Archive for the ‘Reverse Auction’ Category
Thursday, April 7th, 2011
To the above point, this author has never seen a single category or product that can not be sourced using a reverse auction. And, I know many will argue this point with me. My answer however is a little more complex and is based on the evolution of original reverse auction or e-negotiation tools. As these tools have evolved, so have the processes associated with them whereby today’s tools have many features that support the entire RFI to RFP process within the same toolset resulting in a final compression event of reverse auction?
The process is really what determines the success of your e-negotiation event and that includes the determination of what it is you are looking to measure. Simply indicating that you want to reduce last year’s price or the price from your last contract is not always a fair analysis. Markets fluctuate daily and a year after your original contract, markets that drive the product you are sourcing may not be favorable to reducing your current price. However utilization of these tools may be able to help you reduce prices you might have to pay while prices are rising or put another way help you avoid costs. Cost avoidance is a good thing, particularly if your competition is not doing the same thing.
In many cases, if your contracts are not current and you have not used these types of tools to negotiate your current pricing and you do not know where to find alternative sources of supply; you will most likely see savings during the first year. After that the category and commodity driving it will determine further compression, holding prices constant or cost avoidance. All are a benefit of todays best of breed e-negotiation tools.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in B2b Reverse Auction, Business Sourcing, Global E-procurement, Reverse Auction
Friday, March 25th, 2011
Reverse auctions are web based or Software as a Service (SaaS) applications that let retailers and other companies find the best suppliers for any resale or not for resale product or service they wish to source. Using a web based reverse auction tool, retailers, other companies or groups of companies (Group Purchasing Organizations) can invite far more suppliers to take place in reverse auctions than they could possibly find or manage using traditional sourcing methodologies. During the reverse auction event they can review on one page all responses from suppliers, data about suppliers, notes from suppliers, product specifications and other necessary information at an instant. Upon auction conclusion which is typically less than 30 minutes retailers and other companies can review savings scenarios and award business from their desktop.
Now let’s get to the simple financial benefits. Let’s assume a $150M Retail Company with industry average earnings of one percent or $1.5M. Additionally cost of goods for this company is 70 percent or $105M. Let’s also assume this company were to only source ten percent of their for resale or above the gross margin line spend or roughly $11M. With below industry average savings of ten percent, total savings generated would be $1.1M which is a direct impact to net profitability. If all other segments of the P&L perform to plan and all savings are recovered during the same business calendar year net profitability would increase to $2.6M or a 73% improvement.
So, why don’t many companies use reverse auctions and other e-procurement tools? That’s a great question!
If this author were you, I just could not ignore this type of opportunity.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in B2b Reverse Auction, E-procurement Tools, Reverse Auction
Friday, March 4th, 2011
Yesterdays post reviewed why and how this author felt that reverse auctions were potentially good for both the distributor and the retailer alike. So just what is cost plus?
According to Wikipedia Cost-plus pricing is a pricing method used by companies. It is used primarily because it is easy to calculate and requires little information. There are several varieties, but the common thread in all of them is that one first calculates the cost of the product, and then includes an additional amount to represent profit. It is a way for companies to calculate how much profit they will make. Cost-plus pricing is often used on government contracts, and has been criticized as promoting wasteful expenditures.
Once unit level cost has been established for the distribution of products it’s easy to turn that into a percentage and add it to the price of a product coming up with a distributed unit price or category price. The most important part of this pricing exercise for the distributor is to get the distribution costs correct. This can include price of storage, freight, length of travel, driver cost and any number of other costs. This is an area where a distributor can lose a lot of money if they are not very careful.
So, are revere auctions a tool that can help distribution companies? The answer is a clear yes both above and below the gross margin line. If you like to know more please contact me at ronsouthard@safesourcing.com.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in B2b Supply Chain, Business Sourcing, Reverse Auction, Sourcing Strategy
Thursday, March 3rd, 2011
A lot of distributors have told this author that reverse auctions don’t apply to them because they use the cost plus model and as such they just add their price or profit margin on top of the contract price with their source to drive their distributed price.
