The Procuretech Podcast: Digital Procurement, Unwrapped

While many solutions providers in the procuretech space have focused their efforts on automating or simplifying operational procurement, my guest this week is from a company who have used this technology to bring AI-driven benefits to the spend analysis process. Instead of just providing a spend dashboard, Simfoni is seeking to distinguish itself from an increasingly crowded marketplace by offering spend classification, a suggested savings roadmap and risk analysis all in one. We discuss how this can lead to faster decision making, as well as exploring some of the limitations where the procurement skills of the person managing the category will still come into play. Just like a pilot's relationship with an aeroplane's auto-pilot capabilities, AI can do the heavy lifting, but the nuanced expertise of the procurement professional is vital. Leveraging AI to Power Smarter Spend Intelligence: Sreeram Venkitakrishnan from Simfoni 3:10 What is AI-powered spend intellgence? 5:41 I ask Sreeram whether AI capabilities are really that advanced when it comes to classification of PO data and the ability to categorise vendors and individual POs into taxonomies or buckets of similar spend. 10:15 Can a machine or artificial intelligence perform risk analysis? Or is it more around accelerating decision making through making certain pieces of data more accessible? 13:31 We explore how using AI and machine learning can locate the most lucrative cost savings opportunities, which could vastly speed up the amount of time to come up with an expense reduction roadmap from an initial spend analysis. 15:20 Sreeram explains the concept of "should cost analysis", and how market intelligence can be utilised to project what direct materials should cost based on market price intelligence and various sources of commodity price data. 17:32 We discuss how tools like this can facilitate the ability to "hit the ground running" in a new category management position, especially in cases where Buyers and CMs don't have experience of purchasing that particular category before. Will Simfoni and similar tools enable access to more roles for experienced Category Managers with a more generalist background? 20:17 Of the 3 key pillars that Simfoni offers, I ask Sreeram his thoughts on which of them will have the most profound impact over the years to come. 24:10 I muse about some of the same topics coming up in several different interviews that I've done for the podcast and how this is very unlikely to be a coincidence! If you want to stay relevant, ensure you're aware of what these are! How to connect with Sreeram: https://simfoni.com (Simfoni website) https://www.linkedin.com/in/sreeram-venkitakrishnan-6aba9459/ (Sreeram's LinkedIn profile) How to connect with James: https://jamesmeadsconsulting.com/ (James Meads Consulting website) https://linkedin.com/in/james-meads/ (James' LinkedIn profile) https://bookme.name/jamesmeads/lite/initial-consultation (Book a Call with James) https://linkedin.com/showcase/procuretechpodcast (Follow The Procuretech Podcast on LinkedIn)

Larger organisations tend to use enterprise level ERP systems such as SAP and Oracle, neither of which are particularly user-friendly. In fact, the average person who only uses them to request, approve or receive goods and services will usually find them cumbersome to the point that they find ways around them. Organisations typically react to this by offering solutions such as punch-out catalogues and P-cards, or even third-party integrators and BPO to deal with tail spend. Smaller and medium-sized organisations either don't have an ERP system (particularly for rapidly scaling startups), or they have a sales / accounts-oriented solution like Xero, Sage or Netsuite. In all of these situations, there isn't really much opportunity to have visibility of requisition and order tracking, as well as what is being spent against which budget in a format easily visible to users and budget holders. My guest this week is the CEO of Canadian scale-up Procurify, who are making waves through their super user-friendly P2P software which facilitates a more visible "spend culture" in organisations through its smartphone app first technology and easy to user interface. How Well Designed P2P Software Can Lead to Improved Spend Awareness: Aman Mann from Procurify2:14 Aman begins the interview by walking us through what he views as being a good corporate spend culture, and examples of where it can easily go wrong. 5:47 We explore the differences between a healthy corporate culture of spend transparency vs. a more controlling, top-down approach of strict spend control, and how the former can result in a much more autonomy and less bureaucracy. 9:35 Uncontrolled spend vs. transparent spend - what is the difference and what can cause the former vs. the latter? 16:00 We look into two examples: A rapidly growing company that has no ERP system vs. a well-established organisation that has a legacy ERP system in place that does not really cater well to procurement's needs. I ask Aman how Procurify's system can drive benefits and what time savings this typically provides. 22:18 What to do if you already have an existing, legacy ERP system in place? If this has a finance module, what options are there to use a P2P system such as Procurify that has been designed with procurement in mind when there is still a need to use legacy systems for accounts and invoice processing? 25:56 Simple P2P functions such as approvals of requisitions and POs and performing goods receipts have only fairly recently become commonplace via mobile app, whereas travel & expense software has had functionality to submit reports in an app for years. I ask for Aman's thoughts around why this has taken so long to catch up. 29:27 How Aman sees Procurify's product as just a tool which can help as an enabler of how organisations can succeed through company culture and mindset. How to connect with Aman: https://www.procurify.com (Procurify website) How to connect with James: https://jamesmeadsconsulting.com/ (James Meads Consulting website) https://linkedin.com/in/james-meads/ (James' LinkedIn profile) https://bookme.name/jamesmeads/lite/initial-consultation (Book a Call with James) https://linkedin.com/showcase/procuretechpodcast (Follow The Procuretech Podcast on LinkedIn)

Expenses for items such as individual company mobile phone usage, printing and copaying is typically billed centrally against a centrally negotiated contract. The costs incurred, however, are often both a mystery and black hole of unaudited, unchecked invoices. They needn't be. All organisations can access individual employee expense data if they so wish. The reality is that few of them do. Which is really a lost opportunity, when you consider all of the anomalies, discrepancies and consumption-driven cost reduction which can be attained here through just having the right data. My guest this week, Anthony Devine, explains how organisations can, through the power of well presented data and a culture of transparency, use this data to drive awareness of cost and usage, and make a serious dent into the overall spend on these services. Driving 30% Savings with Deep Data on Employee Expenses: Anthony Devine from Finfo tells us how 2:50 Anthony tells a fascinating story of how he discovered this was a problem from a very different original career path he had been on. 4:45 What does Finfo define as indirect employee expenses for the purpose of what the tool can track? 6:31 How can these expenses be broken down to show what each employee or username is consuming? What are the means and mechanisms used to be able to get hold of the data and present it in an easily understandable format? 8:59 What is preventing the client from accessing this data themselves? Anthony's answer is surprising in that the barriers to entry are relatively low but the penetration rate of clients actually requesting this data natively is very low. 11:08 I ask Anthony how they are able to fulfil the data privacy requirements of GDPR, and what data they are actually able to legally display within their own organisation. 14:47 Anthony walks us through how Finfo onboards a new client, and how they go about giving them visibility of the data which could generate an easy return on investment with regard to going after the low hanging fruit. 18:14 The savings figure in Year 1 that Anthony alludes to is an eye-popping number you won't want to miss if you're an IT or telecoms procurement professional! 21:41 Beyond year 1, how does Finfo manage to deliver value beyond implementing the initial quick wins? 23:01 How procurement category managers can benefit from a third party provider (such as Finfo) as a means to having better knowledge of their competitive position with regard to their contract terms with telecomms and printer/copier suppliers. 26:05 I ask Anthony to give me the elevator pitch of how Procurement Managers should be positioning this to persuade budget holders to invest in tools to assist with cost transparency  How to connect with Anthony: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonydevinefinfo/ (Anthony's LinkedIn profile) https://www.finfo.io (finfo website) How to connect with James: https://jamesmeadsconsulting.com/ (James Meads Consulting website) https://linkedin.com/in/james-meads/ (James' LinkedIn profile) https://bookme.name/jamesmeads/lite/initial-consultation (Book a Call with James) https://linkedin.com/showcase/procuretechpodcast (Follow The Procuretech Podcast on LinkedIn)

Buying smart, and measuring total value rather than just price, is a popular concept right now. And for good reason, given the supply chain fragilities that the Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare. Nonetheless, the automotive industry is one that's renowned for being particularly cutthroat in its often combative relationships with suppliers. My guest on today's show, Dr. Gisela Linge, is a strategy consultant who has over 10 years of experience in the automotive industry. So, it's all the more relevant to talk to someone with her experience about how sourcing smart and collaborating with innovative startups can move the needle. We discuss how some of the process and regulatory roadblocks can be removed to ensure procurement and R&D are able to work with the most innovative companies in the space without having their hands tied by impossible T&Cs, bureaucracy and book-length contracts. Sourcing Smart and Successfully Collaborating with Startups - an Interview with Dr. Gisela Linge from Strategy Meets Reality2:09 I ask Gisela for a short intro of how she got into the space of strategy, specifically in procurement 5:18 Buying smart rather than buying cheap - how does it work in an industry that is as cutthroat as the automotive sector? 8:21 Do large organisations such as OEMs and Tier 1s actually have the self-awareness to see the opportunities of how they can benefit from working with startups, or do they require external help from consultancies to understand the lay of the land?  13:07 Will we as time goes on see a more open interface between ERP systems and individual apps offering specific solutions that can integrate with them? 15:27 We look at examples of where companies do have a strategy of working with smaller and more innovative startups, but can often become unstuck with the usual big company compliance and legal bureaucracy. This can prevent startups from getting a foothold into these organisations as vendors, so we look at how this could play out and what needs to change, including an example of how Gisela overcame this in a previous position she held. 19:20 We touch on one of my favourite topics - I promise I didn't lead the conversation this way(!) - of pragmatism over rigid process and how there must be more flexibility within legal and internal audit departments to make these collaborations a success. 21:58 I ask Gisela her experiences of being able to convince legal colleagues to be more pragmatic, in the quest of being able to work with startups who don't have the bandwidth to sign up to standard large corporation T&Cs and contractual requirements.  23:46 Exploring the opportunity of using risk management software to assess risk level of working with a specific vendor, and how this can be used to procurement's advantage in preparing the business case to gain buy-in from Legal or any other sceptical internal business partners. 24:47 I ask Gisela for a tip for buyers who are struggling to get their stakeholders to agree to working with smaller startups to drive innovation. How to connect with Gisela: https://www.linkedin.com/in/giselalinge/ (Gisela's LinkedIn profile) https://www.strategymeetsreality.com (Strategy Meets Reality website) How to connect with James: https://jamesmeadsconsulting.com/ (James Meads Consulting website) https://linkedin.com/in/james-meads/ (James' LinkedIn profile) https://bookme.name/jamesmeads/lite/initial-consultation (Book a Call with James) https://linkedin.com/showcase/procuretechpodcast (Follow The Procuretech Podcast on LinkedIn)

Tail spend is a huge, untapped opportunity that you're probably not exploiting to its full potential. If you're following the 80/20 rule, then managing the tail isn't going to be a key priority when it comes to resource allocation. Meaning a lot of opportunity goes to waste. Especially if headcount is being cut and procurement teams are having to deal with bigger workloads. My guest this week is Kevin Frechette, CEO and Co-Founder of Fairmarkit, who were recently recognised by Gartner as one of their "4 Cool Vendors" in the procurement tech space. I also recently wrote https://www.fairmarkit.com/blog/the-significance-of-tail-spend-in-a-down-economy (a piece for Fairmarkit's blog) all about leveraging tail spend in a recession, if anyone is interested to read my thoughts there! Strategies for Dealing with your Tail: How AI-powered Automation fits into the Mix2:20 In light of their recognition by Gartner as one of 4 “cool vendors”, I asked Kevin what in his view makes a vendor cool. 4:44 Kevin explains how Fairmarkit came into the space of offering tail spend solutions. It's an interesting story that shows a great example of pivoting what their initial idea was, to actually offering what the market is asking for to solve a specific challenge that kept cropping up in their discussions. 7:10 Kevin walks through the business case of why tail spend is a great untapped opportunity, and how a lot of the existing procuretech solutions were not addressing this as an opportunity. 8:20 We walk through some of the reasons why there is so much cash left on the table when it comes to tail spend and why organisations often overlook this as a valuable source of cost savings. 9:28 Is there a justification to allocate procurement resource to tail spend? If you can't add headcount, especially under these economic circumstances, then how do you decide what to tackle and what not to? And for what you're not tackling, what opportunity does this then offer to technology as a solution? 11:20 What actually constitutes tail spend? Is there a single definition? And what about services as well as goods? 14:13 What are the advantages of using a tech solution such as Fairmarkit vs. just leveraging other non-technical solutions such as BPO, catalogues, MRO and FM integrators and Group Purchasing Organisations? 18:16 We explore finding where the "sweet spot” is between value of purchase order and available resources in procurement teams to be able to leverage a tech solution like Fairmarkit to drive value and reduce sourcing cycle time of tail spend items. Kevin then walks through an example of how the process would then work when running a sourcing request through Fairmarkit. 20:50 Dealing with data quality and how Fairmarkit can manage non-perfect descriptions of what requisitioners are trying to source. Kevin explains how machine learning will improve the ability to work with imperfect data as the amount of requisitions Fairmarkit processes continues to increase. 26:26 We discuss Fairmarkit's strategy of moving beyond just tail spend to offer a more end-to-end solution, and what the driving factors behind it were. 28:02 Kevin explains the concept of “intelligent sourcing”, and how data and automation can be leveraged to streamline and optimise the sourcing process. 30:32 Are clients using the productivity gains achieved through using the tool to redeploy FTEs onto more strategic procurement activity? Or are they just using the benefits to reduce procurement headcount? 34:01 A final example given by Kevin focuses on the concept of sourcing smarter. How to connect with Kevin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-frechette-49652921/ (Kevin's LinkedIn profile) https://www.fairmarkit.com (Fairmarkit website) How to connect with James: https://jamesmeadsconsulting.com/ (James Meads Consulting website) https://linkedin.com/in/james-meads/ (James' LinkedIn profile)...

Understanding what you spend is the most important part of strategic procurement. Without this, you can't do much else. You're shooting in the wind, not really knowing whether what you're tackling are the ripest opportunities. While spend analysis tools have been around for a while, they're now becoming old hat. The new generation provides spend analytics and guides you to where the best opportunities may be hiding in your spend data. Taking it to a completely new level, the ability to combine spend analytics with process mining is game changing. If you're not sure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_mining (what process mining is), it will save what would previously have taken days, if not weeks of work to find holes and inefficiencies in your processes. The P2P process is a classic case of where this can be implemented effectively, and combined with spend analytics to drive both performance improvement and cost reduction. That's what my guest today, Samir Kharkan, CEO of German startup SCALUE is here to talk about. The Killer Punch for Extracting the Most Value: Combining Process Mining with Spend Analytics 2:40 I start off by asking Samir the same question as I asked Kevin last week, and that is: what makes a vendor “cool”? 3:14 Spend ANALYSIS vs. spend ANALYTICS. What's the difference, and how does analytics drive businesses forward more than just a standard analysis dashboard? How SCALUE and similar tools (see episode 3 with Eddie from Seaforth Analytics) differentiate themselves from the first wave of spend cube software 6:54 What is Process Mining, and how does this add further benefits beyond the spend analytics function in terms of analysing business processes to view potential inefficiencies and non-compliances? 8:30 Does a powerful tool such as spend analytics combined with process mining enable CPOs or CFOs to employ less experienced procurement managers now that software can do most of the heavy lifting? Spoiler: the answer is NO! 11:45 I ask Samir to walk through what the must-haves or prerequisites are on the customer's side to ensure that implementation of a tool like SCALUE is successful. Samir's "Captain of the ship" analogy is absolute gold! 15:47 We drill down into why this type of solution specifically solves a common problem for mid-sized companies, when considering this with the captain, ship and compass analogy that Samir so eloquently explains. 17:53 Is spend analytics and process mining also a relevant tool to use in professional service industries where there is no product being manufactured? 20:43 We drill down into an example of where an automotive supplier discovered 30% maverick spend in indirect services through the data made available by using SCALUE's solution. Samir walks us through how they discovered it and then put measures in place to reduce this. 26:00 Let's talk payback calculations…how long does it take for customers to typically see return on investment? 27:18 Samir gives a great example of how looking at invoice discrepancies based on drill down of incoterms can often give return on investment in just one swoop. How to connect with Samir: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samir-kharkan-6b641a40/ (Samir's LinkedIn profile) https://scalue.com/en/ (SCALUE website) How to connect with James: https://jamesmeadsconsulting.com/ (James Meads Consulting website) https://linkedin.com/in/james-meads/ (James' LinkedIn profile) https://bookme.name/jamesmeads/lite/initial-consultation (Book a Call with James) https://linkedin.com/showcase/procuretechpodcast (Follow The Procuretech Podcast on LinkedIn)

The topic of data is like a boomerang. It always seems to come back into every discussion when we get into the nuts and bolts of implementing a digital transformation in procurement or even just implementing a software solution to get more visibility into spend analytics. Problem is, investing in it often doesn't yield a visible payback that can be directly tracked to a future P&L statement. So, how can data management ever become top of the agenda? My guest today argues that a significant part of the solution is being able to tell the right story to the right people, to help them better understand the implications of NOT doing this. The message is clear. At the point of putting together a business case and a budget appropriation request for implementing procurement tech, getting your data ducks in a row needs to be an integral part of the calculation. Scott Taylor joins me on this week's podcast to help explain why. Why Implementing a Digital Procurement Solution Must Include A Data Strategy: Scott Taylor is The Data Whisperer1:47 What problems does Scott see when it comes to the causes and the effects of poor or inconsistent data? 5:53 Master data - what are the different types of data in the procurement space and where do the common pitfalls tend to come from? And how can feeding garbage into a procurement tech solution impact your implementation of a digital transformation? 8:46 Why is data management an important component in the various different procurement initiatives that are buzzwords at the moment? 12:02 Scott explains his "4C" concept and how it helps businesses to understand their potential flaws in master data management. 18:12 If we assume that cleaning your data is something that's a non-negotiable, I ask Scott how to approach the discussion with key decision makers. Specifically, how to pitch to CFOs to get buy-in to make the investment in something that doesn't have an immediate, demonstrable payback. 21:10 Scott explains why if digital transformation is part the journey of where a company wants to go, it requires highly structured data to successfully reach this destination. 22:11 Why selling data cleaning as a stand-alone project is likely to fail, and how to make the case for including data management and structure in the budget of any large-scale procuretech investment. 23:59 When it comes to data management, do smaller businesses have the advantage over larger corporations because they have fewer legacy systems and less data to manage, or do the larger businesses have the upper hand because they have the resources and expertise to stay one step ahead? 27:41 As a final question, I ask Scott about whether he thinks data scientists will be an integral part of procurement organisations going forward. How to connect with Scott: https://www.metametaconsulting.com (Meta Meta Consulting website) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVQ1YhjNqc77GVsb3Xs4tvw (Scott's YouTube Channel) https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottmztaylor/ (Scott's LinkedIn profile) How to connect with James: https://jamesmeadsconsulting.com/ (James Meads Consulting website) https://linkedin.com/in/james-meads/ (James' LinkedIn profile) https://bookme.name/jamesmeads/lite/initial-consultation (Book a Call with James) https://linkedin.com/showcase/procuretechpodcast (Follow The Procuretech Podcast on LinkedIn)

There are lots of options out there for software to facilitate and digitise our P2P processes, perform e-sourcing or manage our contracts more effectively. However, the surprising omission up until recently was having something that gets us out of our inboxes. Procurement still relies heavily on email, and the volume we receive means that important stuff can easily be missed. Storing Excel and Word documents, as well as project updates and meeting minutes on Sharepoint was able to do that to a certain extent. But let's be honest, Sharepoint's interface is pretty clunky. It's also difficult to find stuff on there unless you've got an experienced administrator. The solution? One answer is to have a cloud-based SaaS app which shares project updates, stakeholder and supplier communication and delivery objectives all in one space. That's what Richard Sains, my guest today, has developed. He's one of the growing contingent of former procurement professionals turned procuretech entrepreneurs! ! Note - my audio is a bit sketchy on this one due to me recording this outside of my usual podcasting space. Improving our Productivity for Day-to-Day Communuication and Project Management: Richard Sains from Acada1:43 Rich explains what ultimately drove him to make the switch from being a category manager to a SaaS entrepreneur. 4:54 We discuss the biggest changes over the last 5 or so years in terms of developments in the procuretech space, and how the continuing trend seems to be the faster, leaner, more agile tools that are “best-in-breed” modular, niche solutions.  With this comes some unique challenges in terms of integrating all of these together to get them to communicate, but technology is evolving to deal with this.  Swapping things out and replacing them one-by-one makes it easier to upgrade on a modular basis rather than a major IT project each time there is an upgrade. 7:52 I ask Rich what he sees as the most common forms of waste or inefficiency in procurement teams and to what extent he sees automation or technology as the solution to combat some of these challenges? 12:01 Some inefficiencies of existing working practices will have been laid bare as a result of Covid-19 and the immediate shift in many cases to remote work. What therefore are the biggest challenges to larger organisations if we assume remote work in some form is here to stay? 14:24 Should technology be seen as a facilitator or productivity enabler? Or will it completely replace some manual tasks in their entirety and eliminate some operational or tactical procurement roles? 18:32 Rich in his own words describes Acada as an innovative system for procurement people to manage their workload and give visibility to their leaders and stakeholders. He expands on what he means by this here. 22:29 There are overlaps and similarities to some of the other tools out there, a couple of them have even been on the show. I'm thinking specifically Tarmo from ProcurementFlow (Episode 2) and Pierre from Per Angusta (Episode 13). Rich explains any specific inefficiencies or value adds that he feels Acada solves, that other SaaS tools in the procurement tech space can't do.  25:56 Acada is a pretty new tool compared to some of the other solutions out there, so what are their next steps in terms of growth or development? 28:12 Rich walks through the business case of if I was a CFO, how would he convince me to buy Acada as a tool? How to connect with Richard: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rsains/ (Richard's LinkedIn Profile) Send Richard an email https://www.acadatech.com (Acada website) How to connect with James: https://jamesmeadsconsulting.com/ (James Meads Consulting website) https://linkedin.com/in/james-meads/ (James' LinkedIn profile) https://bookme.name/jamesmeads/lite/initial-consultation (Book a Call with James) https://linkedin.com/showcase/procuretechpodcast (Follow The Procuretech Podcast on LinkedIn)

Innovation never stops. Alongside the tools that are making manual processes digital, there are also a new breed of tools which are fundamentally changing the way we go about our job.  How we structure and carry out tenders hasn't really changed much over the last 20 years. E-sourcing tools have been around since the late 1990s, and have been pretty mainstream for the past 15 or so years (I used them myself way back in 2003)! There are a lot of cool apps out there that are disrupting the old-school world of procurement. One of these concentrates on simplifying, shortening and using game theory to influence the outcome of sourcing activities.  Bid Ops was recognised for its disruptive contribution to the procuretech space when it won Best Startup award at the 2019 Digital Procurement World conference in Amsterdam. This week, I interview Founder and CEO Edmund Zagorin on how they've grown, how Covid-19 has changed the landscape and how they're growing despite cuts to procurement and IT budgets through an innovative business model that delivers value from day 1 to their client base. Making e-Sourcing Faster and More Effective using AI and Game Theory: Edmund Zagorin from Bid Ops2:09 Bid Ops recently won the best startup award at DPW 2019.  So, has that propelled growth for BidOps, or is it more down to Covid-19 and everyone needing to deliver more, faster, and with fewer resources? 5:42 I ask Edmund how does BidOps differentiates itself from a standard eSourcing tool e.g. SAP Ariba for large organisations, or MarketDojo and RFP360 as a more accessible, cloud based solution for all businesses. We talk about “Best-in-Breed” cloud based solutions and how the “unbundling" of procurement tech is niching down into more specific applications focusing on one specific area. 12:47 BidOps straddles the two niches of being an eSourcing tool and also a platform to utilise AI for simulation of negotiations. I ask Edmund what he sees as being the biggest challenge here, and whether he sees a move-away from more traditional ERP systems for managing RFQs and tenders. Edmund's answer about using technology for Sourcing versus using it for P2P optimisation is an interesting insight. Sourcing offers so many opportunities beyond traditional automation and digitisation of operational and transactional practices. 18:15 Budgets are tight right now, so I ask Edmund to tell us a little about how Bid Ops has tried to combat this with a more innovative pricing model. 23:00 It's a bit of a hornet's nets from a legal perspective when you work on a gain share model. How does one prove a saving? Because not everything has a last paid price… 25:58 Edmund talks about having to do more with less, and how using gain share to enable immediate implementation of a solution without a lengthy budget approval process is allowing teams to drive results faster. Especially in times where headcount and budgetary constraints are a very real issue for many procurement teams. 27:07 How to deal with sceptics: how is Bid Ops able to distinguish and differente itself from some of the more traditional e-sourcing tools which some of us in the procurement space have had a love/hate relationship with over the years?  There's a great discussion here about how mutually de-risking the first quote and using game theory in negotiations can lead to a more successful (and shorter, more convenient) outcome from sourcing tenders. 32:17 Finally, I ask Edmund the best way to get in touch to learn more about Bid Ops.  If you're interested in giving this tool a try, as a certified partner I can also help you learn more about what it can do and connect you to the Bid Ops team for a demo. How to connect with Edmund: https://bidops.com (Bid Ops website) https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmund-zagorin-41291b13/ (Edmund's LinkedIn profile) Send Edmund an Email How to connect with James:...

