Today’s post is the SafeSourcing archives

In May’s 2014 Issue of Computerworld, the author, Howard Baldwin, makes a compelling case for the advantages of companies to use open source solutions in their business.  From business agility to improved quality and reliability the increasing adoption of open source technology has shown that its popularity will continue to grow.  Dictionary.com defines open source as “pertaining to or denoting software whose source code is available free of charge to the public to use, copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute,” so it is no wonder why this technology would be attractive.  Today’s blog will focus on some areas to keep at the forefront when evaluating open source applications.

Experience – Since there are dozens of new open source applications appearing every week, it is important to validate which companies have tools that will save a company as much time as they will money.  The only true way to uncover that is by digging into the companies that are currently using the technology and what they have to say about their experience.  New open source solutions without any major users aren’t necessarily solutions that should be automatically discounted but they are ones that will need to prove themselves even more during the Request For Information and Proposal stages.

Documentation – Open Source companies have been notorious for offering little to no useful documentation on how to implement and configure their solutions.  While this has gotten much better in the last ten years, it still has a long way to go to catch up with its mainstream “for resell” cousins’ polished user manuals.  Making it a condition of any Request For Information to review this documentation is critical.  Since these are freely available open source applications, this should easy and, in fact, evaluations of open source documentation can begin even sooner than an RFI might be issued.   Good documentation of the tool and the source code is key to evaluating how useful it will be for a company.

Evaluate the code – Besides the cost aspect of open source technology, it is the access to the source code behind the tool that makes open source such a popular concept.  Being able to use, manipulate and manage the custom changes needed is critical for most companies’ use of open source technology.  As mentioned above, because it is open source, the source code is generally available and ready for review any time an IT team is ready to evaluate it.  Verifying that code is annotated internally well and that its classes are also well-documented in external documentation is an important step in the decision to adopt it.

For more information on how SafeSourcing can assist you evaluating an open source solution or on our “Risk Free” trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.  We have an entire customer services team waiting to assist you today.

We look forward to your comments.

Today?s blog is by Margaret Stewart, Executive Assistant at SafeSourcing.

Many companies use acronyms in their business lingo and their operations. They serve as a way to easily refer to industry terms or provide an easy way to remember longer terms or instructions. Often, those terms are specific to one company or industry, but there are many acronyms that are used across the board in businesses.

First, what is an acronym? Acronyms are, according to Wikipedia, an abbreviation, used as a word, which is formed from the initial components in a phrase or a word. For example, LOL is an acronym for Laughing Out Loud and MLB is an acronym for Major League Baseball.

As most companies use their own set of acronyms, here are a few that are used by most businesses:

CEO ? Chief Executive Officer. This is a commonly heard term used by most people, not just businesses. It refers to the person in charge of a company.

B2B ? Business to Business. This refers to interactions specifically from one business to another business, like sales or communication. This term distinguishes the transaction as not one involving a customer.

RFI ? Request for Information. This is a common term where one company requests information from another company, usually to determine a business? qualifications in providing goods or services.

RFP ? Request for Proposal. This is what a business will send out in order to get proposals on services or goods from another company.

RFQ ? Request for Quote. This is what a business sends out in order to receive estimated prices for goods or services.

These are just a few common business acronyms and if you want to find out what 3PL, OEM, PIP, and other acronyms and business terms mean, simply go to our Wiki page. The SafeSourcing wiki is a tool that anyone can use and provides useful information on many common business terms.

For more information on other tools offered by SafeSourcing, or on our ?Risk Free? trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service representative. We have an entire team ready to assist you today.

http://safesourcing.com/ContactUs/tabid/60/language/en-US/Default.aspx

Todays post is by Ron Southard, founder and CEO of SafeSourcing.

In part one of this post we discussed the fact that the use of e-negotiation tools should be just as beneficial in the private label area as they are in expense related areas. Quite frankly there is no area of the business that should not benefit from modern negotiation strategies and tactics.

The first hurdle that buyers and category managers have to get over is that the benefits are not only related to price. In fact that is a huge measure of success, but not the only one.  Other benefits that are more on the soft side are related to work flow and the amount of work that a category manager, buyer or other procurement knowledge workers can reasonably accomplish when trying to source a specific product or category. That level of reasonableness may in fact lead to unintentional results that are less beneficial to the company in terms of missed quality improvement,  missed pricing reductions and lack of adherence to  other company standards to name a few when sourcing traditionally.

A few questions one should ask when beginning to source a product or category are as follows.

1. Do I have a quality specification for this category?
2. Do I have a list of suppliers outside our incumbents?
3. Do I have clearly defined terms and conditions?
4. How many suppliers can I negotiate or deal wit at the same time?
5. How many individual bids can I receive and respond to during the time it will take me to source this category?
6. How will I consolidate and evaluate all of the responses once received?
7. How will I evaluate all of the marketing rhetoric supplied that has nothing to do with the specification but may hold nuggets of value we may want to explore?
8. Who will schedule sample reviews once I get to a best few decision point?

