Archive for the ‘Procurement Tool’ Category

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What’s on your e- procurement tool belt? Tool belts should make your job simpler.

Monday, April 26th, 2010

There are all sorts of shiny new belts in every store. Don’t get caught up with flashy features that you will never use or forget how to use because you will end up defaulting to doing things the same way you have been for years

The SafeSourcing e-procurement tool belt is simple and easy to use.

A procurement intern can build an e-negotiation event the very first time they look at our tools. If they don’t understand certain procurement terminologies they can enter the term into the SafeSourcing Wiki without ever leaving the website. If you would like to converse with other procurement professionals about a variety of subjects such as index pricing, just log in to Sourcebook it’s easier to use than traditional social network sites and has many of the same features. You can create a group or hold an open threaded conversation with hundreds of other procurement professionals. If you are looking for new sources of supply, you can request information sorted by dozens of criteria including proximity to a particular zip code, category, sic code etc. While all this is going on alerts from more than thirty sources like the FDA, USDA and OU provide you with up to the minute industry alerts on safety and environmental related issues. Are you looking for product specifications?  Just click on the SafeSourceIt template library. Want to start a contract after you have awarded business from an e-negotiation event, simply click on SafeContract to view templates and setup tracking.

You can also read this blog daily and pass the useful inforamtion on to a friend very easily.

We constantly hear from our customers how simple our tools are to use. What are you waiting for; get your pants of the ground with the Safesourcing e-procurement tool belt.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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There are a number of places from which procurement professionals can collect or solicit your RFI data.

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

According to Wikipedia and others a Request for Information (RFI) is a standard business process whose purpose is to collect written information about the capabilities of various suppliers. Normally it follows a format that can be used for comparative purposes.

A Request for Information (RFI) is primarily used to gather information to help companies make a decision on what steps to take next. RFI?s are therefore most often the first stage in the procurement process particularly with new sources of supply. They are used in combination with: Requests for Quote (RFQ), Requests for Tender (RFT), and Requests for Proposal (RFP). In addition to gathering basic information, an RFI is often used as a solicitation sent to a broad base of potential suppliers for the purpose of preparing a supplier?s thought process in preparing for a Request for Proposal (RFP), Request for Tender (RFT) in the government sector, or a Request for Proposal (RFP).

Much of the data required for an RFI is generally available and can be found on company websites, U.S. Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings for publicly traded companies in their Edgar system, industry guides from companies like Trade Dimensions, or from sources like Dun and Bradstreet.

The challenge for most companies is that they do not have the necessary resources to complete this research. Therefore providers of supplier data should be able to make this data available in templates that companies can begin with. Simple data should always be available in any database as to Company Name, Annual Sales, Product category expertise, contact information, e-procurement experience and product specifications. This data should be easily exportable to a variety of formats such as MSFT Excel.

A simple request of your e-procurement supplier should get you well on your way to completed RFI?s that lead to quality RFP?s and RFQ?s without spending a lot of your valuable time on basic research. If they do not, we?d be glad to hear from you.

We ?look forward to and appreciate?your comments

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Retailers need to think it through before trying a do it yourself program when it comes to e-negotiation or e-procurement

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

This author has met with many large companies that are using e-sourcing suites or tools provided by some of the largest names in the industry. After we have reviewed what we do and how we do it and then compare what they are accomplishing the following question always comes up. Why are you generating significantly higher savings than we are?

The answer is pretty simple in most cases. You have bought a software suite or tools and rather than using them as designed you have just incorporated your old practices into new tools. In addition, further training or access to your supplier?s data in the form of sources of supply etc. was not included in your initial cost.

A full service solution provider should be able to create, execute and support all auction activity including but not limited to the following.

1.?Assistance in selecting Auction categories
2.?Market insight
3.?Determine the timing of category auction
4.?Identification of potential quality suppliers in addition to existing
5.?Building on-line auctions
6.?Supplier contacts and training
7.?Execution of live bids
8.?Trouble shooting during live bids
9.?Compiling and communicating reports within 24 hours
10.?Award and Non-Award notifications to Suppliers
11.?Providing ongoing customer support
12.?Monitoring Supplier performance
13.?Feedback from Retailers/Suppliers
14.?Analyze the quality of each auction

The above deliverables if not executed in a self service program will result in less than maximum results and potentially failure of your program.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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Retailers, how many of your e-procurement contracts contain evergreen language?

