Author Archives: Thomas Kase

About Thomas Kase

Thomas Kase is a Lead Analyst for Spend Matters. His main passion in life is the interaction between information technology, how business is conducted, and how the two continue to shape each other – particularly in the corporate supply chain. He has extensive direct experience from both the buy and sell-sides of the negotiation table.

When You Find Yourself In a Software Hole, Stop Digging!

Thomas Kase - May 24, 2013 6:47 AM | Categories: Commentary

Bad software is rolled out all the time, perhaps because business clients have poorly defined use cases, ad hoc processes – or because software firms cut corners and let programmers take off without proper supervision. Then there’s also good ol’ incompetence (of course). Executive ego around how customers “should” go about their business in the solution is sometimes an issue as well – even though “educating” the marketplace to correct the errors of their ways is usually a horrible foundation for a business plan. Many software firms learned this the hard way during the dot.com days. Instead of hanging out [...]

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E-Sourcing: What’s Changed in the Past Five Years (Part 2)

Thomas Kase - May 23, 2013 3:08 PM | Categories: Commentary

In the first installment in this series, we talked a lot about the changing e-sourcing landscape based on observations from a deep dive sourcing analysis we’re currently working on. Today we’ll share some of the remaining “gotchas” to bring our subscribers up to speed on what’s changed in the past five years. But first, here’s a summary of our initial points: Non-western expertise and sourcing suites gain stature The rise of truly integrated end-to-end solutions is finally here (in certain cases) Optimization (i.e., flexible and alternative bidding submissions, application of buyer constraints, scenario analysis) has finally gotten easy to use Larger [...]

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Analyze This! – Supplier Performance Management Based on Real Data

Thomas Kase - May 23, 2013 8:01 AM | Categories: Commentary

To drive change and improvements, it is critical that internal stakeholders and suppliers rally around good data based on a uniform set of definitions. The challenge for most organizations, especially those with a global footprint, is the consistently drive processes and definitions across the whole organizations. Making the analysis timely, effective and efficient sets up another challenge in the form of minimizing the touching of data – no rekeying – and as little manual entry as possible. Only then can the right solution consolidate and present users with a dashboard and data that is still actionable. Nobody wants to read [...]

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Technology Gives Fresh Take on Supplier Performance Management

Thomas Kase - May 21, 2013 7:35 AM | Categories: Commentary

Join us for Good Data: Spend Analysis Tactics to Attack Supplier Performance Management on Thursday, May 30 from 10-11am Central. FMC Technologies is an oil and gas industry company with over 18,000 employees, $6.5B in revenue, and a $13B market cap. Like most businesses, they stand and fall with the performance of their key strategic suppliers. The company’s major headache comes from lack of consistent data, terms, SLAs, etc. across the globe: how can they accurately benchmark anything? How do you uniformly define concepts like quality and on-time delivery, for example? The question is as much centered on process and [...]

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Financial Services Vendor Risk Management

Thomas Kase - May 17, 2013 3:06 PM | Categories: Commentary

BB&T Punts on Ariba, Scores Touchdown with Hiperos to Tackle Compliance Headache This case study analysis is based on commentary presented by BB&T and Hiperos at the Sourcing Interests Group (SIG) spring summit in 2013. BB&T (NYSE: BBT) is a large regional bank, predominantly active in the US southeast and Texas – over 31,000 full-time employees, and close to a $20B market cap.  BB&T has used Ariba for six years and is now in the process of implementing SAP. From a financial industry perspective, there were issues with the bank’s approach to managing suppliers – and a new approach was on their drawing [...]

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SIG Dispatch 1: Initial Impressions and Exploring the Procurement / Tax Equation

Thomas Kase - May 15, 2013 10:31 AM | Categories: Commentary

Today’s the second day of my very first SIG Summit on Amelia Island (near Jacksonville in northeastern Florida). And I’m even wearing the prescribed newbie palm tree on my name badge. However, this is far from the first SIG Summit. To be exact, this one is the 43rd, and there are around 375 attendees in all. As context, SIG got started back in 1991 when its founder Barry Wiegler put together a group of procurement folks primarily tasked with exploring the outsourcing function. Since then, SIG has been transformed into a broader membership organization that tackles a much broader range [...]

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Why Set Yourself Up to Fail – Don’t Use Traditional Software Solution RFPs (Part 2)

Thomas Kase - May 10, 2013 8:44 AM | Categories: Commentary

After you’ve invested time to really understand your specified requirements (and documented them internally), you should consider truly opening up the RFP – make it a real Request For Proposal (i.e., “show me what you can do”). This contrasts with a Request For Quotation (locked-down specs, just give me your price, etc.) by another name. Here are a few lines of inquiry that I rarely saw in RFPs but that I think can be of tremendous value to successful adoption, ongoing learning and innovation for procurement tools: Describe the type of organization that is an ideal user of your solution: Procedural/bureaucratic vs. [...]

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Why Set Yourself Up to Fail – Don’t Use Traditional Software Solution RFPs (Part 1)

Thomas Kase - May 10, 2013 6:13 AM | Categories: Commentary

The opinions in this piece are based on my past experiences from being the point person handling hundreds of Global 2000 proposals covering e-sourcing, supplier management, contract management, and other solutions that support the upstream procurement function – as well as on recent conversations with managers and executives currently involved in proposing such solutions to the same client base. At Procuri (since acquired by Ariba), which is the firm where we had the best process (that I have ever worked with) for RFPs, “my” success rate at winning proposals was around 11%, if I recall correctly. (Please note that this [...]