We're BACK! We kick off series 2 of The Procuretech Podcast with with a mini-series examining three different Supplier Relationship Management platforms. The first one we're taking a closer look at is Danish startup LeanLinking, and my guest on this week's show is their CEO, Lars Kuch Pedersen. Why supplier performance data can't just be measured in hard KPIs Lars begins by explaining how he came to set up LeanLinking following a successful career in procurement as a Regional Category Manager for a pan-European hardware retailer. One of the problems he was commonly faced with during his career in procurement was being on the other side of the table to Account Managers from his suppliers who almost always had better data on him as a customer than he did on them as a supplier. Was the company generally happy with the supplier's performance? Was quality performance acceptable? Were they easy to deal with when it came to scheduling deliveries or accuracy of invoices? How responsive were they when there were quality or delivery problems? The truth was, other than asking every single stakeholder individually, by email, he had no way of knowing. Lars quickly realised that he was far from alone with this problem. Most large companies don't have good supplier performance data outside of the standard on-time-in-full (OTIF) measurements. Hard vs. soft performance data Spend data and delivery performance data is (relatively) easy to get hold of. In most companies, quality data can also be extracted from ERP systems. The challenges come when it comes to more subjective, "soft" data around performance. How do you measure that in an ERP system or in supplier performance KPIs? Without surveying stakeholders individually, it's extremely difficult. How do you measure hard data for ease of cooperation, responsiveness of suppliers? Some categories of spend make it harder to track Service Level Agreements (SLAs) or KPIs. How do you track the performance of a marketing agency? Much trickier than measuring the performance of a raw materials vendor. Managing performance of direct vs. indirect suppliers You can't measure OTIF and corrective action incidents on indirect spend like you can on raw materials. Here, you're much more reliant on nurturing and collecting stakeholder feedback as part of the supplier review and SRM process. What are the concrete problems that need to be overcome to improve the overall cooperation with a supplier? These are often not visible when looking at hard KPIs. Not doing proper SRM = value leakage If you're not constructively measuring supplier performance, you're missing out on driving value. What is the cost of poor supplier relationships? Yes, it's difficult to put a cost on, but not doing it is leaving opportunities on the table. Non-conformance reports or a ticketing system can be managed within LeanLinking. For example, a storesperson can raise non-conformance tickets for packaging issues, or incomplete deliveries of spare parts. What about SRM through ERP systems or enterprise level all-in-one Procurement suites? Lars explains how ERPs are not really built with Procurement in mind and don't offer the opportunity to measure supplier performance. SAP for example have acknowledged this and are opening up their interface to integrate best-of-breed procurement solutions as a compatible add-on to their ERP suite. Likewise, the major enterprise level suites for managing procurement are more focused on Source-to-Pay and don't really touch 360° supplier relationship management. Scorecarding and sharing agendas with stakeholders and suppliers to increase collaboration is not a feature built into these systems. How do "growth" sectors benefit from SRM if cost is not a major focus? In sectors such as tech and pharma, Lars explains that there is less focus on cost savings and more focus on value creation within procurement when it comes to supplier innovation and collaboration....

Historically, there wasn't much technology out there to deal with indirect services spend, both from a sourcing and supplier contract lifecycle management perspective. This has started to change recently. But is it possible to manage both strategic, corporate level service agreements as well as more tactical, tail spend and one-time buys all in the same platform? My guest on this week's podcast is Fabian Heinrich from Berlin-based startup Mercanis. They claim to have a solution for both. We dive into this and find out to what extent their platform can support these requirements. SRM for Services: Managing both Strategic and Tail Spend Procurement volumes have massively shifted from goods to services over the past 10 years, as young tech companies have grown into major corporate entities. Furthermore, IT and marketing have become increasingly important categories and now account for significantly more spend than they used to. How are the sourcing requirements for services different from goods? A services e-sourcing platform needs to be more flexible, due to the very diverse range of products being purchased under the different types of services. Workflows are different in many cases, depending on the type of services and the type of contracts being sourced. Subcategories can often be varied and diverse, and taxonomies are much more difficult to apply to services spend. What's more, the stakeholder collaboration and the level of the relationship between procurement and their internal business partners by necessity requires much more focus during the end-to-end sourcing process. Managing the lifecycle of services spend and its complexity I asked Fabian about how to ensure that the lifecycle of services procurement is reflected, and some of the important characteristics that need to be monitored and taken into consideration. There's the classic trap of having a corporate procurement team negotiate a central or global contract that then ends up on Sharepoint or on a C-Drive that nobody in satellite locations knows about. Stakeholders and local buyers then just continue doing whatever they've always done! Fabian explained that a sourcing tool for services wasn't enough, and that some features from an SRM or contract lifecycle system were necessary to ensure that it was a rounded platform to satisfy the needs further downstream. The "self-service" model for tactical purchasing and one-time buys Just like catalogues have been common for buying tail spend on indirect goods e.g. MRO and office supplies, a guided buying process to enable stakeholders to "self-serve" themselves on smaller, less strategic purchases or one-time buys is a feature Mercanis realised was absolutely essential. If one of the goals is to free strategic procurement teams from the day-to-day operational work of sourcing non-repeatable requirements and low spend, high volume items, then something similar to how this works for goods would need to be part of the user experience. How to avoid maverick spend for local, site level purchases Strategic spend is (usually) well managed within larger organisations. The problem generally comes once you get down to the decentralised areas of spend. These are often categories or suppliers managed at country or local level. Mercanis has enabled the end users through guided buying to have a better user experience when seeking to buy services locally. This enables the end user to buy from compliant sources, and to find a supplier faster, than having to go through this process in an analogue (Google search and email) RFQ. The other advantage from a procurement perspective is that this frees up resources in strategic procurement teams to focus on the activities which have the most business impact. What preparation is necessary to ensure success with a digital services procurement platform? Like most things in life, you get out from it what you put in. With digital procurement software, this

Business relationships at their heart are all about people, when you put the commercials, the products or services, and the mechanism or process used to manage those relationships to one side. Managing people-to-people relationships, whether with stakeholders or suppliers, through email chains and Excel sheets isn't particularly effective. Especially when it comes to continuity and longer term collaboration based on mutual trust. Sheldon Mydat, CEO of Suppeco is my guest this week to walk us through how stakeholder relationships and supplier development can flourish when these relationships can be managed in one single place. Stakeholder and Supplier Collaboration Without Emails and Excel Emulating relationships that are based on human behaviour is tricky to do with spreadsheets and presentations. It's highly subjective but it also is key to driving successful, incremental value. But this value often gets lost because it's unstructured. Sheldon explains how he built a tech platform based off the back of what he's tried to build Excel formulas and macros to measure: the performance-related benefits to some of the more subjective areas of supplier relationship management (SRM). Value Creation through a structured approach to SRM The challenge of course is ensuring that everybody uses a given tool or process to work with SRM, instead of defaulting to type. So, what's in it for the stakeholder or the supplier to use a digital tool? If we look at contract and spend management, we're looking at the bottom of the pyramid. But if we look at the top of the pyramid, we look at other ways to create value such as innovation, shared R&D, different areas of performance management. The result is that these activities all drive the bottom line value at the bottom of the pyramid. Creating a structure and a visibility across all of this activity is key, so as those affected can actually see it bearing fruit. Sheldon uses "just-in-time" (JIT) as a great example of how supply chains have been primarily driven by cost savings activities rather than collaboration. Bringing stakeholders across the whole supply chain into the relationship and to actively drive value and collaborate together is the opportunity to break this cycle. The triangle between stakeholder, supplier and procurement Sheldon cites an article from McKinsey about how digital procurement platforms can drive incremental value of between 3% and 10% annually because of the ability to drive instant collaboration between the three points of this triangle. Having a structured process to work on whichever activity it may be is key, and part of that process is clearly being able to work in a platform that enables this. Monthly or quarterly business reviews are often talking shops, and can be the very thing that holds you back because they are too rigid. The savings achievable through immediate and ongoing collaboration outside of formal meetings are real. However, the discipline and the structure to log in and actually use the platform is key to success. Sheldon explains that there is a deliberate intention not to spam users with notifications, and to have smart links in any email communication to avoid the need for users having to log in and enter a password each time to check a project. Is there a niche or sector that real-time SRM works for best? Community-wide engagement is key, and ensuring that everyone is aligned that any digital collaboration platform is the single source of truth is absolutely essential. While certain sectors or departments may be better resourced and tech savvy, the fundamentals for success are always to ensure that the process of how SRM is run and administered within an organisation is the secret sauce. Sheldon cites the construction industry as one sector which has struggled in the past with SRM, but is now starting to make considerable strides to develop this. How to convince CFOs to invest in something that...

AI is a term that often scares anyone who is not familiar with the technology and the application. In this episode, we're going to cover some of the different use cases for AI in the procurement space, and then dive into master data as a specific case study. Adriano Garibotto, Co-Founder and Chief Sales & Marketing Officer of Italian procurement data management company Creactives is my guest on this week's show to break down this not-as-scary-as-it-sounds technology! Using AI to Clean Procurement Data Creactives originally set out as a cost reduction consultancy for indirect procurement back in the early 2000s, focusing specifically around optimisation of MRO spend in manufacturing businesses. The constant challenge of poor data, inaccurate or missing taxonomies and battling with free text PO descriptions is what ultimately led them down the path of creating a software business to solve this problem at scale. Origins of what Creactives is today comes from some of the early stage AI utilised by their consultancy around 15 years ago. Together with a collaboration with the University of Verona, they then doubled down on developing a software solution which can help to classify, clean and structure complex master data from multiple ERP systems and sources. Some examples of what AI can do in the Procurement space AI must be applied to specific fields to provide tangible solutions. The fundamentals of procurement can be broadly classified into the following 4 questions: What am I buying? From whom do I buy? What price am I paying? Who is doing the buying? Answering these questions is not easy, especially in large, enterprise level organisations with legacy systems i.e. different ERP systems, multiple languages and complex supply chains. AI can play a strategic role in the harmonisation of the data and helping to create a unique visibility. This is the fundamental building block which leads to other opportunities to use AI in the procurement space. How can AI be leveraged as a catalyst for positive change? Addressing resistance to technology is a change management issue, as Adriano explains. At its core, getting the right organisational structure in place is the key to success. Data preparation historically required a large amount of work from procurement professionals. There is the classic Pareto of 80% of the time being taken doing the preparation, and only 20% conducting the actual added value activity for which the clean data is necessary. If AI is able to do the lion's share of the 80%, this then allows strategic resources to be freed up to focus on more value-added activities which can actually implement the changes and the projects to drive the costs down, or reduce the supply chain vulnerability, or whatever the higher goal of the activity may be. Data itself on its own doesn't intrinsically have value - it is the enabling factor that facilitates the journey to be able to deliver the value. Is category management dead as an organisational structure? Adriano makes a controversial - but very valid - point that the category management architecture of procurement organisations which has been dominant for the past 20 or so years will be rendered irrelevant by AI. The way procurement teams operate in future will be beyond the category model, as a result of data being the driver of how organisations drive value in their business. Product launches and lean activities cut across numerous different categories, and the design of procurement departments must consequently adapt to this. To what extent can AI perform data classification? Adriano uses a nice example of comparing master data and AI solutions to motor vehicles. The more sophisticated the engine is, the more sophisticated that the fluid going into the engine needs to be. The same applies to procurement data and the AI solution you are using to clean it. If you have very complex data, then the process to...

Tactical, non-strategic spend is a time suck to pretty much every organisation, regardless of their size. Managing this through traditional channels - i.e. ERP systems - is a cumbersome process for both the procurement professional who has to manage it, and the stakeholder who just wants a simple, user-friendly interface to be able to buy something. Henning Hatje, Co-Founder and CEO of Berlin-based startup Lhotse is my guest on this week's show. He explains how their solution helps to simplify tactical, non-strategic and tail spend (we look into each of these definitions during the show, too!) Simplifying and Automating Tactical Spend Lhotse was founded in 2020 and is growing rapidly, having recently announced a €5 million seed round funding just before the show was recorded. The fact that such a young company has managed to secure this kind of funding is tantamount to the need for a solution on how to manage tactical and tail spend. Deloitte's 2021 CPO Survey points towards more effective management of tactical spend With companies under new pressure to operate leaner, smarter and faster, it's little surprise that tactical and tail spend is coming under the microscope. Operational efficiency topped the list of most urgent priorities among those surveyed for the 2021 Deloitte CPO Survey. Finding a more productive use of buyers' time when it comes to the huge operational workload of dealing with non-strategic spend will no doubt be high on the wish list. Tactical vs. tail spend? There are many different definitions, and much if it is nuanced and dependent upon how different organisations see their spend. Lhotse views "tactical spend" as: Being non-managed spend by procurement Predominantly indirect in nature Whereas they see tail spend as: Also having some crossover with tactical spend But also encompassing "managed" areas of high volume, low value spend such as certain areas of MRO spend and office supplies which are often procured using punch-out catalogues Much depends on the thresholds that companies use to define how tactical spend or tail spend is seen. What typical policies exist for non-strategic spend? These are some common scenarios for how non-strategic spend can fall through the cracks: Spend that falls below the threshold where competitive bidding is required - i.e. three bids, then a buy - clearly has a lot of untapped opportunity. Here, essentially, stakeholders can purchase from whomever they wish. Diligence with which a policy is enforced. Often this is dependent upon the perception or reputation of the procurement function internally, but also is heavily influenced by staffing levels within procurement teams and their (in)ability to manage all areas of spend. There are massive differences between how these thresholds are applied - from very strict, low spend thresholds right the way through to enterprise level organisations in high profit industries which can sometimes have 6-figure sums considered as tactical spend. When it comes to other ways of handling tail or tactical spend, Integrators and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) are still common, but as Henning explains, they can often have flaws. It can send the wrong message to stakeholders when low value spend is farmed out to an external organisation. But more importantly, there is now technology that can automate or semi-automate large parts of these processes. This moves the organisation away from functionally managing a BPO or an integrator and instead towards a more strategic process of researching and integrating technology into the procurement function. Other advantages of applying technology to this problem Henning talks about the opportunities that a solution such as Lhotse can leverage existing data in your system to automate or semi-automate: Lhotse can integrate system data into existing processes to give relevant supplier recommendations based on...

This week, we bring you the first in a 3 part series of live episodes recorded at Procurement Summit in Berlin on 29 and 30 September 2021. We'll be covering a different theme on each episode, and featuring 3 procuretech startups each week. Our focus is on some of the newer, less well-known startups who pitched and exhibited during the summit to bring awareness to some of the exciting new players out there who are destined to grow quickly. Hot Digital Procurement and Supply Chain Startups in the ESG and Risk Management Space On this episode, we're looking at startups whose mission is solving problems in the rapidly growing and increasingly important ESG and Risk Management area. Shipzero Tobias Bohnhoff, Founder of Shipzero is my first guest. Shipzero tracks and manages transport emissions, helping freight buyers and logistics managers to have more transparency around their shipping data.  The tool essentially enables companies to make strategic decisions around two key areas of transportation procurement and logistics management: Helping companies to reduce their overall transport footprint through optimisation of their freight operations. Evaluating different case scenarios when it comes to deciding which mode of transport to use. One part of this conundrum is actually looking at where to source goods from. The increasing cost, especially of ocean freight, is making companies reconsider lengthy supply chains where historically the logistics cost was not a major factor. Technology is now in place to enable data sharing between companies. The transportation market is very fragmented and contains a lot of smaller businesses who are not as technologically advanced as global logistics firms. Shipzero enables this data to be aggregated for the end customer. When it comes to decarbonisation, there are also the factors of considering transportation methods powered partly or wholly by renewable energy.  Shipzero enables companies to simulate the CO2 emissions based on different transportation scenarios. The range and payload for electric trucks is different to diesel trucks. Using a granular data stream from the telematics of the truck allows you to make the decision of which methods or lanes for transport can be switched to transportation from renewable energy sources. Tobias mentions that any company with over €/$100 million annual turnover with significant transportation spend can benefit and see a positive payback of using the tool to optimise their transportation. I ask Tobias how he would convince a company who doesn't see this as a priority, to take action now rather than in a few years time. Then we round off the interview by looking at Shipzero's plans for future growth. https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobias-bohnhoff/ (Tobias' LinkedIn profile) https://www.shipzero.com/ (Shipzero website) Prewave Next up is Harald Nitschinger, CEO of risk management solution Prewave. Harald comes off the back of winning DPW's Startup Pitch competition during their virtual conference just a few weeks ago in September. So, what's so special about Prewave?! Well, it's certainly a hot topic with COVID-19, broken supply chains, the new “Lieferkettengesetz” (Supply Chain Law) coming into effect in Germany making it a topic and a solution very much in focus right now. Supply chains have never been less transparent and have never been more complex, with large organisations having tens of thousands of suppliers all over the world. Keeping on top of all of these transactions, past, present and future, is almost impossible without the help of technology. Potential scandals, force majeure events, natural disasters We take the hypothetical example of a child labour scandal for a textiles retailer using a supplier in Bangladesh: how could Prewave help to identify this before the story breaks and causes brand damage to the retailer. Harald explains the concept of “known locally,...

We're back with part 2 of a 3 part series of live episodes recorded at Procurement Summit in Berlin on 29 and 30 September 2021. Each podcast features a different theme, focusing on some of the newer, less well-known startups who pitched and exhibited during the summit to bring awareness to some of the exciting new players out there who have a bright future. Hot Digital Procurement Startups which Utilise AI and Game Theory to Deliver their Solution This episode is all about startups who heavily feature AI or game theory as part of their experience and solution. Pactum My first guest is Fabio Herle from Pactum. Pactum leverages AI and game theory to automate negotiations. Quite a bold claim to automate something that many procurement professionals have spent their whole careers trying to refine, improve and perfect! Fabio explains how the German-speaking area of Europe offers both challenges and advantages in equal measure. On the one hand, Procurement is a fairly mature function and there are some world class companies, procurement functions and well-managed processes. On the other hand, it's a more conservative business culture where resistance to change can be quite common. While Pactum was founded in Estonia, they are actually headquartered in the US. Not because of investment but due to ease of customer acquisition in relation to Europe's largest markets. So, what can it do, and what are its limitations? Fabio goes on to explain that Pactum is not able to replace a human in a complex negotiation which requires preparation, emotional intelligence and the need to maintain a strategic relationship with a critical vendor.  Instead, Pactum focuses on automating negotiations for tactical purchases where it may not be the best use of a procurement professional's time, or where the spend would not have been previously managed by anyone in the procurement team because of the value of the transaction.  NDAs and simple payment terms “horsetrading” are two examples which Fabio cites as being prime opportunities where Pactum can add value. The goal is that over time, it will be able to handle more complex negotiations as the AI matures. The example of being able to give counter offers and counter proposals, in a proper trading style negotiation, is an area where Fabio explains is part of Pactum's plans as the tool matures. Another advantage of using a machine is that it never forgets any of the details! This is definitely one to watch and a rapidly scaling company. https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabio-herle-272a545/ (Fabio's' LinkedIn profile) https://pactum.com/ (Pactum website) MySupply Next up is Andreas Zimmermann, CEO of MySupply. This is an e-sourcing tool, looking at some of the more tactical areas of sourcing. Whereas most e-sourcing tools tend to focus on strategic sourcing for highly complex tenders, MySupply focuses on the more straightforward sourcing requirements. The specific USP of MySupply is the engine behind the tender which guides it towards the right strategy e.g. should it be an auction, 3-bids-and-a-buy, simple RFP etc. Whereas it is primarily aimed at smaller and medium-sized businesses to provide a way to affordably bring more spend under control and negotiate with suppliers that otherwise would have been unmanaged, it also functions for larger businesses too for any sourcing requirements that are not complex. As with Pactum, this focuses on a problem that is coming more and more to the forefront. Namely, that Procurement often does not have the resources to get involved in non-strategic spend, but would like to get the savings or cost avoidance from being able to deal with this in a more automated and hands-off way. We talk about existing tools for e-sourcing and auctions, especially the more established players, not being intuitive or user-friendly. Moreover, these tools also don't really show or guide users towards the types of sourcing events...

We're back with the final part of our 3-part series of live episodes recorded at Procurement Summit in Berlin on 29 and 30 September 2021. Each podcast features a different theme, focusing on some of the newer, less well-known startups who pitched and exhibited during the summit. This final episode looks at 3 solutions out there who have doubled down on tackling the lucrative and under-served niche of digitsing services procurement. Prospeum Philip Rathjen joins me from Prospeum, a pretty new solution out there that has recently been launched. Philip explains that the idea came to him and his co-founders when they were working together in IT and they realised how much work goes into tenders, and what a manual, admin-heavy process it is to manage. This led them to ultimately go their own way and build Prospeum. Prospeum's features start with supplier scouting and vendor onboarding, and then moves through the complete sourcing process up to the point where a vendor is selected. Their focus is on the big ticket, complex services sourcing requirements in IT and marketing categories. It doesn't offer contract lifecycle management or SRM functionality: it is solely an e-sourcing platform. So, why not just use one of the established suites for this? Phil explains that the suites are often not just focused on e-sourcing and even those which do have strong e-sourcing modules tend to be a) difficult to use unless you've received a lot of training and b) usually designed with raw materials or commoditised goods in mind, meaning that none of the templates favour services. Sourcing nuanced, complex services is a whole different board game. Prospeum has a feature that enables pre-qualification of vendors before inviting them to an event, and then enables internal stakeholders and suppliers to collaborate on the platform. A welcome change to what usually happens, when stakeholders and suppliers just email you outside of the e-sourcing platform because they hate using it! Typical avatar customer for Prospeum? Any business with a large IT spend, typically the higher end of the mid-market towards enterprise level. Banking, financial services, insurance and high growth tech companies would be some examples that fall neatly into that category. https://prospeum.com/ (Prospeum website) https://www.linkedin.com/in/philipp-rathjen/ (Philip's LinkedIn profile) Apadua This one is a bit of an outlier because it's vendor funded. In other words, the suppliers pay to have a profile and a presence on Apadua rather than the buying organisation purchasing a SaaS subscription or a license to run the software. Here to tell us more about this unique approach is Gregory N. Vider, Apadua's Founder. Greg sees their strength as being "by procurement professionals, for procurement professionals", as both he and his co-founder Markus have a procurement background. Direct procurement is usually pretty strong in most companies, whereas indirect procurement and specifically services procurement usually lags behind in the maturity curve. This is especially applicable in smaller businesses, and as Greg explains, the platform can be used by SMEs with just a couple of million € spend, right the way up to enterprise level clients. The purpose of Apadua is to make services procurement free at the point of entry to buyers, while at the same time providing both sides with smart technology to create value together and build sustainable business relationships on an equal footing. But if your own incumbent vendors aren't on the platform, then what? You can also onboard your existing vendors onto the platform in plenty of time to run an RFP. Does Apadua have issues with getting vendors to pay to use the platform? Gregory argues that in industries such as consulting, for example, the sales cycle is not only notoriously slow but also very expensive. Instead of having to do business on the golf course or at corporate hospitality...

The Lowdown on Spend Matters 50 To Know / 50 To Watch and the ProcureTech100 This week is a solo episode. I rarely do them, and I thought long and hard before publishing this. At the end of the day, I'm just one person who has a keen interest in digital procurement technology. I'm not an academic or a researcher, but I do take a passionate interest in what is out there and I have some strong views on what I feel should be the priorities when it comes to digital procurement transformations. I'm also acutely aware that most of the listeners to the podcast are not CPOs in enterprise level organisations. My aim is to bring content out there to Procurement Leaders outside of Fortune 500 companies and to shine light on solutions that are a fit for regular, mid-market businesses. Challenging or questioning the conventional wisdom of how these lists are made up is something I debated for a while. Ultimately I decided that listeners need to know and understand what goes into selecting these lists, so as they can look at them with a critical mindset and draw their own conclusions. I sincerely hope this episode provides value to everyone who listens to it and I would love to hear your feedback! Spend Matters Spend Matters are a household name to anyone in the Procurement space and are part of a larger parent company, Azul Partners. Spend Matters was founded by Jason Busch in 2004 and was one of the first Procurement and Supply Chain Blogs. The focus on digital procurement technology with their 50 To Watch and 50 To Know began in earnest in 2014, and has since grown to be the go-to resource for research, analysis and content in the digital procurement space. So, what are the 50 To Watch and 50 To Know? Let's have a look: Almanac They're part of a wider directory of digital procurement solutions housed on the Spend Matters called the Spend Matters Almanac. The Almanac has over 530 listings from 59 categories and over 140 analyst insights. Feeding into the Almanac is the Spend Matters Solution Map, an interactive software solution finder, where the user can select a comparison of different types of procurement software based on a bunch of different criteria and buying personas. Spend Matters have a pretty big analyst team to crunch the data, and the listings have been going since 2014, so they have a huge back catalogue of content and analysis to draw from! There are 23 different categories in the Almanac in total, and not all of them are focused on software itself. There are some consulting, training and membership organisations included in here too. But this is what sets the base for the 50 To Know and 50 To Watch So, how do we get from here to the 50 To Know and 50 To Watch lists? "The Spend Matters® annual 50 Providers to Know and 50 Providers to Watch lists are determined by the entire Spend Matters analyst team to represent the best of the commercial providers that serve enterprise-level procurement organizations." "We do not include brand new startups with only a few employees and customers who are piloting some “minimum viable products”. We track over a dozen of them right now and are working on highlighting them in the near future." Spend Matters makes it very clear that participation is NOT "pay-to-play", rather "participate-to-play". So, the 50 To Watch and 50 To Know is NOT sponsored content. BUT It can, however, mean that if a provider does not agree to participate according to the (pretty lengthy) RFI criteria laid down by Spend Matters that their solution will not be included. This is also acknowledged by Spend Matters themselves - they openly recognise that there are some solutions out there who may be worthy of making the list but choose not to put themselves through the participation process for whatever reason. "From a methodology perspective, first, the analysts review last year's lists and determine which providers no longer meet the...

