Category Archives: Vendor Review

TradeCard: Transaction Management for the Global Supply Chain Part II

In yesterday’s post we introduced you to TradeCard, a supply chain management services and trade finance company that provides an end-to-end SaaS transaction management solution that connects over 4,000 buyer and supplier companies across the world with local support in over 50 countries. This solution, which implements end-to-end transaction management from the cutting of the Purchase Order to final settlement (including chargebacks) with support for financing, document management, 3rd party freight forwarders, and factory floor shipment packaging, is one of the most extensive SI has seen with respect to visibility into the three critical supply chain flows — financial, physical, and information.

We discussed the financial flow, which supports pre- and post- export financing, payment protection, invoice discounting, and settlement with their Procure-to-Pay solution; the physical flow, that is supported by their collaboration, Factory Xpress, and document management solutions; and the information flow, which is supported by the aforementioned solutions along with the TradeCard Advantage and Custom Objects Toolkit solution. Today we are going to dive into the physical flow and the solutions that support it.

We’ll start with the collaboration solution. Designed with forecasting and supply planning in mind, the solution allows for forecast and purchase order data to be pulled from your ERP / forecasting system / system of record of choice and pushed back when the production plan and/or purchase order is complete. Forecasting revolves around (rolling) supply plans, that can be completed from a material, supplier, forecast, inventory, (material) commitment, or demand view. Buyers and suppliers, who are given permission, can edit the forecast, and the revised forecast can be maintained along side the original forecast. The forecast can be at the product level, or the component material level, as the platform has equal support for component and 2nd tier raw material suppliers, who can also be given (read or edit) access if relevant or key. The system also allows the scheduled production runs to be collaboratively decided upon (and updates the projected inventory automatically). There are no built-in forecasting models at this time, but that may change in a future release. (In the interim, Tradecard can integrate any forecasting system that can provide data in a standard format such as EDI, XML, or CSV.)

The UI is similar to many web-based supply management platforms, and includes a “taskboard” that keeps track of all of the current tasks for the current user, which can be ordered by action type, transaction, or assignment date. With respect to transactions, which the suite is designed around, a user can query and track transactions by purchase order, invoices, payments, packing & shipping, financing, (goods) receipts, contracts, adjustments, events, and customs filings in addition to supply plans. Purchase orders are extremely detailed and can contain all of the information required by the supplier, freight forwarders, and any customs authorites (including order terms, parties, freight terms, destinations, items, components, additional terms, and required documents). This allows for the easy generation and submission of appropriate trade and customs documents (with over 10 import and export document formats supported out-of-the-box). The system maintains complete document history and allows an authorized buyer to query exactly who did what when. Events allow the buyer to track the transaction after the PO is issued and record actual production, shipments, receipt, distribution to warehouses, returns, chargebacks, and other relevant events.

Factory Xpress is the “shop floor” solution that is designed for the personnel who are actually packing and shipping the orders. The users can access, and (if they have permission) edit the packing plans, create and print packing slips and/or shipping labels, and even scan appropriately barcoded labels to indicate when an order has been packaged and shipped. In addition, orders for packing labels and materials can be sent directly to Avery Dennison, whom the solution was developed in conjunction with. The system supports bulk packing, multi-packing, and free-packing plans and can automatically regenerate packing plans based upon changes in order quantity, delivery location, carton sizes, or item mix. Once the shipment has been packed, packing manifests can automatically generated from the packing plan and purchase order.

One very neat feature of the platform is the “discrepancy preview” that a supplier can run before finalizing the invoice. When the discrepancy preview is run on a draft invoice, it compares invoice data to shipment/packing manifest data and PO data and reports all discrepancies in pricing, order quantities, factories, origins, destinations, and other comparable data and checks that all terms and/or documents have been completed. This allows the supplier to correct any data that can be corrected before the invoice is sent, minimizing the chance of the buyer rejecting it or sending it back for correction. It also allows the buyer to verify that the invoice they received is consistent with what they expected, or if its not, immediately determine what the discrepancy is and whether or not it was approved (due to a change in forecast or demand).

With respect to reporting, there are dozens of built in report types and the user can select the attributes and value ranges for each report, but TradeCard does not yet possess a generic report builder tool, although custom reports can be created by way of their Common Objects toolkit if required. However, complete export of all in XML and CSV format is supported and the buyer can use a third party data analysis and reporting tool to construct whatever report they want for more detailed analysis.

