A small Spend Matters team descended on ISM 2019 conference this year in Houston (next year is in Boston, where I live!) and I wanted to share some thoughts on the event and a few of the great sessions there.
ISM 2019 featured some excellent procurement advancement and transformation case studies, such as “The Challenges of a New CPO” covered in an earlier dispatch. They are tales of aligning people, process and technology to create business value. Since getting the people side right was consistently mentioned as the most crucial — and fickle — element of the triangle, I was delighted to attend the session on building a high-performance procurement team by Dr. Clark Perry, a director at AlixPartners.
I spend a lot of time in product demos, discussing product features and functionality with the analyst community, digging into technology, and harassing our pre-sales team. I’ve gained a wealth of knowledge about purchase-to-pay software – more than you probably want – but what I’ve also learned is that there are some slippery providers out there. They might deliver a slick demo, but there’s quite a bit of information they’re not telling you, and only one party stands to lose in that situation: you. Keep reading for some examples of how our competitors have offered creative storytelling instead of the truth about what their product can and can’t do.
Government contracting is known as a detail-oriented process that relies on plans and procedures, but Public Spend Forum is offering tips to help companies with procurement problems so they can improve the process where they can. And that involves changing your mindset, being flexible and ensuring that you have talented people. The tips come from the agile model for addressing the constant change associated with modern business, and Public Spend Forum, a sister site of ours, explains how these principles can relate to procurement practices.
Like a lot of my colleagues on the analyst team at Azul Partners, I’m prone to overcomplicate things rather than take the easy way out. Big, hairy, audacious concepts (and technologies) fascinate me far more than what I’ve come to call the “Stupid Simple” ones. But it is this latter group that has far greater appeal in the mass markets and, from a technology purchasing and adoption standpoint, the Stupid Simples tend to be the rocket ships from an initial growth perspective. What do Stupid Simple concepts and companies have in common? I’ve created a running list.
This Spend Matters SolutionMap Insider release note provides insight into the Q1 2019 SolutionMap release for Source-to-Pay, reviewing the process that we followed for this quarter’s release.
The providers in the Q1 2019 Source-to-Pay SolutionMap include Coupa, Determine, GEP, Ivalua, SAP Ariba, SynerTrade and Zycus. All of these providers were required to participate in SolutionMap for each underlying module, as well. These individual areas include Sourcing, Spend and Procurement Analytics, Supplier Relationship Management & Risk, Contract Lifecycle Management, E-Procurement and Invoice-to-Pay. All of these providers are also included in the individual Strategic Procurement Technologies (SPT) and Procure-to-Pay (P2P) suite views.
This SolutionMap Insider research note provides insight into these and additional considerations in the Q1 2019 SolutionMap release. The Source-to-Pay customer data set is composed of a subset of the 600+ individual organization references included in the overall SolutionMap scoring as of Q1 2019*.
*Customers using more than one module that a vendor provides can opt to fill out a single survey within each individual suite area (e.g., a customer using two modules for P2P and four modules for SPT would need to fill out only two surveys).
Public Spend Forum (PSF), one of our sister sites, has taken a look at civic tech companies whose solutions “hold great promise for improving the way we live, work and engage within the public sector.” These emerging government technology contractors are featured in this PSF outlook for the year ahead, and the solutions focus on everything from monitoring stormwater to building better municipal websites to giving first responders on-demand, real-time information on how to respond to people with mental illnesses and other conditions. Check out the list of 8.
My 2019 wish is directed at healthcare’s supply chain leadership. More than encouraging investments aimed at making their supply chains more dynamic, I would like to see the gloves finally taken off and the bullying behavior of major suppliers called out for what it is. To make that happen, healthcare’s supply chain leadership must think more strategically about their supply rationalization strategies across their most important service lines. If for no reason other than to establish balance in important relationships, the effort is essential. Finally, staff must be remotivated to challenge the established order, so programs that reward them for doing it must be instituted, promoted and monitored for results.
This Spend Matters SolutionMap Insider release note provides insight into the Q4 2018 SolutionMap release for Source-to-Pay, reviewing the process that we followed for this quarter’s release.
The providers in the Q4 2018 Source-to-Pay SolutionMap include Coupa, Determine, GEP, Ivalua, SAP Ariba, SynerTrade and Zycus. All of these providers were required to participate in SolutionMap for each underlying module, as well. These individual areas include Sourcing, Spend and Procurement Analytics, Supplier Relationship Management & Risk, Contract Lifecycle Management, E-Procurement and Invoice-to-Pay. All of these providers are also included in the individual Strategic Procurement Technologies (SPT) and Procure-to-Pay (P2P) suite views.
This SolutionMap Insider research note provides insight into these and additional considerations in the Q4 2018 SolutionMap release. The Source-to-Pay customer data set is composed of a subset of the 600+ individual organization references included in the overall SolutionMap scoring as of Q4 2018*.
*Customers using more than one module that a vendor provides can opt to fill out a single survey within each individual suite area (e.g., a customer using two modules for P2P and four modules for SPT would need to fill out only two surveys).
Malcolm Harrison took over as CEO for the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (CIPS) in the summer, and he promised an interview with Spend Matters UK/EU to talk about his first “100 days” or so. Spend Matters' Peter Smith, a former CIPS president, recently caught up for a chat about where the organization is going with its certification programs, its commercial work and more. "I do feel that we may not have the balance quite right in terms of our commercial activities and the core purpose of supporting the profession and our members," Harrison said. "I have some sympathy with the view I’ve heard that 'CIPS has got too commercial.' ” Read the first of the three-part series here.
Procurement has made significant strides in supporting supplier relationship management initiatives, but poor investment in technology could limit the potential benefits those programs can deliver in the years to come, according to State of Flux, a consulting firm that specializes in SRM and which held its annual SRM summit in Chicago on Oct. 23. Over the decade that State of Flux has monitored SRM maturity, procurement organizations have made considerable improvements in several areas — but not in adopting and using technology dedicated to SRM.
Fellow Spend Matters analyst Xavier Olivera and I touched down last night in Leesburg, Virginia, to attend Zycus’ annual customer event, Horizon. It feels like the source-to-pay provider’s largest annual conference yet. In a series of posts today and tomorrow, the Spend Matters team will provide live coverage from the event. Zycus CEO Aatish Dedhia kicked off the morning keynote session with an update on the firm he started. Here are some of the highlights.