacs are describing their ride on the Mindbender at the West Edmonton Mall, which they visited after meeting with Upside Software (acquired by SciQuest, rebranded Jaggaer).
the doctor I’m glad you enjoyed your trip to The Mall, but would you like to get back to where we left off before I had you jump ahead in your story?
Yakko Where were we?
the doctor You were describing your on-line review of MFG
Wakko MFG … it’s dynamite
MFG … it’ll win the fight
MFG … it’s the power load
MFG … watch it explode!
  air guitar
the doctor Yes, Wakko, we covered that already. So who did you visit next?
A brief moment of silence while they collect their thoughts … a daunting task for Wakko.
Wakko I’ve got the Power!
the doctor Uhmm …
Yakko That’s right! Power Advocate.

We were sitting in the Chinese Cafe …
Wakko finishing up our sixth order of Chow Mein …
Dot while wrapping op our review of MFG.
The maniacs return to their story and, as usual, proceed to ignore me.
Dot Where to next?
Wakko Hopefully someplace a little less breezy. I’ve lost three kites today!
The maniacs are still in Chicago, having recently visited Kinaxis before hopping into the cyber-enabled Chinese Cafe for their MFG research.
Yakko We’re on the N’s. I don’t know many N’s. New Momentum?
Dot Predictive market intelligence using optimization models. I think that’s a wee bit over Wakko’s head.
Yakko Fair Enough. NewView?
Dot Visibility solutions for automotive and aerospace?
Yakko I think so.
Dot Given the turmoil in those markets, I’m sure they’re too busy trying to get their solution installed at manufacturers that desperately need it to talk to us.
Yakko Possibly. the doctor did mention that he’s never been successful in his reach out attempts to them …
Next Generation Logistics?
Dot Again, Logistics.
Yakko Right. Not our focus. Well, I’m tapped.
Again, because he doesn’t check the Resource Site often enough, which currently has over ten companies that start with N.
Dot On to the O’s?
Yakko Sure! I’ve always been intrigued by Open Bravo.
Dot Aren’t they headquartered in Spain?
Yakko I believe so. But maybe we could get a web-demo and research them from right here!
Wakko That would be great! I could have more chow mein … six is an unlucky number in Cantonese … while eight is very prosperous … Waiter!
Yakko Let’s see if I can Google a number …
tappity, tappity
Here we go! A US number too!
beep bip-beep-bop boop-bop-bip boop-bop-bip-beip
Operator Hello …
Yakko Hello … could we get a demo of Open Bravo?
Operator You can download Openbravo ERP through SourceForge or access our demo centre for a quick overview. As we’re open source, you have free access to the product.
Yakko Oh. Uhm … thank you?
Operator You’re welcome.
click
Dot So?
Yakko Looks like “O” stands for “Oh, Bother”.
Dot What happened?
Yakko They told me to download it and try it out for myself. I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like installing an ERP system just to review it.
Dot Neither do I. Who else starts with O?
Yakko I’m too bummed to think about it. Let’s just move on to the P’s
Dot Perfect Commerce?
Yakko Perfect? As far as I can tell, they got their ass-whooped so bad in the market, they had to be saved by a European-based services firm by the name of Cormine, that, for reasons beyond me, decided to keep the name. Plus, especially considering what we’ve learned so far on our tour, I think it’s really conceited to claim that your applications enable “perfect” commerce.
Dot Prime Revenue?
Yakko Interesting. Online billing and payment is commodity these days, but supply chain finance is cutting edge. However, as most companies still haven’t figured out that making your suppliers wait 30 extra days for payment isn’t supply chain finance, the concept might be too innovative for the market and an area we should tread carefully in.
Dot Power Advocate?
Yakko Didn’t the doctor mention them as a company he wanted checked out?
Dot I think so …
Yakko Where are they?
Dot Back in Boston …
Wakko Awesome! I was just thinking how great a cream pie would be to top off my eighth order of Chow Mein!
Wakko is, apparently, addicted to Boston Cream Pies.
Yakko I guess that settles it. Back to Boston we go!
Wakko So who will we be visiting?
Dot Power Advocate …
Wakko I’ve got the Power!
Yakko Wha …
Wakko Like the crack of the whip I snap attack
Front to back in this thing called rap
Dig it like a shovel rhyme devil
On a heavenly level
Bang the bass turn up the treble
Radical mind day and night all the time
Seven to fourteen wise divine
Maniac brainiac winning the game
I’m the lyrical Jesse James

