Archive for the ‘Supply Chain Procurement’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Supplier management may be your most important issue during a time of economic recovery.

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

In the Monday May 10th issue of USA TODAY the Money Section carried an article titled “Suppliers can?t meet demand” by Paul Davidson. The article went on to discuss that the economic rebound has been so robust that manufacturers are struggling so much with demand that it is causing huge bottlenecks in the supply chain. The article also went on to discuss that companies are reluctant to hire to meet the demand because they are not totally convinced that the current rebound will last.

The retail supply chain is something that this author has posted on dozens of times from the importance of a robust retail supply chain to how to manage your relationships with current and new sources of supply. A significant part of that is to have secondary and tertiary sources of supply that you can rely upon. By example, during the most recent H1N1 flu outbreak, Safesourcing was able to provide multiple sources of surgical mask suppliers to one of our customers that had not been able to find them elsewhere for sales in their stores. They did not know of these suppliers. They are also a very large company. Although this particular issue was caused by panic buying, it is still a supply and demand problem and correlates very well to the USA TODAY article. The message here is, don?t wait until a time of panic or increased prosperity to work and plan for spikes in the supply chain that may cause your customers pain.

Following are five Safesourcing blog posts from 2008 that should provide some good base reading on this subject.

1.?Is critical thinking in supplier selection a key to quality auctions? You bet!
2.?Supplier Open Communication. A key to high quality e-procurement events.
3.?Supplier-selection-this-may-be-the-most-important-decision-you-make
4.?What is retail supply base management?
5.?What is the benefit of a large retail supplier database and how do companies use the data to support growing their spend with reverse auctions?

The SafeSourceIt? Retail Supplier Database contains over 380,000 vetted suppliers.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments

Posted in , , ,

Safesourcing Inc. completes a successful year two.

Friday, May 7th, 2010

It hardly seems possible that we launched our company two years ago. At the time there were indicators for those paying attention of trouble in the global economy but know one had any idea just how bad it was going to get. In hindsight what a time to launch a company. When customers and business partners asked me why, my response was if you are doing what you believe in and the results you promise are true, then there really is no bad time to launch a business.

Our promise has been the same from day one, to reduce the cost of goods and services regardless of a company?s size or the size of the category being sourced. And, while doing so improve quality, safety and environmental focus. Today, two years later our customers will attest to the fact that we have held true to that promise.

Following is a short list of accomplishments that we are very proud of.

1.?Over 700 educational blog posts relative to e-procurement issues of importance.
2.?Over 1500 useful procurement related wiki terms and definitions.
3.?Added an average of more than one new customer for every month in business.
4.?Grew our supplier data base to greater than 380,000 retail suppliers
5.?Sourced 100?s of categories from commodities to finished goods and services.
6.?Sourced categories as small as $5K with savings > 30%.
7.?Sourced categories as high as $80M.
8.?Never held an e-negotiation event that did not result in savings.
9.?Conducted every process in e-procurement including RFI, RFP and RFQ.
10.?Installed our product in Asia in a multi lingual implementation.
11.?Averaged over 24% savings over two years.
12.?Developed a unique process for sourcing small spends for the retail mid market.
13.?Grew our database to over a terabyte of data.
14.?Helped companies source with environmental and social consciousness
15.?Today released SafeContract? a fully featured hosted Contract Management System.

To our customers thank you for your support. We endeavor to earn your business every day. To our business partners thank you for your guidance during a tough economic period. To the retail industry our goal is to be your best vehicle for reducing costs and improving earnings with an increased focus on corporate social responsibility.

Thank You.

Posted in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

As a follow up yesterdays post, the next question was; what is the benefit of a large retail supplier database?

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

Retailers should have continuing success when running prior e-procurement events over again, one area of commonality that has historically made this difficult is a lack of new suppliers.

There is a proper way to insure the sustainability of your reverse auctions going forward.? Since you have already conducted or should have conducted your detailed discovery and analysis a robust retail supplier database will allow you to do the following.

1.?Conduct a detailed supplier discovery
a.?Rank suppliers
i.?Size
ii.?Experience
iii.?References
iv.?Environmental certifications
v.?Safety Certifications
2.?Develop a three year supplier game plan
a.?Develop a three year time line? for all categories
b.?Identify suppliers for each event over the three years
c.?Develop a three year rotation schedule for the selected suppliers.
3.?Role Play internally? each year for a test category
a.?Ask the following questions
i.?Who will you invite and why
ii.?Keep in mind the unique benefits of distributors and manufacturers
iii.?Discuss award the business strategies
iv.?Review alternate scenarios
v.?Review impact on non awarded suppliers
vi.?Determine which suppliers will be invited back
vii.?Determine what new suppliers from your database search will be invited next year

If you only have the same list you originally used to conduct your historical events, don?t expect savings the 2nd and 3rd time around if market conditions are similar. Or, you could call Safesourcing.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Posted in , , , ,

A Retailer partner asked me today how we built our retail supplier database SafeSourceIt?.

