Spend Matters » Procurement Research

Is Indirect Category Sourcing Savings Fact or Fiction?

Sydney Lazarus — Wed, 15 May 2013 12:02:13 +0000

Last week we told you about a new research paper authored by Spend Matters UK/Europe’s Peter Smith, titled Indirect Category Sourcing Savings : Fact or Fiction? Delivering Credible Benefits from Sourcing and Category Management Programmes. You can download it for free by clicking the link above. Getting down to the question of fact or fiction, Peter says: “The final section of the Paper looks at how Xchanging themselves are addressing the issue of benefits tracking and measurement. Of course, this is particularly important for them as an outsourced service provider, as their success – and in some cases, their direct income – depends [...]

Improving Program and Delivery Management

Sydney Lazarus — Mon, 13 May 2013 16:07:29 +0000

Last week we told you about a new research paper from Spend Matters UK/Europe’s Peter Smith: Indirect Category Sourcing Savings : Fact or Fiction? Delivering Credible Benefits from Sourcing and Category Management Programmes. You can download it for free by clicking the link above. The paper analyzes how procurement and sourcing programs benefit from focusing on program and delivery management, which itself has several key components. On the issue of improving program and delivery management, Peter divides the topic into three main areas: Program Management— “To deliver effective sourcing and category management, what we might term the ‘basics’ of project and program management [...]

Indirect Category Sourcing Savings?

Sheena Moore — Wed, 08 May 2013 15:53:34 +0000

Today we’d like to feature a new research paper authored by Spend Matters UK/Europe’s Peter Smith: Indirect Category Sourcing Savings : Fact or Fiction? Delivering Credible Benefits from Sourcing and Category Management Programmes. You can download it for free by clicking the link above. Peter says: “I’ve co-authored it with Ed Cross, (pictured here), Executive Director of Xchanging Procurement Services, also a serious triathlete and heavy metal music fan. (I’d love to say we developed the material during our regular 20-mile training runs… but I’d be lying). We start by looking at what makes sourcing and category management programmes successful. As well as [...]

Getting More from P2P with Better Analytics and KPIs (Part 2)

Jason Busch — Thu, 02 May 2013 12:02:12 +0000

In the first installment of this series, based on the Spend Matters research paper Avoiding “Dumb Ways to Die”: eProcurement and P2P Style Adoption Scenarios to Breathe Life into Implementations, we began to explore the limitations of analytics and insight often found in today’s P2P implementations. When thinking about the type of insight that’s essential for building through better dashboards, reporting and analytics, we must consider a number of areas. This visibility could include the ability to drill down on vendor information, such as spend with specific suppliers on a PO, non-PO and invoice basis linked back to historic baselines [...]

Compliance Elements and Supplier Management

Jason Busch — Wed, 01 May 2013 16:05:11 +0000

When Spend Matters surveyed 36 companies during Q4 2011 on their interest in substance and materials centric compliance as part of supplier management and supply chain risk programs, a number of compliance elements emerged that were of keen interest to corporate procurement and supply chain leaders. Materials conformance was noted by nearly 70% of survey respondents as being a compliance element “when selecting and managing vendors and materials.” Somewhat similarly, the importance of adherence to a proprietary set of internal or adherence to a set of industry criteria was noted by 62% and 56%, respectively. Interest in environmental health and [...]

Getting More from P2P with Better Analytics and KPIs (Part 1)

Jason Busch — Wed, 01 May 2013 14:07:12 +0000

Historically, man reaped what he sowed. Without sunlight, however, nothing grows. One of the many challenges lurking in the shadows of eProcurement and e-invoicing implementations is that processes and systems must trudge ahead without sunlight. Reporting is periodic, insight is low, and the effort is too much. What’s needed is a new class of analytics. They shouldn’t be layered on top of the process but be built instead into the processes themselves. This can drive dramatically better end-to-end performance for existing implementations while helping new ones get started. In the case of P2P, including external content and intelligence to provide [...]

eProcurement Troubles: “Globalizing” P2P (Part 2)

Jason Busch — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 16:08:41 +0000

In the first installment of this series, based on the Spend Matters research paper Avoiding “Dumb Ways to Die”: eProcurement and P2P Style Adoption Scenarios to Breathe Life into Implementations, we began to explore the challenges that come with global P2P implementations. There are many, and it’s critical not to underestimate them! Some global and regional-specific P2P tailoring can be accomplished through better use of pre-existing capabilities, including rules-based workflow in various fields including monetary amounts, supplier type, spend category, region, etc. In most organizations, unfortunately, such efforts tend to be very crude and follow a one-size-fits-all model. Companies thinking [...]

Upstream Risk Mitigation and Logistics/Transit Routes

Jason Busch — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:01:18 +0000

The following post is based on material contained in the MetalMiner report (available for free download): Conflict Minerals: Building Responsible Manufacturing Supply Chains. Join MetalMiner and Spend Matters for the Conflict Minerals Edge event taking place on May 6th in Chicago. Upstream Risk Mitigation Following the clarification on information needs from upstream actors, OECD also acknowledged “that upstream suppliers are those who can most effectively and most directly mitigate the risks of adverse impacts. Downstream companies are not expected to directly mitigate risks upstream in the supply chain” and that “industry initiatives provide one-way information on upstream activities and add [...]

eProcurement Troubles: “Globalizing” P2P (Part 1)

Jason Busch — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 14:03:34 +0000

This post is based on content contained in the Spend Matters Compass series paper: Avoiding “Dumb Ways to Die”: eProcurement and P2P Style Adoption Scenarios to Breathe Life into Implementations. The paper, authored by Spend Matters Chief Research Officer Pierre Mitchell and Jason Busch, is available for free download in our Spend Matters research library. For some economic and policy wonks (and New York Times columnists), the world seems to be flat. But for most procurement organizations, the notion of “think globally, but act locally” is a challenging proposition and far from reality. We still must find ways of delivering a personalized [...]

Enabling Suppliers Without Massive Cost or Effort

Jason Busch — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 16:02:08 +0000

What organization does not have thousands of suppliers that ideally they would onboard into a closed-loop, visible procurement environment? Just about every middle market and larger entity wants this level of supplier enablement. Yet one size never fits all when it comes to onboarding and enablement for a given supply base, which is why the great majority of vendors are not linked into a closed-loop system. For supplier enablement, companies must make trade-offs when it comes to how quick and cheap they want a process to be. Furthermore, they must consider what level of automation touch points they require: self-service [...]