apparently, Wakko likes Snap

Power

We rejoin the maniacs a few days or so later back in Boston.
Dot Are we here?
Yakko I don’t know … I always get so turned around in this city … even Wakko could have done a better job at urban planning!
Dot I think this is the right address.
Wakko raps on the door with his mini-mallet
British Professional Good day, sirs and madam. How can I help you?
Wakko Do you have the power?
British Professional Well, as you Americans say, we always pay the hydro on time …
Yakko I believe what my colleage is asking if this is Power Advocate.
British Professional Absolutely. How can I be of assistance?
Wakko Well, we came here from Chicago to find out what you do?
British Professional Blimey O’Reilly! You trekked all the way here from Chicago and you don’t even know what we do? Are you off your rockers?
Wakko Nope!
Somehow, Wakko has found a rocking chair.
British Professional On the cadge?
Wakko Not yet …
British Professional Well, that doesn’t sound very made up. So why are you here?
Wakko the doctor said we should give you a check-up.
British Professional Well, now I’m in bits.
Wakko You look whole to me!
British Professional looking very cautiously at Wakko
Yakko I believe what my colleague is trying to say is that the doctor of Sourcing Innovation said we should check you out if we wanted to expand our horizons.
British Professional Well that certainly clears things up a bit. I thought I was going bonkers.
Yakko Conversations with Wakko often have that effect. So, can you enlighten us.
British Professional I can definitely give you the griff. What would you like to know?
Yakko Let’s start with the basics. What do you do?
British Professional In his best American
We provide cost-effective supply-chain solutions to the energy industry with the goal of helping our customers achieve operational performance goals. We have deep expertise in the energy, utility, power, gas, chemical, and manufacturing industry; a custom 3-tier schema for the utility industry that captures detail in critical areas that UNSPSC and other generic schemas lack; tailored sourcing and spend analysis solutions; and customized category intelligence and cost-indices that you won’t find anywhere else.
Yakko That’s a mouthful!
British Professional It’s definitely not half! Where would you like to start?
Yakko Let’s start with your sourcing platform.
British Professional It’s essentially your standard e-RFX and e-Auction platform.
Yakko So why would someone choose your platform over Ariba or Emptoris?
British Professional Well, besides the fact that it’s a lot more affordably priced, it’s customized for the energy and utility industry. We have a lot of built-in commercial and technical templates as well as extensive capabilities for buyers to build their own data-sheets for apples-to-apples comparisons.
Yakko Don’t scores of platforms come with templates and templating capabilities?
British Professional They do, but buying hardware in the energy and utility industry is very different than buying a stapler from the cheapest office supply site. A lot of this stuff isn’t commodity, and even standard components are often only made by a handful of companies. Plus, it often takes a lot of detail to distinguish one component, like a transformer, from another … detail that’s lost without the right questions … which require the right templates … which requires the right category knowledge, which your average e-Sourcing firm lacks.
Yakko And you have that expertise?
British Professional Yes. That’s what differentiates us not only from other supply chain software providers, but other sourcing consultancies — our expertise in the energy industry where we’re an end-to-end solution provider. Even the new marketplace entrants, like Co-Exprise and CombineNet Energy don’t have the platform – services – market intelligence package that we can offer our customers. You have to remember, we’ve been around almost a decade, and many of our staff members have been doing this for over two decades … giving us hundreds of years of collective experience in the energy and utility industry and expertise that we feel is unmatched.
Yakko Can you tell us about your expertise?
British Professional Our expertise comes in the way of three major offerings: category intelligence based on years of experience that helps you get the most from your sourcing events; our new capital and O&M cost indices that provide our clients with leading market intelligence on the categories that matter to the energy and utility industries; and our customized taxonomy, used by a number of Fortune 500 companies, that provides the foundation for our leading spend analysis and visibility solutions.

Let’s start with our new cost indices. They’re web-based and provide our clients with real-time access to supply market data. They’re dynamic and allow users to define their own scenarios, with their own assumptions, to create their own probabilistic cost and demand forecasts in addition to the forecasts we provide them. And since they’re based on over 880 publicly available indexes that are augmented with data from over 65,000 suppliers and 1,000 international companies, they provide the most accurate market trend information you can get.

We currently offer six O&M indices and seven construction indices, with more coming in 2009, including “green” indices in first quarter and European indices in second quarter. The 5-level indices break costs down to the commodity level and allow the impact of each commodity to be measured and understood. The data goes back to 2000, and for any index, or any component category, sub-category, item, or commodity you can view trends based on at least five years of data.

