Ghosts in Data Can Indicate Fraud but …

… so can the telltale signs, and if you don’t even know how to spot those signs, why even look for the ghosts (which are very hard to find).

A recent article over on Dev Discourse on Spotting the Ghosts Using Big Data to Detect Fraud in Government Purchases described the results of a study by the University of Craiova, Romania, Institute of Financial Studies, Bucharest, and three other universities that examined how big data and online systems can help make public procurement more transparent and fair.

They analyzed the data from Romania’s public procurement system in 2023, where the government made 2.25 million purchases that totalled about 3.22 Billion Euros. In this study, the researchers were particularly interested in “exclusive” relationships, where a vendor only works with one public entity. They found that over 14% of all public purchases fell into this category, which is concerning as these exclusive deals can indicate problems like favouritism or fraud because they don’t follow the usual rules of fair competition.

This is just one standard way to identify potential fraud. Other ways, as noted by the article, are to

  • look for unusual transaction values,
  • look at the geographical distribution of unusual transactions or sole-source relationships (and for clusters in particular) as many happen in specific regions (suggesting that certain areas have higher risks of fraud)
  • look at deals that were completed too quickly (such as those completed within minutes of posting) and that were awarded considerably after hours or on weekends,

If you’re not even doing these basics to identify potential fraud, then you’re not ready to look for ghosts in the data.

And when you are doing this, and you’re struggling to weed out the likely fraud in sole-source, unusual transaction value, and transactions completed at weird times, the next step is to do a basic analysis on the supplier. As the report indicates, the correlation between award level and supplier financial performance should be correlated, not inverted. If a supplier with poor financial performance keeps getting sole-source awards, that’s a BIG RED FLAG.

Then, run the standard contract-purchase_oder-invoice matching to make sure the amounts line up. And if you do all of the above, you’ll find more fraud, non-policy compliance, and overpayments than you ever thought possible. No ghosts needed. (But if you ever get to the point that all of the above comes up blank, reach out and the doctor will tell you how to find ghosts in the data as well as ghosts in the machine.)

There are Many Key Elements of Sustainable Procurement Strategy — But Three Fundamental Elements that Must Be Present

A recent article over on Material Handling & Logistics on Key Elements of Sustainable Procurement Strategy outlined for key strategies for sustainable procurement that were on point:

  • A Holistic Approach
  • Data Integration
  • Pay it Forward
  • Stakeholder Engagement

But meaningless if you don’t have the basics in place:

  • trained talent
  • well defined processes
  • solution-oriented systems

Trained Talent

All of the above, and all of the other key elements of a strategic procurement strategy not listed, require talent to execute. Talent that is appropriately educated, experienced, and trained on all of the key elements appropriate to your organization. With respect to the above:

  • talent needs to define the right holistic approach
  • talent needs to identify the critical data, formats, and integration strategy — and make sure it is done effectively
  • only talent can handle delicate supplier relationships to make sure it is truly paid forward
  • shareholders need to be engaged effectively, and that requires real talent

Well Defined Processes

Statements, directions, and mandates don’t accomplish anything. Neither do people without an appropriately designed and detailed plan — which goes well beyond we’re going to engage supplier S or buy product P. Procurement success rates are high when there are well thought out and appropriately defined processes that can be followed by all those involved in a project or process, and generally low otherwise. Moreover, without well defined processes:

  • there is no holistic approach, it’s just a buzz phrase
  • data integration is just a one time pull into a system or push into a warehouse, and it gets outdated faster than fashion on Melmac
  • it takes more than smooth talk to pay it forward, it takes processes that ensure knowledge is transferred to, effort is minimized for, and real collaboration takes place with suppliers — it takes processes to make sure nothing critical is overlooked that could hamper the organization’s goals
  • while talent is the most critical to stakeholder engagement, good processes are critical to ensuring requirements and data is efficiently collected and retained (as a stakeholder should never have to make the same request or provide the same input twice) and no concern is overlooked

Solution Oriented Platforms

Sustainable Procurement ultimately relies on appropriately trained talent executing well designed processes with the help of platforms that help them do the jobs they need to do on a daily basis. Platforms that automate the tasks and solve the problems the organization has, not platforms that do nothing but act as fancy middleware or slap roll-the-bones AI-assisted conversational interfaces on top of software that never worked in the first place. Sustainable Procurement requires that the procurement department be able to get stuff done. That will rarely be AI, or spend orchestration, or the buzzword of the day.

  • orchestration may sound like it supports a holistic approach, but all those systems do is tie systems together that actually do the work through a common interface, which, in its attempt to homogenize everything, often weakens the solutions for the individuals that need to use them the most; a holistic approach is about getting things done with systems that get things done
  • you can’t integrate data without the right platforms that collect, process, and normalize the right data the right way
  • it’s a lot easier to pay it forward when you have the right platforms that support the processes and the people who need to pay it forward
  • it’s easier to manage stakeholder engagement on systems designed to support the stakeholders in question, in contrast to one-size-fits-all (but serves no one) “orchestration” systems

In other words, if you truly want sustainable procurement, start with making sure the foundations are in order. The rest will follow in a straight-forward manner once you have the basics right.

So You Admit You Might Be a Dead-Company Walking. How Do You Avoid the Graveyard? Part 6

In short, as per Part 1, you

  1. keep admitting to every mistake you are making and do something about it, then
  2. continue by looking for cost-effective opportunities for improvement and pursue them and finally
  3. never, ever, ever forget the timeless basics.

