Archive for the ‘E-procurement Solutions’ Category

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Getting to your RFP Short list!

Tuesday, January 14th, 2014

Today’s post is by Mark Davis; Senior Vice President and COO at SafeSourcing. 

The RFI/RFP process has been the source of a few SafeSourcing blogs over the past few months and no piece is as important to the process as the plan you develop to move forward with the final stages of the RFx process, as you have companies that barely make the shortlist all of a sudden leap to the front of the pack if done right.

Today’s blog will take a look at some of the aspects that you should be thinking about when preparing for the final presentations.

Who makes the list?  – The main purpose to holding the final stage presentations is to get a final look at the vendor team that you may be getting ready to give your business too.  In almost every case, the RFx process will immediately drop a few vendors out of the mix based on their responses, their initial pricing or a combination of both.  Typically the final presentations will be given by 2 4, sometimes 5 vendors.  To have a larger list makes managing the list difficult, and generally is the stage where you have it narrowed down to companies who can truly handle your account.

What is the focus? – As you are developing the items in the next two points it will be important to develop the content for what you want to know more about.  In many cases RFIs and RFPs are unable to completely do justice for some of the details you need especially if those details revolve around a demonstration.  This is not to rehash the RFI/RFP itself but rather to dig deeper into answers that may have been confusing or not quite as complete as what you wanted.

What’s the Agenda? –  Once you know what you want to focus on and prior to holding your presentations it will be important to create the agenda you wish the vendors to follow.  Not doing so allows the vendors to present whatever they want and may leave you with more follow-up questions than you started with.  Vendors generally appreciate an agenda so that they can focus their energy on the things that are important to you.  This agenda will help be the foundation for the next two points so making it thorough without being so detailed there is no flexibility is the key to a good agenda.

How will you score it? – The final piece you will want to develop before the presentations will be a scorecard that can be distributed to the evaluation team covering every aspect that you want reviewed.  This is a critical step because not everyone will automatically evaluate the presentations in a similar way without guidance.  This can be as detailed as you want to make, however, it should at the very least follow the agenda the vendors have been given so that thoughts and comments on each point can be captured by every member of the team.

Getting ready for final RFI/RFP presentations is an important part of the evaluation process and one that should have as much thought and preparation put into it as the RFx itself.

For more information on helping your company prepare on RFI/RFP or in help preparing for final presentations, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.  

We look forward to your comments.

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Your Online Tattoo

Tuesday, January 7th, 2014

Today’s Post is by Michael Figueroa, Account Manager at SafeSourcing.

It’s become fairly common knowledge that everything we do online is permanently preserved and searchable by potential employers, angry exes, and on the fence customers. However, the extent to which your information can be used is becoming more and more invasive. Here are just a few examples:

1. Facebook has been under scrutiny for their facial recognition software for a while now: Any location someone takes a picture of you at, even if you’re just in the background, has the potential to tag you once uploaded.1

2. There are already companies experimenting with using facial recognition technology to use your face like an analog credit card number .2

3. Researcher Alessandro Acquisti discovered that through some off the shelf facial recognition and data mining software he could discover peoples identity and even social security numbers in some instances.3

4. With google image search or tinyeye any image can be reverse searched to find all websites that contain that image .4

5. Of course there has been a lot of buzz about what the NSA captures online, and that the CIA gathers from the big tech firms like google, yahoo, and facebook.

When your information is online, it’s best to think of it as a digital tattoo: It’s like a permanently identifying mark that you can be easily identified with a little digging. The same is true for your company, and not just its twitter feed or Facebook account.
 
Proprietary product information, logistics details, images, all can be indexed and retrieved even after it’s been taken down from your site. Some information you may want to keep available at all times, such as contact information, RFI/RFP templates, and core competencies. Information that well represents your company and allows potential customers a convenient means to beginning an account with you. Just be careful with the digital tattoo you give yourself, because there are new ways of using it that are being developed all the time.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Resources:

1 Jessica Guynn. “Privacy implications of facial recognition back in the spotlight …” 8 Dec. 2013 <http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-privacy-implications-of-facial-recognition-back-in-the-spotlight-20131203,0,3372180.story>

2Betsy Isaacson. “Facial Recognition Systems Turn Your Face Into Your Credit Card …” 2013. 8 Dec. 2013 <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/19/facial-recognition-credit-card_n_3624752.html>

3 “The future of facial recognition: 7 fascinating facts | TED Blog.” 2013. 8 Dec. 2013 <http://blog.ted.com/2013/10/17/the-future-of-facial-recognition-7-fascinating-facts/>

4 “TinEye Reverse Image Search.” 2005. 8 Dec. 2013 <http://www.tineye.com/>

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How committed are you to your own success with your new e-procurement tools?