These indices complement the decades of category expertise in the energy and utility industry that we bring to our clients, as well as our unique category intelligence power-search tool that acts like a Google for the energy industry. We also maintain extensive supplier lists, like Thomas Net, but with more detail, and our own category hierarchy, which underlies not only our spend analysis and visibility offering, but a number of Fortune 500 ERP taxonomies as well.

With regards to spend analysis, we offer all of the standard data-aggregation, cleansing, and enrichment capabilites that all of your standard spend analysis vendors offer, augmented by 20,000 unique industry specific auto-classification rules that allow us to parse transactions and automatically classify a much greater percentage of your spend faster.
Yakko 20,000 rules?
British Professional Yes, 20,000 rules.
Yakko I thought automatically classifying spend was easy and only required a small rule set?
British Professional That’s what the big players want you to believe. The reality is that there’s so many suppliers, so many abbreviations, so many SKUs, so many part numbers, and so many ways to identify a part in a limited-size description field that it’s almost impossible to automatically classify spend across an organization. Most solutions don’t even come anywhere close to 80% accuracy, which a good data analyst can do by hand in a few hours with the right spend analysis tool that allows real-time rule-generation and data classification!
Yakko Then how do Emptoris and Zycus do it?
British Professional Lots and lots of manual labor in India. The reality is that unless they’ve already classified spend at another company in your vertical with a similar supply base and similar purchases, they’re “automated classification engine” won’t even classify half of your spend, and they’ll have to ship it off to their offshore operation to clean it up and classify the rest. That’s why it often takes them 3 weeks to 3 months for them to build you an initial cube … they’re classifying your spend by hand and building the rules your organization needs to automatically classify similar transactions in the future.
Yakko So that’s why you have so many rules?
British Professional Yes, that’s why we have over 20,000 rules … which, by the way, only map spend in energy and utility companies. (A cross-industry solution would need hundreds of thousands of rules!) And it’s also why we use the most powerful spend analysis tool we could get our hands on that allows for real-time rule-generation and classification of spend. It’s called BIQ. You might have heard of it. Between our huge rule-set and our ability to apply our domain expertise on the fly, we can build a starting cube in a matter of hours, and do an initial spend analysis for our customers in a matter of days.
Yakko Days?!?!
British Professional Absobloodylutely!
Yakko But I keep hearing about how it usually takes a few quarters to select a solution, build a data warehouse, map the data, clean the data, enrich the data, configure the reports, and get actionable information.
British Professional Well, if you’re using last-generation technology, it certainly does, but we use BIQ, a rule-set we’ve been building for years based upon decades of experience, and deep expertise. Did you know that Lexington Analytics, another services distributor of BIQ with deep expertise in the financial industry, routinely goes to client sites and builds an initial cube, on the fly, in a few hours in their first meeting?
Yakko You must be pulling my plonker!
British Professional I assure you I’m not. With the right tool, and the right expertise, it really is possible to build starting cubes that fast. You really should read Eric Strovink’s guest posts on Sourcing Innovation carefully. A real spend analysis solution allows you to map data on the fly … and do so after you’ve applied a layered rule-set that allows you to progressively refine rules until you’ve achieved the required level of accuracy … usually 90% is sufficient for a good spend analysis. And it allows us to get results quite quickly.
Yakko But you say you also offer a web-based solution. BIQ is desktop. How do you do it?
British Professional Right now, we build the initial cube in BIQ, map it to our taxonomy, and when we have the right view, export it to our custom on-line viewing engine that provides you with dozens of built-in reports and allows you to slice and dice the data in the cube anyway you want.
Yakko Doesn’t the data get stale?
British Professional It would if we didn’t update it, and we have an automated process to do that. Which, to be quite frank, is just as good as any other product out there, as they all work the same way.
Yakko And what if the user wants more flexibility?
British Professional Such as …
Yakko Multiple-cubes. Measures. Meta-measures.
British Professional We rarely run into that. The reality is that only the power-users even think about that level of analysis. It’s not a problem though. Since we use BIQ ourselves, we can provide our clients with a full data dump of their cube at any time, the associated ruleset, and relevant report templates that will allow them to use BIQ on their own machine.

