Conferences Content

Presenting at an industry event is an important step in any professional's career. It is also an excellent opportunity to promote, showcase and reward a team for a job well done. But most importantly, it is a critical factor in keeping an industry relevant, competitive and strong. Every professional worth their salt should consider it their duty to share their successes and failures.

Of course, in order to present at an industry event, you must first submit a proposal in the form of a session abstract. Sourcing professionals are well-versed in writing business cases and category strategies, and we have all read our fair share of good and bad proposals. However, when it comes to writing a speaking proposal, many sourcing professionals don’t give it the time or energy it deserves. These abstracts are often used to describe your session, and if the goal is to share your thought leadership, you will want to make sure your abstract grabs your audience’s attention. Consider the following five tips to write a compelling proposal for your next industry event.

Another SIG Executive Summit is in the books, and we covered the big picture and an interesting look at a hidden spend category. Also, this fall’s event in California was the first one that two members of the Spend Matters team spoke at together (more on that session later).

Walking through the halls and in joining the breakfast and lunch conversations, it was clear that “digitizing” is front and center for the majority of procurement organizations who attended. I think what myself, Jason Busch and Pierre Mitchell were most surprised by, however, was the “gap” in maturity levels.

At SIG’s Global Executive Summit this week in California, two sessions, a mainstage panel and a breakout session, focused on the opportunity for lease sourcing. Two LeaseAccelerator execs — Steve Keifer, VP of Marketing, and Ingemar Lanevi, VP of Global Lease Sourcing Solutions — ran the sessions.

EVERY procurement leader and category manager who has the opportunity to address lease spend should listen to this presentation (and of course finance teams that have oversight over leasing spend as well). Here are some of my notes from the talk and from the slides that Steve shared with me:

Three members of the Spend Matters crew came down to Carlsbad, California, for SIG’s Global Executive Summit. Pierre Mitchell, Sheena Smith and I have all enjoyed our time (and this gorgeous Southern California sunshine) so far. As the first day of the Summit kicked off Tuesday, I took the stage for a couple of minutes to announce Spend Matters’ partnership with SIG (later, I’ll share a bit more on the session that Pierre and I presented).

It was a true honor to announce the relationship to SIG members alongside my longtime friend and SIG Founder Dawn Tiura, but I had to ask why they only provided silky pashminas to delegates who get chilly vs. a slightly more masculine tweed scarf. Alas, this inspired a few of my fellow manly delegates to take the stage during a lunchtime panel in a pashmina rebellion, usurping the silky garments in a dapper manner.

In all seriousness, SIG thinks of EVERY detail for delegates. And our first day included a lot of insights.

Spend Matters attended Oracle’s recent OpenWorld conference to see the latest developments in its cloud ecosystem, especially within Oracle Procurement. Oracle continues to make progress in its strategy of transforming from a technology and products company to one of cloud services. It was a decision that has taken time to develop, but without a doubt this vision is beginning to crystallize as a unified solution within the Oracle Cloud (aka Oracle Fusion) technology platform.

In this Spend Matters PRO article, we will discuss:

* Oracle’s overall cloud strategy and its relevance to procurement
* Latest Oracle procurement product updates and plans
* Analysis of Oracle’s methodical progress in a dynamic market, and what it can teach SAP Ariba (and vice versa)
* Opportunities and emerging progress in platforms and “business networks”

Application-wise, Oracle is a slow and steady provider of cloud-based procurement applications, with a strength in P2P (as evidenced in its performance in our most current P2P SolutionMap ranking). And it’s making progress in its strategic procurement application areas — especially in contract management, where its solution is surprisingly strong relative to non-best-of-breed CLM players. But the game in the market is shifting beyond applications toward open platforms and ecosystems.

Can Oracle seize the opportunity? We’ll discuss...

A Spend Matters team attended the Zycus summit this summer in Utah that provided a deep dive into the firm’s latest developments and gave us a chance to talk to some customers. This two-part Spend Matters PRO briefing will highlight the results of that day, focusing on updates to Zycus’ business, product development and, most specifically, its innovation related to autonomous computing — particularly with its unique approach to bots that combines RPA, AI and a democratized platform approach. It could be a game-changer in the industry, but it’s also not very easy to execute. We’ll weigh in on both sides of this coin.

Part 2 will provide an overview of MERLIN (Zycus’ AI underpinnings and platform) and how it ties to Zycus’ overall product strategy and release schedule. MERLIN’s main concept is based on autonomous procurement (the tailored bots that it builds are called BOTs), with a focus on automating all the routine, repetitive tasks of purchasing processes, especially transactional and manual ones.

The Spend Matters analyst team is harbor-side in San Diego this week for REV, Jaggaer’s annual customer conference. The two-day event offers a strong focus on technology and roadmap topics, and executive keynote speakers this morning articulated the emerging vision for Jaggaer’s product suite. Clarity of vision is critical today for Jaggaer after the whirlwind of recent years. Here are three significant takeaways from this morning’s presentations:

A couple of weeks ago, I attended and spoke at Digital Procurement World (DPW) in Amsterdam. The event was the brainchild of one of the first employees at Procurement Leaders, Matthias Gutzmann. With DPW, his idea was to bring together not only procurement organizations and technology (and services) firms in a conversation around digital, but also to engage the start-up community — and investors.

On just about every count, DPW was a runaway success. It was the very first procurement event I’ve been to that did a great job of engaging early stage technology companies and connecting them with buyers, consultants and others.

Here are a few of my observations:

In Spend Matters’ last article on SynerTrade’s recent conference in Paris, we talked about how SynerTrade has heard the call of the digital procurement revolution and is readying itself for the revolution by turning its source-to-pay solution into a platform that, through an enhanced API, can easily integrate best-of-breed partner products to provide customers with the tools and intelligence that SynerTrade doesn’t have (as no single vendor can do everything, and the best know enough to not even try).

In this article, we are going to discuss the four key takeaways that the customer panel left us with:
* Measure and Track Quarterly — and React
* Don't Go Too Fast with Tech
* Start with Something Simple That Works and Delivers Value
* Progress Takes Patience

Last week, at the same time the new Digital Procurement Workshop was happening in Amsterdam, SynerTrade was holding its annual Digital Procurement Summit in Paris (at the Pavillion Royal, with the pre-conference tour and dinner at the Centre Pompidou — obviously to make the point that, while there is an Art to Procurement*, in today's digital world, you need to take a more modern approach to achieve success). And while the event might have flown under the radar with all the other events going on this month, it certainly over-delivered.

When the city of big shoulders hosted the Big Ideas Summit last week, the procurement executives at Procurious’ event in Chicago generated a lot of excitement and a powerful list of insights.

An array of speakers led thought-provoking sessions and imparted plenty of big ideas — from the latest in neuroscience to how procurement technology and policies affect issues like human trafficking and forced labor in supply chains.

Today’s Afternoon Coffee brings you a slew of can’t-miss procurement and supply chain news, happenings and announcements, from Amsterdam, San Francisco and Brazil (by way of Las Vegas). Buckle up!