Monday, October 21st, 2013

Today’s post is by Ron Southard CEO at SafeSourcing Inc.

Many projects fail when companies implement them. Probably a much higher percentage than you might believe. Just take a look at the new Obama care website.

 It’s no different when implementing new procurement technologies. You can install it behind your firewall. You can use SaaS based tools. You can pick any toolset in the Procure to Pay process from eRFX tools to Contract Management. If you are going to be successful with the launch of your new e-procurement tools, you have to be committed to the process. This really is about nothing more than how prepared you are as a procurement knowledge worker regarding procurement in general and your category, product or service specifically. If you are committed, then you should be prepared. There really is no excuse to not be.

In order to be successful at e-procurement or the online or SaaS based e-RFX process, a procurement knowledge worker has to be committed to the process. First of all this means they have to understand the process. Beyond training in tool utilization, this suggests a willingness to share information relative their buying patterns as well as what their expectations are for selecting a new supplier to work with. All of this must be shared with their new solution provider.  Category managers, buyers and other knowledge workers that interface with the supply chain should be communicating regularly with their incumbent suppliers regarding current market conditions, quality, delivery and other potential pitfalls as part of their job.  If issues do exist they need to be discussed and documented so they can be reviewed with your new e-procurement solutions provider and included in the e-RFX setup and strategy. 

To be committed to the procurement process, procurement knowledge workers must be prepared to answer questions from suppliers even if the answers are to be issued through your solutions provider.  If you act as though you are not committed to this new process, your incumbent supplier as well as potential new sources of supply will pick up on that immediately. 

The bad news for your company is that if a buyer or category manager acts as though they do not support this new process, holds side bar conversations that mitigate its use or raises other red flags in the supplier community, you will not get the best pricing, you will not get the best quality and you will not have the best supplier relationships into the future.

If you tools are not working for you, contact a SafeSourcing customer services account manager for assistance.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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A Supplier from a recent RFP mentioned he loved the SafeSourcing eRFX process!

Wednesday, October 2nd, 2013

Today’s post is by Shelly Hayre a COE account manager at SafeSourcing.

I was recently following up with a Supplier from a past SafeSourcing eRFX event. He told me he loved the eRFP process as it seemed so seamless. The Supplier then went on to describe the standard RFPs he is used to; submitting hundreds of page documents and proposals, sending multiple hard copies, clueless on the company’s objectives and needs.

An RFI/RFP allows you to qualify a supplier for your company’s needs. Why give yourself more work than necessary? The following tips will bring your company more useful and painless information through the eRFX process, specifically eRFI’s and eRFP’s.

1. Be Specific!:  When you are setting up your RFI/RFP questions try to keep as many questions as possible closed. If you are searching for a specific answer then make sure you are asking the right questions to receive the correct response. I have seen RFI/RFP’s that ask such broad questions that every supplier interprets them differently and it is hard to do a true comparison between the answers.

2. Share with the suppliers:  Know what your company’s needs and values are. If having a national supplier and covering all locations is important, then provide suppliers with a list of locations to verify they can cover all those locations. If this is a deal breaker, then it is as simple as a yes or no question. Providing suppliers with all the needs and values of the company will provide you with the best answers.

3. Pricing Model:  Instead of asking for their pricing model, determine a standard direction for your RFI/RFP in order to steer the gathering of pricing in that direction. If you let the vendor provide you a general pricing model there could be many hidden fees not required. This will make comparing pricing between suppliers difficult. 

Successful RFI/RFPs may require some extra effort and time at the beginning, but it will save you more time at the end. SafeSourcing prides ourselves on creating successful RFI/RFPs that will bring value to your company.

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 and appreciate your comments.

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How should your company structure for procurement success?

Tuesday, September 3rd, 2013

Today’s post is by Ron Southard, CEO at SafeSourcing Inc.

During a lunch meeting last week a retailer asked us what they should consider in terms of structuring their procurement professionals to fully embrace e-negotiation tools.

Our answer is certainly not a complete one, but the following points are areas that should be considered for any supply chain re-structuring including what is needed to drive success while trying to fully embrace SaaS e-negotiation technology. These steps will get you headed in the right direction towards achieving the greatest possible return on investment.