Plus, if the demand is there in the future, we will take advantage of BIQ’s new XML interface, forthcoming in its next release, that allows it to be driven over the web through a standard web-browser.
Yakko It sounds like you guys have an extensive solution for the energy industry.
British Professional We do … and we’re building out a basic contract management solution that takes into account energy-industry specific needs as we speak. An initial version will be available next year.
Yakko How will it compete with the stand-alone players like
Apttus,
CMA Contiki,
iMany,
Open Text,
Selectica,
Symfact, and
Upside Software, and a slew of others I know I’m forgetting?
British Professional It won’t. Just like our sourcing platform isn’t built to be the be-all-and-end-all of generic sourcing platforms, our contract management solution isn’t being built to be the be-all-and-end-all of enterprise contract management platforms. It’s being built to meet the needs of the energy and utility industry, and will offer capabilities, and templates, that specifically meet those needs. It will help us serve our clients better. We don’t serve companies buying staplers from office supply vendors. We serve utility companies buying transformers from electrical equipment manufacturers. There’s a big difference, and that’s why you need a customized solution.
Yakko So you really are an end-to-end solution for the energy industry.
British Professional Yes we are.
Yakko Cool.
British Professional Very, and with that I bid you ta-ta old bean!

 

Getting the Most Out of Cost Reduction

Today’s guest post is from Patrick J. Hogan, a Partner at Paladin Associates, Inc..

A recent article in Paladin Associates’ CheckMate Newsletter entitled “Cost Reduction is NOT a No-Brainer”, generated interest and requests for more information. It made the case that cost reduction programs should be carefully thought out so mistakes and inexperience don’t cause harm. What follows are some common ways that cost reduction programs can be mismanaged, go wrong, and cause real headaches. It is NOT a complete list!

Companies with inadequate spend information really don’t know what they are spending, who is doing the spending, and what suppliers they are spending with. Without such fundamental intelligence, chances are high that resources will be misdirected or wasted, and results will be sub optimized.

Many companies simply need to focus on fundamentals. It is surprising how many companies do not consolidate purchases or buying points, do not require system or product specifications, or do not require suppliers to compete on a regular basis. Many firms simply need to get back to basics.

A common oversight is indirect spending. Companies often focus exclusively on strategic direct materials and ignore indirect spending on telecom, facilities, transportation, office supplies, and so forth. Yet big savings are often available in these areas.

A frequent obstacle to efficient cost savings is lack of buy-in by the organization. It is an unfortunate fact that not everyone in a company is cost-sensitive, or sees cost reductions as being in their interest. In fact, many employees, and even managers, are “empire builders” who are actually more interested in maintaining or growing budgets, organizations, and perceived power. They may talk a good game, but really are not committed to cost-reduction. They may even fear cost reduction. Internal politics and power struggles are very often the chief obstacle to more efficient processes and procurement.

Frequently, the cost-reduction “team” lacks the specific functional expertise to effectively cost-reduce certain functions. Finance or Procurement personnel are generally not the best people to effectively cost reduce Marketing & Sales, Human Relations, Customer Service, Telecom, IT, and many other functions requiring specific product, market, contract, technical or professional functional expertise and judgment. This requires balancing both functional skills and cost awareness. Establishing cross-functional teams with both functional and procurement expertise is one solution.

“Right-sizing” or down-sizing is an area of great risk. Downsizing can improve a company’s health dramatically, or destroy morale and precipitate a “death spiral”. Many of the issues are not intuitive. This topic needs a book in itself, and requires experienced hands to get positive results.

Frankly, overly cozy vendor relationships can get in the way of effective cost-reduction. Suppliers’ sales people work to establish personal relationships and “differentiate” their products for reasons other than price. They are often successful in minimizing competition as a result. But this usually costs the buyer money!! Some favorite sacred cows are sales commissions, legal fees, HR benefits, ad agencies, and printing companies.

On the other hand, not understanding a supplier’s full capabilities can result in overlooked opportunities for savings. A supplier might well have the resources to help reduce costs through process or product changes or simple suggestions, or other approaches not defined in a formal specification or RFP.

An ironic mistake that companies can make in tough times like these is locking into a new “low” contract price, only to find that prices actually drop below that level over time…resulting in overpayment during the contract period. Don’t mortgage the future simply to insure short-term savings.

Many companies have a do-it-ourselves mentality. They do not believe they need help, or they don’t want to pay for consulting help. But nonetheless they are just not getting the total job done. “Not-invented-here” and the “we-already-thought-of-that” syndromes are common themes in many companies. The “fear factor” also plays a role… many employees are concerned about getting credit for cost-savings ideas, or of being blamed for ideas someone else may find. In our increasingly “blaming” society, they are not always being unreasonable either. Many companies have inadvertently set up win-lose scenarios on cost reduction that block the free flow of ideas and participation, and inhibit the use of consulting experts whose savings ideas might expose waste. But all companies have waste, and wise companies want to find it and remove it ASAP. Setting up a win-win environment is key, and getting outside help is smart.

