Category Archives: Sourcing Innovation

ScanMarket – Spreading P2P through the Clouds

ScanMarket is a Denmark-based cloud-based Source-to-Contract suite provider with hundreds of global clients and high adoption rates. ScanMarket claims that companies that switch to their solution see 3x gains in adoption and spend volume (put through the system), and it’s not an unrealistic claim (especially when the system is compared to older Source-to-Contract solutions). It’s another company that has been around quite a long time (since 1999), even though it’s not a name you know in North America.

Even though modules can be activated or deactivated as desired (and an organization can buy anything from just Project Management to the whole suite), ScanMarket was designed to be a single, integrated, source-to-contract suite that contains eRFX, eAuctions, Contract Management, Supply Base Management, Project Management, and Spend Analysis (which is the only module that is almost completely separate). Functionality can be purchased separately, but there is no versioning — ScanMarket is one platform, one instance (where ‘modules’ can be turned off depending on the functionality not desired by a customer). (ScanMarket provides a short, quick on-line introduction video overview of what they think an e-Sourcing platform is.)

The RFX solution allows RFI, RFP, and RFQ which support numerous evaluation settings via bid parameters and weighted scoring, a powerful bid matrix that can capture up to 1 Million data points in a single bid, a template (and question) library for quick event creation, (standard) Excel integration for offline completion, and integration into the sourcing dashboard. In addition, it contains the ability to copy events using multiple template settings that take just the desired data forward. In addition, the buyer can choose to just take some suppliers and some bids forward as well. It’s pretty powerful for an RFX platform.

The e-Auction platform is more-or-less your standard e-Auction platform supporting Japanese, Dutch, Reverse, Factored, and Forward auctions with numerous, configurable, bidding rules to match the event to the situation including individual starting prices, feedback options, blindfolding, proxy bidding, rank, traffic lights, staggering, blind period, reserve price indicator, and partial quantity bidding. Auctions can be monitored in real time on an item and lot level, and the buyer can choose whether to see a full tabular history of bids by item or lot or a real-time graphical “horse-race” view. In addition, the bids can be modified in real time using one or more modifiers (such as switching costs) or formulae (which can include factors to account for different defect rates) and allow buyers to do realistic cost comparisons (even if such cost comparisons are hidden from suppliers).

Contract Management provides a single, online, repository for all contracts with search and reporting. It supports templates (for quick contract data capture), version control, categorization, and buyer-defined meta-data with a detailed approval workflow to support negotiations. Contracts can be instantiated directly from the results of a (cherry-picked) RFX or e-Auction, dates specified, and appropriate notifications and reminders set.

ScanMarket SBM is their Supplier Information Management (SIM) solution that acts as the central, single, repository for all supplier information. It can capture all of the data you expect, including any and all attachments that need to be captured, index those attachments with meta-data, allow for repository-wide (metadata) search, provide full visibility into associated supplier activities (including event history, contracts, and captured performance), and maintain complete audit trails. It also integrates with the suite dashboard for dashboard-based reporting.

Project Management in ScanMarket is a single repository for all projects, notes and attachments that provides an integrated dashboard view of, and reporting across all, projects. There is customizeable workflow management, that allows for the creation of multiple project workflows that can be instantiated as needed, and the templated workflows can be customized for each task in each project across stakeholders and participants. There is also integrated communication and messaging and the ability to quickly jump into the appropriate point in the eRFX, e-Auction, supplier profile, or contract associated with the project.

ScanMarket is a solution that is definitely worth looking into. For more information, see the recent Spend Matters Pro [membership required] series by the doctor and the prophet. (Part I, Part II, and Part III)

On the Tenth day of X-Mas (2016)


On the tenth day of X-Mas
my blogger gave to me:
Standard Sourcing Posts
Direct Sourcing Posts
Risk Management Posts
Sustainable Posts
e-Procurement Posts
some SRM Posts
some CLM Posts
some Best Practice Posts
some Trend Bashing Posts
and some ranting on stupidity …

Yesterday we focused in on direct sourcing because most platforms, designed for indirect, weren’t up to snuff for direct sourcing and that needed to be pointed out before we launched into a more general discussion and review of (the best posts on) traditional strategic sourcing.