This week we kick off a mini-series of 5 podcasts on e-sourcing software. On the one hand, this is a mature market, with lots of established players. Indeed, many of the larger suites started out as auction platforms back in the day. But this is now being challenged by fresh thinking and new technology, especially as businesses realise that there are way more possibilities to drive value here than just through a traditional e-auction platform. First up, we welcome Tim Grunow and Lukas Wawrla from Zurich-based startup Archlet to the podcast. Leveraging E-Sourcing to Consider Non-Price Factors - Lukas Wawrla & Tim Grunow from ArchletArchlet began as a university project, and has since developed into a startup with over 30 employees, which recently secured $10 million in Series A funding to continue its path of impressive growth since inception in 2019. Tim explains how they grew quickly to learn about supporting a client on a packaging sourcing project during a university consulting assignment, and how this ultimately became the spin-off that then became Archlet. Why are companies still using Email and Excel, with so many e-sourcing tools already out there? Lukas argues that perhaps it's flexibility. The tools are not versatile, flexible or user-friendly enough to facilitate an end-to-end sourcing event completely within platform. At some point, sourcing managers get stuck or frustrated with the tool and revert back to form, which means going offline and using Excel to analyse the data from their tenders. We talk about re-thinking procurement tools starting with the user first and explore a great graphic that I came across when I was on Archlet's website, all about Procurement's digitalisation journey: If we consider e-sourcing, there are 5 stages: Stage 1 - 100% Email and Excel based Stage 2 - Supported by technology i.e. using an e-sourcing tool as a repository to collect bids or run e-auctions, but then the analysis and post-event requirements are typically done off platform; often then offline in Excel. Stage 3 - Optimisation: The ability to perform the end-to-end event, including supplier onboarding, event management, post-event analysis and negotiation completely within the e-sourcing platform Stage 4 - Guided Sourcing: How you could use the tool to create your scenarios to get to your desired outcomes faster? Leveraging external data as part of this to augment and complement the data in a sourcing event. Stage 5 - Autonomous Sourcing: Completely autonomous. Will we ever get there? This is the blue sky scenario! So, how can we avoid post-event deferment to Excel? Focusing on the USER as a key USP, instead of being driven by features and process. Many existing e-sourcing tools are seen as being process-centric. Archlet have focused on "consumerising" the approach. They see the key as being feature-rich enough to offer the value that other tools can't offer, but at the same time have user-friendliness and ease-of-use at the heart of the product. Their trick that they have up their sleeve is using external data sources from other third parties to add value to and enhance the e-sourcing data, enabling users to incorporate this into their supplier selection process during a sourcing event. Leveraging non-price and external data factors into the sourcing decision Tim and Lukas walk us through their strategy of having tools integrated into their platform that cover other non-price related aspects of an e-sourcing event. Archlet recently partnered with existing tech offered by Tealbook and Ecovadis for example, which can be integrated into their e-sourcing process and their data leveraged to add this into the native data that is returned as part of the e-sourcing event. The opportunity to have additional know-how that you don't necessarily have directly from your suppliers with the responses that they give. Having this data in your decision-making and your post tender discussions will...

On this week's episode, we explore a topic that is becoming ever more important when it comes to selecting a piece of software in the B2B space. Adoption and acceptance of procurement technology within an organisation is highly dependent on a software's user experience and ease of use. And yet very little is spoken about this when we look at review sites and awards for procurement software. This week's guest is Jack MacFarlane, CEO of DeepStream Technologies. They're an e-sourcing platform with UX at the heart of what they do. But can it compete and hold its own against established solutions already on the market? Putting User Experience at the Heart of E-Sourcing Software – Jack MacFarlane from DeepStreamJack is not a procurement pro and actually has a background in investment banking, as he explains in the intro. Going from here to found a procurement software company was a decision he took as a result of a gap he saw in the market for businesses to transact and source with each other more effectively. He saw an email and attachment-based sourcing methodology that was endemic in the businesses he had worked in or experienced, and knew there was a better way. This despite some of the more mature and established competition that is already out there in the marketplace. User experience: how important is it compared to features? Being the "Mac vs. the Microsoft" as Jack explains it was the USP they wanted to achieve when designing the experience behind DeepStream. From a product philosophy perspective, building a digital platform that was as straightforward to use as sending emails and Excel sheets was their main goal. Stripping out features and functionality was seen as a necessary evil to ensure that simplicity was key, all the way from supplier onboarding through to sourcing and awarding of tenders. What impact can having a better UX have when it comes to user adoption? The comparison that Jack makes is with the smartphone. We use a multitude of apps to perform all the activities we use our smartphone for. There isn't one single suite we use on our phones. The same argument can be made for best-of-breed procurement technology because design and functionality, when it's done right, can trump an all-in-one platform when it comes to usability and adoption. The easier it is you make something to use, the lower the barriers are to adoption. People can self-learn without the need for lengthy courses or training. You don't need consultants during the implementation phase. So, logically you're then much more likely to get higher adoption. Not only that, but over time, if the software is easy to use then people are likely to stick with using it vs. reverting to the tried and tested method of using email and spreadsheets. The case for features vs. simplicity If you can essentially digitise within a day, and have users and business units up and running almost immediately, it can organically expand and develop more quickly than a more complex piece of software. "You're never going to see the benefits of digital platforms if you have low engagement rates and it's hard to use" as Jack argues. He sees the more traditional enterprise model to be: Strategy to buy a feature rich, expensive software suite that requires a lot of training to use Get management buy-in Top down "enforcement" of the policy Which ultimately fails if over time, users revert back to form and use what they feel comfortable with i.e. email and Excel. What about UX for supplier onboarding? While suppliers will always be sceptical towards e-sourcing software, DeepStream have endeavoured to make the supplier experience as smooth as possible. The average onboarding time for suppliers is < 5 minutes and it's free to register. There are also a couple of measures that they are using to encourage suppliers to get more from the platform Supplier engagement is one of the KPIs that they track in terms of response rate vs. the previous...

We're back with the third in our 5-part series on e-sourcing platforms, and this week we're looking at how e-sourcing can fit into a wider scope covered by a software solution. How can an e-sourcing requirement be married together with upstream and downstream features to create a mini-suite centred around vendor management, with e-sourcing at its core? This is what my guest this week, David Wadler, has created with the Vendorful platform, and he's here to walk us through how this approach can reduce the need for too many SaaS applications in one organisation. Does a Mini Suite of Best-of-Breed Vendor Relationship Management Trump "One Trick Pony" Software? NYC native David starts by giving us some history of his background and how he kind of fell into software engineering and growing a startup after living abroad in France for a number of years. His first experience of procurement was serendipitous, having sold his first software company to Lexmark, who then engaged him on an assignment to look into costs in their IT category. He quickly realised that the sourcing process was broken and was very administrative and manual, and hence Vendorful as a concept was born! E-Sourcing vs. Vendor Management PlatformThe idea for Vendorful was borne out of an initial concept to build a sourcing tool for IT. As customers demanded more and more features, they followed a strategy they called customer driven development. As David explains, this was based on features that existing customers were asking for rather than internally driven by product strategy. This resulted in Vendorful growing initially to serve e-sourcing beyond the IT category, and then ultimately to become what it is now; a vendor lifecycle management platform which covers some of the activities further upstream and downstream which would have been conducted on email or spreadsheets. Moving from Excel and ERP to one single platformDavid knew they were onto something when a customer contacted them requesting something that had nothing relating to e-sourcing. He gives an example of supplier onboarding and management where a customer was manually typing in and uploading documents into an ERP system, and managing the records through an Excel spreadsheet which was manually updated. Knowing that there was a better way, this led Vendorful to be developed into more of a full stack vendor management system, covering much more than just e-sourcing. Indeed, eliminating a lot of manual processes around vendor lifecycle management (VLM) is one of the key attributes they now see as their USP. VLM platform plus P2P integration outside of ERPVendorful doesn't touch any steps of the procure-to-pay (P2P) process and instead sees itself as a platform that would go hand-in-hand with a best-of-breed P2P platform. This tech stack is a very viable alternative to one of the established source-to-pay (S2P) suites, or indeed trying to perform this activity natively in an ERP system with, inevitably, the need to revert to email and Excel for some of the process and analysis. They see their segment and price point as being particularly competitive to mid-sized businesses and even to some enterprises who perhaps want something more user-friendly or versatile. Their cost is in the low 6-figure ($) typically versus price tags of over $1 million for enterprise level S2P suites. David quips that it was once described by a sales executive for one of the suites as "Google Docs for Procurement"! Defending market position from the bigger suitesIf the suites see them potentially as a danger and move into their market segment, what ways can they differentiate themselves and compete with companies with a much bigger marketing budget? Vendorful is a new product and is not built on a legacy tech stack that is over 10 years old. It is seen as more versatile and is able to cope with more complexity, based on some of the feedback they have received from customers who have done RFIs and

A tool that's easy to use and affordable, but also very versatile in terms of what it can do and the add-ons that go with it. We continue our mini-series of e-sourcing solutions today with Market Dojo. They've grown a feature rich e-sourcing tool that is offered as a simple, pay monthly software but also comes with many different additional modules to complement the core RFx / e-auction software on offer. I spoke to one of their Co-Founders, Nic Martin, to discuss what brought them this far, and what their plans are for the future. Combining ease-of-use with flexible contracts and plenty of additional modules - Nic Martin from Market DojoMarket Dojo has a wide range of customers - from consultants through to SMEs and larger businesses. They see their flexible pricing model as one of their strengths, essentially enabling anyone to use their software on a pay-as-you-go basis. This opens up the tool to independent consultants, small businesses and growing startups, as well as their more established customer base. Part of the Market Dojo philosophy has been studying a lot of the B2C marketplaces, the most obvious being Amazon, and trying to emulate as much as possible their interface, simplicity and general user experience. How important is UX? The challenge of receiving customer feedback over the years has meant that it requires a balance of deciding what is really needed vs. what are nice-to-haves. Keeping users happy while maintaining a solution that is easy and intuitive to use has been key in balancing how to incorporate new features into the product. What different types of auctions and RFx are available?Core product is e-auctions RFQ Live questionnaires / surveys to factor in considerations other than price, which can provide real time feedback during the event Advanced lots: obtaining cost breakdowns at a much deeper level, without relying on Excel after-the-fact. How do they avoid the trap of trying to be everything to everyone? Figuring out in the early days to understand WHAT features to pitch to WHICH type of customers has helped Market Dojo to learn and grow, and also to decide which features to prioritise. Some aspects of the tool may be more valuable to some users than others. For example,  an independent consultant may place a lot of value on a choice of different types of e-auctions, whereas an SME or growing startup would need a lot more hand holding when it comes to running events, and perhaps appreciate simplicity and an intuitive UX a lot more. Niching down is a great marketing theory in principle, but they found that they were winning customers in quite different industries and niches during their early days. Market Dojo has since seen e-auctions run on such diverse categories of spend as global freight, purchased parts and fruit & vegetables, so versatility and offering a solution that can be used in a variety of different industries has been a difficult but possible balance to achieve. Maturing from a pure play e-Sourcing tool to a more rounded solution Taking on board customer feedback was a key factor in instigating Market Dojo to develop additional modules as they have grown from being a pure play e-Sourcing solution into evolving into more of a mini-suite. An example is with the supplier onboarding tool, which was developed based on a request that was made from one of their early customers. One of their biggest challenges was with supplier intake, and they recognised that Market Dojo would be a good solution for this if they could expand beyond just the sourcing module. Whereas on the other hand, some customer requests were seen not to be aligned with their overall vision and direction, and instead led them to seek out partners who could offer such a solution as a best-of-breed solution that could be integrated with Market Dojo's software. Nic cites Per Angusta's procurement savings and value performance reporting solution as being a great example of where they

Our final episode in our mini-series of e-Sourcing platforms brings us to a well-estalished provider who has been in the space for over 20 years. So, during the interview with Henrik Balslev, CCO of Danish Source-to-Contract (S2C) software Scanmarket, the most obvious thing to talk about was all of the data they've collected since they've been offering e-auctions and RFx solutions to their customers. Using 20 Years of E-Auction Data to Help Customers Gain Competitive Advantage - Henrik Balslev from Scanmarket Scanmarket have been around a long time and are one of the early e-sourcing providers. They recently acquired Swiss-based contract lifecycle management (CLM) platform Symfact to complement their offerings in the S2C space, and can count customers in 86 different countries who use their software. Their typical client is pretty industry agnostic and somewhere from €1 billion to €20 billion annual turnover, so large enterprises but certainly not Fortune 500 territory. How have e-auctions evolved? Henrik has been involved in e-auction statistics since 2006. E-auctions are now being used as a more everyday tool and The evolution has been predominantly in these areas: Less focus purely on price More thought around which commodities or categories to tender in an auctions More thought and strategy regarding which type of auction or e-sourcing event to utilise When in the process to take the negotiation process offline and move to in person discussions The move towards a total cost of ownership (TCO) strategy in many organisations has been the bedrock behind these seismic shifts. What about using auctions for services? Henrik surprisingly confirms that services have always been in the top 10 of most auctioned areas of spend within Scanmarket's platform, but they have seen a significant uptick since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. What sets services apart is that it is often more tricky to get stakeholders on board for tendering using an e-auction, and that it's also more difficult to measure some of the nuances in proposals for services. "Use the tool when and where it makes sense" is a very good time from Henrik to make sure that it aids and abets the user, rather than hindering the process through having a policy that forces category managers to use a software that isn't suitable for the tender or RFP in mind. Running the auction for certain elements within a specific provision of service can also be a successful strategy, and then inviting the top 3 suppliers from the auction to 1-on-1 negotiations to discuss the devil behind the detail. In other words, auctions are a great way to shortlist vendors if there is a large pool of potential suppliers for a certain service. How specifically does Scanmarket leverage their auction data? The same category for one company can be completely different to the situation within another organisation. There are so many parameters that aren't fixed and are dependent upon an organisation's maturity of procurement, relationship with incumbent vendor, and so on. Rather than focusing on this, they tend to look at more holistic data. Henrik cites an example of the optimal number of vendors to include in an auction. Bringing in an extra supplier into the auction statistically increases the savings by 1.11%, but only up to a total of 7 participating suppliers. Increasing the supplier count beyond 7 doesn't bring additional savings according to Scanmarket's data. We explore how a customer can also best achieve their end goal based on the different auction types and functionalities which can be switched on and off. The "if this, then that" (IFTTT) scenarios which can be looked into based on the data that Scanmarket has, to be able to guide the customer along a path that is likely, statistically, to be more successful. Dealing with supplier reluctance to participate Henrik explains that reluctance to participate often comes...

Enterprise suites vs. Best-of-Breed is a long-standing and hotly debated topic. This week's episode is an edit of a LinkedIn Live session that I did with Nico. If you'd like to see this on video, just head across to The Procuretech Podcast Page on LinkedIn and watch the complete live stream! The ongoing debate between Best-of-Breed vs. Enterprise Suites: Which solution is best? We start off with a brief introduction of who we are, and our background. Always good to know how we both got into this space! Then, we dive in to an overview of what, and who, the enterprise suites are. If anyone is listening to the show who isn't an expert in procurement technology, we break it down in easy-to-understand language. So, what DOES an "all-in-one" suite do, and encompass, and where do they typically fall short? And why are best-of-breed solutions such hot property right now, and where could they potentially pose problems due to the fragmentation of needing to make numerous solutions communicate with one another? Nico makes a good case for how a suite can make life easy by covering everything all in one platform. I counter this by arguing that while that may be true, the cost and the complex, tedious implementation requirements make these suites out-of-reach for non-enterprise companies. So, where are the limitations of suites, and what are the pitfalls of best-of-breed solutions? When does a suite make sense vs. when does best-of-breed have the upper hand? Like most complex questions, it kind of depends. Suites are not agile. They take time to plan, scope and implement. Whereas best-of-breed may have the upper hand in terms of flexibility and agility, on the flipside it requires integration between multiple solutions. This has been made simpler thanks to APIs and cloud-based infrastructure, but your IT department will need to be open-minded towards change. Suites tend to be more bulky. Risk of obsolescence by the time a suite is fully implemented and integrated is a real concern. While Nico oversaw the transformation at P&G five years ago and was extremely happy with the result, the world has changed since then. Best-of-breed was a much smaller ecosystem back then than it is now, especially since the proliferation and growth of procuretech since the start of the pandemic. We finish off the live cast by looking at where this space is heading, and a lot of the future trends which may, or may not happen! It's always so much fun to speculate though! Specifically, we examine: Will there be a consolidation of the best-of-breed market, as companies who fail to deliver the expected growth don't make the grade for the next round of funding? Who will buy them up? The suites or other BoB providers? Or will other procurement software companies simply poach their best talent and / or purchase their IP? Realistically, the market probably isn't big enough for 5 suite providers. Will we see a consolidation among the suite providers, as both best-of-breed solutions and the market leading suites both attack the less dominant suites and eat into their market share? Stay in touch! https://dpnow.ch (Connect with Nico on LinkedIn) Sign up for the https://procuretechpodcast.com/newsletter (Procuretech Podcast Newsletter) https://calendly.com/jamesmeads/30-minute-intro-call (Book an Intro Call) and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! https://linkedin.com/in/james-meads/ (Connect with James on LinkedIn) https://www.linkedin.com/company/37782359/ (Follow The Procuretech Podcast LinkedIn Page)

Some of the irritations that procurement professionals face in their daily work are very easily avoidable. With a bit of thought and the right software platform, a lot of busywork and unnecessary admin can be eliminated or simplified. One such example is the vendor intake process. My guest this week is Nick Verkroost, COO of vendor onboarding and master data management solution OCG Software, about keeping things simple and the hidden value in robust vendor master data. Eliminating admin hassle and master data as the new gold: Nick Verkroost from OCG Software Nick explains that OCG was borne out of a previous business that routed office supplies to the lowest cost vendor. I walk through some of my personal frustrations from the corporate world of how inefficient the vendor onboarding process is, through a mix of poor communication, excessive compliance requirements, vendors not following the process right the way through to internal routing of approval workflows being broken. Onboarding a supplier should take a day. In reality, many corporate procurement teams tear their hair out with inefficient, Excel-based processes that take weeks to add new vendors into their system. So, how do we improve this? "Don't worry, we'll find a way around procurement". The age-old tale told by stakeholders to their suppliers because of the painful vendor addition process that takes far too long. Nick describes the desired end state as: "We need to create a mechanism by which you as a customer and me as a supplier can exchange master data in a very seamless and fluid manner; highly secure, fully auditable but also with a process which we've all understood fully aligns with how you want to onboard a supplier into your organisation". Each individual piece of tech has the requirement to onboard or input supplier data. Be it ERP systems, e-sourcing tools, P2P software or risk management solutions. None of them are harmonised. Each of them requires different attributes of vendor data to enable them to function. But none require a uniform, comprehensive set of criteria which fulfil an organisation's compliance and vendor due diligence checks, as well as the data required in order to pay invoices and transact with the supplier day-to-day. Does OCG target SMEs with no vendor management tools, or act as an aggregator enterprises with a complex tech stack? Nick explains that they started their journey as a partnership with two Fortune 500 companies who had big, digital procurement suites which weren't solving this issue effectively. However, where they've seen the most success in terms of evolving customer acquisition trends and where they're focusing most of their marketing efforts nowadays is with SMEs and the mid-market. This market segment generally is more dependent on Excel-based data and sees the bigger payback in relative terms. Being able to give these types of businesses the ability to see a more holistic view in one single source of truth when it comes to due diligence documents on risk and CSR, on top of just pricing and contractual terms, has a huge invisible value vs. this data being stuck in silos. What issues arise if vendor master data or onboarding due diligence is inaccurate or incomplete? Bad data can result in a lot of poor decisions or outcomes further downstream. The simple truth is that the quality of master data is terrible in most organisations. The pandemic, and the ensuing crisis management, laid bare the gaps that exist in a lot of vendor master data. Something as simple as missing email addresses and incorrect phone numbers meant that it was impossible to contact suppliers quickly and en masse to manage an emergency situation. Poor master data can also lead to: Inaccurate spend analysis due to duplicates Payment to the wrong bank account Risk of corporate scandals if the right due diligence is not followed during the vendor onboarding process Production...

How big does a business need to be before they can afford procurement software? And how many features does the software need to have to still enable it to deliver value? My guest today is Adam Thomas from a small but growing startup oboloo. Based in London, the company is focused on delivering a practical source-to-contract software solution to small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs). Providing simple, affordable and easy-to-use procurement software to SMEs: Adam Thomas from oboloo The first question we tackle is what is their definition of an SME, because everyone defines the term somewhat differently. Oboloo sees their typical customer base as being companies with an annual turnover between £5 million and £100 million. They identified this space because typically none of the established procuretechs who do what oboloo does are very active in this segment of the market. The software itself is essentially a simple source-to-contract (S2C) platform and has 4 core modules: E-sourcing Contract Management Supplier Management Savings Reporting Adam explains that they are seeking to tackle the more strategic aspects of sourcing and procurement rather than the transactional P2P space. The value proposition being through time saved as a result of digitisation, as well as the value identified through the e-sourcing module and being able to store this data centrally for future reference. Leveraging the data - i.e. performing a spend analysis - from their P2P transactions (which could be integrated with oboloo) can then drive the initiatives that can be conducted through the oboloo platform. What about SMEs and startups without a dedicated procurement team? Adam explains the importance of consistency when managing external vendor spend, whether that is on spreadsheets or shared drives. As a company grows, these processes should grow with it. So, regardless of whether a company has a dedicated buyer, the procurement process itself requires a more robust solution to be able to store data in a single, easy-to-use repository. Sending out simple RFQs and uploading a contract into a database isn't rocket science at the end of the day, and employees can still use the system even if they're not procurement professionals. Where is oboloo seeing the most interest in the market? It tends to be less about traditional, established SMEs vs. growing startups and more about the modules themselves. Adam mentions that there is a lot of demand and interest for their contract management module right now, whereas the e-sourcing and supplier management functions are not as sought after. If they just want contract management, why not buy a specialist tool? Simplicity is the easy answer. A lot of businesses at their core just want to have a simple database. While oboloo does have additional functionality, the objective is to ensure that the customer can upload a contract into their system with the least amount of hassle. This increases adoption and reduces the “desk drawer” problem in many organisations, where contracts actually registered in the database are just the tip of the iceberg. How did they find the sweet spot between price and features? Having all of the core functions and features that an SME requires to run their business was the goal. Does it have auction functionality, for example? No, but then practically speaking, an SME customer can go out and find a separate solution for this. The likelihood is that this would be a very infrequent requirement. Ultimately, going back to basics, the objectives Adam states are: Process & outcome Budget People If the employees don't accept, adopt and use the software, then as an end goal of digitally transforming your business, you have failed to a large extent. It's more difficult from a design concept to make things simple, than it is to make something complicated. Enabling everyone to use the system without...