Even in today’s world with all of the phone, voicemail, text messaging, fax capability and other types of communication methodologies there is only so much one person can listen to, evaluate or respond to.

Here are a few event based statistics of what a quality SaaS based e-procurement eRFQ event or Reverse Auction can provide.

1. From as few as 1 to as many as 6,000 items managed in a single event
2. From as few as 3 to  greater 30 suppliers  managed in a single event
3. Average Length of a typical event is only  31 min
4. Average number of  bids submitted during an average event = to 198 unique bids
5. Average Bids Per Item during an average event = to  23
6. Average number of suppliers in an average event = to 6.
7. Average number of items in an average event = to 40.
8. Incumbent supplier is not the low bid > 50% of the time.

There is no single individual that can accumulate the same amount of data in this short amount of time let alone provide it in a reviewable format that is tailored to making an award decision. The clear advantage here is to the e-negotiation tool.

With all of the above to consider then should buyers try to continue doing this on their own and if they do, will they see the same type of savings as they did when they sourced there expense or indirect categories? The answer is they may see better savings and they won’t know if they don’t try.

In case you need some more ammunition, here’s just a few of the 100’s of examples of what type of  savings results you might see in Grocery and OTC areas.

1. PL Beauty Supplies – 10%
2. PL Vitamins – 31%
3. PL Windshield Washer Fluid – 28%
4. PL Pain Relief – 14.9%
5. P.L. Cotton Products – 7.6%
6. PL Shortenings & Oil – 12%

If you’d like to learn more about sourcing your private label categories, please contact a SafeSourcing customer services representative.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Todays post is by Ron Southard, founder and CEO of SafeSourcing.

I was asked the other day if I would share some experience in sourcing private label items in the Grocery and OTC area, and if there were any differences in those areas that might make using e-negotiation tools less effective than traditional negotiation methodologies.

At first I chuckled because the answer is so obvious to me. Then I thought that it obviously is not to others. Further more, greater than 80% of companies still don’t use these advanced tools today even though they have been around for over a dozen years.

The more I continued to think about it, the more the answer did become somewhat complicated. That’s because the answer concerns raw materials, commodities, services (as an example printing) and all the other things that go into making and delivering a product to market that as a private label deliverable is supposed to deliver better margin contribution than a national brand. And unlike the evolution of private label, in today’s world also deliver the same or better quality than the national brand. Additionally the challenge exists to find enough suppliers to provide these products that understand the regulatory concerns for the market being considered. An example might be the U.S. versus the CANADA or MEXICO markets.

The above has to be formulated into a specification that defines the product or products to be delivered in the approved brand format that suppliers can understand. At the same time that specification needs to be unbundled from a bid perspective in order to take advantage of market fluctuations so as to mitigate too much movement in price over a reasonable period time such as quarterly.

With all of the above to consider then should buyers try to do this on their own and if they do, will they see the same type of savings as they did when they sourced there expense or indirect categories? Check back tomorrow for Part II in order to get the original answer before this one became a little more complicated.

If you’d like to learn more about sourcing your private label categories, please contact a SafeSourcing customer services representative.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Today’s post is from our  SafeSourcing archive.

As competition for qualified procurement talent begins to increase with the departure of a strong Baby Boomer generation and the lack of an equivalent group of strong resources, managers must begin to rethink the talent they are searching for and explore new methods for getting the best associates possible.  Luckily there is an increase of institutions offering procurement and supply chain specific degrees and students that are actively pursuing these paths.  Today we will look at some of these new areas to focus on when beginning your searches for new employees.

Work with the Schools – A few weeks ago we posted a blog about the rising increase in universities who are bolstering their offering for degrees in Supply Chain Management and Procurement and in the rise in students seeking these degrees.  By working with the universities directly, you can ensure that your company is able to get the first pick at the best and the brightest.  As the stronger students in traditional areas like Law, Medicine and Engineering begin to move towards new untapped areas of business, this group of potential employees will get stronger and stronger.  Many times there are even groups of several universities that share common resources and hiring sites for all of their students to search.

Data Analysis Skills – We no longer live in a world that is going to continue to source based on face to face meetings and paper bids alone.  Whether or not you work with a 3rd party Strategic Sourcing company like SafeSourcing, the need to analyze and understand data is going to become critical as we move forward.  Pivot tables, excel skills and even some SQL knowledge will not just be nice-to-have skillsets they will be requirements.  Understanding where your potential candidates are in this area will help you to gauge how effective they can be for your team.  As with any sourcing project, the foundation of data you start with and provide vendors will set the stage for the success of the project and having data analytics skills are crucial to creating that foundation.

Deep VS Broad – This is one of the struggles of any procurement manager trying to hire for their team.  The case can be made for both sides.  On the one hand having an employee who has broad knowledge across several categories allows them to take on more projects and be effective immediately.  This type of experience is good when the team they are going to is smaller and needs a diverse experience.  Candidates with deep knowledge in a few of the more difficult areas such as construction, services or IT are also very important because the stakeholders in your company want to work with people who know what they are doing.  Larger procurement teams have the luxury of hiring more specialized candidates but in reality the ideal candidate will be a mix; someone who has a specialty area or two, but also has a broad level of experience in other areas.  Understanding the specific projects someone has worked on will be an important evaluation piece through the hiring process.