We’re going to start to explain it’s importance by pointing out that If One Wants to Avoid Cost, Then One Should Avoid Cost At All Costs! This is something most organizations don’t do.

When you realize this and go to market for a proper platform (upon which you can find much advice in the archives), remember that
SI Has Been Telling You Solution Provider RFX Templates SUCK for Years!
Solution Provider RFX Templates SUCK! What Do You Do?
So, Do You Throw Provider RFX Templates Out with the Packaging?

This is true whether they are templates to acquire a solution or acquire the products and services that you need to function as a business.

Then, when you get that platform, remember that
If You Are Going to Create RFPs, Avoid RFP Hell!

After all, you already have to contend with
Eight Reasons Best-in-Class Suppliers are Ignoring Your RFP
why give them more reasons to?

But don’t just switch your events over to e-Auctions, because it’s
Time to Remove e-Auctions from the Strategic Sourcing Toolkit.

There is a host of reasons for doing so. One reason is that
Bidding Flexibility is Important to e-Auction Success
but most e-Auction platforms don’t give you bidding flexibility.

Instead, what you get are
The Entanglements of e-Auctions.

In other words, before you put your faith in e-Auctions, ask yourself:
e-Auctions — Savings Machine or Inflation Nightmare?

Come back tomorrow for the eleventh day of X-Mas.

iValua: Brewing the Kettle for the Vertical Petals

When SI last did a deep dive on Ivalua back in late 2013, they were proving their mettle with source-to-settle (Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV) because an integrated Source-to-Settle (S2S) platform brings unparalleled benefits to Supply Management. Since then, they’ve been extending the platform, but instead of broadening it (as they already had just about everything covered except decision optimization and cashflow optimization), they’ve been deepening it with industry specific functionality for a plethora of verticals, namely, the manufacturing and automotive industry; the banking and services industry; the retail and distribution industry; the construction, oil, and gas industry; the health care industry; the telecom industry; GPOs (Group Purchasing Organizations), and the public sector.

For the machining and automotive industry, in addition to their powerful RFX capability which allows buyers to create detailed cost models for components and products being sourced, they also have integrated sourcing project management (as a Bill of Materials might require multiple sourcing projects, capabilities for New Product Introduction (NPI) management, asset and tooling management and tracking, and the ability to identify raw material / component price data variance across plant locations. This is in addition to the detailed supplier master data management (that can support the definition of approved suppliers by category, buyer, and location), quality tracking and management (through scorecards), and productive action plans (that build on the corrective action plan capability).

For the banking and services industry, in addition to vendor managed catalogs, contract compliance management, invoice data capture, and dynamic discounting, unlike some of their peers that grew up in the indirect (commodity) sourcing world, they support detailed rate cards and services profiles, e-Signature integration, and multi-envelope bidding.

For the construction, oil, and gas industry, in addition to support for spot-sourcing and spot-awards to on-contract suppliers, detailed service personnel data collection, and supplier data access to available assets (and tools), the platform also supports the creation of field service request estimates based on PR and PO process initiation, asset and tooling management, automatic monitoring of supplier credentials and certificates, data collection for supplier personnel performance management, and the collection of documents and specifications on all relevant supplier safety practices.

They’ve also fleshed out their analytics and out-of-the-box reports to cover spend data and metrics from all aspects of the source-to-settle lifecycle (which is easy to do when all of the data is in one store maintained by one platform, and not 3, 4, or 5 — which is common with some of their competitors that created their suites from multiple acquisitions), increased the configurabilty of their solution (where the buying organization not only has control over modules and workflow, but even what is displayed, or not, on individual screens), exposed the full extent of their integration capability within the platform (where lead buyers can configure the APIs through a simple form-based interface and XML), and created an add-on store where clients can share and download additional reports and components and integrations created by their peers or third parties.