Finally, the TradeCard platform currently supports English, Traditional, and Simplified Chinese with Spanish coming later this year, and most implmentations, which includes integration to your ERP and forecasting systems, and onboarding of 80% of your relevant supply base, and user training, are accomplished in 90 days. It’s a solid solution and one worth looking into if you need to manage end-to-end transactions across the global supply chain.

TradeCard: Transaction Management for the Global Supply Chain Part I

In yesterday’s post on how it’s sourcing, procurement, and global trade management, we mentioned how a critical part of global trade is finance and document management. One company that facilitates this process is TradeCard, an end-to-end SaaS transaction management solution that connects over 4,000 buyer and supplier companies across the world with local support in over 50 countries. And while they aren’t the only company that facilitates this process, with notable competitors being Integration Point and their extensive suite of import, export, and supply chain compliance solutions and TradeBeam with their import, export, and visibility solutions, they are the first solution that I’ve seen that implements end-to-end transaction management from the PO to final settlement (including chargebacks) with support for financing, document management, 3rd party freight forwarders, and factory floor shipment packaging. Furthermore, their solution, which supports the physical, financial, and information flows from all parties, focusses on the alignment of the flows.

The financial flow is supported by way of a procure-to-pay solution that enables pre- and post- export financing solutions, payment protection, invoice discounting, settlement, and chargebacks. Through agreements and alliances with over 25 banks, insurers, and other third parties, the TradeCard platform allows a suppier to request financing as soon as the purchase order is received. Then, depending on the supplier’s credit rating and the amount of the request, the request will be forwarded to one or more financing partners who will offer financing at standard terms or the TradeCard credit line, where the TradeCard platform can automatically grant certain financing requests under standard terms on behalf of the partners in the financial network.

The time of the financing request is flexible. The supplier can request financing at any point from the receipt of the purchase order to the receipt of goods by the buyer, and might even be able to request financing beyond receipt of the goods by the buyer, depending on the buyer’s standard payment terms. In addition, the platform allows the supplier to offer invoice discounting on early payment by the buyer as soon as the invoice has been accepted. Finally, the platform allows for electronic payments, which completes the end-to-end financial lifecycle of the transaction.

The physical flow is supported by their collaboration solution, which allows buyers and suppliers to collaboratively share current demand data and collaborate on forecasts and production plans, the Factory Xpress solution that allows for the creation and execution of detailed packing plans, and the document management solution that allows for the creation and transmission of documents that are required by freight forwarders, customs agents (for import and export), and distribution centers.

The information flow is supported by their Procure-to-Pay, Collaboration, and Factory Xpress solutions as well as their TradeCard Advantage solution that allows for queries and reports across the platform and the transaction data that it contains. It’s also supported by their new Custom Objects Toolkit that allows TradeCard to quickly create custom extensions — that can take the form of integrations, reports, or global trade documents — for customers on an as-needed basis.

By integrating the three flows, TradeCard provides a single view into the global supply chain for buyers, suppliers, factories, and partners around the world, which can be integrated into the platform as needed. TradeCard can, and has, integrated multiple ERP, best-of-breed, and home-grown sourcing, procurement, and global trade solutions into its platform in support of its hundreds of global Fortune 3000 customers. Furthermore, over 150 service providers already inject services into the platform in the form of financing, payment protection, inspection, and logistics, which a customer can take advantage of day one.

Tomorrow’s post will dive into the physical supply chain flow and the solutions that TradeCard provides.

BravoSolution: Making Spend Analysis More Useful to the Average Supply Management Professional, Part II

In yesterday’s post we discussed how, for one reason or another, spend analysis is not used enough in the average organization. But, as I said before, this doesn’t have to be the case. Spend Analysis can continue to deliver value year over year if it is properly integrated into daily supply chain activities. And the key to making this happen in your average Supply Management organization is integrating spend analysis not only into the (e)Sourcing process but the e(S)ourcing suite.

In BravoSolution’s Collaborative Sourcing Suite, Spend Analysis is integrated into the Contract Management, Compliance (& Spend) Management, and Performance Management solutions and will be integrated into Risk Management in the next version of the solution that is currently under development. In todays post, we will discuss the benefits of integrated spend analysis and what is available in BravoSolution’s suite.