Today, we’ll continue by describing what you do when you identify, and admit to, the next mistake (mistake 8) we chronicled in our two part introduction to our “dead company walking” (Part 1 and Part 2) series (where we helped your potential customers identify problems that signify you are a SaaS supplier they should be walking away from). (You can find part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5 here.)

8) If there is interest, your product is the solution

Every inquiry is a lead, and every lead is one we must sell and close.

Let me be clear here: Nothing could be further from the truth!

If we go back to mistake #7, buzz and sound bites are more important than timeless educational content, a lot of inquiries are going to come from people trying to figure out what the h3ck you do and if your product has key functionality or process support that they might be looking for.

And if you pass that bar, then they need to know that it meets enough of their requirements to be a consideration — if they can get budget to put out an RFP.

Which means that, the more buzzwords and sound-bites you use, and thus the more confusing your messaging is, the less correlation there is between inquiries and actual interest in your product and, as just stated, actual interest doesn’t mean actual budget, or, more importantly, that your product is the solution.

There was a time when most vendors, with integrity (and without the constant push from greedy investors to sell first, solve later) would qualify a lead before trying to sell that lead, but these days, it seems that most vendors have adopted the Big X strategy of “everyone’s a client, close the deal, and figure it out later” — and they do so even if they don’t have a clue how to solve the problem or the software to do it, when nothing could be further from the truth.

the doctor knows we’ve all forgotten about the Miracle on 34th Street, but it had a timeless piece of sales advice you should never forget if you want to maintain integrity: if you don’t have what the customer wants, send the customer elsewhere. It doesn’t mean you’ve lost them. It means that when they have a problem you can solve, they will come back because they know they can trust you, and in the world of SaaS where they need constant support, they want a vendor they can trust.

At the end of the day, the reality is this:
if there is interest, there’s an opportunity to qualify … and that’s it

And, more importantly,
it there’s an opportunity to qualify, there’s an opportunity to learn … and that could be more important than a sale!

If you stop pushing and start pulling, i.e asking, you can learn about:

  • the real problems potential customers are having,
  • what they are looking for in a solution, and
  • how your solution could be improved to not only solve more problems, but be more appealing, as well as
  • why they contacted you, and use that insight to figure out
  • how to tweak your messaging and content to get more relevant inquiries in the future

Once you get this information you can,

  • tweak your roadmap appropriately
  • improve your usability (which does not mean add flash to your UI)
  • ensure you have the right price point for a timely, but still profitable, sale

All you have to do is fire your marketing morons*, stop talking gibberish and start listening.

Stay tuned for Part 7!

* the doctor is not implying all marketers are morons, there are still a few very smart ones out there, just that the percentage of morons focussed on hits and not success or meaning has greatly increased over the past decade and the odds are, if you’re a dead company walking, your marketer is a moron and not a maven.

Post-ZIRP World!

Inspired by THE REVELATOR and Alan Buxton. (See the post AND the comments!)

To the tune of Perfect World by Huey Lewis and the News.

Everybody’s afraid of
the Post-ZIRP world
Where you can’t have
everything your heart desires
The perfect pitch won’t get the big raise
And the perfect plan won’t set the world on fire

Well, what you gonna do,
when one and one makes two
And the vision of the future
is low utility fees
No Co’s perfect,
not even a perfect fool
If you can’t serve results
They won’t keep the faith in you

Ain’t no bullsh!t in a post-ZIRP world
There weren’t no ZIRP world anyway
Ain’t no bullsh!t in a post-ZIRP world
But keep on dreamin’
of living in an all ZIRP world

Everybody’s got secrets
Now you know that it’s true
They talk about AI
They talk ’til they’re blue
Something happened to the pledges of trust
Down through the years, they began to rust

Now here we are, amid the fears and the laughter
Still waiting for our happily ever after
They’ll keep on dreamin’ as long as they can
Try to remember and you’ll understand …

Another BRIC in the wall!

We don’t need no education!
We don’t need no thought control.

And we don’t need no American Dollar.
We don’t need no OPEC zone.
No cold war dogma in the classroom.
No arbitrary acetone!

As a result of “first-world” “western” policies, “populist” politics, arbitrary “sanctions” (which are then bypassed through intermediaries), arbitrarily choosing of sides, forced “democracies” (even though the ring-leader isn’t a democracy), etc., many countries are getting fed up of the “West” and petitioning to join the BRICS. What started as a union of Brazil, Russia, India, and China in 2006 (and then expanded to South Africa in 2010), this year saw Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates join the ranks after being invited to join on January 1. (This followed reports last year that over 40 countries have expressed interest in BRICS, and almost half of that number have bid for membership.)

As of now, the BRICS countries represent roughly 45% of the world’s population and 28% of the world’s economy. (That’s more than the US portion of roughly 25% or the EU portion of roughly 19%, and way more than the UK’s portion of about 2%.) Within a few years, the BRICS will likely gobble up a considerable portion of the 26% not in the EU, and could soon represent close to 50% of the world’s GDP and 80% of the world’s population).

A seismic shift is coming and the BRICS, especially if they adopt a central currency, will soon set the global economic standard (despite the denials of the US and EU). Are you ready? (Answer: you’re not, but you should start preparing your global supply chains now so you are when the time comes.)

I don’t need no arms around me
And I don’t need no drugs to calm me.
I have seen the writing on the wall.
Don’t think I need anything at all.
No! Don’t think I’ll need anything at all.
All in all it was all just the new BRICS in the wall.
All in all you were all just the new BRICS in the wall.