The team you build for your procurement department is changing as quickly as the landscape of procurement and new elements need to be focused on.  Skills in data analysis and broad category experience with a focus on a few complex areas are now key for delivering projects successfully and efficiently.  For more information about SafeSourcing can help fill in some of the experience categories or can assist you with spend analysis, or on our “Risk Free” trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Project Manager.  We have an entire customer services team waiting to assist you today.

We look forward to your comments.

Today’s post is from our SafeSourcing Archive

Yesterday we looked at the planning that needs to go into the initial phases of Request For Proposal meetings to make them successful.  Understanding the format and agenda are key ingredients to structuring the evaluation of the presentations and in helping guide the vendors on what needs to be talked about or shown.  Today’s blog will wrap up this two-part series by focusing on the final details and the structure for formally evaluating the presentations in a way that will ensure the comparison criteria are as similar as possible.

Fill in the RFP holes – No matter how much time is spent preparing an RFP there will always be holes of information created either by missed content or by new questions arising from how the vendors initially responded.  Many times this will include clarification on pricing models, more depth on service and how it is measured or a deeper dive through a live demonstration of the features of a software tool that is being highlighted in the vendor’s offering.   While there will still be time to follow-up with questions after this meeting, it provides a great forum to level each vendor’s solution with the others.

Scoring made easy – The biggest pitfall many companies fall into when organizing their RFP presentations is determining how they will evaluate the presentations of each vendor.  Having a high-level agenda is a great start and will go a long way to providing a side-by-side view and sometimes that is all that is needed.  Frequently, however, especially with software solutions, giving the vendors a script or use-cases to demonstrate will help build an internal scorecard that can be used to score and evaluate each feature and piece of functionality.  Some vendors choose to publish the scorecard in advance to the vendors so that they know what pieces will be evaluated and sometimes this scorecard is kept for internal use only.

Housekeeping details – Once the dates & times, duration, format and content are decided and delivered to the vendors, the final piece will be to ensure that the vendors have the final “housekeeping” details for the presentations.  If an online method is chosen, this will mean ensuring a webinar invite has been prepared and sent with a tool all evaluators can use effectively.  If an onsite presentation is chosen, making sure that the address and contact details have been provided to the vendors so they know where to go and who to ask for when they get there.  Publish or solicit the need for internet and projector requirements and provide the vendors with the list of people who will be attending as well as receive the list of their presenters in case security needs the information in advance for onsite meetings.

A Request For Proposal is a very valuable information gathering process by which companies are able to gather the what is needed to make important decisions.  Seeing the process of planning all the way through the end will ensure the best comparisons can be made and turned into decisions that provide the company with the most value.  For more information about SafeSourcing or on our “Risk Free” trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.  We have an entire customer services team waiting to assist you today.

We look forward to your comments.

Today’s post is by Alyson Usserman, Project Manager at SafeSourcing.

Usable Paper Products can result in a massive spend category, does this sound like your company?

Usable paper products can be a company’s highest spend category because it typically goes unmonitored. If you are a retailer with public bathrooms, you could be paying hundreds of thousands  of dollars a year  to maintain the usable products within the bathrooms.

When sourcing usable bathroom products and toilet paper, the specification can be pretty standard depending  if you utilize coreless toilet paper rolls or not. Sourcing bathroom products can still be complex depending on the nature of the spend. Are you currently using more than one supplier? Can your janitorial staff couple this with their supplies and lower the cost of their services? Do you have space to store the additional cases.

These questions become vital when sourcing usable products like toilet paper. Are you over paying?

For more information on how we can help you with your procurement needs or on our “Risk Free” trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.  We have an entire customer services team waiting to assist you today.

We look forward to your comments.

Today’s post is by Troy Lowe; Vice President of Development at SafeSourcing.

Spring is in the air!  The trees and flowers are blooming and the lawns are turning green, well at least it is in most places.  Is your lawn not looking as healthy as you would like?  If so, the problem could be that it needs to be aerated.  Over time the soil becomes compressed due to traffic and mowing.  Aerating is the act of poking numerous holes into the ground which allows air back into the compacted soil.  This process makes room for the compacted soil to loosen up and allows oxygen and water easier access to the roots.  How often you should aerate a lawn depends on the amount of traffic that occurs on the lawn.  High traffic areas need to be aerated more often because it will become compacted quicker than low traffic areas.  Depending on the type of grass, the aerating needs to be done at different times of the year.  Warm season lawns should be aerated in the spring and cool season lawns should be aerated in the fall.

There are several different tools that can be used for aerating and local landscaping companies offer this service as well for both homes and businesses. 

SafeSourcing can gather all the necessary information for you and help you decide which option meets your needs.  If you would like more information on how SafeSourcing can help you, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service representative.  We have an entire team ready to assist you today.

We look forward to your comments.