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

The first part of the answer is that you have to be a student of the database industry to understand what may be available to you without having to do a lot of work. At the end of the day a database is a list albeit a sophisticated list with lots of tables and joins and other database features that allow for the combination and use of data.

As an example, when looking to build a retail supplier database there is certain information you require in order for the data to be believable. UDDI (Yu-di) is an open industry initiative, sponsored by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), enabling businesses to publish service listings and discover each other and define how the services or software applications interact over the Internet. These service listings can take a number of different forms such as business registrations, for UDDI they are in the following formats.

1.?White Pages ? address, contact, and known identifiers;
2.?Yellow Pages ? industrial categorizations based on standard taxonomies;
3.?Green Pages ? technical information about services exposed by the business.

Combining these data which is readily available from a variety of sources provides a great start. From there the challenge to add other attributes that are important to you such as certifications, sic codes, detailed company descriptions, sales figures, products carried, experience, ratings etc.

This author has always believed that reinventing the wheel is? a misguided way to accomplish development initiatives and with all of the open source available on the market today and the cost of IT talent as high as it is we have to explore these alternatives to core development if time to market is a critical success factor.

So there you have it, my thinking and process for building our database. The next question is how we keep it fresh an updated. And that my friends are a trade secret.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Posted in , ,

A Retailer partner asked me today how we built our retail supplier database SafeSourceIt™.

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

The first part of the answer is that you have to be a student of the database industry to understand what may be available to you without having to do a lot of work. At the end of the day a database is a list albeit a sophisticated list with lots of tables and joins and other database features that allow for the combination and use of data.

As an example, when looking to build a retail supplier database there is certain information you require in order for the data to be believable. UDDI (Yu-di) is an open industry initiative, sponsored by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), enabling businesses to publish service listings and discover each other and define how the services or software applications interact over the Internet. These service listings can take a number of different forms such as business registrations, for UDDI they are in the following formats.

1. White Pages — address, contact, and known identifiers;
2. Yellow Pages — industrial categorizations based on standard taxonomies;
3. Green Pages — technical information about services exposed by the business.

Combining these data which is readily available from a variety of sources provides a great start. From there the challenge to add other attributes that are important to you such as certifications, sic codes, detailed company descriptions, sales figures, products carried, experience, ratings etc.

This author has always believed that reinventing the wheel is  a misguided way to accomplish development initiatives and with all of the open source available on the market today and the cost of IT talent as high as it is we have to explore these alternatives to core development if time to market is a critical success factor.

So there you have it, my thinking and process for building our database. The next question is how we keep it fresh an updated. And that my friends are a trade secret.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Posted in , ,

Why is e-negotiation not the most important initiative of all retail companies?

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

I have been in many meetings numbers of retail companies where charts that reflect savings from recent e-negotiation events of other retailers with similar formats are reviewed. As real as these results are, it is still difficult for most retailers to pull the trigger in order to give a new process a try. We just seem to get in our own way because we always have more important things to do.

We just have the ability to make things to difficult for ourselves.? Relative to e-negotiation, let?s assume that the CEO directs that he or she would like the cost of goods reduced. The project is then assigned to the Senior Vice President of Supply Chain or Chief Logistics Officer or Chief Procurement Officer or other senior executive. This is further assigned to the Vice President of Purchasing who in turn assigns it to the director of supply purchases. The director convenes a meeting of the buyers or category managers responsible for a variety of supply categories. In degrees of separation this is about 5 or 6 degrees from the person initiating the project. And now the excuses (delays) begin.

1.?We can?t damage our relationship with our incumbent suppliers.
2.?We get the best price in the industry right now.
3.?These guys don?t know what they are talking about.
4.?Don?t we have a tool that does this in our ERP system?
5.?We?ll sacrifice quality.
6.?We don?t have time for this.
7.?I?ll get back to you.
8.?Let?s create a cross functional team.
9.?I?m not going to be first.

If we go back to the CEO and explain what the situation is, one is likely to get a reply that says to the team JUST DO IT! Unfortunately that needs to be followed by; DO IT NOW!

From start to finish, an e-negotiation event such as a reverse auction should take no more than two weeks to run. This includes the entire process including an RFI if required from the day a retailer says go to the actual award of business. There are several requirements necessary to accomplish this that will eliminate the worry and mitigate the risk.

1.?A robust supplier database with safety and environmental focus.
2.?A robust event template library.
3.?An intuitive or intelligent tool for building an event quickly.
4.?An automated reporting tool to provide immediate event detail for review.

If you are really interested in improving your bottom line now, you are less than two weeks away from immediate measureable results.

We appreciate and look forward to your comments.

Posted in , , , ,

Hey retailers; how green are your suppliers? You can not manage something that you do not measure.

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

When we think about safety and eco standards relative to our supplier partners, I honestly believe that retailers say quietly to themselves; how are we supposed to monitor this with everything else we have to deal with in procuring products?

This issue becomes more complex when you consider that data may be required from your organization relative to your existing suppliers, data from your supplier as to their own interpretation of their adherence and practice and finally other external data that neither organization may have.