  1. Gaining executive (CEO) level and other stakeholder (Board) support
  2  Get your supply chain organization structured for success
  3. Do a detailed analysis of your direct spend
  4. Do a detailed analysis of your indirect spend
  5. Do a detailed review of planned capital project spends and allow of add ons
  6. Plan a detailed review of all contracts.
  7. Plan a detailed review of all suppliers
  8. Develop better relationships with existing suppliers
  9. Improve the performance of suppliers.
  10. Gain access to additional sources of supply
  11. Improve your view of all spend categories.
  12. Develop a detailed off shore and near shore strategies.
  13. Review all sourcing methods used today.
  14. Review all Environmental strategies
  15. Review all Product Safety strategies
  16. Create a product specification library
  17. Conduct detailed category discovery
  18. Align all of the above with your SaaS  solution providers recommended strategy
  19. Ask all department business owners to sign a sourcing collaboration agreement
  20. Streamline, streamline, streamline.

As you use the above list and grow it, it is important to remember that the job of a procurement management leader is to think outside of the box and educate while looking for innovative ways to do things better, faster and at a lower cost. And to hopefully create an environment that will inspire co-workers while doing that.

Reach out to a SafeSourcing customer services representative if you like assistance getting your procurement strategy aligned.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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SafeSourcing Inc. announces three new additions to the SafeSourceIt™ family of Cloud based Procure to Pay applications.

Tuesday, August 27th, 2013

Today’s post is from the SafeSourcing  marketing department!

SafeSourcing is  very pleased to announce  the following three new tools to its comprehensive suite of procure to pay tools under the SafeSourceIt™ umbrella.

  1.  SafeSpendAnalsyis™  –  Takes company purchasing patterns and trends to new levels as it integrates external data feeds  for a wide variety of data sources.

  2.  SafeReportDesigner™   –  Allows users the capability to drag and drop key data points in a way that allows them to build custom reports

  3.  SafeScorecards™ –  Consolidates details from all of the SafeSourceIt™ modules to track and score procurement performance by Supplier, Internal Department, Product Category or Procurement professional.

These tools join  SafeeRFX™, SafeSurvey™, SafeDashboard™, SafeDocuments™, SafeContract™, SafePO™, SafeCatalog™ and the  SafeSourceIt™ Supplier Database that are already in use by our customers today.

If you are interested in ROI’s much greater than 10X and rapid deployment of solutions that will preserve those savings, please contact a SafeSourcing customer services representative.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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Making the Complicated Less Challenging

Wednesday, August 7th, 2013

Today’s post is by Sarah Kouse a Project Manager at SafeSourcing.

Having a complicated event, whether it contains a lot of line items or items that require a lot of details, can get challenging.  If you follow some of these steps, it could simplify the process.

Details – Knowing all the details about the event and the items involved is very important because the more the vendors/suppliers know about the items they are bidding the more accurately they can quote.   This can be challenging because sometimes all those details are not always easily available, but once you have most of the details, you can then try to locate more information and details to be able to provide the vendor/suppliers. The more details you provide, the less questions tend to arise during an event and the more you can obtain an “apples to apples” comparison.

Timeline – Setting a realistic timeline for any event is important. You don’t want to set a timeline that is too long because it could cause participants to set things aside and potentially forget about it. You also don’t want to set a timeline too short because it causes everyone to rush things and potentially leave out important details.  Vendors may also not be able to obtain all the information they need to provide their most accurate quotes.

Simplicity – Making a complicated event as simple as possible could help an event go smoother for the creator/administrator and the participants as well. The more complex an event, the more complicated it can be, resulting in a higher risk of issues and the probability of potential participants to decline to participate because they just “don’t want to deal with it.” An example of this is would be to focus on the items making up the top 80% of your spend and then collect market basket discounts for the other items.

In the end, the more realistic the timeline and the more details you can provide the suppliers the greater the likelihood of a smooth event that produces great results. 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.

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Why is the Waste Removal Category a Great Choice When Executing an eProcurement Event?

Wednesday, July 24th, 2013

Today’s post is by Ryan Melowic; Assistant Vice President of COE at SafeSourcing.

Every company which has brick and mortar stores or facilities has to dispose of their waste.   Currently throughout North America there are a few major national players, substantially more regional players and a boat load of local suppliers to service your company’s stores and facilities.