This week on the podcast I'm joined by two guests, because we're actually going to be talking about a customer success story on the show. Børge Langedal, Co-Founder and CRO of Norwegian spend analytics, vendor and category management tool Ignite Procurement joins me together with Arndt Romer from their German customer SEG Automotive. We dive into how and why SEG Automotive chose Ignite as their digital solution and how they've seen benefits since its implementation. Building a digital strategy with the right partner after a divestiture SEG Automotive is best described as a large medium-sized business focusing predominantly on automotive products. With 7,000 employees across 14 locations and annual turnover of €1.5 billion (approx. $1.9 billion). Based in Stuttgart, Germany, they were spun off from Bosch in early 2018 and therefore had to develop their own in-house systems as part of the divestment. Ignite Procurement is based in Oslo, founded in 2016 by an ex-BCG team and has since grown to 50 employees. It's a spend management solution to make strategic procurement easy, with data management and procurement analytics as the core offering. Bosch had a well developed system landscape which essentially SEG would no longer have had access to after the carve-out and them becoming an independent company. This led to the need to find and develop their own digital procurement and spend management strategy to enable them to have access to good, clean data without being dependent on an ERP system and Excel spreadsheets. Bosch had a central procurement team and a lot of the main team at Bosch remained there, which resulted in the need to hire and onboard a lot of new team members when SEG was carved out from Bosch. The transition from following the processes and internal controls of a global corporation to becoming a leaner and more agile mid-market business necessitated the need to improve their reporting and decision-making landscape. How did SEG arrive at the decision to select Ignite Procurement? Arndt mentions that it was a three-prong strategy.  They were aware of some of the more well-known tools and approached them to understand what they could offer. They also considered out-of-the-box solutions such as Power BI, as well as exploring the possibility to develop some in-house solutions. On top of this, they had a digitalisation team internally who was out there going to different trade fairs, researching niche / best-of-breed solutions on the internet to discover tools that were not already known to the business. It was at one of these trade fairs shortly before COVID hit that they were introduced to Ignite. Bringing these three approached together required a scorecard to allow different stakeholders to evaluate the capabilities of each of the different solutions. This enabled them to move forward to pilot phase with shortlisted vendors, at which point, Arndt says it became obvious that Ignite was clearly the best solution for what they were looking for.  How did Ignite Procurement go about assessing and evaluating SEG Automotive's needs vs. their offering? First and foremost is understanding whether they can indeed solve their challenges and meet their requirements. Trying to be everything to everyone ultimately is a road to disaster! Ignite's team quickly realised that making data more accessible was a key customer requirement and also a key feature of their software, and as such they determined that SEG would be a very good match in terms of system capabilities vs. what they saw as must-haves from a customer perspective. Børge also says that they were quickly impressed with the SEG Automotive procurement and digitalisation team's rigorous structures and processes, which went alongside the desire to digitise and improve their operations. Why didn't SEG Automotive choose to go with an established Suite? As a EUR 1.5 billion company, SEG would definitely have been within the orbit of...

I'm joined today on the Procuretech Podcast by Sammeli Sammalkorpi, CEO of Sievo, one of the stalwarts of the spend analytics space. The well-known Finnish company were actually founded almost 19 years ago!  During this time, what started out as a simple spend analysis tool has grown to be a comprehensive best-of-breed solution for spend analytics. We discuss how this niche has matured over the years and what direction it's headed in the future. Spend Analytics: Maintaining relevance and continuously improving in a crowded market Sammeli starts off by explaining how being from Lapland, his parents' wish was always that he would become a reindeer farmer!  Instead, he landed into software development rather than staying in his hometown. This came about through starting out as a junior analyst in a procurement consulting firm and realising quickly that there weren't any tools out there to efficiently analyse and report on what a client's business is spending its money on. In a crowded marketplace, Sammeli puts Sievo's success down to staying on top of the latest technological trends as well as listening to and striving to satisfy their global, enterprise level client base. Machine learning and AI is developing and evolving quickly. New technologies and more and more data is available. They have seen many well-funded competitors enter the market, and some of them fail. Even though Sievo have never received any VC money, they have gradually grown to 220 employees in their two bases in Helsinki and Chicago.  How has Sievo grown despite the onslaught of competitors? There are 3 factors Sammeli gives as the main drivers behind their continued success: Procurement leaders who change companies and then lobby to introduce Sievo's software in their new company because they have seen the value first hand. The data they have been able to gather and, with their clients' permission, use it to provide benefits and insights to their whole client base to improve analytics and predictive trends. Big data enables the classification process to be more efficient and accurate, due to the learnings and previous spend which has been analysed and classified through the system. The most obvious example of this is the ability to recognise duplicate vendors e.g. IBM, I.B.M. and International Business Machines as being the same organisation Scale: being able to invest more into software development and marketing & sales as they have become a bigger company than most of their competitors. Leveraging their data assets to add to the CX Drilling down on this piece, Sammeli mentions three areas where they have been ableto improve customer experience through aggregating data: Incorporating client modification or customisation requests into the general product offering to bolster the capabilities of the tool. The aggregate intelligence gained from each spend classification / normalisation of supplier data to be able to have an ever-growing database of parent and child companies in the supply base. The ability to use this data lake to drive benefits across their whole client base through upgrades, feedback, insights and market intelligence. Are new acquisitions coming from customers ditching the suites or greenfield digitisation projects? Most of their clients typically have had some kind of approach to spend analytics in the past. There doesn't seem to be a distinct split of whether that's from an underwhelming experience with one of the major suites, or having tried to natively use a tool such as BI or Tableau in-house without seeing the anticipated success. There is a growing acceptance that even those companies who are running suites still need to aggregate their data in one place for a single source of truth, at least for large, enterprise level companies. The assumption of a few years ago that a suite could fulfill all of a corporation's digital procurement needs is now pretty much...

On this week's episode I get to talk to a well-known industry expert and dive into a subject many of you may be confused and excited about in equal measure. Melissa Drew, Associate Partner at IBM is my guest to dive into the topic of use cases for AI in procurement applications. We tackle where we are, where we're headed and what some of the opportunities and limitations could be for this technology in this space. Use cases, opportunities and limitations of AI in Procurement Melissa starts off by giving a quick whistle-stop tour of her career so far, which includes 27 years in the procurement space in one form or another. I then begin by asking the question of whether AI and robots are about to take over our lives. Are robots about to take over our jobs? Melissa gives a very important definition that AI and cognitive technologies are actually different things, and that what we commonly refer to as AI in digital procurement terms is in fact what she would define as cognitive technologies. The difference being, in the example she gives, that AI in driverless cars is constantly evolving and developing its behaviour as it learns from different scenarios that it is being exposed to. Whereas on the other hand, cognitive technology that's often used in digital procurement technology is highly reliant on the human that is programming the algorithm telling the machine what it should actually do. AI is only as intelligent as the human programming it In order for outcomes to be representative, a human has to “teach” the models. Teaching the models can only be done by collecting data. But HOW we collect the data and from which sources obviously impacts the programming that is written around how the machine interprets this. Melissa gives the example of Amazon's CV screening algorithm that was unknowingly biased towards male candidates because of the way that it had been programmed based on the data it had been fed. Inadvertently, it had been shown more male applicants during its programming and as such had developed a bias towards male candidates. What has contributed to improvements to AI over the past 20 years? AI was originally used to augment human behaviour; to take things that we tactically need to do repetitively as a process and just do them faster and more accurately. Synthesizing, cleaning and categorising complex procurement spend data used to take Melissa about 9 long weeks. Back in 2004, when she started applying AI to be leveraged for repetitive tasks in spend analysis and categorisation, it reduced this task from 9 weeks down to several hours. That's the potential that AI has. As Melissa explains, what has changed over the past few years is the infrastructure that organisations have to house the data, as well as the improved ability to be able to collect and process it all. Why we still need humans to interpret and assess AI's work How do we ensure that we are collecting all of the right data? Are we using the right breadth of data. Why is AI making the decision or recommendation? Humans still need to test the data and even then, there is the risk that they will potentially have biases because of their own preconceptions. It's the same parallel we can draw to how reliable we as individuals perceive certain news and media outlets to be, when we consider our own political views and the assumptions we make around the media's bias towards a certain political party or social issue, for example. What questions should buyers be asking procurement software suppliers to determine their AI capabilities? Seemingly every software company is using some kind of AI, regardless of the solution they are offering.  The AI is being used in multiple ways: so what EXACTLY is the software vendor using AI for and to what extent is this going to enable your procurement team to spend more time and focus on the activities that drive value? Melissa highlights some of the key ways to determine whether the...

We're back with another Pub episode, where we dive a little bit deeper into a topic than we do in our normal podcasts and really break down a hot topic in a more informal chat format. My guest for this one is Prof. Dr. Florian Kleemann. He's a university professor, author of four German language procurement textbooks and also a former consultant. We dive into the topic of how people are a vital factor in change management. A digital transformation project, or orchestrating the changes to make a procurement team fit for the future, are both great examples in this regard. Getting Your People Strategy Right for Change Management, Digital Transformation and Orchestrating the Procurement Organisation of the Future We kick off the discussion by me asking Florian how he sees the skill set of procurement professionals evolving as we move forward. While on the one hand, Procurement will definitely become more robot-driven for some tasks, he sees the function becoming more of a jack-of-all-trades as we expand our remit into other areas and become more versatile as professionals. By this, he doesn't mean tactical and strategic procurement being mixed, rather the increasing professionalisation and specialisation of procurement as a profession will result in procurement professionals being involved in different areas of the business. Florian's 4 key areas for managing change Digitalisation Innovation Resilience Agility Digitalisation should not be seen as the future of procurement in itself: it's more the enabler to help free up procurement resources to concentrate on more strategic topics. When considering resilience, we also need to bring in the increasing importance of the sustainability discussion as part of this too. Touching also on soft skills - selling, influence, persuasion - the type of skills that are often more associated with Sales & Marketing teams, are becoming ever more important to procurement professionals too. Procurement, as Florian argues, should be seen as a service, but not as servants to our internal stakeholders. Taking your team on the change journey from process-driven or compliance-driven to a more agile, strategic function will require a change in the skill set but also a change in the mindset. If you're having to control and beat down your stakeholders to a large extent to keep them in check, then Florian argues that as a procurement team, you have failed to provide a viable strategy and with it, the means of easily and efficiently procuring goods and services. Start with the most eager or most engaged stakeholders to get some quick wins, and then move on from there. Can Greenfield Procurement organisations outperform Mature Procurement functions? I make the example of how many African countries have gone from having no functioning fixed line telecommunications network to jumping a technological generation and rapidly adopting mobile phones. Indeed in Kenya, for example, mobile payments technology is more advanced and more widely adopted than in most European countries. Could the same apply to Procurement in organisations who are starting a centrally managed procurement team from scratch? Florian does see some opportunity here, but also argues that if the pace of change is too quick, then it is usually not aligned to the overall corporate goals. "Strategy following structure, or structure following strategy? In the end, culture eats it all for breakfast". What about soft skills and self awareness as part of formal Procurement training? Florian disappointingly shares that the major professional bodies are not really moving with the times yet and adopting these skills into their training syllabuses. He also shares the story of how he wrote an article in Germany's most well-known Procurement and Supply Chain publication about these skills and how they are covered in his syllabus for the course he teaches. Despite this being published in...

We look at something a little bit different on this week's show and examine how one startup Founder decided to start his own community of procurement software startups to help to promote his own.  To be able to learn from other procurement tech companies and jointly market each other's solutions at the same time is a great, innovative way to increase attention to your own business. Andreas Zimmermann, CEO of MySupply and Supplytechs joins me to tell his story. How one Founder created a community of startups to grow his Procuretech company Andreas began his career as a Consultant and this led him to start his entrepreneur's journey, at the time also in the consulting space. MySupply evolved from this as he saw the need for an affordable e-Sourcing tool for non-enterprise businesses that can leverage AI to automate parts of the sourcing process, to point the buyer towards the right e-sourcing strategy for a specific project.  Recognising the typical challenges that Startups have Speeding up the process from minimum viable product (MVP) to having a reliable stream of revenue is the biggest challenge for every startup.  Usually in the early stage, a startup will not have a big marketing team or a huge budget to spend on ads. So, finding ways to organically (or relatively affordably) get attention onto the product is going to be key. Even more so if a startup in the early stages is self-funded and not backed by VC money. Enter Supplytechs as a potential solution So, without a huge Sales & Marketing team or budget, being able to effectively and affordably start to bring in revenue is key. Andreas explains how the usual route of doing a roadshow at conferences and at industry events was kind of dependent on the other parties being interested (and of course, it's also not free). Meaning that ultimately, the ability to start generating sales was really outside of their control to a large extent. They noticed that other startups in the space may be targeting the same customers but are not necessarily in direct competition with MySupply, and so the seed was planted that there was perhaps a smarter way to combine resources and to help one another in some way. Why not just sponsor an event instead? Startups just don't have the budget to compete with the bigger boys when it comes to event sponsorship. Attending events is fantastic from a marketing perspective but the costs to be a sponsor are just too prohibitively expensive. This is also reflected when you see the types of companies that sponsor these conferences and events. Even well funded, later stage startups are rarely seen in the list of sponsors. How to go about getting others on board with the idea? Andreas explained that he used COVID as a catalyst to get some buzz around the idea to do a digital event. With all events and conferences being cancelled, this gave him the impetus to reach out to other startups and potential speakers and there was a lot of interest, for obvious reasons. They recently in September just did their third Supplytechs Digital Conference which was a pitch event featuring some of the startups who are a part of Supplytechs. Leveraging collaboration While there may be some companies in the Supplytechs network who are theoretically competing with one another, it is rare that two startups are both going after and competing against one another for a sale with the exact same customer.  And while it could happen at some point, the power of the network and the knowledge contained within each of the different startups is really a force of momentum that can help all of them grow and develop in the right direction. Especially when considering the real competition is either legacy software in organisations, or processes which use Excel and Sharepoint that could be digitised. Discovering the full potential Andreas acknowledges that Supplytechs is still in its early stages and there are numerous directions that the network could go

There are many great stories about how startups are created, but this one is particularly interesting. Take a procurement organisation that is often cited as best-in-class, and then challenge it with becoming even better. My guest on today's show, Michael Pleuger, is a former Senior Executive at Vodafone Procurement who had the mandate to do just that. The result became akirolabs, and the journey of how this happened is our discussion today. Making a Best-In-Class Procurement Team even Better: The story of akirolabs and the strive for excellence Michael's journey with Vodafone started out with him being part of the team who designed and launched the Vodafone Procurement Company, headquarted in Luxembourg. akirolabs is the first AI-enabled collaboration platform for strategic procurement, and was borne out of him being challenged by Vodafone Procurement Company's Founder and CEO (now akirolabs Co-Founder) Detlef Schultz, to take their already mature procurement digitisation to the next level. Beyond category management: filling a white space in today's procurement technology landscape To set the scene, Vodafone already had industry-leading digitisation and was performing as one of the best-in-class organisations when it comes to three KPIs of measuring the effectiveness of procurement: Value contribution Compliance Efficiency Michael couldn't see at first anything missing from the existing set-up. How do you take that and improve on it. All operational and tactical procurement was already digitised and automated to a high degree, so the question that Michael got to work on was: how can we make the more strategic side of procurement more digital? Thinking outside the box and looking at other industries Michael's proposal was working around replacing experience with vision, leadership and collaboration. One of the first things the team did was to bring in McLaren Applied Technologies: the data and analytics spin-off of the McLaren F1 racing team. Just doing that in itself shows that bringing best practices from other industries or walks of life can have a huge impact. When you consider just how many data points a motor racing team has to measure to get one step ahead of their rivals, it's not surprising that the insights they could offer were hugely insightful. Classic thinking outside the box. Not "what is our competitor doing?" How did they arrive at Category Management as the focus area? Procurement is in a unique position as the node between the business and the supply chain. No other function in the business works with such a diverse range of stakeholders within the business and at the same time looks outwards with the relationships that we manage with external suppliers. So, what is needed to optimise and leverage this position? Connectivity: being the spider at the centre of the web has limited usefulness if the communication channels between all of the interconnected parties are not smooth and accessible to all. Prevent Silos and Fragmentation: the necessity to have some kind of "digital glue", as Michael describes it, to prevent this fragmentation between all of the different stakeholders we come into contact with, both internal and external. AI to leverage both the Demand and Supply factors: Procurement essentially works with internal business partners to understand the demands of the business, and then communicates this to external suppliers to understand and secure the supply-related aspects of the puzzle. With these three factors, the team then concluded that the Category Management process would be the best way to bring all of this together in some digital form. But does this translate to the average procurement team? It's one thing doing this for EUR 26 billion of spend in an extremely mature procurement organisation, but can it translate to the average mid-market business whose digital journey is way less mature? Michael argues that even

Spend analytics is a pretty mature (and competitive) market. So, what does this hold for the future? No better person to ask than the former CEO of Spendency, Arvid Fredin. They were recently acquired by German source-to-pay technology company Onventis. Arvid stayed on post-acquisition and is now Managing Director of Onventis' operations for the UK and Nordic countries, and joins me on this week's episode. A recent acquisition, and how this may shape the future of spend analytics A good place to start is actually to talk about the recent acquisition of Spendency. Is this part of a wider pattern that is emerging? Are we starting to see more consolidation in the market? And if so, why are we seeing it? Will there be more consolidation and what is driving this? Arvid suggests that the driver is often the desire to get more productivity from their sales force. Being best-of-breed and focusing on one specific solution often means that it's more difficult to get warm leads who are looking for exactly what you're offering. But is the growth coming from customers who are switching away from some of the legacy suites, or is there still enough business to go after from companies who are still at the beginning of their digital transformation journey? Greenfield customers are easier to win over because: No existing solution in place as a benchmark to compare against No switching costs to consider to phase out a legacy application As soon as there are fewer opportunities out there in terms of greenfield customers, Arvid suspects there will be much more consolidation. The difference between natively coded tech vs. Power BI or Tableau Spendency is actually natively coded, whereas many spend analytics solutions out there, as well as anything natively developed in-house by organisations themselves, usually relies on third party technology. The most common of these are Power BI and Tableau. From a price perspective, this gives Spendency an advantage because they're not paying third party licensing fees. But it also allows them to be able to run queries much faster and more efficiently because their technology is specifically designed for procurement spend analytics reporting. Whereas third party technology on the other hand is built having to be something that can offer all things to all people. This affects overall user experience as well as the cost of the solution. To AI or not to AI: How far can automation get you? Spendency currently doesn't utilise AI for their analytics solution, so the obvious question is do you actually need it? Arvid looks at two ways that AI can be built into spend analytics: For efficiency and to reduce manual, time consuming tasks to enable procurement teams to spend time on more value added activities. This is the type of AI that is typically being used these days in spend analytics software The more exciting, sexy future where AI engine is able to pick up on smart signals and made recommendations. We're not there yet with #2, but this is where the exciting future could be. Using AI for categorisation of spend is definitely on their roadmap. But having AI working together with a Category Manager is likely to be the common model of deploying spend analytics solutions in the near future. Enabling Category Managers to see the categorisation rules is key to this, to remove the "black magic" from the process and ensure that the tool has credibility. Getting to 80-90% categorisation should be possible with technology, but getting to 100% is always going to be a challenge without any human interaction in the process. Is there a difference between what Consultants need vs. Category Managers? Arvid explains that Spendency evolved through Effso, a Swedish management consulting firm, and was eventually spun off as a separate business. The needs of a Management Consultant are indeed different than the needs of a...

On this week's show we're digging into the world of direct materials sourcing. It's a part of the digital procurement landscape that's been a bit neglected, except for e-sourcing tools, and my guest this week decided to do something about this. Anne-Sophie Le Bloas, Founder and CEO of Ravacan, experienced in both her native Europe and also in the US, that there wasn't much innovation out there when it came to leveraging digital tools to manage direct materials spend, and set out to remedy this. Creating visibility, analytics and clarity in the direct materials space Part of a rare breed, Anne-Sophie is a fellow ex-Procurement Category Manager turned startup founder. She studied Procurement and Supply Chain in Bordeaux and then moved into the corporate world, starting out in the FMCG industry, moving then into aeronautics and then finally the automotive industry. Against this backdrop, there is a lot of focus around specification and quality, while at the same time ensuring cost reduction. Engineering and technical decisions are key, but at the same time there is a lot of pressure on cost, especially in lower margin industries such as automotive. Is it hard to get conversations with innovators and change agents? Traditional manufacturing is an industry where change often happens very slowly and is difficult to drive innovation and different ways of doing things. I was therefore curious to understand whether Anne-Sophie had experienced challenges getting traction if she is selling software into these types of businesses. She admits that there have been challenges, but also says that she tried to target the innovators and change agents within these businesses. The COVID-19 pandemic has definitely helped to accelerate the appetite for change and embracing potential new ideas, partly as a result of supply chain shortages, inflationary pressures and longer lead times. The ability to be able to make decisions faster and to have the bigger picture at your fingertips has been a key factor in driving acceptance of using software. Moving to a remote working environment during COVID meant that previous interactions that would take place within a production plant no longer could, if white collar functions such as Procurement and R&D were working from home. What's wrong with managing directs within an ERP? Understanding knock-on effects and having predictive models to be able to evaluate this impact on the overall supply chain is key. This is something that's very hard to do from within an ERP system. For example if a COVID lockdown closes down a factory in a certain part of the world, how can you model this from within your ERP or using a spreadsheet? Asynchronous ways of working are too slow. Data may have changed by the time you have tried to update and work collaboratively on an Excel and email-based project. Managing multiple tiers of supply and directed buys Direct material supply chains often have added layers of complexity, where you need to understand relationships beyond your 1st tier suppliers. Anne-Sophie cites the example of the consumer electronics industry where contract manufacturing is normal and the Tier 1 supplier is really just a gatekeeper to a number of external manufacturers. It's also quite common in some industries to have "directed buys", where the end customer dictates to a Tier 1 supplier where to buy certain components to buy from further down the supply chain. Having the ability to track your BOM electronically, through one platform, gives a whole new level of transparency and visibility. Leveraging AI to capitalise on savings and limit price impact With constant price fluctuations in direct materials, there is also an AI element built into the software which allows for intelligent switching of suppliers in the case where components are dual-sourced. Getting the mix right based on capacity, price, lead time and availability can certainly be managed manually but is very...

Kicking off this week with the first of a number of interviews we'll be doing over the next couple of months with contract management platforms. This is a rapidly expanding area and it's gone from simply being repositories and authorisation / signature software into becoming a very diverse ecosystem over the past few years. My guest today is Elena Mechik of Berlin-based startup Inhubber, which offers a blockchain-based solution for contract management and tracking. Blockchain and its use in Contract Management for Procurement and Supply Chain I have to admit that I was very ignorant about blockchain and its multitude of potential different uses and applications until I started digging into this topic. If you think "it's just something to do with Bitcoin", then think again! End-to-end encryption of contracts: Why is it important? Elena explains that the way you track and store contracts should be treated the same way as you store money. With increasing risk of phishing and cyberattacks, it's important you understand, track and trace your contract management activities. Contracts are encrypted from user-to-user with Inhubber, whereas most other platforms tend to encrypt just on the cloud or on the server. There is no need to send documents via email or any other less secure method of communication. What is blockchain and how is it relevant to contract management? Blockchain technology can be used in various industries and use cases. It works by saving certain information on various "nodes" (or "chains"). You don't save this information on your personal laptop, rather it's saved hundreds or thousands of times on a network of other, independent nodes. This gives the document (or information) immutability: the elimination of somebody being able to fraudulently change or doctor a document. In simple terms, it eliminates fraud and tracks and records any changes or amendments for posterity. There is no need with blockchain to save different versions of contracts in MS Word with the latest version filename as a differentiator. There is a complete audit trail stored in cyberspace. Nobody can falsify or overwrite changes to a document without it being flagged. Which sectors are keenest to adopt this technology? Elena answers that typically, companies that have experience of being hacked are usually keenest to bring this on board. Historically this was only very large companies, but this is now starting to change. As cybersecurity becomes more and more central to companies' risk management strategies, the size of the companies responding favourably to investing in blockchain technology are becoming smaller. It's no longer an issue that only big organisations need to worry about. From real estate, through to construction and most recently banks are all showing an interest in adopting this type of technology. It's not just contracts which can be stored using blockchain While they may be the most obvious example, contracts are just one type of document which can benefit from blockchain. Purchase orders and receipts for example can also be stored in Inhubber, and access control to different documents within an organisation or within a network of core suppliers can also be regulated through the platform. By taking advantage of encryption technology, confidential documents can also be transferred for example from a buyer to a supplier when collaborating on joint innovation projects. Leveraging AI to extract key contract data As with many competitor CLM solutions, Inhubber also has an intelligent contract monitoring function which can track some standard metrics such as: When is a contract due for renewal? Who are the contract partners? Which conditions have been negotiated? This can also be programmed according to individual requirements of customers, to enable it to train the AI based on what to look for. How does the AI differentiate between native contracts and third party...