The fallacy in this thinking is that it may make buyers and category managers lazy in their approach to driving margin within the categories that they manage. This results in a higher price to the retailers they distribute to and ultimately to the consumer or their customers customer. A worst case scenario is that the consumer stops shopping at their customer’s store which reduces overall volume and further increases prices by not meeting volume incentives. It’s a slipper slope.
Off course this argument is relatively easy to overcome when we get around to discussing capital goods and expense related products and services area. These areas have an impact on the distributor’s net profit. And I’m sure that many of you will agree that just because one says they are a cost plus provider does not necessarily mean it’s true in the most pure sense of the definition.
Check back tomorrow and we’ll review what the real definition of cost plus is in part II.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in B2b Supply Chain, Retail Supply Chain, Reverse Auction, Sourcing Strategy
Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011
There are well established processes which when followed will create higher quality sessions for the retailer and their supplier partners, resulting in better savings or cost avoidance dependant upon the category and market condition.
Although brief, the list below provides a good framework by which to build your program and should get you headed in the right direction.
1. Executive sponsorship is mandatory by the CEO,CFO and or the COO
2. Get the entire buying organization together for a kickoff session.
3. Provide an over view of what you are going to do and the impact it can have on the company. Use company financial models.
4. Discuss and agree on success criteria.
5. Every event is not a homerun. Singles and doubles score runs.
6. Create a fun environment.
7. Consider prizes for the most creative use of an auction.
8. Use scorecards by department with percent of savings.
9. Discuss the meaning and importance of corporate aggregation.
10. Hand out event templates to gather existing product specifications.
11. Put a time requirement on data collection.
12. Gather an accurate list of your present suppliers.
13. Work with your sourcing company to identify a top 100 list of events.
14. Calendar the events.
15. Prioritize by dollar value, date and strategic value.
16. Conduct department level discovery meetings of 30 minutes to an hour.
17. Investigate existing contract language.
18. Look for auto renewal (evergreen) language roadblocks.
19. Determine alternate sources of supply with your sourcing company.
20. Develop an event rules and instruction template and post with each event.
Although these steps are not all encompassing, they provide a format for getting started that offers the best opportunity for reduction in capital expense, cost of goods, expenses and improvement in corporate earnings.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in E-procurement, E-procurement Tools, Reverse Auction
Friday, February 18th, 2011
Competitive bidding is the process of inviting and obtaining bids from competing suppliers in response to documented specifications, by which an award is made to the best overall bid that meets or exceeds the specifications in areas such as price and quality. There are keys to understanding and making your bidding competitive and successful when using e-negotiation tools.
One of the most important elements and most overlooked is that of incumbent supplier communication once a bid has been authorized. This means that your entire company is on the same page. That page is agreeing to not setting any false expectations with your incumbent suppliers. Because you already have a relationship with these companies you will most likely receive calls, emails, IM’s and texts wanting to know what is going on. Your company line has to be that “We value our relationship and encourage you to use this process as it is the only process by which we will review bids”. Do not indicate that everything will be ok or that things will work out just fine or any similar language. If you are using a 3rd party, instruct your incumbent supplier or suppliers to provide any questions or communications they have through the third party only.
To make it simpler, be honest, be thorough and don’t set any expectations. Keep this in mind and all suppliers will feel like they were treated fairly and want to bid to win your business again.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in E-procurement, Online Reverse Auction, Reverse Auction, Reverse Auction Procurement
Tuesday, November 30th, 2010
A lot of privately owned companies are happy to grow a little every year, add employees, make payroll, have happy associates and put a little money in the bank. It is only when a company decides to be a public company or use a Venture Capital Company that this philosophy becomes a problem.
This author could go on and on relative to the subject of realistic earnings; which continues to piss me off. However the title of this blog is much simpler. The answer is how much margin you want to target and how much should your supplier be allowed to make when selling products to your company.