A very common problem for procurement organizations is a lack of appropriate resources. Most companies, even those with large procurement staffs, lack all the skills, the manpower, the funding, and the time to turn over all the rocks required to get the total job done. An ROI analysis would frequently justify more resources. Or, temporary use of consulting resources may be appropriate.

Another common phenomenon is excessive focus on identification of cost reduction opportunities and process development, but inadequate attention on execution and results. Many companies have long lists of opportunities, but short lists of what have actually been accomplished or resulted in tangible savings. In a related vein, savings can erode over time if companies don’t monitor results, update specifications, record engineering changes, housekeep their records, etc. Implementation, follow-through, and measurement are essential in driving for results.

Effective cost reduction is not just about common sense. Like so many other things in life, it requires experience to do it right and avoid costly pitfalls. In tough times like these, with so many “new” managers being pushed into cost-reduction exercises, finding experienced hands to guide the process is critical. Professional consulting help must be considered, particularly with a company with a results-driven focus.

The Sourcing Maniacs 2008 Vendor Tour Part VIII: FieldGlass

In yesterday’s installment, we jumped ahead in our story and recounted the Maniacs’ failed attempt to infiltrate Empower and find out what Emptoris is really up to, whether or not they’re going to go public soon, and what their plans are in their quest to become the largest sourcing provider in the space. In today’s installment, we recount the maniacs’ visit to FieldGlass (acquired by SAP).

Today’s post is a long post, as it recounts the “rationale” the maniancs used in selecting Fieldglass, a lenghty definition of what contingent workforce manaagement is, as the maniacs apparently had no clue, and then a detailed description of Fieldglass’ capabilites. I’ve broken it into Preamble, Lead-In, CWM Definition*, Technology*, and Epilogue so that you can jump to the part you’re most interested in, where * indicates content,  if you’re short on time (and come back later for the rest).

Preamble

Yakko, Wakko, & Dot Oompa Loompa Doom-pa-dee-do
Yakko I have a great product for you
Yakko, Wakko, & Dot Oompa Loompa Doom-pa-dee-dee
Dot If you are wise you’ll take a look-see
Yakko, Wakko, & Dot 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
Wakko Up in the dark’ning skies
Yakko, Wakko, & Dot 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
 
Dot the doctor sure knows how to write a catchy tune!
Wakko I could sing it all day long. ‘Cause I wanna go to the Coupa Store!
Dot So where are we going next?
Yakko I guess we’re on the D’s.
Wakko Who do we know who starts with D?
Yakko Demica.
Dot Supply Chain Finance, right?
Yakko Yep.
Dot Well, the innovation there is in the application thereof, and not necessarily in the technology, as the doctor explains nicely in the wiki-paper, so I’ll pass this time around, since we’re more focused on technology right now.
Yakko No prob. We can always do a services company tour later if we don’t find any jobs before this tech tour is over. How about Descartes?
Wakko The “delivery management” company. That’s just combining 3PL with VMI and network op-ti-my-za-shun, right?
Yakko I think so, but I’m not 100% sure.
Wakko I’ll pass for now. Too complex for me! I still have problems with 5 by 5 … I run out of fingers and toes …
Yakko Hmmm … Denali?
Dot Consulting, market intelligence, and professional placement. Again, services.
Yakko Well, dat does It. I’m out of D’s. On to the E’s!
Dot I have a sour taste in my mouth for the E’s right now.
Yakko And there’s a chance we can sneak into Empower in the fall and find out what Emptoris is up to. Ok. On to the F’s. Frictionless?
Wakko Aren’t they just a bunch of saps?
Yakko Excuse me?
Wakko Didn’t SAP buy them?
Yakko Oh, you mean S-A-Ps. Yes, you’re right! Fogbreak?
Dot Again, back in California. Too soon to go back.
Yakko FieldGlass?
Wakko What do they do?
Yakko Contingent Workforce Management.
Dot And where are they?
Yakko Chicago.
Dot That’s not too far.
Wakko Wind! I like wind! Let’s go!
Dot And since we have a mighty hike ahead of us …
the maniacs are still in Pittsburgh, PA, where they were visiting Co-exprise before doing their on-line Coupa research
let’s sing!
Wakko It was just yesterday, I ran out of feed
Dot A wascally wabbit, it ate all my seed
Yakko Hens were getting restless, I couldn’t drink my mead
Yakko, Wakko, & Dot I logged into Coupa, and it met my need
  Editor’s note: the maniacs proceed to sing all of the Coupa songs, repeatedly … and even though I think they’re pretty damn good (after all, I wrote them), they get a little tiring after you’ve heard them for the tenth time … in a row … so I’ll save you a few pages and simply point you to Davie and the Coupa Factory, It’s Coupa Time, The Coupa Hoedown, The Coupa Drinking Song, and The Coupa Store if you’re curious.