With the backdrop of inflation, supply chain shortages and now as I currently write this, a war being fought on European soil, supplier collaboration and supplier innovation are two topics that I think we can be sure will increase in priority. My guest to deep dive on this topic is Maciej (Matt) Zaleski of Procurence Meercat, a software platform for industrial manufacturing companies who have recently developed a supplier innovation module for their solution. Using software to successfully drive a transparent supplier innovation program Against the rather bleak backdrop we're currently up against, the focus right now is to ensure that manufacturing businesses are able to become a customer of choice to their supply base. With a tight market and the need to innovate to stay ahead, avoid material shortages and optimise lead times, this is particularly good timing to be discussing this topic. Procurence grew out of Matt being frustrated at what was already out there. He found himself as a consultant having to leave a client with Excel sheets rather than a nice software dashboard. This is ultimately what drove him to start the business. Starting off with a procurement, quality and vendor master data solution, Procurence has since grown to become a full stack solution on the quality and New Product Introduction (NPI) side in addition to the pure procurement modules. This focus has enabled them to thrive in manufacturing industries, especially the automotive sector. New modules have very much been based on customer feedback, and supplier innovation is no different, growing out of a request from AGCO Corporation, one of Procurence's key customers, to streamline and digitise the process. Define "Supplier Innovation": What does it mean? There are three key pillars that Matt typically sees from Procurence Meercat clients: Design to cost Quality Sustainability Matt explains that it's all about looking at what hides below the waterline. Continuous Improvement often sits below the top of the iceberg but is nonetheless a very important component of supplier relationships. Different stakeholders will drive the process depending on what the end result should be. Ideas generation typically becomes a lot more bottom up process and as such requires a greater amount of participation from a wider number of stakeholders e.g. engineering, marketing, supply base, manufacturing. Early involvement with suppliers is key. Otherwise, the potential is that a company misses out on ongoing feedback during a design process or project ideation if they are only contacting suppliers once the design and features are a done deal. R&D is a more strategic function, but often don't have the manufacturing experience or the technical knowledge of the supplier's production process. A hands off approach will result in the supplier doing as they're told. Whereas in a more collaborative environment, they will volunteer suggestions and improvements during a more consultative process. How can software assist this process? Channel between internal stakeholders and suppliers. There are often multiple stakeholders who need to have access to a two-way conversation between the company and its supply base. "Crowdsourcing" of innovative solutions to specific problems around product design, production process, quality improvements, kanban etc. Software platforms facilitate this through making the conversations visible to multiple stakeholders and removing the silos we see when this task is performed through emails and spreadsheets. Supplier to internal stakeholder: procurement doesn't know everything that's going on in the company. Procurement often expects a clear specification to be able to go to market with an RFP or RFQ. Stakeholders may look to suppliers to assist them with this process and thus reduce the time to introduce the part or project. This can also work in service companies, and...

Today is a very proud and special day for me as I launch our new venture: Procurement Software. The ProcurementSoftware.site website sets out to democratise access to information and resources on digital procurement as a free platform, focusing on helping procurement leaders, CFOs and boutique consultancies serving mid-market businesses. What makes ProcurementSoftware.site different and unique? I've listed 10 reasons why I believe that Procurement Software provides a solution that nobody else out there is offering....here goes: 1. Completely FREE to access for the buy side We don't charge any subscription to buyers. Neither to the individual, nor to the company. Our directory is completely free to access all areas. 2. Focus on software that's within reach of mid-market businesses The existing content platforms and research houses who are specifically focused on the digital procurement ecosystem are very much targeting enterprise level procurement pros as their target audience. While anyone in a large corporate will still get value from our solution, we have deliberately included some of the less well-known software that focuses on mid-market and SMEs as their target customer base. All of the legacy suites and new best-of-breed solutions who target enterprise customers are also included in the directory, but our blogs and this podcast is more focused on the mid market. 3. More transparency There are a number of "best of" lists out there. They have varying transparency when it comes to how these lists are put together. Some are more clear than others, but still, there is a lot that remains murky. We have circumvented this potential issue by making the directory completely comprehensive and including anyone in there who we believe has a relevant solution and a saleable, useable product with existing customers. 4. We're all busy: you don't have time for complex research Procurement pros - I know you're busy. There are enough challenges in the world right now keeping you up at night. That's why we feel that a lot of the detailed research and white papers are unnecessarily complex. You're smart people. If you're given the basics to get on with, you can do your due diligence on the potential software suppliers you're considering. Do you need to pay several thousand dollars for a white paper you'll probably never read in full? That money could be better spent hiring someone to help you source and implement the software from the shortlist of solutions we'll provide you for free. 5. User Friendly Our content and our software directory is easy to use, easy to find and intuitive. I talk about UX being an under-appreciated feature for procurement technology to help with adoption and uptake. The exact same thing applies here. We will definitely also listen closely to user feedback and improve our UX as we go! 6. No Corporate Subscriptions So, if your organisation doesn't have a corporate subscription to one of the big research houses, then how do you access market knowledge? As an individual, you can't take out a subscription. And even if you could, it would be prohibitively expensive. That's why we're never going to offer this as a business model. Even if we sell content in the form of digital downloads on the site in future, my goal is to ensure we offer this at an affordable price that any procurement pro could purchase, even for those of you who are unable to claim it back as a company expense. 7. No Jargon! I hate complexity for the sake of it. White papers and solutions maps can be unnecessarily confusing. Lots of competitor websites are full of acronyms and procurement-speak. That's why we want to give you a simple solution which just requires a few mouse clicks. We've also spelt out in full all of the acronyms that are in our software finder, so you're not scratching your head if you're not an expert in this space. 8. No "pay-to-play" business model Every software solution...

As procurement pros, we're feeling the heat a lot right now dealing with problems of a reactive nature. We're having to fight to secure supply and deal with crisis management with increasing frequency. Moving to a more predictive form of supplier relationship management (SRM), while at the same time handling the transactional and compliance part of the requirements is what my guest, Sam Jenks, CMO of Kodiak Hub, is here to talk about today. Full Stack SRM: The case for "Know Your Supplier" with due diligence and risk monitoring What started off as Kodiak Rating in 2015 recently rebranded to Kodiak Hub back in September last year. Part of this was the wider evolution of their platform from being primarily a compliance and controls platform to what has now become a full SRM tool, both on the predictive / market intel side as well as on the more traditional audit and reports side. As Sam explains, this was more of an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary process. Customers needed a platform that could expand into other areas of SRM other than the compliance piece, and Kodiak walked with them on their journey and built out their platform to evolve into what it is today. Onboarding and assessment was the core feature, but this has since expanded to cover: Credit rating Third party market intelligence Due diligence (audit) module Supplier performance How has the evolution affected their customer base? Primary customers have moved to be slightly larger than previously, but they have maintained to a large extent a customer base which is predominantly manufacturing businesses with a large spend on raw materials. The industry sectors have remained pretty consistent along their journey but they are now seeing more success acquiring customers more positioned towards the enterprise segment. Whereas previously, most of their business was coming from the mid market. Breaking down SRM: tactical and strategic How can this experience be improved and optimised within a digital platform, based on what Kodiak Hub has built? Tactical: Supplier onboarding, compliance checks and audit - removing manual data entry and ensuring that the data gathering piece can be automated to the greatest possible extent. Supplier pre-qualification and onboarding also requires the supplier to be actively engaged and to find the process intuitive. Industry or customer specific content around supplier onboarding has been built into the platform to avoid Weighting and KPIs can be modelled based on customers' individual criteria. Strategic: Collaboration space - having an interactive platform which can be used either for corrective actions, or for innovation focused activities. Looking at innovative activities, this is more based on project management or more strategic activities such as joint R&D. Performance evaluation - removing the "Excel hell" from the process and having 6 different standard areas for performance. Everyone's needs when it comes to performance are different, depending on what they are buying and the industry sector they are in. Predictive analytics: While there are a lot of stand alone best-of-breed solutions out there offering individual solutions - e.g. news monitoring, financial risk, traceability - Kodiak has tried to bring this all under one umbrella. Their approach is to partner with third party solutions providers who can do all of this in one platform rather than try to build out their own proprietary technology for everything to try to compete with the single-solution software providers. What makes Kodiak different from all-in-one suites which have SRM platforms? Sam highlights the fact that a lot of the suites are not user friendly and there is a lot of legacy technology out there with some of the traditional suites. He also mentions that through their approach of partnering with technology providers who are experts in the space of each of the specific areas they

Managing a situation where an increasing percentage of any company's workforce is composed of external, contingent workers is a challenge that many companies are already dealing with. While many more will have to figure this out pretty soon too, as they move to a more flexible labour model with the advent of the "gig economy". How to mange this digitally, to both ensure compliant onboarding of consultancies, contractors and freelancers, as well as streamlining the administrative hassle associated with this? Tobi Schmidt and Igor Putrenko from external workforce management platform Eqip are my guests to discuss this. Digitally managing the Contingent Workforce: Compliant onboarding, payroll and cost management Managing this process using dozens of different recruitment agencies, or even using individual interim managers directly, isn't realistically an efficient strategy that larger businesses can manage at scale. So, there's a recognised need to manage this more effectively. What is already out there in terms of existing technology? Enterprise Resource Planning tools (ERPs) such as SAP and Oracle tend to be used more for matters relating to the internal workforce. Payroll, salary info, taxes, deductions, compliance requirements and so on. Vendor Management Systems as Igor calls them, or VMS for short, have systems and records for all external providers of services. Examples here in the more traditional enterprise software space are SAP Fieldglass, AgileOne and Beeline. Cost and lack of intuitiveness when it comes to ease of use are cited as being pitfalls of these platforms. Whereas on the other end of the spectrum, platforms such as Upwork and Fiverr are the go-to websites for managing more traditional freelancer and small agency relationships. These are popular in the tech startup and lifestyle business space, but would not be considered as rigorous when ti comes to the needs of larger businesses with compliance and due diligence requirements. How does Eqip differentiate their offering? Eqip is a B2B marketplace which incorporates proper screening process, and also caters to more niche, white collar consultancy or expert professions. This is essentially the differentiation between them and more generic freelancer marketplaces. In terms of the legacy enterprise software, they attempt to also provide this in one platform but in a more agile way, enabling a faster onboarding process for vendors. Hard-to-find skills, such as cybersecurity experts, can be very tough to find through traditional recruitment agencies. The existing enterprise software doesn't really provide the tech to enable cross-border talent scouting and a solution to compliantly onboard them. Eqip saw a gap in the market to fix this, by enabling Swiss companies originally to recruit hard-to-find contractors and consultants from a talent pool in Central and Eastern Europe. Furthermore, it also enables them to manage these workers if they are performing the work remotely from their home countries rather than actually needing to be on site at the client. What are the emerging trends in this market? On the one hand, companies struggle to find workers in their own country and simultaneously are becoming more comfortable with remote work. This is leading to more geo-arbitrage when it comes to recruitment, especially in the contingent workforce. Whereas on the other hand, Eqip is also seeing an increasing demand on the platform for more "operational" consulting requirements from companies who would typically perform the work on site. Igor also mentions the increasing erosion of the "job for life" concept and a move towards a larger percentage of a company's total workforce being contingent rather than permanent, salaried employees. Is HR the key stakeholder, and how open are they to change? While HR teams are a cog in the wheel, Tobi and Igor actually say that their sales and business development strategy is usually focusing on...

We're diving in again to the ever-expanding contract management space this week, looking at a piece of software that straddles the murky waters between procuretech and legaltech. Redlining and amending contracts is a boring and tedious process to most procurement professionals, but a necessary evil that comes with the territory for commercial contract negotiations post-sourcing and award. My guest this week to break down how technology can get us to our destination faster is Dan Broderick, CEO and Co-Founder of Washington DC-based legaltech start-up BlackBoiler. Utilising AI to speed up and simplify your contract clause redlining process I start off by asking Dan about who he typically sees as being the customer's job title in the roles that they sell to, with this being a more legal-focused solution, and to what extent Procurement features in this. We then move on to some of the key features that BlackBoiler offers to set the scene of what it can actually do to aid us as procurement professionals to speed up an otherwise cumbersome and tedious task. What is Black Boiler's sweet spot? There's a lot of contract management software now on the market and it's becoming an increasingly crowded space. Dan sees BlackBoiler's sweet spot as being a contract negotiation automation software that helps customer and supplier get to the point of a mutually acceptable negotiated position on contracts, through the use of automation on changes to standard contract copy. This can be applied on both native contracts and third party documents. Both Legal and Procurement alike are seen to Dan as being potential "buyers" in this space. Also Sales to some extent are involved in the conversation because they're often struggling to conclude contracts fast enough to satisfy customer expectations. What inspired Dan to found BlackBoiler? As a lawyer, he found that he was often tasked with negotiating contracts that were very similar, and was responding to very similar counter-party positions and redline in these documents. After getting the feeling that his work felt more than a touch robotic, it made him realise that a significant part of his job could potentially be automated to free up time and to speed up the process. Are the must-have features different when viewed from a sales, procurement or legal perspective? YES! Dan explains that the key challenges tend to be: Self-empowering Sales to avoid them having to go to legal and potentially lose a sale due to the bottleneck. Enabling Legal do their work faster, and looking at how can they make their work less repetitive. Procurement is working with a business need for them to purchase something. As the gatekeeper, speeding up the end-to-end Source-to-Contract process is key. How to bridge the gap between AI, and the professional expertise of the lawyer? Dan explains that BlackBoiler (or indeed any AI-powered solution for that matter) is not designed to work on its own. The objective is to speed up the process and enable arrival at the destination faster, not to eliminate Legal from the process completely. Helping the legal counsel to become more efficient and free up their resources to work more strategically is the overarching objective. By enabling them to not be actively involved in fairly routine higher volume, lower risk agreements will add value to both Procurement and Legal alike. Dan likens this to using a junior counsel rather than a highly experienced legal professional for more routine agreements. What about greenfield or decentralised procurement with no standard contract templates? This is an area where it's difficult to apply the typical solution that BlackBoiler would go in and solve. Dan mentions that they're currently working on building something that will enable new or less structured procurement teams to go in and generate some standard clauses based on some standard intake questions. The solution isn't ready for...

The relationship between Procurement and Legal can often be somewhat strained. Procurement's hands are tied because they have to seek legal support. Legal typically is under-resourced to serve the growing needs of procurement teams, especially when Sales often gets priority in the internal legal support pecking order. My guest today is Giles Thompson, Chief Growth Officer of London-based contract process automation tool Avvoka. We discuss how both teams can work smarter with the right tech to improve relationships, free up time and ditch the repetitive tasks. Improving Procurement and Legal team relationships and workflows thanks to automated and smart processes Giles is a lawyer by trade and educational background, and so is great to approach this discussion from someone on the "other side of the fence" so to speak. He tells the story of how in his short time dealing with procurement professionals, he often found himself offering the same advice and amending the exact same clauses each time he was asked to get involved in a contract negotiation process. Avvoka as a solution essentially helps to simplify and automate this process by enabling the buyer (or the seller for that matter) to generate a contract template by answering questions as part of a guided process to determine the risk and thus the level of complexity required in numerous different contract scenarios. Why is Legal such a bottleneck in large enterprises? Legal is being asked to weigh in on more and more different processes and requirements, but the headcount is not being increased to the necessary level to cope with this. Procurement, likewise, is being expected to do more with less, and as such this creates the classic bottleneck and frustration that goes with it. Whereas in reality, the vast majority of contracts don't need to go to Legal for the green light or for very straightforward, commercially driven amendments. Having the ability to use a self-service portal that generates or inserts the necessary contract clauses depending on the specific requirements can save time, money and unnecessary frustration. The power of aggregated data Giles makes a great point that through having a platform that tracks and documents each time a counterparty redlines something in a standard contract or requests changes, this is stored in a central database. If it's costing time and money to renegotiate a particularly troublesome clause every single contract negotiation, then perhaps there's a valid argument to just swallow this as something that most vendors just won't accept, and move on with a more realistic contract template that's likely to be adopted. How many times have we clashed heads with different suppliers over the exact same standard contract clause, every single time?! Over time, the template then becomes more workable and less likely to cause conflict during negotiations. How to simplify and self-serve legal advice to buyers Often a procurement professional will not feel comfortable negotiating certain (more legal-specific) clauses in a contract. Especially if they don't have a formal procurement or contracting background and have not been trained in commercial contract management. Giles gives examples of how a tool like Avvoka can enable self-serve advice directly in the platform. He gives the example of liability clauses, and how embedded videos from in-house Legal, along with various different templates, can offer a "grocery store" environment to pick the best clause according to perceived level of risk and buyer vs. supplier power balance within the negotiation. The classic "work smarter, not harder" opportunity. Dealing with supplier generated (third party paper) contracts Avvoka is geared up to work on native contract formats but can also work with third party contracts. Controlling the platform that the contract is being negotiated on can often be a small win, especially if you're forced due to relative supplier...

My guest this week on The Procuretech Pub requires no introduction to anyone who is familiar with the digital procurement space. Dr. Elouise Epstein is Partner at Kearney in San Francisco and author of the book https://www.kearney.com/procurement/trade-wars-pandemics-and-chaos (Trade Wars, Pandemics and Chaos: How Digital Procurement Enables Business Success in a Disordered World). We have an informal and very open discussion about procurement technology's past, present and what direction the future trends are moving in this space. Procuretech's evolution, where it's at and where we're headed: The Procuretech Pub with Dr. Elouise Epstein Elouise begins by giving a whistle stop tour of her career and some of the things she's seen in the digital procurement space along the way. From its beginnings, where best of breed led the way, through the rise of the suites and now to a more emerging hybrid model. She explains how around 2013, Kearney began receiving calls from enterprises who had implemented what I now often refer to as "legacy suites", saying that users didn't want to use them and they weren't seeing their return on investment. It wasn't really until 2020, where Covid definitely seems to have given the market a push, that organisations started to adopt more of a "platform-based" approach with an increasing emphasis on a best-of-breed tech ecosystem. Elouise's "spider diagrams" and the current "platform" trend "The suites failed to deliver and there is legacy sunk cost investment" and as a result of that, often these suites are used as a platform from which companies build out their tech stack. Elouise is a big critic of the big suite approach and is an advocate of the platform approach, where this is built upon through best-of-breed technology. We just don't have 100% the ideal, perfect platform that we need just yet. The software used as a platform has ended up being in that role kind of by default, and there isn't a system built to act as a platform in its core function just yet. Building their own platform can also be an option for very large enterprises who have the IT capabilities in-house to do this. This is an approach for the brave / well resourced IT departments, but advantage of this strategy is that each "module" can easily be exchanged. Using a legacy suite as the platform doesn't allow this to happen as easily for P2P, or S2C to some extent. Will the legacy suites survive this pivot? I ask Elouise what the future holds for these suite providers with this market backdrop. While the market leaders are secure, especially with SAP Ariba and Coupa having implemented App Stores to allow easy bolt-ons and integrations for best-of-breed solutions, some of the others are "under duress". She sees the suite market as being "propped up" to some extent. Who will come in to challenge the market leaders? Will someone from outside procuretech come in to challenge them, such as Salesforce or AWS? And, where will the others go if they survive this? It could be that they pivot more towards the mid market, but that would obviously mean a significant realignment of their pricing model and features offered in order to compete and flourish in this market segment. How useful or reliable are the "best-of" lists when evaluating the market? Elouise is openly critical of analysts and consultants in general and sees the hype as being self-serving. She starts off by saying she's not a fan of 2x2 evaluations because they create artificial markets rather that have to fit into that specific evaluation framework. Much of the innovation doesn't neatly fit into a box, and innovation is constantly changing as the market evolves. How the data is being used and how the evaluations are put together is important to be able to truly appreciate and evaluate which procurement software is best for a specific business, based on their own unique, individual criteria. Keeping on top of the market evaluations and...

Digital transformation doesn't necessarily have to be complex. Sometimes, an end-to-end source-to-pay (S2P) solution that joins up the dots, and automates a lot of otherwise manual processes, can give a huge productivity advantage. The mid market has traditionally been underserved by procurement software, with tech companies typically going after large enterprise clients at their expense. One of the older players in the European market is Onventis, who have successfully been improving and extending their offering since 2000 and successfully serving mid-market businesses. My guest today is their CEO, Frank Schmidt. Providing a solid solution for source-to-pay in the mid market - Onventis has survived and thrived Frank's audio unfortunately is pretty bad, so apologies for that ahead of the interview. We did the best we could. Who is the target market for Onventis? Mid-sized businesses for Onventis are those who fall into the bracket of internationally active manufacturing companies with an annual turnover of EUR 100 million to EUR 1.5 billion (approx. $110 million to $1.65 billion). Although they have customers who are much bigger than this too. What does their suite cover? At its core, Onventis is a source-to-pay suite but its functionality is more wide reaching than this. Their sourcing module goes right through to offer auctions, as well as basic contract management functionality. There are also additional applications covering supplier and risk management, as well as the catalogues and e-procurement functionality associated with the traditional full stack P2P offerings. How do they fare against some of the enterprise suites? Frank agrees that towards the upper end of their customer base, they are playing on the same turf as some of the more well-known enterprise level procurement suite providers. There has already been a lot of consolidation in this market, and Onventis has also been no stranger to this. Their recent acquisition of Swedish spend analytics platform Spendency, along with an invoice automation platform called Workflow Wise who were acquired by Onventis two years ago. My interview with Arvid Fredin, who was Spendency's CEO prior to the acquisition, can be found in Episode 24 of the podcast. As a German company, it's no surprise to learn that 70% of Onventis' customers are in a SAP ecosystem. This enables them to offer fully standardised integration with SAP, when so much of their business comes from customers already using SAP as their ERP system. Coming into contact with Ariba and Coupa is also commonplace. Why go for a suite vs. 2 or 3 best-of-breed solutions bolted together? Customers in this segment are always somewhat more price sensitive than enterprise customers, and the "time to value" is key in terms of seeing the ROI on their investment. Time to implementation is key, as is the ability to pick and choose which modules of the suite to purchase in the initial phase. Customers often want to see proof of concept or run a pilot and to see a positive return on their price to performance ratio. Offering modularity allows companies to tackle their digital transformation in a piece-by-piece way by capturing the most added value at first and then building on this. How much greenfield business is still out there? There isn't much greenfield business out there, which kind of surprised me a little when Frank said this. Most of the business they see is replacement business or expansion business in one form or another. Frank sees a lot of legacy tech, fragmented systems and botched transformations out there. Much of the technology is siloed, such as invoice automation in Accounts Payable, which is an area they often come across and are asked to consolidate into their suite approach. There is also a differentiation in the various industry sectors. Industrial manufacturing industries such as automotive are often ahead of their counterparts in service industries, where Frank...

This week we're taking on a very relevant topic in today's marketplace. Given the current supply chain crisis and geopolitical instability, what better time to speak to a guest from a unique eSourcing solution? Alan Holland, CEO of Keelvar, is here to tell us how AI can offer something more immediate, spot and transactional, in these unstable times when agility matters. Keelvar - bot technology for spot sourcing Alan begins by giving us a rundown of Keelvar - who it serves and how it works. Alan explains how his background in a university computer science department inspired Keelvar, and how his knowledge in AI has enabled him to develop a platform for sourcing excellence, that scales to any size of transaction. Recognising the importance of data... finally! Alan got into procurement after watching his PhD students making requests from chemical companies. It was a chaotic process, and as a computer scientist he identified it immediately as a data problem: Much richer information needed to be collected from suppliers, and data processes needed to be much more efficient. He explains a win/win situation here - with both buyers and suppliers benefiting from richer, more detailed data. This was how things got started for Keelvar. Optimising spot sourcing, as opposed to long-term tenders I ask Alan about Keelvar's unique focus: Optimising spot sourcing. Using ocean freight as an example, Alan begins by explaining what makes Keelvar stand out from its competitors. On the one side, there are strategic sourcing events that take a long time (often months) to complete. For these, Keelvar stands out by offering the most flexibility and detail. The other major challenge in ocean freight is change - be that rates, network requirements or ports. Every day you're going back to market with mini tenders to adapt to these changes. Keelvar has sourcing bots that can automate this process, and provide great flexibility in customising this automation. We talk about the difference between ocean freight and other areas such as consumer goods, highlighting how much flexibility and agility matter in an ever-changing marketplace. Predictability vs flexibility in ocean freight Many freight handlers reward predictability through their pricing. I ask Alan how Keelvar, which by nature doesn't provide that kind of predictability, can still create value when it comes to ocean freight. Alan explains how this capability is embedded in the sourcing bots: When requests come in, if there is predictability in the demand pattern, then that is gathered at the request stage and shared with the carriers. How does Keelvar deal with charges at port? Alan explains that each of Keelvar's customers has great flexibility in how they want to design their bid sheet. Each sourcing bot asks for different things. If you determine that port handling fees are cost elements that should be included in the overall offer, carriers can't submit a bid without including those fees. What is the biggest win offered by Keelvar? Is it cost, data quality, simplifying processes under one source of truth, or a mixture of all three? Alan thinks it's a mix of all three, but that time saved is the main thing - with one customer saving 93% of the time and workload required for these mini tenders in ocean freight. He sees this as Keelvar's top benefit. But other benefits included process consistency, and savings as a result of being able to approach a large number of carriers in parallel. Keelvar makes this kind of scalability easy, allowing you go out to many more suppliers and generate competitive tension in the process. Keelvar is also fast - there's no time spent waiting for someone in procurement to kick off a mini tender process. How does reporting work with Keelvar? All the big data is collected online, so it's not on spreadsheet. The bot then uses a chat interface with a human approver to offer a choice of available options: From...