In this category companies are faced with one major dynamic.  The dynamic is that many times  waste removal contracts are signed at  the store or facility level.  Therefore, each store or facility has a separate expiration dates which is a nightmare to manage the more stores and facilities your company has. 

SafeSourcing has in-depth experience with the Waste Removal category.  We use our category knowledge to drive saving and mitigate your companies risks.  Savings are achieved by process improvement  as well as more competitive rates.  Risks are mitigated by nationally locked in fuel rates and contract expiration dates being consistent across your company’s stores and other facilities.

SafeSourcing can review your company’s historical data and provide a cost reduction and process improvement strategy that can be executed in most cases within 30 days.  We also see this strategy through the award of business. Typically reduction of cost for your company in this category is in excess of 20% 

SafeSourcing wants your company to complete successful eProcurement   events with us!  We have the category knowledge, vendors, tools and commitment to insure that your company’s eProcurement events are a success.  For more information on how we can help you with your waste removal 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.

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Why companies should choose SafeSourcing’s customer services for their fast track complex eProcurment events?

Friday, July 19th, 2013

Today’s post is by Ryan Melowic; Assistant Vice President of COE at SafeSourcing.

In business today most procurement teams aren’t always properly staffed.  Therefore, the cycles that would be needed to in order execute complex eProcurment events aren’t always available. In a recent example a client came to us with a project they needed completed accurately and quickly.  This project involved finding R&M vendors for their 450 plus stores.  The vendors needed to be broken down by industry and by location.  As such, SafeSourcing would need to communicate with over 400 vendors in a period of two weeks.

When faced with a tall order like this SafeSourcing has procedures we follow which will always get us to the finish line and they are as follows.

Understanding what the host would need to make their final decision.  Without knowing this it wouldn’t be possible to gather useful data for the host.  If the host wants to qualify the vendors they need to know what differentiates the vendors.  Examples might be size, experience, coverage and price, any combination of which may define the supplier.  The raw data is fine, but not a useful format in making decisions. However SafeSourcing reporting services can provide format adjustments that easily let us manipulate data to make decision making easier.

With the hosts needs defined we then lay out a proposed method and timeline in order to achieve their goals.  When using SafeSourcing our staff becomes an extension of your team.  To complete the project and timeline we assign multiple members of our team to one project such as an overall project manager and Center of Expertise associates.  So, if it is determined that it would take one team member 160 hours to complete the requirements of the project SafeSourcing might assign 4 member of our team to the project in order to finish in a week.  We have the staff needed to divide and concur you company’s fast track complex eProcurment events.

Finally, our reporting is second to none.  We insure the report package which your company is provided allow for clear decisive decisions by providing an executive summary with multiple award scenarios.  These decisions will be data driven and well thought out. 

For more information as to 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.

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What does SafeSourcing do in order to bring value to your company?s sourcing projects?

Wednesday, July 10th, 2013

Today?s post is by Ryan Melowic; Assistant Vice President of COE at SafeSourcing.??

Currently, I am preparing for a presentation with a potential customer who runs multiple restaurants and a commissary.? I want them to thoroughly understand the value that SafeSourcing could bring them during the process.? Therefore I?m going to break it down for everyone below.

First and foremost SafeSourcing brings deep and broad based category knowledge.? Whether we engage with the potential customer on restaurant supplies, food they use to create their menu or negotiating the way they buy power.? SafeSourcing has knowledge in typically all categories because our team knows the industry.

Second, SafeSourcing knows who the key vendors are in the industry.? We work to constantly update our database which has over 430,000 vetted suppliers.? In the database we track safety certifications, key company details, product offering detail and contact detail based on region.?? Our clients value SafeSourcing for the vendors we provide for their eProcurment events that they might not otherwise engage.

Third, our specifications are extremely detailed and believe are second to?n0 one.? We work with our host companies to properly spec out the items that will be involved with an eProcurment event.? Since we are familiar with the key requirements needed to properly build the specification in a large variety of industries, we understand the questions that need to be answered by the host in order to create a complete but user friendly specification.?? Additionally, we work to understand how the host currently procures their products so we can duplicate it electronically but in most cases improve upon it.

Finally, our process works!? We have many years of successful eProcurement experience in a wide variety of expense, capital, and services and for resale types of events to support our claims.? Just the fact that the typically return on investment in our services is greater than 18X speaks volumes as to our processes.

I?can?t wait to meet with this new potential client as I can?t think of any reason why they wouldn?t give us a chance to show them what we can do. And we guarantee that they will be cost neutral in the process

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.

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