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

In this case your supplier wins because your contract contains evergreen language. Some retailer?s think this is a good thing and it could be. Paired with other language that might identify escalator or de-escalator language that protects both the supplier and the buyer against abnormal commodity increases this could be win-win. The bigger issue is who is responsible for monitoring the dates and how will you be alerted if the adjustments don?t take place?

This begs the question; just what are are evergreen clauses within a contract and what do you need to do to be careful with them.

According to Black?s Law Dictionary an Evergreen contract is a contract that renews itself from one term to the next in the absence of contrary notice by one of the parties.

The potential problem with an ?evergreen? clause in your contract is that this type of contract automatically renews at the end of the contract term, unless one of the parties notifies the other party that it does not want to renew the contract.? This notice normally must be given within a specified time period such as 60 to 90 days prior to the end of the current contract term. This takes us back to who is going to monitor this time frame and alert you to the fact that something is required?

A significant step in conducting quality e-negotiation events is to understand the contracts you are wishing to negotiate.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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Retail e-procurement savings. How many times have we heard we can do it better ourselves?

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

And for those very large retail companies that have very expensive internal tools that were sold to you by the largest players in the space. Ask yourself why your event savings are much less than those reported by companies who have outsourced this functionality? If you want to drive the greatest possible savings across the broadest range of categories in the shortest amount of time; and have a sustainable process moving forward keep reading..

The question one needs to ask is; what type of event services does my e-procurement provider offer? If your company is deciding to try self service, which is to be 100% self-sufficient, you need to know if your provider offers readily available classroom education that can be conducted on-site in order to train your team in all the nuances of event support. These skills are the foundation that allows e-procurement providers to support large volumes of events in a full service mode, which drive greater savings over the long term. Knowledge transfer in this area is one thing; the passion, skill and headcount to carry out these practices on a day by day basis are what drive results.

Typically event services falls into two broad categories:

1. Event management
2. Event monitoring and support.

Event management provides end to end e-sourcing support that begins with a companies overall strategy and ends with the actual execution of the e-procurement event. This is a true cross category effort that includes a rather lengthy list of services that may include buyer training, supplier selection, category discovery, supplier communication, the strategy for taking a category to market, training and overall supplier expectation management.

Event monitoring and support is actually the tactical implementation of the over all e-procurement event management process. This may include all communications with suppliers on the day of an event including making sure they have access to the system, get logged in properly, don?t have problems placing quotes, monitoring supplier and buyer system communications techniques during an event such as notes and texting and being available post event for questions as needed.

These services are normally provided by people behind the scenes with a very specific skill set. If you plan to do self service it would be very wise to make sure you have them covered at the same quality level.

As always, we look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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Giving it your best is more than a practice.

Friday, February 5th, 2010

Best practices only become best practices through a thoughtful paying forward of one?s careers learning to others in order to shorten their educational curve to the ultimate benefit of customers, partners and other stakeholders they may interface with in the hope that they will do the same thing.

According to Wikipedia a best practice asserts that there is a technique, method, process, activity, incentive or reward that is more effective at delivering a particular outcome than any other technique, method, process, etc.

When a company indicates to you that they use best practices, does this mean they are supporting what is the best practice for the entire industry they serve such as the procurement space. Or does it mean they are the best practices for just their particular product family?

This author does not believe that a best practice is just following a standard way of doing things that can be carried out by multiple organizations. A best practice is a life long process that by its nature has to evolve over time as tools, businesses, and existing processes change so that a current practitioner performs similar tasks more efficiently or cost effectively.

If one uses best practices, the result should?be an ideal state that a person or an organization set out to achieve in the first place. In fact if the process used is actually a best practice shouldn?t all of a companies customers use exactly the same process. I?m not sure that this is ever a question one asks when looking for a referral about a companies service offerings. Please tell me about your companies? best practice? Are they consistent and carried out each and every time to the desired result?

One way to ensure good quality results is to provide templates that can be used over and over again and are evaluated at the completion of each practice or session of a particular deliverable and changed as need be. This then requires passage to other customers in order to insure the integrity of the process. This elevates the actual process beyond just a buzzword and moves a particular process in the direction of becoming a best practice that drives similar results on a consistent basis regardless of customer.