By integrating Spend Analysis into the Contract Management solution, BravoSolution assists an organization in achieving a global view of sourcing and spend. From day one, an organization can not only track the contract details, but can track forecast data (total spend, cost reduction, demand management, etc.) and spend on an on-going basis by business unit and time-period (by setting up the periods for which spend is to be tracked). Then, on a regular basis, current and forecast saving reports can be (re)run with the click of a mouse button. For selected contracts, the actual savings report will summarize forecasted spend, actual spend, spend variance, expected savings (to date), actual savings, and variance, and the forecast savings report will summarize cost reduction, demand management, process savings, cost avoidance, cost increases, and total savings.

By integrating Spend Analysis into the Compliance Management solution, and matching all the way down to the unit level to find variance from contracts, Spend Analysis can help the Supply Management organization quickly pinpoint negotiated savings leakage and stem the losses. More importantly, the reports can be configured to report leakages and variances by supplier and contract (against the contract value and invoiced cost). If the variance calculations factor in discounts, rebates, and pricing tiers, then actual losses can be quickly computed. Then the recovery process can begin. BravoSolution’s suite, which includes integrated messaging for supplier performance tracking and hooks into performance management, includes the ability to track amounts paid and overpaid by supplier and contract to assist in recovery.

By integrating Spend Analysis into Performance Management, not only can spend be tracked by supplier, but spend can be broken down into high, average, and low performing suppliers. These reports can be high-level, based upon overall performance scores, or by individual KPIs from supplier scorecards. In addition, trends can be analyzed and the organization can determine whether spend to high performing suppliers is increasing, holding steady, or decreasing and whether or not action has to be taken. These trends can be plotted or (spider) graphed automatically, and benchmarks can be built and tracked over time.

And by integrating Spend Analysis into Risk Management, Risk Management can be taken to the next level. But that’s the subject of a future post.

So how successful can you be if you integrate Spend Analysis into Contract Management, Compliance Management, and Performance Management? Theoretically, the sky’s the limit (as spend analysis is now doing more than just measuring spend). Practically, the results are looking very promising. While BravoSolution only finished the initial integration of their core suite components with Spend Analysis last year, BravoSolution’s first four case studies are looking quite promising.

After an initial 3 month roll-out to a handful of advertising and marketing groups in a large media organization, the organization decided to roll out the contract and compliance management solutions to all 30 of its global groups. A second organization was able to get 50% of its spend in a compliance program in less than six months. A third organization was able to develop a performance management solution that it could roll out to thousands of franchisees to determine the appropriateness and effectiveness of its global contracts. And while the final savings numbers won’t be known for a while, the savings are tracking in the range enabled by High Definition Sourcing, 10% to 30%.

BravoSolution: Making Spend Analysis More Useful to the Average Supply Management Professional, Part I

For reasons I don’t quite understand, spend analysis is not used enough in the average organization. More often than not, even basic spend reporting — that would tell an organization what is being spent, on what, with whom, and when — is not run. Even though most organizations can probably name seven of their top ten suppliers, categories, and organizational units by spend if you just ask them, chances are that not only will they be surprised by the other three, but they won’t quite comprehend the magnitude of the spend. And until an organization understands the magnitude of their lack of comprehension, getting spend analysis adoption in the organization is likely to be a problem.

However, that is only the first obstacle. Once a solution is adopted, chances are it will only be used by a small number of senior analysts. Just like decision optimization, there seems to be a common misconception that it is “hard”, requires “math skills”, or “takes too much time” — as a result, many users are intimidated or can’t find the time to try it. The “hard” and “math skills” misconceptions can usually be overcome with a demo or two on a properly implemented, easy to use, tool, but unless it’s easy to import data and generate reports, the “takes too much time” stigma may stay.

But if you get past the stigmas, if all it does is generate a few canned reports, you hit the real problem. It’s usefulness quickly comes to an end. Once you’ve attacked the Top N suppliers, Top N categories, and Top N spenders in the organization and reigned in costs and performance, unless there is a way to identify the next N opportunities, the usefulness of the tool has come to an end. That’s why the traditional spend analysis value curve flattens out within a year and spend analysis never reaches wide adoption.