 

Lead-In

Wakko Feel that wind! We must be getting close.
Yakko Pretty darn close, actually!
Dot So why are we here? After all, isn’t contingent workforce management simply contractor management? And when you need a contractor, don’t you just call up your placement agency and get one? What’s so hard about that? And why would you need a software solution?
Wakko Quoting?
Dot e-RFX.
Wakko Billing?
Dot e-Invoicing.
Wakko Payment?
Dot e-Payment.
Yakko Firing?
Wakko Donald Trump!
Yakko Were we too hasty in selecting FieldGlass as our next target? Were we swayed by the possibility of an excuse to visit the windy city
Wakko so I could fly my kite
Yakko and not by whether or not the technology might have something to offer, making the company viable, and, thus, increasing the chances that there might be a job for us?
Dot Maybe. I’m starting to wonder about this decision.
Yakko Well, we’re here … so we might as well give them a shot!
Wakko On it!
Out comes Wakko’s mini mallet. Tap. Tap. Tap.
See, no dings!
  A man in a blue suit and dark jacket opens the door.
Dark Jacket Can I help you?
Wakko I’m Wakko!
Yakko I’m Yakko!
Dot And I’m Dot!
Yakko, Wakko, & Dot And we want to know why we’re here!
Dark Jacket Now that’s a very difficult question, and one I leave to the philosophers. I’m a technology guy myself.
Yakko What we mean is, why is FieldGlass here?

 

CWM Definition

Dark Jacket To provide a unified, best-of-breed, contingent workforce solution.
Dot But why? Isn’t contingent workforce management simply contractor management? And when you need a contractor, don’t you just call up your placement agency and get one? What’s so hard about that? And why would you need a software solution?
Dark Jacket No, and no. Why are you here?
Yakko We’re seeking enlightenment. We’re trying to find out what various solution providers offer the sourcing world.
Dark Jacket To what end?
Wakko Well, we’re trying to map the new sourcing world to find our place in it
Dot and help the doctor in his quest to educate the masses.
Dark Jacket The Doctor? I’m sorry, but you’ve lost me.
Yakko the doctor of Sourcing Innovation informed us that the best way to find our place in the sourcing world was to understand it, and the best way to understand it was to go and talk to the innovative vendors and find out what they were doing. And if we did that, we could help him in his mission to educate the sourcing world, which he says is a win-win for everybody.
Dark Jacket Sourcing Innovation … I think I’ve heard of it. It’s one of those upstart blogs, isn’t it?
Wakko It’s not just any blog … it’s the best blog if you want to learn about innovation in your supply chain.
Dot And it publishes our stories! How can you beat that!
Dark Jacket So you want me to explain what FieldGlass does?
Yakko And why anyone would need a contingent workforce management solution. Especially in supply chain. It really sounds like a simple HR tool to me.
Dark Jacket Well, it sounds to me like you don’t understand the problem. Would you like to?
Yakko, Wakko, & Dot Yes, please!
Dark Jacket OK … give me a few minutes.
  Dark Jacket disappears back inside and re-emerges a few minutes later.
Dark Jacket Since you say you’re familiar with Sourcing Innovation, we’ll start there. I did a bit of research, and found a number of informative articles on the site that frame the problem quite well, and which should allow me to convey the purpose of the FieldGlass solution to you in a manner that will be easy for you to understand.

We’re at the beginning of a talent crunch that will surpass anything the world has ever seen. Over one quarter of America’s population, and well over one third of America’s workforce, is eligible, or will soon be eligible, for retirement. The vast majority do necessary jobs. Where are their replacements going to come from?
Yakko New Graduates?
Dot Other countries?
Wakko Robots?
Dark Jacket Nope. Nope. And Nope. There aren’t near enough graduates to fill all those empty positions as American’s youth is declining. Remember, it’s the boomer generation that is retiring and birth rates have decreased since then. There are strict limits on how many people can enter the US each year to work. If we are lucky, and the incoming administration doesn’t lock down the borders even more, over the next five years, the government might permit 1% of those jobs to be filled with foreign workers. And that might be an optimistic scenario, especially since most countries around the globe are suffering talent crunches as well, and some are worse off than we are! Finally, although Disney’s Imagineering leads us to believe that it won’t be long before Robo can do all of our jobs for us, the AI that would be needed is likely still decades off so robots won’t save us either.
Yakko So we’re doomed?
Dark Jacket Only if we continue with the traditional mentality that all workers must be full time employees. The fact of the matter is that, at least to a limited extent, the vast majority of the American population, almost 80% in fact, is able to contribute to the economy in some way, shape, or form. Furthermore, if we add up all the available capacity that is going unused in the traditional employment model, we find that, at the very least, we can make a major dent in the talent crunch … and maybe even halt it altogether (at least for the time being).
Dot So how should we be thinking?
Dark Jacket Part-time. Flux-time. As needed. As available. Pre-graduate. Retiree. Disabled. Telecommute.