This author will continue to refer to our services offerings as high quality process techniques focused on continuous improvement that deliver anticipated results. Our customers, supplier participants and business partners will determine if they are best practices for them.

We look forward to and appreaciate your comments.

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Do your suppliers adhere to all of ISO?s environmental standards?

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

ISO has published a new, updated brochure providing a basic introduction, as its title indicates, to Environmental management ? The ISO 14000 family of International Standards. The 12-page, color brochure is the latest edition of a successful publication first released in 1998, two years after the launching of the first standards in the ISO 14000 family

The International Organization for Standardization widely known as ISO, is an international standard -setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. Founded on February 23, 1947, the organization promulgates world-wide industrial and commercial standards. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. While ISO defines itself as a non ? governmental, its ability to set standards that often become law, either through treaties or national standards makes it more powerful than most non-governmental organizations. In practice, ISO acts as a consortium with strong links to governments.

The SafeSourceIt? Supplier Database holds it suppliers accountable to many ISO standards including 14000, 7002, 9001 and 22000.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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Do your suppliers adhere to all of ISO’s environmental standards?

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

ISO has published a new, updated brochure providing a basic introduction, as its title indicates, to Environmental management – The ISO 14000 family of International Standards. The 12-page, color brochure is the latest edition of a successful publication first released in 1998, two years after the launching of the first standards in the ISO 14000 family

The International Organization for Standardization widely known as ISO, is an international standard -setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. Founded on February 23, 1947, the organization promulgates world-wide industrial and commercial standards. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. While ISO defines itself as a non – governmental, its ability to set standards that often become law, either through treaties or national standards makes it more powerful than most non-governmental organizations. In practice, ISO acts as a consortium with strong links to governments.

The SafeSourceIt™ Supplier Database holds it suppliers accountable to many ISO standards including 14000, 7002, 9001 and 22000.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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SafeSourcing Website experiences significant traffic growth.

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

During the last ninety day period the SafeSourcing website www.safesourcing.com has experienced significant growth globally. According to a number of rating services including Alexa and Google Analytics our website has had visitors from thirty seven (37) countries. Our reach which is a percentage measure of global internet users has grown 130%. Our traffic rank has increased 168% and our page views have increased 150%.

This growth places us amongst the top websites in the procurement space. Spend Matters and Sourcing Innovation continue to be the ranking leaders in our space. Both are required daily reading for this author.

We are very proud of our growth as it indicates that SafeSourcing is providing valuable content to regular visitors as well as registered members. We are also enjoying a good mix of both returning and new users. In reviewing these data the entire website is being explored on a regular basis including the following areas.

1. Sourcebook our professional social network for procurement professionals.
2. The SafeSourcing Wiki
3. The SafeSourcing daily Blog
4. SafeSourcing environment and safety alerts
5. SafeSourcing specifications template library
6. The SafeSourceIt? Supplier Database
7. The SafeSourcing Query tool
8. SafeSourcing Product Information Sheets
9. SafeSourcing White Papers
10. SafeSourcing Press Releases.

Thank you to those of you that have allowed us to achieve this growth.

As always, we look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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Try using a little wizardry or sorcery in your retail procurement practices.

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

From a purely systematic or technological perspective, a wizard is a computer user interface that leads a user through dialog steps in order to accomplish something easily or for the sake of appearances magically. So to begin with if you are not using technology in your retail procurement practices this would be a good place to start. You can never tell improved profits may simply be as easy as abracadabra.

Magic which is practiced by wizards is the act of performing, entertaining or enlightening an audience by creating illusions of seemingly impossible feats, using purely natural means. As an example; maybe finding new sources of supply in order to compress a retailers pricing is as simple as having access to a supplier database (hidden knowledge) that can conjure up new sources of supply through an easy to use interface (wizard). Since most retailers do not know that such a database exits, a novice supply chain team member or apprentice (audience participant) could conjure up a query on their PDA (magic wand) that searches this database (universe) by major category, country, postal code, sub-category, safety certifications or other incantations, and in less than 15 seconds produce a result set of 200 suppliers seemingly from thin air. This act of prestidigitation to most retailers would appear as magic. To his or her boss (lord or lady) this novice or apprentice team member would be looked at as a wizard, magician or seer.

Call your solution provider and see what type of sorcery they can share with you. If they can?t, call SafeSourcing the sorcerers of sourcing.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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