But this doesn’t have to be the case. Not only can spend analysis reach wide adoption throughout the supply chain organization, but it can continue to deliver value year over year if it is properly integrated into daily supply chain activities. And the key to making this happen in your average Supply Management organization is integrating spend analysis not only into the (e)Sourcing process but the e(S)ourcing suite. From eBidding through Decision Optimization and Contract Management through Supplier Performance Management, Spend Analysis can play a vital role.

In BravoSolution’s Collaborative Sourcing Suite, Spend Analysis is integrated into the Contract Management solution, Compliance (& Spend) Management, and Performance Management and will be integrated into Risk Management in the next version of the solution that is currently under development. In tomorrow’s post, we will discuss the benefits of integrated spend analysis and what is available in BravoSolution’s suite.

Lavante – The Newest Contestent in the SIM Arena

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, Lavante is the latest provider of Supplier Information Management solutions in the Supply Management space (which includes Aravo, AECSoft (just acquired by SciQuest), CVM Solutions, Hiperos, and Rollstream, which have all been covered on SI). And while it arrived late, it comes ready for battle.

Since you all know by now what a good SIM solution should do (and if you don’t, reread the classic vendor SIM posts linked above), I’m not going to waste any time describing what it should do or spend a lot of time on the details. Instead, I’m going to mention all the standard stuff that the platform does and then focus on what makes Lavante different from the competition and why it should be included in your SIM vendor short list.

Like its competitors, Lavante allows you to collect detailed information on all of your suppliers, including detailed information on each contact. By default, this detailed information includes tax information, headquarters information remit-to information, business structure information, ERP (System) information, ownership information, certifications, services/materials information, risk management information, insurance information, bank information, and user defined summary information. A supplier has the option of entering all of the information on-line or downloading a template. Lavante can import your current supplier master (in a standard format such as XML) or provide a buyer with a (CSV) template to enter information for new suppliers. The information collected can be customized for every supplier, notifications on change can be configured at the element level, and approvals can be required before critical information is changed.

In addition to the standard browser interface, suppliers can also respond to e-mails or faxes (and even call a rep who will enter the information for them if they are still technologically illiterate). The supplier interface allows a supplier to log-in and manage 100% of their information, which minimizes buyer effort if suppliers take an active role in buyer interaction.

At any time, a buyer can get a list of all suppliers who have not provided requested information as well as suppliers who have registered and completed their profile. The buyer can also see which communication attempts have been tried or whether or not the supplier has not provided an e-mail or fax number.

The distinguishing characteristics of the platform are the following:

  • it was built on the cloud
    it was designed to be 100% multi-tenant and cloud compliant from day one
  • extremely configurable
    many early platforms only had the ability to send an alert when a change was made; later ones allowed for alerts to be configured to change type; Lavante’s platform allows each individual data element to be marked as notify/don’t notify on change
  • automatic validation of Tax ID
    Lavante does a real-time check of every TIN that is entered and a supplier is not allowed to register without a valid TIN that matches their name
  • multi-mode outreach
    whereas most providers assume browser or e-mail data provision, Lavante also accepts faxes and integrates OCR and provides supplier outreach services that will get suppliers onboard by e-mail, fax, or phone if necessary
  • a supplier portal that equals the buyer portal
    suppliers were an afterthought in many first generation SIM platforms and a supplier had to log in to a separate instance of the portal for each buying organization they dealt with; in Lavante’s platform, a supplier can manage their data for all buyers who use Lavante through a single log-in — information needs to only be entered once and common information is segregated from buyer specific information
  • very large supplier database
    Lavante, which started as a recovery audit vendor, has been around for 10 years and has amassed a database of over 2 Million vendors that its client do business with — as a result, it has current information on over 2 Million vendors in its database

Plus, Lavante can use this platform to streamline its recovery audits and save an organization up to 10X more than a recovery audit without access to detailed information would save. So when you add the initial savings that will come from 1099 reporting compliance with reduced SIM (when 20% to 40% of supply base information needs to change annually) resource requirements and more successful cost recovery audits, the solution pays for itself almost immediately. Plus, since it’s true multi-tenant cloud, Lavante can turn your organization on in less than an hour.