This week we've got a sponsored episode, welcoming back a guest we last spoke to in September 2021, Henning Hatje from Lhotse. Lhotse has a tactical and tail spend solution, which they see as something complementary to a legacy suite based approach. So if you've spent a lot of money investing in one of these suites and you're not likely to change provider, or maybe your company has a strategy to use a specific ecosystem that matches and ties in with your ERP (not naming names!), then this solution could be for you. Lhotse pivots to enterprise with a new solution I welcome Henning back to the podcast and mention how, since he was last on the show, he's been busy making changes to Lhotse that he's very excited to share. He talks about how Lhoste have been securing funding, scaling their team, refining their value proposition and pivoting their target market over the last eight to ten months. Lhotse now have enterprise size organisations squarely in their sites. Henning explains how the team realised that Lhotse works best when implemented in large, existing structures like the ones mentioned in the podcast's intro - for example SAP Ariba. Not so much as a standalone solution, but rather as an integrated solution that operates in the background of those legacy systems. What makes Lhotse different? Henning explains how these legacy systems don't cover tactical spend well, and are often cumbersome to use from a UX standpoint. I ask him what makes Lhoste different, and how it can meet the kind of requirements that today's customer is demanding. He explains that Lhotse's new approach hopes to supercharge procurement systems, working on two main axes: One focusing on the operative procurement teams, the spot by teams, the tactical teams, making their life easier and more efficient, bringing efficiency levers to their daily life, in terms of execution; And one focusing on the requester, the business users that are spread across the organisation. Henning  says that business users never enjoy these big suites, because they're made for experts, not occasional users. Although we both think that these big suites do have upsides, and we shouldn't beat them up too much, we both agree that UX makes them very intimidating for new users. For tactical spend and tail spend, users need a system that's intuitive, because if they don't have that, it results in maverick spend. Why do things this way, as opposed to just connecting catalogues? I put forward a logical challenge to Henning: Why wouldn't you then just just connect a bunch of punch out catalogues with something like Ariba, or one of these big suites? Where is the gap between what Lhotse does and what and what a punch out catalogue running into one of these suites can offer? He explains that the chief benefit is central coordination and easy searchability. Lhotse can harmonise across catalogues, giving an integration layer that combines the process of searching for something, no matter if it's a catalog item, or a free text request that will go out to suppliers to get quotes. While common, repeatable spend might benefit from a catalogue approach, not all spend is of this kind. So Lhotse is also useful when it comes to non-repeatable spend - for example a marketing assistant buying conference meeting rooms. Unique spend like this is common, and no-one wants to use a static, unintuitive catalog for these sorts of purchases. Examples - How Lhotse could help your organisation What does the process look like for tactical and tail spend in a poorly managed organisation, and by contrast, what does the same process look like when using Lhotse? He proposes an example where a company is using Ariba: They get a first quote, put it into the system as a free text request, and then put this to the procurement team to action. In this example, the procurement team is effectively doing a job a robot could do. They're not even sourcing, just converting a purchase...

This week our guest is Jim Bureau, CEO of Jaggaer. He's carving out a niche for an all-in-one solution, at a time when best of breeds are gaining market share. I'm known as a bit of a best of breed fanboy, so Jim is stepping into the dragon's den, here! I welcome Jim to the podcast, congratulate him for his bravery, and ask him about the challenges of offering a full suite solution in a tough market. Jim says it's important to acknowledge that, while companies may want to commit strongly to either best of breed or full suite solutions, the reality is that most companies end up using a mix of different tech approaches. He goes on to talk about the importance of user experience. Whether a solution is best of breed or wider in scope, the thing that users pick up on is the experience. And that's what Jaggaer focuses on. The future landscape for established suites I ask what Jim expects to see in the future for established suites like Jaggaer. Does he expect things to become more modular? Is that a direction he's thinking of following with Jaggaer? Jim says that the reason why full suites exist in the first place is that it's expensive to tie things together. He thinks that simplicity is key here, and that this question brings up two important initiatives for Jaggaer at the moment. One is creating an environment and ecosystem of partners that allows people to have suite systems while being able to plug niche, innovative vendors into that - quickly, easily and without requiring a lot of IT spend. Jaggaer allows customers to share third party modules and products that can easily be plugged in. Secondly, Jim is also working on something called Jaggaer Compose. This allows the customer and partner community to build out business processes that are specific to a niche or industry, and can then be shared amongst one another. He believes this will completely change the game on how people interact with these systems today.  It will officially be launched at the end of Q2. A Pick and Mix approach I ask Jim if he sees a future where customers can take a more  “pick and mix” approach. For example, let's imagine a consumer thinks that an external spend analytics product is stronger than what Jaggaer can offer. Is that something that they could, as part of their RFP, specifically request?  Jim says that, for any CEO, no-one wants to forgo business! But he accepts that this is how most companies want to work. Jim has spent a lot of time and effort on Jaggaer's autonomous commerce platform. Autonomy is important, and true autonomy comes from embracing sources outside of your own system - taking information from sources like TealBook or EcoVadis, and working that into your machine learning. There are so many sources of information out there, and you're never going to own everything. I agree that you can't be everything to everyone - Ikea makes great kitchens but you wouldn't buy your white goods from them. Customers want to use specialists. I use contract management as an example, and Jim jumps on the opportunity to speak more about this… Contract management and acquisitions Jim says that contracts are something people often use as an example of an adjacent market here, but he's spent a lot of time and effort making Jaggaer's contract features as usable as possible.   He explains that he doesn't want to force customers into adopting his contract module just because it's there. By focusing on the user experience, and good application of data (from some acquisitions we'll talk about in a moment..), he hopes that customers will gravitate to the best, easiest solution available - and if that's Jaggaer, then great.   I ask Jim what drives his strategy around staying on top of innovation? How would he decide whether to acquire a company or to enter a strategic partnership like he has with TealBook and EcoVadis?  Jim explains that it comes down to comprehensiveness. Not just the...

This week we're talking about supply chains. More specifically, where does the line lie between procurement and supply chain? Should we be concentrating on better understanding our multi-tiered complex chains, rather than just purchasing software to better track and trace shipments? Understanding the value of pre-emptive end-to-end supply chain management It's a bit of a loaded question, but I'm sure we're going to have a great debate today as we welcome an expert in the logistics and supply chain field, Tobias Larsson from Altana.ai. I welcome Tobias to the podcast, and ask him for a little bit of background before we dive into the bulk of this week's show. Tobias explains how he began his career in supply chain logistics with DHL. Starting as a management trainee, he'd take calls in customer service. This let him learn the nuts and bolts of the business before moving into working in freight, then in innovation at DHL. In 2011, just after the earthquake in Japan, he helped DHL develop a supply chain risk solution called Resilience 360. Eventually, this was spun out of DHL into its own business. Then, about a year ago, he left that organisation to join Altana.ai. He goes on to explain how Altana's mission is to create a living map of global supply chains. He sees it like the Google Maps of b2b commerce, giving customers multi-tiered visibility of supply chain networks by using a broad pool of datasets, all stitched together with AI. Of course, this kind of risk awareness is only becoming more valuable in our current geopolitical situation, be it due to COVID, or other disruptions to global supply chains. The future of supply chains – Just-in-time vs. Just-in-case I say that, in future, it's clear we'll need greater communication between corporate procurement at a strategic level, and local procurement at a more operational level. I ask Tobias, if he's starting to see a move away from procurement reporting into the CFO or a business unit, and instead reporting into supply chain, or the COO? He says yes, definitely. And goes on to describe how procurement has been a very strict process in companies, historically, acting almost as a policing faction. But now, looking at trends in the “new supply chain normal”, we've got bottlenecks, capacity shortages, transport issues, and a war in Ukraine. It's going to take time to get back to where we were before, with just-in-time supply chains, So now, pushing reliability upstream and expecting suppliers to deliver doesn't really work any more. Pointing your finger at suppliers is meaningless if they can't get access to the materials they need. It doesn't work to expect them to deliver on short deadlines. Collaboration and sharing responsibility Tobias says things are changing into a more collaborative environment where you need to work together with suppliers to manage risk. Procurement isn't a policing faction any more. Today's challenges call for a trusted, responsive network, so that we can all be more strategic and nimble. I ask Tobias to expand on the notion of near-shoring. Does he think that software like Altana.ai can offer the same kind of benefits? Could you keep a complex global supply chain in place while using that kind of software to mitigate risk? Or does he think a mix of both approaches is best? He says that balance is the way forward, here. Reducing long supply lines is useful, and it's worthwhile for companies to do that. But what Altana.ai focuses on is trust. Whether your suppliers are near or far, if you're better able to detail your value chain, that's going to have value. It's about bringing them closer to your business in more ways than simple geography. Will we ever see a return to the way things were? I ask about inventory – does the shift away from Just-in-time to Just-in-case is going to become permanent? Tobias thinks there'll be a strong re-balancing. It's more and more necessary to be mindful of your supply chains,...

This week we're doing something a little bit different: A quick solo episode, bringing you ten key criteria to consider when sourcing a digital procurement solution. This is something that seems surprisingly hard to come by in popular articles and white papers, so here are ten helpful factors to consider. Let's dive into the list… 10 Key Factors When Choosing A Procurement Solution 1. Cost The main question here is which cost model does the solution use? Most digital procurement tools operate a Saas (software as a service model). These will either charge you an annual or monthly fee for unlimited users, or on a per-user basis. Some solutions offer a hybrid approach somewhere between these two, or use a more modular structure. Per-user pricing gets expensive very quickly if you need to keep adding users. You may sign up to something like this, thinking that it's affordable, but then scale up to a point where the fees get out of hand. For established businesses this is obviously less of a concern. 2. Features I'm particularly talking about best of breeds here, rather than legacy suites. Less is more is the key thing here - do you want it to do one thing very well, or would you like something more versatile that offers a modular structure you can expand over time? If you're laser focused on a specific problem, for example contract management, or supplier relationship management, you'll want something that can do the job well. But these focused solutions obviously lack flexibility. A more versatile, modular solution can expand as your business does. It's important to consider this with your end goal in mind - what do you want to get out of the software, and what will your needs look like down the line? 3. Implementation How much time and resources will it take to implement a solution? Some of the bigger suites can take months to implement, not to mention an army of consultants in some cases! If you're a mid market business with a limited amount of IT resources, then you need to be asking providers to give you estimates on the time and ease of implementation. How easy is it to connect to your existing systems, for example ERP? How open is the interface? Most modern best of breed solutions have APIs which should facilitate implementation, but be aware that ERP systems - especially older ones - may not have the kind of open ecosystem that modern tools have. If your solution is trying to communicate with these older ERP systems, then be sure to ask about this up front. Maybe ask for case studies to see how this integration works in real terms before you commit. 4. User Experience How easy is it to use - For you, for your stakeholders, and for your procurement practitioners? I've been in situations in my career where I've been given tools so complicated that even experienced procurement professionals don't use them! If a tool creates extra work for your procurement team, or your suppliers, it might fall by the wayside. You want users to adopt new tech, and you want them to enjoy using it. If a tool becomes something users want to avoid, it's not a fantastic tool in the first place. User experience is an often-overlooked factor, but I think it's crucially important. Try to get a demo, or prior access before buying a piece of software - and try to check out how easy to use and accessible the key features for your business are. 5. Customer Support This is especially important with startups, who may not have 24/7 customer support. If you're in a different time zone, trying to get hold of a company who don't have an external customer support team, you could be waiting a while to resolve your problem! Try to get a picture of exactly what customer support is on offer. Do they have their own employees? Will they give you a dedicated customer success team member as a point of contact? Or, what if it's the worst case scenario of a ticket system run by an external company? 6....

This week on the Procuretech podcast, I'm joined by Source-to-Pay (S2P) and implementation specialist Joël Collin-Demers, all the way from Montreal. Source-to-Pay today – Market trends, Roadmaps, and Best-of-Breed vs. Full Suite Today we'll be talking about the dynamics of the source-to-pay application market, how to craft a transformation roadmap in that space, and where we see this market going in the future. But before that, I ask Joël to introduce himself. Once he's given us some fascinating insights into his favourite vegetable (it's eggplant, if you were curious), Joël goes on to speak about his twelve years of experience in the procurement space. He started off his career working for IBM, working on implementing procurement modules. He then progressed to implementing for direct and indirect materials, and looking specifically at source-to-pay applications that sit on top of ERP. For the last three years he's been running his own independent consultancy, addressing exactly the kind of issues we'll be talking about today. "Sauce"-to-Pay Joël mentions the classic ‘pasta sauce' metaphor for consumer choice: There was a time when there were only two or three kinds of pasta sauce on the shelf, and no-one felt bad about their decisions. Nowadays, breadth of choice creates option paralysis - it's almost impossible to know if what you're buying is really the best deal out there. I point out that twelve years ago (2010) would've been around the time that Ariba, Coupa, Jaggaer - all the big suites - were just starting to mature and come onto the market. I ask Joël to talk about what it was like at this time, when all-in-one suites were hugely in vogue. He mentions SAP purchasing Ariba in 2012. For a while they didn't do anything with it, but over time they integrated. Adoption in the market for these big suites really didn't begin until a little later, maybe 2015 - at least from what Joël saw in the Canadian market. Many providers in this time were trying to buy up smaller solutions so that they could offer full suites covering the full procurement process. Developing bespoke applications in-house. Is it worth it? I bring up contract management and SRM, along with newer concepts like KYS. Going back to Joël's “pasta sauce” analogy. I put it to him that I actually make my own pasta sauce - which, jokes aside, leads me on to asking if there's any sense to companies building their own SAP tool. Cearly this isn't viable for mid market businesses, but at the enterprise level, does it pay off to build things from scratch. What are the pros and cons here? Joël says that sometimes you need to make your own pasta sauce - on the shelf solutions might not fit your exact needs. Despite this, he's never quite seen anyone build out their own application, in his twelve years of experience. But what he does see, is large amounts of customisation, or enterprises building out their own little bits of functionality that a core suite may be lacking. He compares it to a pyramid. ERP is at the base, this connects to other functions, then you add applications for specific use cases to build on top of that, then you may go and get specific applications for one specific vertical. If you can't find something cost-effective on the market, this is when it pays to build things yourself. I ask if this is still a viable strategy now. Looking at Ariba and Coupa, and their app stores full of best-of-breeds that can be easily integrated, does this diminish the case for building an in-house app? Joël thinks so. He expects to see a funnelling down of use-cases where building your own app will be a viable strategy. Niche spaces are being increasingly served. But then again, there are always gaps to fill. Niche apps are still being developed, and not every niche has been colonised just yet. ERP, Data, and Single Source of Truth I ask Joël if we still need all-in-one suites to provide a single source of truth. Is he seeing a...

This week, we're going to be talking again about that little devil that keeps cropping up - data.  I'm speaking to Costas Xyloyiannis, CEO of HICX, a company that takes a slightly different approach to data. Today we're talking about what he thinks is the safest way to get clean data in your organisation. Before we dive into the specifics of what makes his approach to data so different, I start off by asking Costas to explain Hicx in a nutshell. HICX - A different way to handle data Costas explains that HICX is in the business of supplier experience management. Supplier experience, for Costas, equals data. The end state isn't just that data - there are value drivers after that too - but data is the foundation of supplier experience management: Better data means better experience, and a better experience in turn yields better data. It's a flywheel value effect for both sides. I ask how this differs from other solutions that take the approach of automatically gathering data using scraping techniques or AI.  Costas gives a few differences here. Number one, what is the customer trying to solve? A lot of his customers want the right data in their systems. What you tend to find is that when you pull data out, clean it, change it, what you find is that you can never put it back into those systems. The data will have changed. So this is a very high risk, unsustainable approach. But this is the way most people have done it traditionally. HICX puts processes in place which control how data is entered into those systems. The supplier is the source of truth, so why not optimise the process of collecting data from suppliers? Only then does HICX apply automation to enrich that data. Customer experience and strategic sourcing  I ask Costas to clarify that he is using some degree of automation, but the fundamental difference is that he's relying on the supplier to provide the core master data. He says this is correct. He then goes on to speak to customer demand. Customers need a very granular view of their suppliers. If you're looking at, for example, a process around manufacturing that has to take place at your supplier's facility, most other sources don't explain the things customers want to know: What is the parent legal entity, for example? These factors change how data and business processes are managed. I bring up vendor master data. We often think about this wrongly: “What data do we need in the system to pay the supplier?”. But in something like manufacturing, food or automotive where you've got health and safety requirements that are important to the qualification process, there has to be some way of distinguishing the supplier experience and on-boarding process. If you're using a tool that automatically cleanses data, it's not going to know how strategically critical a supplier will be to you. Costas agrees. He also says that context of how you use data is important. It could be the address of a supplier, it could be a payment address… When you're cleansing you don't know these things. Costas thinks that this is where customers need help: Who is the parent entity? Is this supplier part of the same legal entity? What is this address? How does it all fit together? This is what customers need to understand to a high degree of accuracy. He goes on to talk about the importance of being clear on your use case. If your use case is highly analytical, then using an outside source to cleanse your data makes sense, because your goal is to process a lot of data. If you actually want to change the data in your operational systems, this does not work. You need context to meaningfully make those changes. What does each data point mean to your organisation, and depending on context. The HICX Solution  I mention HICX's clients, who are largely enterprise-level organisations. If the suppliers are HICX's source of truth, then what typically does Costas see from his customers when it comes to managing or changing...

On this podcast, I'm proud that we take the time to talk to some of the more early stage companies operating in this space. And you don't get much more early stage than just launched!  Our guest today is Patrick Jonsson from Digi Procure, whose recently launched company offers a low code / no code guided category strategy creation tool. I welcome Patrick to the podcast and ask him to open up with a quick intro on his background. Low code / no solutions in digital procurement Patrick explains how he doesn't come from anything of a tech background. From his home in Sweden, he's embarked on an international career - everywhere from South America to Denmark. The bulk career of this was in procurement for complex organisational setups: Lots of stakeholder management and getting different cultures to agree. Then about three years ago, he went into consulting, but then decided it was time to move into the digital procurement space.  He found low code/no code solutions really interesting, and so following a low budget, bootstrap approach he launched a minimum viable product with his first solution, which only cost around 2000 dollars. There were some issues with his first customers, but in solving those he fell on what seemed to be needed: A solution for guided category strategy creation.  Simplicity is Patrick's keyword here. Digi Procure is a very simple tool that helps you get started with making category strategies. And with a low code platform, he aims to add further functionality and complexity over time. I say to Patrick that any SaaS solution will face the conundrum of functional complexity versus user experience. There's not really a right or wrong answer here, and it can often come down to organisational maturity and complexity. I ask Patrick who he sees as the target users for Digi Procure. Is he aiming for large enterprises, or smaller businesses? Patrick thinks the answer is medium-sized and up. In his experience, many organisations struggle with making category strategies. You might get a consultant in and end up with a strategy that's maybe 30-60 pages long, and these just end up on the shelf. Follow up on implementation might not ever get done. Then later you get a new CEO who wants to make some category strategies and you start the whole cycle again. So Patrick is aiming for what he calls  ‘maturity level 2' companies. By this he means companies who are starting to dabble in strategic sourcing. You need that maturity and you need a certain size - maybe two or three category managers, before it makes sense to use Digi Procure. Simple and accessible early strategy for medium-sized companies  I say that makes a lot of sense - we're clearly not looking at greenfield here, as companies that young won't have anything in place yet. But then the really big companies will probably want to go for that incredibly detailed kind of 60-page plan Patrick mentioned earlier. It's really the medium-sized businesses that are just starting to dabble in category strategy who have the most to gain here. Patrick agrees. He goes on to say that you can go more complex, using Digi Procure, and he speaks to some experience with customers who have asked for deeper functionality. But that's the great thing about low code / no code. It's adaptable to an individual customer's needs and particularities in a way that traditional SaaS solutions might struggle with. There's also a much lower entry barrier when it comes to price - it doesn't cost much to experiment with the kind of solution that Patrick is offering, compared to more established platforms with their own internal app stores.  He aims to reach a point where he can use a huge repository of category strategy knowledge, and leverage that to help clients as quickly and responsively as possible. I bring up another benefit here - category strategy isn't something that requires an integration with existing ERP systems. It's an activity that largely allows

This week we've got another informal chat from The Procuretech Pub livestreams. I'm talking to Dr. Wolfgang Schnellbächer from BCG, the author of a new book fresh off the presses - Profit from the Source: Transforming Your Business by Putting Suppliers at the Core.  Supplier-centric transformation and the future of procurement I ask Wolfgang for a quick bit of background, before we move on to talking about his book. He explains that he is currently leading procurement for BCG across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and South America. He focuses on procurement transformations across different industries, including automotive. In particular, Wolfgang says that he enjoys expanding the mandate for procurement for wider value generation, using technology. I ask Wolfgang about common mistakes in how organisations manage their procurement teams internally. He says that, interestingly enough, many of the biggest companies make the biggest mistakes - 50, 60, perhaps even 70 percent of a company's overall budget is managed through suppliers by procurement. Oftentimes it goes even higher. If you look at how much time CEOs spend thinking about suppliers or procurement, you'd be surprised: 1% of their day, which is around seven minutes. There is not enough focus on procurement, when there's such big potential in terms of overall spend numbers.  Sales or sourcing? Why businesses need to shift their focus I ask Wolfgang why procurement doesn't get the same level of attention as sales. He thinks that this goes overlooked because most CEOs come from a sales background. It's a legacy issue that has to change. Look at Apple - Tim Cook, Apple's CEO was a CPO before that. He's always thinking in terms of profit from the source, and it's paid off for them. I go on to ask Wolfgang if this means we need to get CEOs on board, so that organisations can view procurement differently. Or is it more simple, that procurement just needs a bigger training budget? Wolfgang thinks it'll need a structural mandate to empower procurement. As an example, he asks us to imagine an engineering company: It may have relatively few engineers in-house, but imagine every engineer in that company's supply chain, all the way down the tiers… It's a huge number of people that could be coming up with great ideas for that company. It's frustrating that procurement always gets so little time and money spent on it, so late in the process.  He also agrees with my second point on training - we need to train people better. It all comes down to experience and expertise. If you have people working in steel procurement, they should have worked in a steel plant. Industry experience really matters.  Category specific experience - why procurement deserves experts CPOs often move their procurement professionals around, presumably thinking that it'll broaden their experience and expose them to more categories. But I put it to Wolfgang that he's almost saying the opposite - procurement experience only has so much value, and it's category-specific experience that really counts.  He says that procurement people should have technical expertise in what they're buying. They need to be able to trigger ideas from suppliers. This way you can align ideas coming from the inside and outside of the company.  He thinks that many procurement professionals do this already - they do think deeply into their categories and they can innovate. But this potential is never tapped, they're not heard in the organisation because they come into the process too late, and are often only expected to give a cost focus.  We need to give a mandate for these people to speak up more. Again, he mentions Apple as an example. He also raises the pandemic - it was procurement in the end that solved those issues.  I say this is all very well and good in theory. But go on to share some of my own experiences as an under-appreciated category manager: A lot of administrative busy...

