Category: Supply Chain

Posted on

News you can use: 7/8/2015

sn_baddata

  • Enterprises Don’t Have Big Data, They Just Have Bad Data

    The truth is, most of them suffer from one of the old adages in computing: garbage in, garbage out. Not only do most of them actually not have Big Data in terms of data complexity or volume, but most of them actually have Crappy Data, and it’s probably hurting their business. According to Experian Data Quality, inaccurate data affects the bottom line of 88 percent of organizations and impacts up to 12 percent of revenues.

    http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/01/enterprises-dont-have-big-data-they-just-have-bad-data/

  • Procter & Gamble’s Futuristic Control Tower Environment

    Another partner for the P&G Business Sphere solution is SAP.  Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, SAP begun talking about their new supply chain control tower solution last year.   Their control tower incorporates the idea of reacting to alerts with prebuilt playbooks that allow an organization to react quickly and with agility to unexpected situations.  (See The New SAP Supply Chain Control Tower for a description of playbooks and their control tower solution stack).

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevebanker/2015/07/01/procter-gambles-futuristic-control-tower-environment/

  • 6 Best Practices for Managing Unhappy Employees

    If the issue stems from something within your company, gather as much information as you can before deciding how to act. But even if it’s a lifestyle factor influencing your employee’s behavior, don’t ignore it just because it comes from outside your four walls. Use it as an opportunity to show them that they’re more than just a name on an HR folder. Offering assistance, whether through a formal employee assistance program or other means, will build their loyalty to your company.

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/247595

  • The Hidden Cost of a Summer Slump

    “Satisfied and engaged employees are less likely to abuse the company’s sick policy,” he says. But it’s not enough to just do a head count. Schwarz says managers should compare absenteeism between different teams, departments, locations, and performance levels to determine whether there are more people taking leave during the summer months. Then, he recommends looking to see if one manager has a larger degree of absenteeism than another.

    http://www.fastcompany.com/3048157/the-future-of-work/the-hidden-costs-of-the-summer-slump?partner=rss

  • The Secret To Walt Disney’s Corporate Strategy
    Hint: It is a massive feedback loop…
    sn_disneystrategy
    http://www.fastcodesign.com/3048046/infographic-of-the-day/the-secret-to-walt-disneys-corporate-strategy?partner=rss
Posted on

The future of sourcing automation

Strategic sourcing and its cousin procurement have always been welcoming of innovation and automation.

Anybody with a business degree knows the basics about warehouse procurement and the 40-year-old ability to have a computer system automatically purchase more of a “widget” when inventory is too low.

Then the ability for a system to search against multiple suppliers for the best price of said “widget” was introduced.  We are cooking with gas!

Customers seem to think that this level of computer intelligence and automation is limited to commodities.  It is becoming clear that is not the case.

Contracting

The physical act of papering a deal can be tedious and time consuming.  Evolved sourcing departments have developed templates to ease the process.  As the work becomes more repetitive and less strategic, departments look to have that work performed by third parties or entry level positions.

Those jobs will not be transferred or go offshore in the coming years, they will be completely automated via computer systems.

Don’t believe me?

Did you know that several articles being released by the associated press are written by bots?

A company called Automated Insights created a program called WordSmith that generates simple news stories based on things like sporting events and financial news. The stories are published on Yahoo! and via the Associated Press, among other outlets.

It is only a matter of time before this technology is turned to repeatable contracting events eliminating simple transactions.  Solutions from Seal software are already close to making this happen.

Market Intelligence

Senior level sourcing professionals might take comfort in the higher functions they are performing such as category management and supplier performance. In the coming years this job will become easier.  Bad news is there will be less jobs.

Frequent readers of this blog will notice a reporting trend on IBM’s Watson technology.

Right now Watson is focused on mining health information, social media, and big data.  There will inevitably be a focus on supply chain market conditions.  It has the potential to become a living, breathing Gartner report that changes daily focusing on software, services,  labor pricing, and even cloud pricing (and thus a hybrid of commodity and service).  And if Watson doesn’t do it, somebody else will eventually.

