Here’s a quick rundown of news and thoughts from particular commodity markets. MetalMiner, a sister site of ours, scours the landscape for what matters. This week:
Providing receivable finance as a technology company poses risk precisely because the potential outcomes are overwhelming and cannot be predicted, no matter how good the underwriting. We risk being fools of forecasts built on historical cash-flow expectations, modeling and simulations.
The B2B payments market has a lot of solution providers, and it's time for Spend Matters to highlight some key players across the market landscape. But first, let's take a look back.
Let's compare Goldman Sachs' 2018 overview of the $1 trillion B2B payments market with Spend Matters' view of the landscape now. We break out more than 40 B2B solution providers by category.
Here’s a quick rundown of news and thoughts from particular commodity markets. MetalMiner, a sister site of ours, scours the landscape for what matters. This week:
The coronavirus outbreak has made online work more vital than ever, and with all of the digital transformation and increased use of procurement technology, vendors have more visibility into what’s actually going on with businesses, which even during this crisis must remain focused on serving clients while their own personnel work from home — sometimes in cities and countries under lockdowns.
To get the pulse of what’s happening, we got in touch with e-sourcing specialists Scanmarket, a company that’s facing both of those pressures. The cloud-based provider operates globally but has its core group in Denmark, one of the first countries to institute a nationwide lockdown.
In any crisis, businesses’ timelines for answers speed up and priorities change. So we talked with Scanmarket CEO Betina Nygaard to get some insight on how the crisis is unfolding and how businesses are addressing all of the risk they’re facing.
As manufacturers weather the uncertainty wrought by the coronavirus pandemic, they’re learning that effectively managing the information supply chain with a distributed workforce requires adjustments from the traditional approach.
Supply chain managers are now cut off from their office’s communications that they’ve grown dependent on to collaborate with suppliers — things like spreadsheets saved to desktops, office phones set up to make international calls on behalf of the company. The supply chain managers are either feeling the pain of relying on manual processes or adapting to a new world where critical supply chain information is intermediated by SaaS solutions.
The latter approach is how customers of SourceDay, a provider of supplier collaboration solutions for manufacturers, are handling the COVID-19 outbreak. In a briefing with Spend Matters on Thursday, the Austin, Texas-based provider shared data it has been tracking across its user base on how the outbreak is affecting manufacturer behavior, along with case studies of how the SourceDay users have applied the tool to combat this crisis.
The lessons from SourceDay customers outline a clear trend: Pursue mass segmentation and communication of priorities with suppliers rapidly, or risk being overwhelmed by the deluge of change orders, delays and cancellations created by the pandemic.
For the buyers and category managers out there, especially those of you deep in the weeds of buying and managing commodities, here’s a quick rundown of news and thoughts from particular commodity markets. MetalMiner, a sister site of ours, scours the landscape for what matters. This week:
First, I wanted to congratulate SAP and its Intelligent Spend team for making Wednesday’s online event happen so soon after its coronavirus-driven decision to cancel its annual event in Las Vegas. Kudos, too, for the professional and informative presentations and very usable infrastructure, which included immediately available recordings.
Now for my conference report: I spent a good part of the morning “attending” virtual sessions (with my services procurement filters turned on, of course). I had expected to hear a more specific update on the SAP Fieldglass solution suite. However, solution migration and integration seemed to be the main themes of the day, as the SAP Intelligent Spend movement continues its process of integrating solutions, like SAP Ariba and SAP Fieldglass, onto a single cloud platform, through CIG (Cloud Integration Gateway) on top of HANA (an application appliance in-memory database).
For the buyers and category managers out there, especially those of you deep in the weeds of buying and managing commodities, here’s a quick rundown of news and thoughts from particular commodity markets. MetalMiner, a sister site of ours, scours the landscape for what matters. This week:
Are you prepared for future supply risk? Do you have a structured supply risk management approach? Given the current coronavirus headlines, you should. And here’s how to start.
Coronavirus is the quintessential example of a supply chain disruption, and its impact has been rapid and global. Given all the news about it and its effects, we have pulled together some of our best information about managing supply risk.
When should companies consider acquiring the latest procurement technology?
It seems like a simple question, but many businesses don’t always get to spend time considering the latest solutions, like in the area of supplier management — they’re more often compelled to do it when the market changes through a merger or acquisition, when their old technology and manual processes don’t cut it anymore, or when their suppliers and competitors outpace them by digitally transforming.
To learn more about when and how to start your digital transformation and continue to ensure it works for your business, we talked with NRG Energy about the evolution of its supplier management technology.
Ride-hailing charges overtook spending on meals as a proportion of the total T&E budget for the first time, according to the 2019 Year In Review Travel & Expense Management Trends Report from Certify, a spend management company that has insights into expense budgets worldwide.