This week we're diving back into the topic of spend analytics and spend analysis, with a focus on smaller and medium sized businesses. We'll look at the challenges they face, and how smaller businesses can afford a spend analytics solution that works for their unique needs. We're joined this week by Thomas Siersbæk Heller-Njor, from CostBits – a procurement professional who's entered the procurement tech space, with a unique spend analysis solution for the mid market. Tailoring Spend Analytics to the Mid Market  First up, I ask Thomas to introduce himself and his background. Thomas started working in IT, then moved to working in procurement for the shipping line Maersk, where one of his projects was in spend management. He found himself living in Cape Town, doing an assessment for the 42 sub-Saharan countries, and realised he had no tool for the job at hand: Gathering PO data, contract data, spend data, etc. So he built a very crude version of his software then, and realised it was a tool that others could benefit from. He's excited to get to work in this space, and passionate about wanting to make data more accessible, available, and actionable. I pick up on the word 'actionable' as a key differentiator between CostBits and its competition. What does this mean, and  makes CostBits stand out? There's a range of different factors here. From a user perspective, the main benefit of CostBits (as well as a simple UI), is that most people stop with analytics. Maybe people working in strategy look into analytics once in a while, but his experience is that a good contract doesn't always equal real savings. So how can he create a spend management platform that gives more? Data. All the data that CostBits get every minute, or even every second, can be mined. Let's say you agree on a price of a hundred, then you get billed for a hundred and twenty, CostBits can use data to see that and ask “is this a good idea?”. It generates actions and guidance for normal people who can't see through millions of lines of complex data. It notices things: “There's a contract for this category and you're not using it – is that okay?”. CostBits aims to bridge strategy and day-to-day operations with understandable suggested actions. Building on invoices, not orders This kind of contract / price discrepancy happens more often than we'd like to admit. One of my frustrations with pulling spend analytics from ERP is that procurement gets access to all the different reports around orders placed, but that's not spend – spend is what you actually pay on invoices. That's why CostBits is built entirely on invoices, and if they can get purchase orders, contracts, and catalogue information, that gets added on top. When working with smaller mid-market customers, invoices are where the real useful information lies. Smaller companies don't have a wealth of resources for data management. They may have maybe one person who does business intelligence, and they don't necessarily know the data. So CostBits simplifies this, by focusing on actions to create real impact. Data and resourcing are critical here, and that I'd like to come back to that point. But before that, let's get back to basics. How much revenue or spend would a company need to have before they'd see the benefits of what CostBits? The more spend you have, the more you can get out of it from a pure money perspective. Anything more than 5-10 million euros in spend is going to be more than enough. But he still wants to address folks in the mid-market, so one of the key indicators on whether they'll be able to get anything out of the software is whether or not they have distributed procurement: Not strategic, tactical procurement, but more purchasing and operational. Actions-focused spend analysis As an example, let's say you have a plant and a HQ. You're buying, but you don't understand the contracts – they're probably in binders behind somebody's desk. If you're

This week we're looking at something we rarely talk about on the podcast - the public sector. Insights on Source-to-Pay technology in the Public Sector My guest this week is Grant Smith, COO of Elcom. He's here to lend his expertise, which is handy because the public sector is a topic I know relatively little about. Grant hails from the UK, but his experience should be applicable to public procurement in any developed markets. A brief overview of Elcom We kick off with a brief history of Elcom. It started out in the US in the early 90s as a hardware reseller. They developed a piece of software with MIT in Boston to run the ordering and procurement process for the business. When the dotcom bubble burst in the late nineties, they sold the hardware business and began to focus on the software side of things instead.  In 2001 they were offered the Scottish government's P2P service, which they're still running. It's run as a shared service by the Scottish government, for and on behalf of the entire Scottish public sector, processing nearly 8 billion pounds worth of public sector spend each year. Elcom also does work across the UK in the health and education space, where the software covers sourcing, contract management, P2P, inventory, point of care, analytics, and more, along with supplier services such as bid management. It's a full stack suite, just in a very specific niche. And with such a saturated market, it's important to carve out that niche if you want to survive.   How is public procurement different from the private sector? The main difference is that the public sector is quite heavily regulated. There are thresholds in terms of the value of goods, works, or services that you're buying that need to be advertised and go through a formal process. For example, in sourcing, there are procedures that must be followed quite rigigly. In the private sector, you go out, you get your quotes and you make a decision on who you're awarding to. But on the public side, there are a lot more rules to follow: Minimum number of bidders, the ratio between price and technical, and the documentation you need to go through, should the procurement be challenged. There are many more hoops to jump through on the public side, especially post award. We then move on to discussing some tangible examples of what we can learn from public procurement, and focus first on healthcare.   What are the benefits of digitisation in public sector health care? Grant's UK-centric experience means that he's used to working in health care as part of the public sector. This is of course not the case everywhere in the world, for example in the US. But he's seen interesting things in the UK's inventory and point of care space that are applicable worldwide. In UK healthcare, there's a good initiative called 'scan for safety', whereby consumables are regularly barcode scanned to capture data and keep track of things during a procedure. The software captures information like stocktake data, items consumed during a procedure, who's in the room, and where a procedure takes place. An innovation here is RFID (radio frequency identification) , which could really revolutionise the provision, costing and tracking of care in a clinical environment. With barcodes, the problem is having to label everything manually: Staff need barcodes on their badges, each individual item has to be packaged with a label, and those labels need to be scanned by hand. It's labour intensive, and cost prohibitive. RFID, though, removes this practical barrier. You don't need to apply barcodes to each and every item. Now the software can use either the RFID or the barcode, and this is already reducing costs.   The revolutionary benefits of RFID Think of the day when manufactures put RFID packaging on their items, as they do now with barcodes. You'd have RFID tags on every item, and also in each location. Stocktaking, which is now

It's the final episode of our second series. So to finish up, we're going to be doing something a little bit different. This week we're bringing you 10 new startups for the price of one! 10 cool early stage European startups from Procurement Summit I recently attended Procurement Summit in Hamburg. It's a fun, pleasingly non-corporate showcase for new companies in the digital procurement space. Where else would you find a Mario Kart competition at a procurement conference? I saw loads of exciting new ideas there, and I'd like to share ten of the best new startups that caught my eye during the conference's pitch event. 1. Flowciety Flowciety won the startup pitch event this year, and with good reason. They're a Berlin-based startup, all about data exchange and process automation, across both internal departments and external third parties. This automation enables you to have a fully auditable trail, avoiding PDFs and emails in favour of realtime tracking. It also enables you to manage supply chain and inventory across, for example, a subcontracted part of an external process. https://flowciety.de/ (Link to Flowciety website) 2. Shouldcosting This Swiss-based startup aims to make companies more competitive by using their internal data more effectively. This is a really smart calculation tool that takes things from the bottom up. It's a data driven engine that estimates product prices based on CAD drawings, specifications and materials. It estimates the cost of raw materials and of cost changes per part, based on engineering changes during the new product development process, or on commodity price movements in our increasingly volatile world. It also calculates labour costs and provides advanced analytics and material grouping. https://www.shouldcosting.com/en/ (Link to Shouldcosting website) 3. Hivebuy Hivebuy is a source to contract solution, strongly focused on process optimisation for small to medium sized businesses. The solution supports companies in budgeting, requesting and ordering services for their business. It also establishes better purchasing conditions for your business, through pooling of pricing on popular catalogues. Obviously this is quite market-dependant, and the company has a strong focus on Germany at the moment, but I'm told that they are looking to expand this scope. The software relies an intuitively designed approval process that link departments with a simple communication flow and approvals process. Control features offer a transparent dashboard for budget management per department. Hivebuy also offers supplier catalogues both externally and internally, along with contract management and repository as part of their more top end plans. It's a unique spin in a crowded niche, which I find very interesting. https://hivebuy.de/en/ (Link to Hivebuy website) 4. TrueLedger This startup from Zurich is a professional services platform focused on external workforce. According to their presentation, 30% of human capital is now external contractors, and this represents 42% of a company's spend on people, on average. As opposed to other external workforce platforms that focus on audit and legal compliance, these guys are very much focused on smart contracting as a way to reduce costs. TrueLedger offers many forms of control here: Time and materials contracts, cost ceilings, standard contracts, and risk sharing, across both blue collar and white collar. All of which flows through to automatic invoicing and ERP integration. https://www.trueledger.net/ (Link to TrueLedger website) 5. Lhotse Analyitcs Lhotse are very much focused on industrial manufacturing companies, from the midmarket to enterprise. Because these are often low margin industries, it's crucial to have better data that creates measurable value. They claim that their software can produce 7.5% savings on average to their customers, using market intelligence and cost breakdowns to offer...

Welcome back to series 3 of the Procuretech Podcast! We bring you the hottest startups, thought leadership and conversation from visionary industry experts, and definitely no stiff corporate content. We're switching things up a bit for the new series.  We'll now be releasing episodes twice weekly, and expanding our scope on guests. In the past we'd typically speak to startup founders, CEOs or CMOs of procurement tech companies. But we're now going to be talking to industry leaders and influencers in this space too. We'll bring you their thoughts, opinions and projections around digital transformation of procurement.  So without any more delay, let's jump into this episode's conversation with a guest from the finance community: Chris Argent, of GenerationCFO.   Procurement and Finance: Natural Allies? – Chris Argent from GenerationCFO Finance and procurement are often sparring partners, but it doesn't need to be that way. Chris and I recently met a P2P transformation conference in London, where the message was that procurement and finance are really natural allies.   Chris's 20+ year journey in finance  Chris's journey began as a financial controller and finance director in small to medium sized organisations. There was a key moment when he stumbled across a fraud that had been committed due to poor systems and poor technology. This inspired Chris to enter the finance transformation arena.  There, he was lucky enough to work with some big players including John Lewis, Amazon and Vodafone. This opened his eyes to shared services and procurement technology. Chris became more tech savvy, and saw the future of what we now know as digital procurement on the horizon. But this was maybe 15 or 20 years ago, and the people around him didn't understand all this new technology.  This need to educate people was the birth of GenerationCFO. It all began as a LinkedIn group. And now, some 19 years later, GenerationCFO has a reach of about 100,000 people who all gather regularly to talk about these transformation issues. This community is predominantly UK-focused, but there are members all over the world - from Europe to the US and Asia. An experienced perspective on finance transformation Chris shares some observations from his long-standing career in this space. What have the main trends been over his time in the industry? And where do procurement tech and FinTech crossover? There's always been an acknowledgement that technology could be used for the better. In a way, this sprang the shared service environment. Back then, you'd get conversations about the cost of labour: “We can save 20% if we move everything to India”, and so on. But that's not the case any more. The savings in that area are negligible. What we need to do now is to understand technology and optimise on that.  Technology is important, especially with things like ESG now coming down the track, and the need for increased responsibility and transparency. A siloed approach doesn't work any more. Procurement teams are thinking about solving business problems, CFO's feel responsible for managing ESG risks. There's loads of crossover there - procurement can't ignore finance and finance can't ignore procurement.  What are the challenges in communication between procurement and finance?  Procurement professionals often struggle to get finance to recognise their wider value. There will always be ‘invisible' work being done by procurement, below the surface of the value iceberg.  And hopefully technology can lead us to a more centralised, collaborative form of project management, where everyone's contributions can be factored in.  And it's not just technology - Chris suggests that there are three key factors when it comes to transforming collaboration and project management.  The first is technology, which definitely shines a light on all the invisible work that gets done.  The second is people: People need to...

Welcome back to the Procuretech podcast! We're continuing our  third series of interviews with industry experts and thought leaders.  Today we're talking to someone with a unique niche perspective, to hear their thoughts on all things digital procurement.   Why Data is the Bedrock of Digital - Susan Walsh is The Classification Guru My guest needs absolutely no introduction to most of you: Susan Walls, the classification, Guru herself. Susan was one of our first guests in series one, all the way back in April 2020. A lot has changed in the world since then, but before we dive into that, let's get a quick reminder of Susan's background.   Susan Walsh – A brief background on the Classification Guru Susan has been running The Classification Guru for just over five years now. She started working for a spend analytics company, before deciding to go it alone. Susan thought there must be companies out there who just want their data classified and normalised, without the analytics part. And she was right. Spend analytics is being increasingly brought in-house – most departments have some kind of analyst now. But people still struggle with classification. That's where Susan comes in, bringing a human touch and years of experience to classification. The Classification Guru can help with things like supplier cleansing for PT implementations and CRM systems. Susan is also currently working on an exciting project outside of the procurement space for retail category management. Basically, if you've got a data problem, Susan can help with it. Because Susan's service isn't a tech solution, it's not the sort of thing we'd usually cover here on procurementsoftware.site. But Susan's niche is a really interesting perspective from which to view procurement. So how has her business been impacted by the rise of procurement technology over the last few years?   The impact of procurement and technology Susan thinks that the expansion of procurement tech has helped her business. There are so many solutions saying “buy our software, it'll fix your data”. But the reality is, you have to clean that data before a tool can do anything with it. People are realising the importance of data, but at the same time they don't have the know how to manage it. They don't fully understand the tools they're using. There's an assumption that this process will be 100% automated, but that's often not the case. It's so important to get it right, and clean the data before you automate it. There are hybrid solutions out there. These either offer consultancy alongside automation, but are usually more focused on enterprise level complex material master data more than vendor master data. There are also solutions that use AI to scrape, clean and sort the data - Tealbook and Scoutbee for example. But they're not classifying data, they're essentially just supplier discovery platforms that can help to categorise data as part of that offering. But where's that data coming from? How do you know it's valid? Is there a human behind it? You should always have someone who knows the industry double check data. Verify whatever you're buying in with what you know, just to make sure it's right. Automation can be successful and accurate when you focus on a specific area. But if you're buying a tool that tries to cover every single industry in the world, it's not going to hit the mark as well, because it's trying to be everything to everyone.   Bigger data, bigger problem Generally, the bigger the organisation, the bigger the dirty data problem. Because they've grown through acquisition, big companies often have multiple ERP systems. That can very easily lead to a real tangle of complicated data. But mid market businesses also have an issue here. Their data is not going to be as dirty as an enterprise company that's grown through acquisition over the years, but a smaller company might not...

Welcome to another episode of The Procuretech Podcast! We're continuing our third series of conversations with industry leaders, which now releases twice a week. Procurement Media through the Years - Jon Hansen from Procurement Insights   This episode, we've got a guest who's been talking about procurement for decades. With a long-standing blog and a podcast that goes all the way back to 2009, it's Jon Hansen of Procurement Insights – the original procurement podcaster. We're going to talk about everything that's changed in the world of procurement over the course of Jon's long-standing career.   Jon's career as a long-standing procurement commentator Jon's been in the tech industry for more than 40 years, and procurement for almost as long. This has given him experience both as a practitioner and provider. One of his first business ventures was to start a company with funding from the government. It leveraged algorithms that allowed the Department of National Defence to procure indirect materials for their entire nationwide military installation base. He later moved to doing the same thing for the New York City Transit Authority. Jon sold that company in 2000, and that's when he began to shift towards blogging. He'd already had a lot of media experience from interviews in his role as a company founder. When someone in the media world said “why don't you start a blog?”, his first thought was “what's a blog?”. This was around 2007. By 2009, Block Talk Radio was launched in New York City. With guests from the world of business and procurement, it broadcast a deeper understanding of procurement to an entirely new audience, through an entirely new medium. Jon jokes that he's always had a face for radio, but he clearly had the talent to match: Some 900 episodes later, the monthly listener base was up to 15,000 a month. And that eventually dovetailed into where Jon is today with Procurement Insights.   Was digital transformation a hot topic back then compared to what it is today? While it wasn't called transformation back then, it's interesting that a lot of the same issues were still being talked about 20 or 30 years ago. One of the biggest challenges in the procurement world was that the earlier platforms were ERP based. Procurement personnel and professionals weren't involved in the selection process of that technology. That was a Finance decision. So there was a great deal of frustration with the majority of ERP implementations. Not that ERP doesn't have a vital role to play. But back then the majority of e-procurement initiatives would fail miserably, costing 10s of millions of dollars. The emergence of the on demand or SaaS software was exciting. Because that started a shift away from a centralised, monolithic approach to automation, to one that was strategically effective and geared towards the procurement people. The interesting point, as we track this story over the last 10 or 20 years, is the value of human experience. In 2019, a Deloitte CPOE global survey indicated that the majority of CEOs were dissatisfied with the results of their initiative. Of course, their ERP technology was cumbersome. But ultimately it was the mindset and approach that was at fault. It was how to leverage that technology and implement it. That inspired the move from Procurement being a function of Finance, to being a key strategic player within the enterprise. And now we've learned that from the pandemic more so than ever before. It's caused organisations and people to look at the technology through a much different lens. In other words, you don't throw technology at something and expect it to fix everything. You have to have the right people in place. You have to decide on the right technology and understand how to utilise it effectively. You have to adapt the technology to your processes. Technology doesn't improve process. Process has to be improved using...

Welcome to another episode of The Procuretech Podcast! We're continuing our third series of conversations with industry leaders, which now releases twice a week. Tech and Remote Workforce Management – Lilia Stoyanov from Transformify Today's guest is Lilia Stoyanov, someone who truly wears many hats.  She's a professor at Ziggurat Business School. She's an independent contributor to Entrepreneur Magazine. And most importantly, she's the CEO of Transformify - a vendor management and payroll management system. Our conversation opens with a brief catch-up on Lilia's background. Lilia Stoyanov's early career Lilia started off in the shared service space, working for Coca Cola where she helped to build a shared service centre. Her role, as either CFO, or – as at Coca Cola – director of procure to pay, involved structuring shared service centres. The big challenge was that Coca Cola, like so many large enterprises, had a variety of subsidiaries and a confusing tangle of legacy tech. Lilia's job was to decide how to bring all that together, and which PTP system or STP system to implement.  This meant factoring in time, and of course cost. Which at the enterprise level could be huge. It's not only the cost of the system. With those types of traditional procure to pay suites, you often need an army of consultants to implement it as well. Then there's training people how to navigate new systems that are very complex. And they shouldn't be. In the past, it seemed like suites needed to look complex in order to impress buyers with all their functionality. Now it's the opposite. Users are demanding simplicity and accessibility. Whether this is the influence of Gen Z entering the workforce, or just users losing patience with outmoded tech, the message is the same: Software needs to be user friendly. Leaving enterprise to become an entrepreneur This eye for simplicity and user-friendliness was an inspiration for Lilia. The same could be said for her unique vantage point: Working inside growing companies that are breaching into the enterprise level gave Lilia insights into the process of building a business.  It was only a matter of time before she wanted to do it for herself. Having seen how enterprises function, she could see what the common problems are before she even began. And it's important to know the pitfalls, and also what the market is demanding. Otherwise, you can't bring a product to the market that everyone else needs and is ready to buy. Lilia would absolutely recommend this to budding entrepreneurs.  If you're considering such a journey, first of all, how do others do it? How are successful businesses structured? What's the hierarchy? How do you manage teams? How do you respond to change? How do we respond to fast paced growth? And after that, you'll be ready to do it yourself. How did Lilia's experiences in corporate influence Transformify? There are two big problems that pretty much every procurement team faces. One is finding talent in the right places at the right costs.  The other is managing one time vendors, or occasional vendors, and dealing with the bureaucracy and human error that goes into maintaining vendor master data. What Lilia's doing now at Transformify tackles both. But what lessons from the world of corporate inspired the creation of Transformify? Vendor management is a big one.  Be it regular or one-off vendors, using a traditional approach is very time consuming. It takes a long time to get a vendor into your vendor master data, then a long time again if you need to change their invoice details, etc. Transformify shifts that responsibility on to vendors themselves.  They have a portal where they can do things like update bank account information. And once it's done, it's done for everyone on all sides. After that, Transformify also consolidates payments. It aggregates all payments to thousands of vendors into one....

Welcome back to The Procuretech Podcast!   We're continuing with our mini series where we ask influencers and industry experts for their thoughts and nuggets of advice on everything that's happening in the digital procurement world.   Content and Community for Procurement - Daniel Barnes from Gatekeeper Today we've got a returning guest who was on the first series of the podcast way back in 2020. He's a man who needs no introduction. But we're going to give him one anyway.It's procurement influencer Daniel Barnes, of World of Procurement and lately Gatekeeper.   A quick catch up on the last few years It was the very start of the COVID pandemic when we last spoke. So we kick off the podcast by asking Dan what he's been up to since then. A lot changed very quickly for Dan when the pandemic hit. He was working as a consultant in the defence space at the time, and COVID really impacted the pipeline of work in that space. From there, he pivoted to a FinTech firm where he worked for around 18 months. During that time he started looking into procurement tech and contract tech. In that role, he sourced and implemented a contract management product called Gatekeeper, then decided he wanted to join that company. Dan's got a legal background, including an undergraduate degree in commercial law. So the contract side of procurement comes naturally to him. He finds it fascinating, being able to hold his own against properly trained legal people like solicitors. He also felt like he could make a bigger impact at Gatekeeper - by showing off this kind of tech and educating people on the benefits of digital transformation. He's been in the role of Community Manager over at Gatekeeper since June. His job now involves shooting content on topics like contract and risk management, and also working with Gatekeeper to help better position the business. So that's lots of change in the last 6 months, let alone the last two years!   Dan's experience working in FinTech When he joined the FinTech, Dan was the very last person to join the team. Everyone else was more focused on the supplier management side of things They had a CLM but it was basically just a repository that allows you to store metadata, and it didn't really do anything else. It was really painful to work with. It was probably just an Excel worksheet by the CMS, and then a user interface was slapped on top of it. Going into a FinTech space in a scale up environment was terrifying. Everything happens so fast. Dan realised that with all the admin workload, there was barely any time to any work that adds value. And the work was boring, too. It was just the most mundane stuff - stuff that you could have a virtual assistant do for pennies, anywhere else in the world. He felt like a very well paid admin assistant a lot of the time. And that's bizarre, especially for a tech business.   Implementing Gatekeeper Thankfully, the company Dan was working for did get it. He managed to secure some investment to go out and find a solution that could change things. They looked at maybe 10 different suppliers, in CLM, and the wider procurement space. Then eventually chose gatekeeper as the best solution. It automated everything that might usually fall to a junior admin assistant – literally every single part of what that job spec would have looked like. Dan can remember the early days when he could spend all day working in an Excel spreadsheet. These days, Excel gives Dan anxiety. Spending all day in a spreadsheet isn't doing procurement. It's busy work. People might shut down at any mention of AI, but it really moves things along when it comes to processes and workflows. Whether it's extracting data, creating records or reaching out to people, it reduces the time spent on jobs that don't add value. This is what Dan finds so empowering about technology. There are also really exciting social and...

Welcome back to The Procuretech Podcast! We're continuing our series of interviews with industry experts and thought leaders to get their take on digital procurement. In this episode, we're going to extend that a little bit and talk about supply chain. Democratising Supply Chain Training - Dr. Muddassir Ahmed from SCMDOJO  Today's guest is a big personality in the supply chain space: Dr. Muddassir Ahmed, CEO of SCMDOJO.  He's got a YouTube channel with almost 10,000 subscribers and a complete resource platform for online courses.  But before we talk about that, let's get some background on how he got there.   Dr. Muddassir Ahmed's background – From corporate to SCM thought leadership Muddassir studied abroad in Sweden, where he earned a masters in production and supply chain. He then moved to the UK for a PhD scholarship. Settling in Birmingham, he began work for the manufacturing company Eaton.  Muddassir started work as a demand planner, but got to experience a wide range of roles at Eaton. He gained experience in supply chain across different departments; electrical, automotive, aerospace, hydraulics. So he's hardcore supply chain guy, through and through. When he finished his PhD in 2015, he realised that most content in the supply chain space was pretty archaic in nature. FinTech content at the time was a lot more attractive: Punchy articles, simple “How To...” guides, easy to read lists.  He thought he'd try to bring this bite-sized content to the world of supply chain, and it worked! What started out as a personal blog quickly grew into a brand in its own right, taking on the name SCMDOJO in July 2018. SCMDOJO now gets 50,000 visitors every month, and the YouTube channel is growing too. Dojo is a Japanese word which means place to stay and meditate. And that's exactly what SCMDOJO does. It gives the supply chain community  knowledge, tools and best practices, to help them survive and thrive. Last year, Muddassir took his biggest risk yet, when he left his job to focus on SCM Dojo. What impacts has Muddassir seen from disruptive procurement technology? Muddassir thinks we have a lot of catching up to do, in procurement. We're easily a decade behind FinTech when it comes to digitisation. He often gets criticised by the big ERP providers for saying this, but he thinks they're really slowing us down. If the same four ERP providers didn't have a stranglehold on 80% of the market, things would change more quickly.  There has been a move to adopting digital tools lately, but the downside from Muddassir's perspective is that they're rarely made by supply chain people.  Every supply chain is very vertical driven, and needs to be customised to the user's business model. This takes consultation and a lot of time. As a result, transformation in supply chain has been slow.  It might be 10 years late, but better late than never.  The flurry of startups in recent years presents some problems. Everyone wants to go the SaaS route, but there's no clear guide on which software to use, how to use it, or how best to customise it.  Or, you go the enterprise route and it ends up costing millions of dollars and 20 consultants. Which, of course, not everyone has the budget for. Even if companies do want to embark on supply chain transformation, they often don't know where to start. Lessons in digital transformation Muddassir offers courses to help businesses take that first step, and he thinks there are two big things companies need to learn. First, there's a difference between digitization and digital transformation.  You can digitise a paper process easily enough – for example, sending emails through DocuSign. But that's not the same as using technology to transform the way you do business at a structural level. People often jump on a new technology without thinking about the bigger picture of change management. Sure, you can rush to buy into AI, or deploy cloud,

Welcome back to The Procuretech Podcast! We're continuing with our mini series where we ask influencers and industry experts for their thoughts and nuggets of advice on everything that's happening in the digital procurement world. Today we're talking about E-Auctions and E-Sourcing. Depending on how the technology's been deployed, some people might be sceptical about this topic. But our guest today literally wrote the book on E-Sourcing, and he's here to explain the upsides. Let's welcome to the podcast Jacob Gorm Larson, of Moneyball CPH.   Success with E-Auctions - Jacob Gorm Larsen from Moneyball CPH We're going to talk about current trends in E-sourcing from a platform agnostic viewpoint. We might all have our favourite - or least favourite - platforms, but we won't be going into specifics here. Instead we'll be sharing all the tips, tactics, and observations Jacob has learned during his long career in this space. We began our chat with a brief rundown of Jacob's history…   Jacob Gorm Larson – A career in E-sourcing Jacob's been in the procurement space for around 20 years. He spent most of that time with Maersk, the global shipping company. Maersk used to be a conglomerate, so they would operate in oil, gas, offshore logistics and a couple of other industries. Jacob introduced E-sourcing across all these different industries, and in doing so, learned that it's not an industry or category specific thing. It can be applied in any industry with the right knowledge. But E-sourcing can be a divisive topic within procurement, because people don't fully understand the technology. That's why Jacob wrote his book, so he could share the kind of knowledge he wished he had access to at the start of his journey. The book sparked some interest, and a year later Jacob found himself moving to an advisory role. He now supports companies in their procurement transformation process.   How did the rise of technology impact Jacob's career at Maersk, and how did this improve results at auction? Jacob says he had a fantastic ride with E-sourcing. He came into his role at Maersk in 2007/8, so there was a huge degree of uncertainty, being right on the brink of the financial crisis. This had a lot of companies in dire straits and facing a lot of challenges. There was a desperate need for securing cost savings. In many ways there are a lot of similarities to the situation right now, with record level inflation across the world and a potential recession coming in. It could well be that within the next six months, we see another huge drive for technologies that can help companies take out costs, and bring down the overall cost base. And that was exactly what Jacob used E-sourcing for back then, too. It was there when companies needed it the most. And so Jacob got support from all the way up the company to introduce it, to push it. promote it and drive it quite hard across all areas of the company. He realised during that time that E-sourcing is in the DNA of procurement as a function: There's a constant need to own the cost agenda. And one very efficient way of doing that is to apply E-sourcing and E-auctions, He also added a lot of sourcing optimization capabilities later on, creating a full toolbox to digitally tackle the market and ensure they were always cost competitive within Maerks's various markets.   The five pillars of successful E-sourcing Jacob's book breaks things down into five pillars required for a successful E-sourcing strategy. These are: Definition Strategy Bidder engagement Adoption and change management The future of E-auctions A lot of people think E-auctions are the same as reverse auctions. But they're not the same thing. Jacob defines an E-auction as any auction in an online, market-driven negotiation, based on total value with commitment. That definition is absolutely key for...