Ivalua is still coding strong, and extending their platform year after year. It’s hard to say what will come next, as two-thirds of their road-map is always client-driven, but if you’re looking for a true, native, end-to-end source-to-pay platform from a responsive organization, the Ivalua platform is one that should be on your short-list.

Virtual Procurement Centers of Excellence: The Next Level of Complex Direct Procurement

We have already discussed Value-Based Sourcing in Complex Direct Supply Chains and how it can generate an ROI well beyond what cost-savings focussed Procurement can generate on its own. We also indicated that a key requirement of success for value-based sourcing was a platform designed for complex direct procurement, and outlined the basic requirements for such in previous posts.

However, the right platform not only allows Supply Management to extract more value from every event than it would otherwise, but, when properly implemented, also provides the foundation for a Virtual Procurement Center of Excellence — a VP-COE if you will. A VP-COE is the next phase of Procurement Evolution for leading Procurement organizations that have evolved from decrentralized models through centralized and center-led models but which now need another evolutionary transformation to excel in today’s increasingly sophisticated global supply chains.

Today’s leading Procurement organizations are center-led. These Centers-of-Excellence are focussed on the identification of appropriate supply chain strategies, strategic categories, best practices, and knowledge sharing and often leave individual buys and tactical execution to the individual units in an effort to get the best of both worlds.

These centers of excellence typically build cross-functional teams to tackle strategic categories that represent all of the key divisions and business units, allow for the creation of flexible supply chain processes and commodity strategies through collaboration, and find ways to fully leverage strategic category spend across the enterprise. They, theoretically, give the organization the best of both worlds and many organizations that employ this model have evolved to be leading Procurement organizations, often recognized in the Hackett Group Top 8%. But is this as good as it gets?

Not even close. The view painted by consulting organizations offering to transform your Procurement organization into a COE is one shared through rose coloured glasses. First of all only high dollar “visible” strategic categories will make the cut due to the limited manpower and additional time required to manage global communications and project teams. A lot of spend will go unmanaged, and a lot of opportunities left untapped. This does not sound like the definition of a true center of excellence to us. Does it sound like a true center of excellence to you?

The long and short of it is, in order to get all spend under appropriate management in a large, distributed, global organization, a virtual procurement center of excellence is required.

So what, precisely, is it and what, precisely, do you need to enable it? Good Questions! And you will find the answers in Sourcing Innovation’s latest white paper The Benefits of a Virtual Procurement Center of Excellence for Complex Direct Procurement, sponsored by Pool4Tool. Download Now! [registration required]

So Why Do You Want To get a Grip on Supply Dynamics?

Simply put, because when you do, target costing becomes a reality. And with target costing, you can not only set, but achieve, realistic cost goals for key products. This is only achieved when you have good insight into end to end cost components from a raw material, energy, labour, and overhead perspective. And this is only achievable when you have the systems that allows you to gather real cost data right down to the raw materials, and not just average cost data from across buying organizations (that are used to feed statistical models).

Seven years ago today SI ran an article on how Target Costing Works and You can Do It Too! We quoted an article from the now-defunct Purchasing magazine on how purchasing learns cost modelling which noted that smart buyers are working with engineers, finance and suppliers to identify cost drivers in product development and eliminate them and that Whirlpol was able to close a gap of 30% between the target cost for a module on one product and the initial design cost.

We also noted that new players in the market, like Akoya (which was puchased by I-Cubed in 2014) and Apriori (which Whirlpool selected as a provider in 2013 [Source]) could be used to help set target costs as Akoya’s market intelligence and statistical models gave a decent target range and Apriori’s production cost models, when populated with raw material, energy, and overhead costs, gave an expected production cost.

But one thing these providers couldn’t necessarily do was figure out how low costs could go if the costs could be traced right down to raw material providers, which can only be done if the input component costs can be traced through the supply chain. But with a solution that allows all costs to be collected and correlated, aggregation and streamlining opportunities to be identified and captured, and high production / overhead costs to be identified, aggressive, but realistic target costs can be set and realized as the organization knows where to focus its cross functional teams. And that’s one of the big reasons why you want to get a grip on supply dynamics!