In the past few weeks, we've hinted at how the times will be changing significantly at Spend Matters as we introduce an entirely new, research-driven chapter in our history. In the coming weeks, we will be launching a members-only community and research service with access to the most informed and independent procurement and related supply chain information, insight, analysis and opinion available globally. In previewing what is to come for practitioners and our overall approach, we provided a bit of higher-level detail in our last post on the topic. Flipping over the equation, for solution providers, our mission is to drive a new level of opinion, knowledge and awareness to help organizations better understand their customers, the market and competitive landscape, develop offerings, position and sell effectively, identify and understand potential partners, and generate revenue.

[More]

Up and up.
Global supply chain management software market reached $7.7bn in 2011: Gartner -- The global supply chain management (SCM) software market increased by 12.3% to $7.7bn in 2011 over last year, according to Gartner. The figures mark the second year of double-digit growth for the SCM software market, driven by an increasing number of supply chain investments, which have kept their priority status and moved forward, despite caution from IT budget decision makers, the research firm revealed. Gartner research vice president Chad Eschinger said despite ongoing economic uncertainty, the market for supply chain applications showed itself to be pretty resilient in 2011 with most SCM providers continuing to expand their footprints.

Here's a list of the worst cell phones out there!
The Worst Phones You Can Buy -- A buffet of horrendous hardware, redundant mediocrity, and straight ugliness. Phones that are both bad and not free. Dumbphones that pretend to be Android. Thing thing. Why do they exist? Presumably, because people are buying them--but why are there so many? Why sell ten flavors of ass soup? We don't know, but here's the menu.

[More]

Every year, SAP has a massive conference in Orlando for clients, prospects, partners, media and probably also to cross-train SAP employees in what the Walldorf-empire is up to. The range of products and the size of the venue is immense -- in fact, you could probably roll half-a-dozen ISM shows into the SAPPHIRE format and there would still be room left.

SAPPHIRE is a well-run event, with few expenses spared -- this year they had Van Halen as their closing act (something I had to pass on, unfortunately). There aren't many other software companies out there who can match that level of wow factor.

[More]

Two members of the Spend Matters team had an exceedingly booked and intensive time at Sapphire this past week. Between the two of us, Thomas Kase and I probably saw a dozen demonstrations, had over twenty formal meetings with SAP team members and partners and spoke informally to over two dozen more customers, SAP solution managers and partners. Even by our usual hectic standards, it really was a completely packed and chaotic few days of learning and interaction. In the coming weeks, we'll continue to share our learnings about SAP's latest procurement, network and supply chain direction -- digging into current and planned product releases as well as new solutions and overall market and solution directions (you can read our initial dispatches here, here, here, here, and here).

Somewhat ironically, on a late night flight back from Orlando, I was reading a good book spanning the history of World War: Adam Hochschild's To End All Wars. In it, I was struck by a passage that could be apropos to what SAP may have up its sleeve -- even though the right hand might not always be talking to the left -- in the procurement and supply chain business applications, cloud and mobile arenas:

[More]

Spend Matters welcomes a guest post from William Murcia, Procurement Practice at Archstone Consulting.

Sourcing managers frequently re-evaluate indirect spend to deliver bottom line results. While conducting spend analysis and re-sourcing spend categories is very valuable to drive cost reductions, people seem to rely on a baseline assumption of organizational need. Companies that aggressively source but do not aggressively evaluate the needs of their organization can become extremely efficient -- at spending money that doesn't need to be spent. Organizations should periodically build bottom-up budgets through zero-based budgeting to continually challenge spend that occurs using traditional budgeting.

Zero-based budgeting is an aggressive budgeting process that forces evaluation of organizational need to allocate funds for expenditures on a line-by-line basis. Business operators must justify each dollar of spend in the upcoming year. This bottom-up approach forces business operators to think strategically about spending and simultaneously builds strong budget ownership. Budgeting is thus not owned by finance, but rather by the entire organization.

[More]

Got milk? ...Got permits??
Ice-cream spot hits rocky road -- Looking to hit the spot with a savory ice cream at Great Brook Farm State Park this week? You may be out of luck. The park's popular ice-cream stand was unexpectedly shut down by state officials over the weekend, after the stand's operator made building improvements at the site without getting permission first. Mark Duffy, who has operated the dairy farm at the state-owned park for 26 years and has a lease with the state to run the stand, said armed Environmental Police officers showed up at stand on Friday evening and stood guard throughout the weekend, turning away customers craving delectable sundaes and frappes.

A new CEO for ISM.
Institute for Supply Management(TM) (ISM) Selects New CEO -- Institute for Supply Management™(ISM) announced today that it has completed the search for a new CEO and chosen Thomas W. Derry to lead the world's leading supply management association, effective July 30, 2012. Derry will succeed Paul Novak, CPSM, C.P.M., A.P.P., MCIPS as ISM CEO. Novak has served as ISM's top executive since 1997. Derry is currently vice president and chief operating officer at the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) in Bethesda, Maryland, a US$23 million association serving 17,000 corporate treasury and finance professionals in North America and more than 100,000 online registered readers worldwide. In his role with AFP, Derry is responsible for strategic planning and development, including U.S. and Canadian membership organizations and two wholly owned, for-profit U.K. subsidiaries. He has experience in all organizational functions, including advocacy, finance, human resources, sales, product development, publications, certification, education and training, conference production and marketing. Prior to joining AFP in 2003, Derry was with LexisNexis Group in Dayton, Ohio.

[More]

Late last year, the MIT Sloan Management Review published a great piece that crosses over the academic journal line by offering some real pragmatic observations for global procurement and supply chain practitioners. Some of the points are clearly obvious, but the thinking behind them and the fact they haven't been articulated before in a similar manner makes the piece an indispensible reference for understanding the current (and future) state of global vs. regional sourcing. The article itself, authored by luminaries, David Simchi-Levi, James Paul Peruvankal, Narendra Mulani, and Bill Read, begins by suggesting that for the past fifteen years, the outsourcing or offshoring of manufacturing operations (whether one's own facilities or suppliers), was a major trend, made possible due to "one crucial enabling factor...cheap oil."

[More]

Please click here for the first post in this series.

Yesterday we shared some of the insights surfaced by a GreenBiz.com interview featuring Hannah Jones, Nike's vice president of sustainable business and innovation. The gist of the story is that Nike views CSR within its supply chain and with its rationalized/consolidated tier one suppliers as a core component of a broader lean and strategic sourcing approach rather than simply as a compliance challenge to overcome. It's a great interview and if you have the time, we recommend you check it out in its entirety.

[More]

Please click here for Part 1 of this series.

We'll continue our look at Seal Software by tossing out a few more case examples for good measure, to show the breadth of applicability for this truly special product, starting first with M&A. In an M&A situation, Seal can enable new levels of visibility into all contract exposure areas before a deal is completed and then drive a rapid post-merger integration as soon as deals are complete. Based on speed, quantity of contract analysis and the amount of deals processed at any given time, Seal's approach can enable contract visibility an order of magnitude faster than manual (or even other automated) approaches across many different contract fields and metadata (e.g., change of control, non exclusivity, escrow, end-of-life, auto renewals, most favored nation status, right of first refusal, limitation of liability, exclusivity, non-competes, non-solicitation, indemnity). A large law firm currently uses Discovery to reduce contract review time using bundled extraction rules.

[More]