Having a system that is monitoring which suppliers are getting into certain service markets and who is doing well and who isn’t (via formal reports and customer feedback via social media) is very powerful.  There may be well-meaning sourcing professionals who are doing this by hand right now (hello), but it takes days or sometimes weeks (trust me) – with AI, it can be done in minutes.

Will your job go away?  No.  But a company will be able to do so much more with less bodies.

Moving Forward

Even with automation reducing certain kinds of jobs, the good news if you are a sourcing professional is that there is a looming talent crisis.  The key is to have the right skill set…

sn_sourcing_sweetspot

Be thankful it wasn’t a pie chart

Sourcing departments are essentially responsible for risk avoidance and cost reduction/savings. The better teams also provide strategic focus and trending for their customers.

The days of martini lunches with the big box sellers are over.  They are being replaced by analytic dashboards and reverse auctions (maybe we can make serving mint juleps at the auctions a thing). Take a look at the capabilities companies are focusing on:

sn_sourcing_deloitte_figure2

Change is coming (I was going to make a terrible Game of Thrones reference and say “winter is coming” but that sounds so ominous and I am already going with a terminator theme).  Automation, bots, and other AI technology are going to impact the procurement and sourcing industries… for the better.

As platforms become more transferable via Openstack and other open source initiatives (and as software itself becomes a platform),  the view will shift from an intangible/incomparable concept of service into a familiar commodity-like view that can be evaluated and presented like a rising or declining stock asset (with the same dashboards and buying intelligence ).  Sourcing professionals and their customers will finally have the right mix of information to make better decisions and develop true supplier strategies.

 

Posted on

News You Can Use: 7/1/2015

sn_sharkwall

  • 6 Life Hacks Learned in Prison That Will Maximize Your Productivity

    I’ve learned to think diligently about my thoughts, and use them to communicate more effectively. Writing can help you organize your thoughts better and actually helps you to be a better verbal communicator. Start with communicating to your team via email, send emails to partners about discussions and/or send emails to your spouse when working through tough decisions.

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/247779?ctp=BizDev&src=Syndication&msc=Feedly

  • The Rise Of Trust (And Speed) In Supplier Enablement (Coupa’s Adam Alphin to look at the future of supplier enablement.)

    Simply put, it’s injected trust into a conversation that previously felt like buyers were cornering or holding hostage their supply base. This trust has resulted in higher engagement, much higher participation in e-invoicing, and get this…suppliers becoming change agents within our customers organizations! We believe the conversation must change from “Here is a web portal that you’ll be charged to use, you’re now required to use it to be our supplier” to “Here are our business objectives we think are in both of our best interest, here are a series of tools we’re providing (for free!) so we can help each other achieve those objectives.”

    http://www.procurementleaders.com/blog/my-blog–guest-blog/the-rise-of-trust-and-speed-in-supplier-enablement-547830

  • ‘The Irrigation Effect’: Why Your Employees Aren’t Getting the Message

    Many leaders are surprised to learn that they are the barriers.  We assume that we’ve communicated effectively when, in reality, the information we share is sparse, insufficient, infrequent, or simply inaccurate. Keep in mind that between the source of the water and the end of the row, the water may have to pass through multiple channels before it arrives.  If managers don’t make a conscious effort to facilitate the flow of information, rather than obstruct it, vital communication is likely to dissipate before reaching those parts of the field where it is needed most.

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/240849?ctp=BizDev&src=Syndication&msc=Feedly

  • Supply Chain Talent Crisis Looms

    Years of headcount reduction, training budget cuts, and the retirement of highly skilled individuals have all contributed to the shortage of supply chain talent. At the same time, a combination of accelerating technology development and widespread experimentation with new operating models are expanding the scope of supply chain operations, creating a demand for new types of supply chain employees—a trend that is only expected to accelerate in the future. “Margins are so thin in many industries that any technology or operational change that can provide a competitive advantage—whether its 3D printing or advanced analytics—is critical. And those capabilities are inherently dependent on talent,” explains Kelly Marchese, a principal and supply chain leader with Deloitte Consulting LLP.

    http://deloitte.wsj.com/cio/2015/06/25/supply-chain-talent-crisis-looms/
    sn_Supply-Chain-Capabilities-1

  • Are the days of global supply chains numbered?