Many people retire because they are forced into it (because of organizational policies, especially in the public sector), because they don’t want to work full time anymore, or because they are unable to do the job they were doing, be it due to failing health or lack of education and training, and not because they want to sit on their porch and stare into space. Many of these people want to keep being productive, they just want to do it less, and maybe do it from home. And they’re great resources. Their valuable experience can be used to mentor junior employees, which helps them become better, more productive employees, faster; to improve processes, which will help the organization do more with less; and to guide management around pitfalls and traps that they know are there in the market, which can prevent the current generation from repeating the mistakes of its predecessors.

And with the high and steadily rising costs of education these days, as well as the desire to be part of the consumer economy, more and more high-school and college students are seeking part time work. Not only are they a great resource to help you with the escalating amounts of tactical work many business face in today’s economy, but utilizing them in positions that correspond to their course of study helps prepare them for full time work when they graduate.
Yakko And that’s why we need contingent workforce management?
Dark Jacket It’s one of the reasons. As I have just described, organizations can not rely on full time labor alone. In addition, the need for temporary contract labor in the services industry is going to increase as lack of talent and market forces dictate less full time employees and more contract labor. And from a business perspective, without a contingent workforce management solution, you can’t have an effective talent management program, and this costs your business money. Lots of money.
Dot How much?
Dark Jacket It depends on the company. But if you look at our Verizon Case Study, readily available on our website, you’ll see that Verizon achieved a four-month payback, 9M in savings in the first year, and a 2 year ROI of 77% after implementation of our InSite solution.
Yakko That’s a lot of cash!
Wakko So how come my wireless bill is so bloody expensive?
Dark Jacket You’ll have to take that up with Verizon, I can only tell you how contingent workforce management saves you money.
Dot So how does it do that?
Dark Jacket Simply put, it streamlines the contingent labor requisition process, simplifies the identification of resources, automates the distribution of requests, standardizes resource rates, automates the collection of quotes, tracks awards, and insures that companies always bill at the approved rate and only for approved hours on approved projects. This reduces recruitment costs, reduces processing and payment costs, and, most importantly, prevents overcharges and overpayments, which often total 20% or more at companies without contingent workforce management solutions.

 

Technology

Yakko And how does your InSite solution enable Contingent Workforce Management?
Dark Jacket Simply put, we enable the end-to-end contingent worker life-cycle, from acquisition, through onboarding, through management and payment, to offboarding, with complete historical data storage to allow you to repeat the process in the future for the same employee, same position, or same department as needed.

We do this with an application that has fully customizable workflows that support the hiring manager, approvers, HR coordinators, suppliers, and workers in each step of the procure-engage-pay-offboard cycle, to whatever level of support and detail they need.

Our application simplifies the definition and setup of a requisition, which, when driven off of a pre-configured template, will automatically populate the job title, description, department, job site, travel requirements, full position description, desired skills, approved rates, default suppliers to issues the requisition to, job status, and any other detail that is relevant to the job posting. All a hiring manager has to do is define the desired start-and-end dates and, if she desires, modify default settings and requirements if the position requires some customization. Once the requisition is completed, pre-configured rules route it to the appropriate approvers, and once it is approved, it is delivered to the appropriate suppliers using multi-tiered supply based rules that can give preferred suppliers or minority suppliers of contingent labor the ability to bid first.

Once the supplier submit candidates, the hiring manager can then use the tool to shortlist candidates (or block them from consideration), select candidates for interviews, record the interview results, select a candidate for hire, send a work-order to a supplier, and then, when the supplier accepts the work-order, “hire” the candidate.
Dot Well, that’s kind of what we’d expect a workforce management tool to do. But what’s so special about it? How does it help procurement? Why can’t we just use Word, Excel, e-Mail, and a File Server.
Dark Jacket That’s a mouthful!