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Our Evaluation Process: An Optimal RFP For E-Sourcing Solutions

Thomas Kase - May 9, 2013 3:03 PM | Categories: Technology

We recently reached out to sourcing solution software providers with a round of questions to understand how they position themselves in the marketplace: how do they deliver value to clients, where are their differentiators, etc. – so we can deliver the highest quality shortlists possible to readers like you. Today we’re offering an insider’s look into our internal sausage-making process in the spirit of full transparency  for our PRO audience – sharing the RFP spreadsheet we sent to the solution providers a few months ago. Become a  Spend Matters PRO member for full access to the RFP spreadsheet – and access [...]

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Procurement Inertia: When Did You Last Run Through the Seven Steps?

Thomas Kase - May 3, 2013 5:04 AM | Categories: Commentary

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Don’t wait for the consultants to come in and kick you past your inertia. If you stay vigilant by revisiting your spend on a regular basis and looking at what you can source more competitively, you might even be able to find line items you no longer need. No point in buying spare parts for a production line that is being phased out, right? You also need to understand the revenue model and customer base of your key suppliers. Looking forward is a challenge in all organizations, and it is tempting to come up with ways to address challenges from [...]

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Internet Sales Tax? Get Real, Public Sector

Thomas Kase - April 26, 2013 8:42 AM | Categories: Commentary

boston-tea-party At the core of sound strategic sourcing lies spend analytics. Inevitably, you need to analyze the potential contribution impact among the many activities you could undertake. Time is always limited, and there is little point in focusing scarce resources on something that will not move the dial appreciably (especially not if there are juicier targets ready elsewhere). With that in mind, let’s look at the current revenue raising initiative by parts of Congress (and the Obama Administration) to impose sales tax on all internet sales. This is a radical change that will undoubtedly affect both the business model and the [...]

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Conflict Minerals – Dodd-Frank, Section 1502

Thomas Kase - April 25, 2013 10:02 AM | Categories: Commentary

The following is a preview from Thomas Kase’s upcoming presentation at Conflict Minerals EDGE, on May 6 at Hotel Sax Chicago. It’s not too late to register – we hope to see you there! Within the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act’s Title 15 is a “Specialized Corporate Disclosure” provision that you should have seen already: “Section 1502 requires persons to disclose annually whether any conflict minerals that are necessary to the functionality or production of a product of the person, as defined in the provision, originated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or an adjoining country [...]

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When AP Meets Common Sense: Discounting and Payment Terms (Part 1)

Thomas Kase - April 23, 2013 3:08 PM | Categories: Commentary

Editor’s note: this is a two-part series. Part 1 features observations and insights from Spend Matters’ Thomas Kase focused on AP, payment terms, strategic sourcing and discounting strategies. Part 2 provides recommendations for procurement and AP organizations around communicating payment strategies and policies to suppliers and the general public. When I first came across “payment terms” outside of a classroom setting it was in Japan in the ‘90s. I must admit, from my vantage point in domestic (domestic Japanese, that is) sales engineering activities, I found it rather confusing. As I recall (translated of course), the terms given to us, [...]

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Emerging Market Watch: Procurement Sophistication in Africa (Part 2)

Thomas Kase - April 22, 2013 3:01 PM | Categories: Commentary

The first installment of our series covering procurement sophistication in Africa can be found here. Continuing on, we come to the topic of indirect spend. Although I had the impression that the private sector buyers were direct side, and many were heavily mired in transactional activities, there were a few strong signs of interest in the indirect side. One participant from a Mombasa-based coffee firm (sophisticated enough to run SAP for all their transactions) revealed that their indirect spend is now on the list of priorities. Perhaps we’ll see full-service strategic sourcing firms begin to enter the market to help companies reduce their indirect [...]

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Emerging Market Watch: Procurement Sophistication in Africa

Thomas Kase - April 18, 2013 3:03 PM | Categories: Commentary

Spend Matters readers curious about procurement and supply chain trends in emerging markets might have caught my recent dispatches from a conference that I chaired in Nairobi, Kenya: Sub-Saharan Africa – Spend Matters to Chair a Procurement Conference in Kenya The African Procurement Journey – European Leg Spend Matters Chairs Procurement Conference in Africa (Part 2) Spend Matters Chairs Procurement Conference in Africa (Part 3) Dispatches From Nairobi: Pirates of the Supply Chain Pirates of the Supply Chain: Cost, Insurance and Russian Cowboys (Part 2)   My earlier stories covered what took place at the conference, getting there (a good [...]

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Pirates of the Supply Chain: Cost, Insurance and Russian Cowboys (Part 2)

Thomas Kase - April 11, 2013 6:07 AM | Categories: Commentary

pirate Thankfully there aren’t that many IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) in Somalia but my contact (click here for Part 1 in this series to learn more about his background) sees plenty of incidents on an ongoing basis. His “counterparts” can be one of the many local criminal gangs who operate on profit or the more politically motivated groups like al-Shabaab – a group that has been involved in a general struggle against the Western world. Regardless, the Englishman thought Kenya was no big deal. He flies through on a regular basis on his way back home for leave and usually spends a few [...]

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