Reflecting on safety, the question that retailers should ask all suppliers old or new is pretty simple. What certifications do you carry relative to food safety such as Safe Quality Foods (SQF), Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), American Humane Certified and others? Another area to question should be regarding USDA and FDA inspection history.

Although Green Initiatives fall into the social consciousness area of a company, there are a variety of questions that can be asked in this area as well such as Green Seal, Eco-logo and Green Star certifications and participation in other partnerships that are environmentally focused.

A source that may make it easier for retailers would be to rely on their e-procurement solutions providers for this data if the provider has it included in their portfolio such as a supplier database. E-procurement specification templates can act as a form of scorecard for existing suppliers and potential news sources of supply if they are used as a repository for database queries relative to the above subject matter. This can become a type of automated RFI process which can save retailers a lot effort when trying to find additional sources of supply or when trying to drive cost down with existing suppliers. These data may also help to protect retailers from harmful litigation when products end up not being as safe as promised.

Can your e-procurement solutions provider provide these types of data on demand as a normal byproduct of your standard e-procurement process?

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Posted in , , , , , , , , , ,

Supplier scoring may provide Key Performance Indicators to the future.

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

Quality supplier selection is one of the most important areas of focus in order to insure quality and sustainability in the e-negotiation process.

Having a large database of available suppliers to drive sustainable results in e-procurement events such as reverse auctions is a critical success factor. Maybe even more critical is making sure that the suppliers once selected for participation in an event are of the highest quality, professional, responsive and have your best interests at heart. There are several areas in the early strategy stages of a reverse auction which if properly monitored can be leading key performance indicators as to future performance. These KPI?s are, the initial supplier response and supplier training schedule adherence. If suppliers are not interested enough during these early stages, that may be an indicator of future performance in other more critical areas such as on time delivery, back order management and documentation.

A simple process for measuring these KPI?s would be to measure the number of days between the project start date or initial supplier contact and the event start date, where the supplier has been sent an invitation but has not responded either positively or negatively. Maintaining an active status of response dates could be scored based on the number of days it takes invited suppliers to respond. Obviously the longer it takes to respond the lower KPI score the supplier would receive. Another possible KPI measurement or filter once the invitation has been accepted would be the number of days between the date accepted and the event start date, where the supplier has accepted an invitation but has not completed their training.

These are not intended to be punitive measures. In most cases suppliers will perform beyond your expectations. Sustainability and quality require measurements regardless of how simple.

As always we appreciate and look forward to your comments.

Posted in , ,

Today is a great time to take a look at your logistics planning and to try out e-procurement tools in order to reduce your freight costs.

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

According to Wikipedia Logistics is the management of the flow of goods, inforamtion and other resources, including energy and people, between the point of origin and the point of consumption in order to meet the requirements of consumers. So getting it there at the right price is an enormous challenge.

The constantly fluctuation cost of fuel is causing less stable freight rates and creating concern and worry? in the executive suite about transportation expenses. As such many senior executives are looking to e-procurement solution providers to automate and reduce costs in the execution of their shipping plans.

Reverse auction tools,? electronic RFI?s and other e-procurement tools are being used regularly in order? to? optimize bid collection by helping companies organize detailed information about their shipping patterns so they can? compare daily or weekly offers from vendors.

Believe it or not many companies continue to use time-consuming manual processes to schedule shipments and have not even consolidated their rate tables into spreadsheets let alone assembled data with easy to use e-procurement tools. Many companies also continue to use static rules based on full loads to LTFL to a destination to decide which carrier they should use. The problem with this is that rate, routes, and a particular haulers availability change daily if not more often.

Call your e-procurement solutions provider and ask how they can help.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Posted in , , , , ,

A procurement lesson! The CPSC issues Guidance on Repairing Homes with Problem Drywall from China.

Monday, April 5th, 2010

Last year I posted on offshore sourcing and the related problem of homes built with drywall from China. Now the CPSC has issued guidance as to what consumers should do. You can bet that this is not the end of this story. The first question I would be asking is who my contractor bought the drywall from in this country.

Inez Tenenbaum of the Consumer Product Safety Commission told the Associated Press, ?We want families to tear it all out and rebuild the interior of their homes, and they need to start this to get their lives started all over again.?

Below are some procurement recommendations:

1. Verify the name and address of the supplier or suppliers and their manufacturing addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and fax number. Conduct a cross-reference search of this information and the company name against other supply chain sites

2. Only deal with a company that has a specific company address and other professionally listed contact information.

3. Place multiple calls to the supplier at their provided contact numbers over a period of time and inquire about their company and the primary contacts. Ask for a management breakdown and to speak with at least two members of senior management.

4. Ask for references in the USA or another developed country that you will be doing business with.

5. Inform the supplier that you will be visiting their location for an office/factory tour. There are a number of third parties that can conduct a background checks on your behalf. These companies also have reference reports available. They are well worth the small associated cost.

6. Never agree to any up front payment without a sample or test of the products to be procured. These pre-shipment inspections are a must for any new supplier. You want to ensure that the goods are of adequate quality before placing or accepting any new products.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Posted in , , , , , ,

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »
© 2025 SafeSourcing