    In Global Supply Chains: New Directions, the Standard Chartered Bank acknowledges that several macroeconomic trends, such as increasing urbanization, more sophisticated communications technology, and lower oil prices, continue to support the growth of global supply chains. Yet at the same time, other trends are creating a sort of headwind that is slowing the pace of growth. For example, automation and robotics are improving, making it easier for companies to stop chasing low-cost labor abroad and bring their manufacturing operations back to local markets. Increasing concerns about sustainability and the high carbon footprint of global supply chains may also be dampening global supply chain growth. Some companies are interested in shortening their supply chains to avoid the risk of disruptions due to a natural disaster or civil unrest half a world away.

    http://www.supplychainquarterly.com/news/20150624-are-the-days-of-global-supply-chains-numbered/

Posted on

News You Can Use: 6/15/2015

sn_productive_woman

  • Generation Y: A New Challenge For Travel Procurement

    When it comes to business travel, these digitally-savvy employees expect a sleek, consumer-like experience from corporate booking tools: when they don’t get it they turn to the consumer applications they already have to hand, and book outside the corporate environment. Not only can this lead to irresponsible spending, and weaker negotiated rates in the future, but it poses significant risks to a company’s “duty of care” responsibility towards its employees. If you don’t know where they are, you can’t help them in an emergency. So how can procurement help to bring Generation Y back into the fold?

    http://www.procurementleaders.com/blog/my-blog–guest-blog/generation-y-a-new-challenge-for-travel-procurement-542624

  • IBM and Procurement Transformation: By the Numbers, Risk Management and More
    [While this is interesting, I really want to know more about the AI/Watson solutions that IBM just started talking about]

    From a numbers perspective, IBM’s procurement performance KPIs and performance improvement metrics are more than impressive. Michael noted IBM saved $6.9B in approved and measured savings targets in 2014 compared to before the program was put into place. Payment terms now stand at close to 60 days rather than 30 days. Spend and contract compliance has increased from 50% to over 90%. Sourcing experts now look at 100% of spend compared to less than 10%. Electronic invoicing has increased from 20% to 90%. And 83% of POs never touch a buyer.

    http://spendmatters.com/2015/06/04/ibm-and-procurement-transformation-by-the-numbers-risk-management-and-more/

  • The Basics of making small talk:
  • This Calculator Will Tell You If A Robot Is Coming For Your Job

    For now, those with the highest-skill, highest-paid jobs are probably safe, and low-skill workers are not. “Inequality is probably the foremost challenge,” says Osborne. “It’s not going to be a problem of there not being enough wealth. We’re fairly confident that all of these technologies will continue to generate vast amounts of wealth—we’ll be generating a cornucopia of increasingly cheap and wonderful goods that will be able to be produced for next to zero marginal cost. But those benefits we’ll see as consumers might not necessarily be realized by workers.”

    http://www.fastcoexist.com/3047269/this-calculator-will-tell-you-if-a-robot-is-coming-for-your-job?partner=rss

  • 3 Reasons ‘Casual Flex’ at Work Doesn’t Work

    What’s more, one-third of workers worldwide feel stressed about work-life issues, according to a study by Ernst & Young about work-life challenges. And flexible-work policies that are merely informal may cause other systemic problems: A Boston University study found employees at a Boston consulting firm faking their 80-hour work weeks over fears that asking to use flexible-work options would cause negative reactions from management. These fears were well founded, it turns out. Employees who faked 80-hour workweeks were given excellent performance reviews, while those who openly asked for flexibility were negatively reviewed, even though they worked the same number of hours as their faking colleagues. That sort of scenario undermines trust and confidence in working relationships, to say the least.

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/246802?ctp=BizDev&src=Syndication&msc=Feedly