Let’s start with the last question. Theoretically, you could create your template job descriptions in Word and your rate-cards in Excel, store them on a Central File Server, and then, every time you need to fill a new job, create a copy, send it out through e-mail, and store the specific instance somewhere else on a file server. And maybe if you’re a small company who only hires a few contingent workers a year, and you were very methodical, you could make that work for you. But what if you hire 100 contingent workers a year in 20 different positions. How easy do you think it would be to keep track of all the different paperwork? Let me ask it this way, you used to do Contract Management right?
Yakko Right.
Dark Jacket And for your average company with more than 500 active contracts without a contract management solution, what was the average level of contract management maturity.
Dot The average company couldn’t even find its contracts!
Dark Jacket So how well do you think the average company who has to hire hundreds, or thousands, of contingent workers a year, where each worker has her own contract, fares?
Dot Not very well.
Dark Jacket And that’s fundamentally why you need a contingent workforce management solution if you have to hire a lot of contingent workers each year.

Now, the reason it helps procurement is that it stores all of the information, including rate information, billed hours, and budgetary information in one place. This allows procurement to get up to date information at any time as to how many contingent workers in each category are hired each year, on average, and how much is being paid, on average, for each position. Procurement can use this information to initiate fact-based negotiations with contingent labor-suppliers to get better rates. Then, procurement can turn around and compare invoices versus approved rates, hours, and expenses and make sure that each worker is being paid at agreed upon rates, and no more, and that unapproved expenses are never paid. Furthermore, they can configure rules that will prevent managers from approving payments that are outside of approved rate or expense bands or that would cause a budget to be exceeded. It gives them the insight into contingent workfoce spend that they’ve never had before without this type of tool.
Dot I get it now. So what’s so special about your tool. We know other companies offer workforce solutions, and we’re wondering what sets yours apart.
Dark Jacket As you can see, it’s very easy to use and guides a user through the process.
Wakko Even I can use it, so I’ll give you that. But most tools are getting easier to use every year. Why should I use yours?
Dark Jacket I could tell you about the hundreds of little usability features we’ve crammed into this tool that make it as easy to use as Google for our average user, but instead I’ll tell you about how we think we’re really different.

Our tool, which supports over 80 Fortune 2000 Global Multi-nationals, was built to be a global tool. That means that we’ve localized it for over 30 countries …
Dot But isn’t that just changing the unit of currency and supporting different languages? If you use Java, that’s easy to code these days.
Dark Jacket It’s much more than that. When I say we’ve localized it, I mean that we’ve configure it to take into account all of the standard business practices, taxation requirements, and legal requirements of each country in which our customers have deployed it. For example, workforce management in Europe is considerably different than in the US. When you bid a rate, you have to break it down into base pay, benefits, travel, per-diem, etc. in Europe. Furthermore, you have different taxation requirements to track and different legal issues to watch out for when onboarding and offboarding. Our tool customizes its workflow and data capture to each country it is used in. And to make sure we do it right, we retain over 20 international law-firms around the globe to keep us up to date on changing requirements and ensure we go above and beyond the requirements when we enter a new country on behalf of a customer.
Wakko So I could hire a vinyard worker in France to hand pick grapes for me and be certain I was following all the rules?
Dark Jacket If you wanted to …
Wakko Awesome!
Dark Jacket That’s what we think of our tool, which can be delivered pure SaaS, and which we improve upon every day. In fact, we now not only do contingent workforce management, but we also do direct hires and service management against projects. And we also have a new InSite Visualizer tool that can be used to generate business intelligence on all of the data the tool collects and present the user with trends and patterns that emerge over time. This way they can accurately predict resource costs over the next contract cycle before entering into a negotiation or compare their data against industry average benchmarks to see how well they’re doing. This is on top of the dozens of standard reports, as well as the ad-hoc report generator, that is built into the tool and the workflow.
Yakko Contingent workforce management is sure a lot more involved then we ever thought it was!
Dark Jacket It truly is … and that’s why your standard direct goods procurment solution you get off-the-shelf won’t work and why you need a customized solution.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a workforce management platform to improve. Good day.

 

Epilogue

Dot That was a learning experience!
Yakko I guess it is a lot more involved than just telling HR to “get me this resource by Monday”.
Wakko I’ll say. So where are we going next?
Dot We’re on the G’s.
Wakko Didn’t the doctor recommend someone else?
Yakko I think so. Just a second.
Yakko takes out his notebook. GDM … Global Data Mining.
Dot What do they do?
Yakko BI, maybe? I don’t know. So let’s go!
Wakko OK. So where are they?
Yakko Just outside of Denver, Colorado I believe.
Wakko All right! We get to see the Rockies! Let’s go!