A simple suggestion is if your company margin is plus or minus 5% of the industry norm you probably can afford to look at a number of categories as good candidates for a reverse auction. The technology area is one that often offers a pretty good opportunity for cost improvement which means increasing your margin and reducing what the manufacturers is making. A site that can help you with this in the technology area is isuppli.com which provides market intelligence for the technology space. In a recent review of technology gadgets in Men’s Health magazine isuppli lists a number of products such as Apple IPOD’S and Blackberry Torch whose margins are above 60%. This is based on materials plus production costs and the current retail price.
If you want to come up with a list of good items to take to reverse auction, look at your company’s gross margin and the margins of your suppliers by product and a pretty good list will reveal itself.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in B2b Reverse Auction, Eprocurement Auction, Reverse Auction, Reverse Auction Procurement
Monday, November 29th, 2010
As you might imagine, each of the steps I offer below can easily be expanded to include a great deal of detail. However, since the question came from a senior executive who was really looking for an elevator ride type of answer I offer the following as a simple guideline.
1. Select customer & provider project leads
2. Conduct detailed category discoveries
3. Rank categories and findings by category
4. Develop a and prioritize a category strategy
5. Select lead category items
6. Conduct supplier discovery & research
7. Select suppliers
8. Train suppliers
9. Conduct online e-negotiation
10. Deliver online e-negotiation reports
11. Analyze e-negotiation results
12. Request samples if necessary
13. Award Business
14. Sign contract and begin delivery
15. Report ROI.
We know these steps return results quickly.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in E-procurement, Online Reverse Auction, Reverse Auction, Strategic Sourcing
Friday, November 19th, 2010
There has been a lot of discussion about reverse auctions lately in the blogosphere. Most of it has centered on whether or not reverse auctions are strategic or not. Many of you are well aware of my opinion on that subject. What interested me was my customers thought that there was a negative reaction to the term. Guess where it came from? You’re right it came from the buyers which is one of the two places it usually comes from, the other being the suppliers. This normally happens during the early adoption stage of e-procurement tools within a company.
My answer to the question was you can call it what ever you want within your own company but do you know how many kinds of reverse auctions there really are. The answer was no. So listed below are some of the names of different types of reverse auctions. Some apply to specific industries while others are just enhanced versions of a particular type. Probably the most commonly used is the classic Dutch auction.
My question to you e-procurement types out there is how many can you name or better yet define the use of. And if there are so many types with the reason being manipulation of the results in different ways, then maybe reverse auctions are strategic or not.
1. English Auction
2. Multi unit English Auction
3. Yankee Auction
4. Proxy English Auction
5. Classic Dutch Auction
6. Vickrey Auction
7. Japanese Auction
8. Chinese Auction
9. Pay-Your-Bid Auctions
10. Aggregate Demand Auction
11. Negotiated Price Auction
12. Exchange
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in Eprocurement Auction, Reverse Auction, Reverse Auction Procurement
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010
I was reading a blog post from the Doctor over at Sourcing Innovation today titled “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to e-Procurement: Terminology” and I thought it was great as well as very timely.
Ultimately it is up to practitioners and solution providers of these tools to educate their customers as to what the proper terms are for the tools they are using. As an example E-RFI, E-RFP, E-RFQ. I have numbers of customers that have used other solution providers and not only are the definitions different by customer; they are actually different within a specific company. In some cases everything is referred to as a reverse auction and in other situations the companies have made up their own name for the service or tool.
This author uses Wikipedia and Wictionary quite often as a source and in this case, they have a very good definition that covers most of the terminology in the entire e-procurement space as well as related B2B and B2C internet based or private network based functions. As your company moves in the direction of a computerized supply chain management solution for your company understanding what you are asking for and what you are using will make both your job and that of your solution provider easier.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in B2b Reverse Auction, B2b Supply Chain, E-procurement, E-procurement Solutions, E-procurement Tools, E-supply Chain, Eprocurement Auction, Online Procurement, Online Reverse Auction, Procurement Auctioning, Procurement Outsourcing, Procurement Purchasing, Procurement Solutions, Procurement Tool, Product Procurement, Reverse Auction, Reverse Auction Procurement, Supply Chain Procurement