Welcome back to The Procuretech Podcast! We're continuing with our mini series where we ask influencers and industry experts for their thoughts and nuggets of advice on everything that's happening in the digital procurement world. This episode we're talking about agility, and we're joined by an expert on all things agile procurement: President of the Lean Agile Procurement Association, Mirko Kleiner.   Agile Procurement: Fantasy or Attainable? - Mirko Kleiner from LAP Alliance I first heard of Mirko back in 2016, when I saw him asking on his website why procurement can't be more fun, lean and agile. I'm a huge fan of this kind of thinking.  Our talk today should prove that agility isn't just something for startups in the tech industry. But before we get into that, let's have a quick recap on Mirko's journey so far.   Mirko Kleiner – A brief background Mirko's actually not a procurement professional. His roots are in the supplier side, which led to some big tenders from a software supplier back in the early 2000s. He noticed a problem. Customers didn't know what they really wanted, and expected a fixed price fixed scope contract. So back in summer 2018, Mirko got inspired by the fact that there was no solution for handling this kind of uncertainty. And so he decided to reinvent the wheel and start on page one. If procurement didn't exist Right? How would we design that from scratch? That was the starting hypothesis. Because of his software background, he was used to having just one day to close the deal, sign the contract and start collaboration and delivery the next day. That was his starting point. And out of this crazy idea, a whole new movement and a whole new approach evolved.   The evolution of Agile Procurement The first step was bringing together the right people. Then they asked, what are the expected outcomes? A lot of customers seemed to struggle internally over expectations at the very high level. Something magic happened when they realised they needed to bring in suppliers. Instead of sending around documents as we used to do in the past, the idea was to invite suppliers into the discussion at the ground floor. To have them simultaneously in the same room - physically, or virtually - to co create the solution. This can close the deal within hours, or days, depending on the complexity of the case. And this doesn't just apply to software procurement. It extends to buying raw materials or professional services. The approach could apply to any category, direct and indirect. It's not a silver bullet - if you have a commodity, something that you could buy off the shelf, or a finished product, then you're better using a reverse auction or an RFP. But if you have a level of uncertainty, innovation, or it's very organisational complexity, sometimes it's even a complexity, an organisational complexity, you should choose a more agile approach. Agile is is a great way to be able to work with suppliers and understand what they bring to the table in terms of innovation on top of just commercial factors.   The role of technology in Agile Procurement It might seem like agility isn't impacted much by technology. After all, so much of what Mirko does is about bringing people together. But technology actually facilitates that process. You can't always meet in person. And bringing together 70 people from different suppliers virtually would not have been possible several years back. From a procurement perspective, Mirko collaborates a lot with the World Commercial Contracting Association. They have tons of great numbers and studies that point to the importance of transparent supplier data. So that's definitely key. Commodity sourcing is going more in the direction of a self-serving model. This combines with the general benefits of automating tedious processes: The opportunity to speed up how we work and free up time for more tactical...

Welcome back to The Procuretech Podcast! We're continuing our mini series where we ask influencers and industry experts for their thoughts on everything that's happening in the digital procurement world. Today's guest is a former CEO, CPO and published author. She's also an advisory board member to two very rapidly growing startups. From CPO to Advising Startups - Joanna Martinez from Supply Chain Advisors Her mission is to help individuals and businesses understand technology, improve processes and align with stakeholders. That's the Holy Grail, isn't it? Let's welcome Joanna Martinez to the podcast, and kick off our chat with a quick recap on her background. Joanna Martinez – A brief background Joanna is an engineer by profession. She spent the first third of her career in supply chain roles for Johnson and Johnson. It's a very very diversified company that gives a lot of autonomy to its different units. So this gave her the chance with everything, from a very rigid, rules-based, process-oriented unit to one that was very much like a startup. This was a great opportunity for learning. And makes great advice for anyone starting their career – pick a company that's going to offer you a broad range of experience. Joanna did a stint in procurement, and loved it. She decided that she wanted to focus on helping companies that didn't have the kinds of resources that Johnson and Johnson had to create a purchasing organisation: Working for firms where she would either create a procurement organisation, or fix a broken one. Twice in the subsequent years, she walked into roles that were vacant because the predecessor went out in handcuffs! That becomes a very interesting stakeholder engagement learning experience. And it was a fascinating look into how hard it can be to keep track of data when it comes to audits. The importance of procurement technology Joanna's last role as a CPO involved a global company with a corporate stand that was very modest, but they had billions of dollars of client spend that they were processing but not really managing. Technology was really important there. It allowed that company to differentiate itself against the competition. It wasn't the largest supplier in that space. But they could go forward with what they had: Subject matter experts, the right kind of supplier relationships, a platform that clients could use. Also Joanna had a really good CEO, who was willing to rethink the kinds of agreements he had in place. That was a huge enabler. In fact, people would say, “What's your most important supplier?” and Joanna would name a technology provider. Having a platform that was easy for clients to understand was hugely helpful. It allowed them to feel comfortable that Joanna was doing a good job on their behalf. What drives positive disruption? Joanna wrote a book called A Guide to Positive Disruption. It's about change management and disruption and making sure that change gets adopted within the workplace. But what's the key driver there? Is it talent, or technology? Obviously it's a mixture of both, but we ask Joanna where she sits on the see-saw there, in terms of which one makes the most impact. She says that lots of things can cause disruption – in a way, it's existed since the dawn of time. But technology is certainly a huge driver now. Today, technology is changing how companies do business, even compared to a few years ago. It might seem like a good thing to have 20 years of experience on your résumé, but these days that might not be the case! The world has changed so much in the last couple of years. The pandemic became a great enabler for technology. Everyone seems to be doing things differently to what they did in 2018 and that was only four years ago. Yes, there's still a value to experience and in-depth subject knowledge. But it's much more important at the moment to be asking questions, to be assessing your practices and...

Welcome back to The Procuretech Podcast! We're continuing our mini series where we ask influencers and industry experts for their thoughts on everything that's happening in the digital procurement world. Our guest today is a real stalwart in this space, and has had her own website and blog since 2009. She's seen many changes in her career, both as a Procurement Consultant with a procurement tech company back in the day, and now as an independent blogger, podcaster, and CIO. Kelly Barner, founder of Buyers Meeting Point and partner at Art of Procurement, a very warm welcome to the show! The View on Tech from Both Sides - Kelly Barner from Buyers Meeting Point   2:02 We open up our conversation with a brief rundown of Kelly's professional background. How did she make the journey from software consultant to content creator, and beyond?   6:34 Current economic headwinds might have Category Managers looking over their shoulders and uncertain about the future. At the same time, growing procurement tech companies are looking to recruit people with procurement expertise. It seems like a natural transition. How did Kelly find that transition? And would she recommend taking the leap to anyone considering a career change?   9:35 Why former practitioners make for great providers, and the value of having a broad base of experience.   10:53 What area of procurement does Kelly think will have the biggest potential impact? What trends has Kelly seen in her years of experience, and where is the impact highest?   11:32 Kelly explains the importance of data and analytics. She also touches on how we need to stop seeing compliance as a dirty word. We should be creating a situation that incentivises compliance naturally.   13:38 We discuss the value of content creators when it comes to internal communication. Does Kelly think that internal marketing will become a more in-demand skill going forwards?   14:55 Kelly feels that companies won't be quick to purposefully pursue content creators. Although internal marketing, content creation, and communication are hugely valuable, we're much likely to see that value emerge organically.   18:52 To what extent does Kelly think procurement tech will be at the forefront of change, when compared to other factors like sustainability and geopolitical disruption to supply chains?   22:25 As we spend less time in tech, it's going to force us to want our tech to do more. And that might leave procurement professionals feeling like their role is in jeopardy. We need to reassess our role with this in mind and become more value oriented.    23:53 With the direction that Kelly's going with Art of Procurement, to what extent do the increasing number of software solutions play a role in her overall strategy and business model?   26:14: If we want to become closer to the business, not only do we need to do a better job leveraging the full capabilities of digital. There needs to be more integration between procurement's digital footprint, and that of the enterprise as a whole.   Stay in touch Connect with https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-barner-6884443/ (Kelly on LinkedIn) Check out https://buyersmeetingpoint.com/ (Buyers Meeting Point) Enjoyhttps://artofprocurement.com/author/kbarner/ ( Kelly's content for Art of Procurement) Sign up for thehttps://procurementsoftware.site/#stay-up-to-date ( Procurement Software Newsletter) https://calendly.com/jamesmeads/30-minute-intro-call (Book an Intro Call) and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! https://linkedin.com/in/james-meads/ (Connect with James on LinkedIn) Follow Procurement Software's LinkedIn Page    

Welcome back to The Procuretech Podcast! We're continuing our mini series where we ask influencers and industry experts for their thoughts on everything that's happening in the digital procurement world. This episode we're talking about negotiation. And there's no one more influential in the negotiation space than the host of the Negotiations Ninja Podcast himself, Mr. Mark Raffan.   Will Negotiation Bots Replace Humans? - Mark Raffan from Negotiations Ninja 1:07 We open up by asking Mark about his background: From sales and online advertising to category manager, before finally transitioning to content creation and his own negotiation training business. 3:12 We discuss Mark's lengthy career in podcasting, now he's over 300 episodes deep. He reflects on some of his favourite episodes. He gives special mention to an interview with Brain Burns, in which it's safe to say they were not exactly aligned... 4:40 Going back to Mark's time working in Category Management, to what extent did he come across procurement technology back then? Mark mentions how common Coupa was back then, alongside niche players like Scout, which is now part of Workday. It's very interesting to see how tech has progressed and it's especially fascinating to Mark to see how the use of tech with negotiation has progressed. We move to talking about the future impact of tech, and Mark highlights process automation and error elimination as huge benefits. 8:17 We talk about how the mid-market is still slow to adopt digitisation. 10:06 Looking at big platforms like Coupa and Ariba, we're now seeing this sort of Salesforce model, where platforms put their own app stores in place. This is almost an admission that these big players can't be everything to everyone. Especially when looking to the mid-market, having a modular structure that allows users to cherry pick features is hugely important. 11:50 We discuss the value of experience. When an experienced professional with over 30 years of experience leaves an organisation, how much can technology hope to fill that gap? 12:47 To what extent can technology replace humans when it comes to negotiation? Does Mark think we'll ever see a robot able to replace humans when negotiating for something really complex and high end? 17:50 We take Grainger as an example. The whole reason Grainger exists is because a technical buyer or MRO category manager didn't have the time to spend all day doing three bids and a buyer for something that cost $5,000. AI can solve all sorts of problems- so as long as you've got a competent person evaluating the results to make sure that it's not doing something stupid from time to time. 18:43 Mark breaks down the present and future of automating negotiations. He doesn't think that truly complex negotiations can be carried out by bots yet. But he's keen to emphasise the word yet in that sentence. He would be very cautious about saying we'll never get there. Because technology is achieving things today that we'd have thought were totally impossible ten years ago. 21:45 Nobody knows the answer for sure. It's not unrealistic to expect that we'll be able to teach a robot to do very complex negotiations. But will we be able to teach them the emotional intelligence required to deal with cultural differences in negotiation between nationalities or between different cultures? That's going to be the most complex part for AI to replicate. 23:49 Mark runs a negotiation training business. How does advancing tech impact how he builds his long term business strategy? 26:02 Mark thinks it's very, very interesting to think about things like using AI to train people in negotiation. But he's keen to highlight the fact that we're both very biassed here. Mark and I think about technology every day. That's our business. But for most procurement professionals it's not on their mind. They've got operational...

Welcome back to The Procuretech Podcast! We're continuing our mini series where we ask influencers and industry experts for their thoughts on everything that's happening in the digital procurement world. Evolution from All-In-One Suites to Hybrid – Melissa Drew from IBM Back in episode 20, Melissa Drew from IBM gave us a masterclass in AI and machine learning. So we were really pleased when she agreed to come back on and take part in another episode. For anyone that didn't listen to the original episode, Melissa has 28 years of industry and consulting procurement experience. She's currently a keynote speaker, board member for a nonprofit, and soon to be a published author. 2:11   We open up our discussion with a quick catch-up on Melissa's background: A history with procurement that goes all the way back to 1996. 3:06   What are Melissa's memories of some key milestones in tech over the years? How has tech impacted her career? From cloud technology to AI, we take a tour of all the biggest tech developments from Melissa's perspective.  5:03   Are best of breeds coming to replace full-suite solutions? How much did COVID impact the procurement tech landscape?  Melissa explains some of the most important recent innovations in procurement tech.   8:41   Will agile startups ever displace the Big Five, or should we expect to see more hybrid approaches in the future?    12:09   Melissa shares a very relevant story about working with chemical experts from her time in procurement. From there, we talk about talent, strategic sourcing, direct category management, and the importance of leadership. “If you have a leader that's doing nothing or saying nothing, they're really saying a lot."   15:00   We talk about the underlying root cause of personnel problems: Talent attrition.  The current management trend of rotating talent across categories means that in-depth experience is becoming rarer.  Can AI compensate for dwindling human expertise?   18:31   We talk about Melissa's upcoming book: An unfiltered, honest look at how to develop a solid foundation for transformation.  This includes some advice that might upset the big boy consultancies…   20:47   We wrap up this episode by thanking Melissa for her insights, and asking how to best reach out to her. If you want to get in touch, you'll find all the links you need below.  Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you next time. Stay in touch! https://www.linkedin.com/in/m-drew/ (Connect with Melissa on LinkedIn) https://procurementsoftware.site (Visit ProcurementSoftware.site) Sign up for the https://procurementsoftware.site/#stay-up-to-date (Procurement Software Newsletter) https://calendly.com/jamesmeads/30-minute-intro-call (Book an Intro Call) and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! https://linkedin.com/in/james-meads/ (Connect with James on LinkedIn) https://www.linkedin.com/company/37782359/ (Follow Procurement Software's LinkedIn Page)

Welcome back to The Procuretech Podcast! We're continuing our mini series where we ask industry experts and influencers about everything happening in the digital procurement world.   Procuretech Driving Procurement Excellence - Graham Crawshaw from CASME   Today's guest is Graham Crawshaw, Director of Procurement Content for CASME - a sponsor-free membership organisation for procurement professionals.    Having already been a guest on https://casme.com/podcast/episode-8-demystifying-procurement-tech-james-meads (an episode of Graham's own podcast), it was high time to invite him onto the Procuretech Podcast.   02:08 We open up with a look back over Graham's career. From indirect procurement at EMI, to running procurement roundtables, and eventually finding his role at CASME.   05:07 How does Graham think the impact of procurement technology has changed, comparing now to five or even ten years ago?   From writing a thesis on computer aided procurement in the early nineties and throughout his career, Graham's had a unique vantage point.    He shares the story from his point of view.    06:51 How AI and machine learning are allowing us to push more frontiers in data analysis.   We also touch on the frustratingly slow uptake for procurement tech, and how surprisingly few businesses embrace the full potential of good analytics.    12:39 Leaner teams on tighter budgets mean that there's often an education gap in the mid-market. We talk about how to encourage smaller businesses to welcome digital transformation.   14:00 Discussing the challenges that procurement teams face in smaller organisations, and how they can get their voice heard.  We also discuss the importance of UI and UX in appealing to Gen Z, and bringing fresh talent into our profession.    15:00 The importance of interpreting data in spend analytics, and how pie charts alone do not represent actionable understanding.    We explain the value of conversation and facilitation when it comes to educating people about technology, and how CASME's sponsor-free approach makes it a unique source of knowledge.    17:27 What does Graham think is driving the agenda when it comes to changes in procurement?   19:14 We touch on the fantastic work of Prof. Dr. Florian Kleemann. Florian spoke with us on a https://procurementsoftware.site/captivate-podcast/the-procuretech-pub-florian-kleemann/ (previous Procuretech Podcast episode), and  had some really interesting things to say on change management.   20:39 Graham shares his experiences from hosting a recent panel discussion on eProcurement.   23:05  What did Graham notice about the participants in that discussion group? Was there any correlations between industries, their maturity, their complexity and their willingness to adopt procurement tech? Or was it fairly random?    24:38 We wrap up today's podcast by thanking Graham for his time and asking where you can learn more about CASME.   You'll find all the relevant links below.   Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you next time!    Stay in touch Connect with Graham on LinkedIn Check out CASME Sign up for the Procurement Software Newsletter https://calendly.com/jamesmeads/30-minute-intro-call (Book an Intro Call) and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! Connect with James on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/37782359/ (Follow Procurement Software's LinkedIn Page)        

Welcome back to The Procuretech Podcast! We're continuing our mini series where we ask industry experts and influencers about everything happening in the digital procurement world.   Risk Management, Tech and Resilience  - David Loseby from Leeds Uni Business School   Today we're tackling a big Elephant in the room that everyone's got their eye on right now: The world of third party risk management.  My guest today is David Loseby. He's a former CPO of Rolls Royce, a consultant, and is now moving into the academic field. David is one professor who definitely has the real life experience to back up what he teaches!   01:40 We open up with a brief rundown of David's background: An eclectic blend of the practical and academic.  His drive is to bring more research impact into business.    03:27  As someone who's currently structuring courses, how does David think the syllabus has changed in the last 10 years? Does the rise of tech impact the teaching process?   09:39: We discuss the challenges of risk management.  With a staggering complexity of unique challenges to every geography, no-one can be expected to model risk accurately on their own. It's simply not humanly possible.  This is why we need collaborative single sources of truth.    11:41 The value of digital platforms in managing non-strategic spend, and how this relates to risk management.    14:35 The impact of black swan events, and how even with lots of data there are some risks that you just can't predict.    16:23 There are two parts to the tehc ecosystem around third party risk management: Material traceability and substainability, and pre-empting risk with intelligence.    18:00  The critical importance of the SME population.   19:08 Licenses and onboarding packages for SMEs interacting with large enterprises.    21:31  Does David think that some tech platforms may grow a consultancy arm to manage tail spend on behalf of mid-market businesses?   23:19 David likens committing to procurement tech to a marriage. It's an interesting metaphor, but one that makes quite a lot of sense.    24:39 That's all for today's episode.  Many thanks to David for sharing his insights, and if you want to learn more or connect with us here at the Procuretech Podcast you'll find all the links you need below. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you next time!    Stay in touch Connect with David on LinkedIn Sign up for the Procurement Software Newsletter https://calendly.com/jamesmeads/30-minute-intro-call (Book an Intro Call) and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! Connect with James on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/37782359/ (Follow Procurement Software's LinkedIn Page)  

Welcome back to The Procuretech Podcast! This is sadly the last episode in our mini series, where we ask industry experts and influencers about everything happening in the digital procurement world.   Talent, Skills and Tech in Emerging Markets - Nolan Menachemson from Nolan School   For this episode, we're going all the way to Australia, where my guest today actually has his own procurement school.  His school has a really noble mission: To make procurement education affordable to students.  So a very warm welcome to Nolan Menachemson from Nolan School.   02:00  We open up by talking about Nolan's mission to bring procurement education to as broad of a base as possible.  In particular, we highlight the need for such accessibility when it comes to developing countries.      04:44  How technology has impacted and enabled Nolan to reach more students. We consider that 10 years ago, it was barely possible to have a stable Skype call, let alone host a group webinar online.   05:31  Automation of entry level positions, and the impact this is going to have in the future.  We also discuss the digital divide, and just how different life is for people who don't live in developed countries. Focusing on the MIddle East, for example, the challenges faced there are very different to our own, and we have to get our heads around that.   07:36  Some of Nolan's students don't even have electricity in their houses. So there's a huge gulf of things that we might take for granted that these people just don't have. That gap needs closing before we can even begin to talk about cutting edge tech.    09:08  The absolute importance of mobile phones in the developing world.  There are so many users out there who will never own a PC, but many of them have a mobile phone.  As such, mobile represents a crucial frontier when it comes to unlocking the talent currently siloed away in developing countries.    10:32 We talk about communications infrastructure challenges, using Papua New Guinea as an example. Some countries seem to have entirely skipped the step of installing efficient broadband, and insteadleapt right from copper cables to wireless internet.    12:56  The increasing prevalence of remote or hybrid work, and the critical role tech plays here.    14:09 Everything as a service, the Internet of Things, and the implications of moving aware from the PC as standard.    18:11   The critical role of technology in compliance, and how this helps reduce exploitative practices like slavery and child labour.  We talk about Prewave, and their AI tool that scrapes news sources and social media accounts to back up compliance.   19:23  There are three elements in combating scourges like corruption and modern slavery in the modern era.  The first thing is a mobile device. The second thing is a search functionality application. And the third is social.  When you combine these three things together, you put a lot of power into the hands of ordinary people.    21:27  To what extent does Nolan think that technology is going to be the driver in elevating our profession?   23:56  We can use echnology to employ people who otherwise would be living a very poor life in a remote village. It's a way of educating people out in the sticks. It's also a great opportunity to get companies to think about their policies.    25:23  That's all we've got time for, this episode. And sadly this is also  the end of our current series! Big thanks to Nolan for coming on to the podcast today and sharing his insights. If you'd like to learn more about his work, you'll find all the links you need below. We'll be sure to keep you posted about the next series of the Procuretech Podcast. But until then, thanks for listening and we'll catch...

Welcome back to series 4 of The Procuretech Podcast! Join procurement content creator and consultant James Meads as he hosts weekly conversations with experts in the digital procurement space. With insights from thought leaders and news on the latest tech, we aim to excite and inspire you about the future of the industry. Introduction to Series 4 – Solo Episode with James Meads This episode is something a bit different. A solo episode from James that serves as an introduction to the new series, as well as a chance to catch up on recent trends in the digital procurement marketplace. So what can you expect from the new series? 03.25 We're going to be concentrating predominantly on overcoming objections and ensuring successful outcomes. There are so many botched digital transformations out there. Tech is not a magic wand that solves problems on its own. So we're going to do more episodes on topics like change management, proposing a business case, influence and persuasion, and developing the right talent, so that implementation can be a success. 05.53 We'll also be touching on some of the big developments in the procurement tech ecosystem since our last series. Such as the acquisition of Coupa software that was announced back in December. What impact will this have on our industry at large? 07:25 Are ERP's days numbered? We'll look at how funding difficulties and the rise of  millennials to leadership positions is driving change. Can the big suites keep up with a market that demands good UX? It's going to be an interesting battle, so watch this space! 11:32: Tech companies in emerging markets are well positioned to grow and disrupt. Look at Penny, setting a great example in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. These solutions offer something really unique, so that's something we'll also be watching very closely. Check out this recent video interview with Muddasir Ahmed from SCM Dojo for more on this topic. 14:15 Best of breed solutions seem poised to keep poaching business from the legacy suites. As does anyone coming into the market with new technology. We've got a couple of episodes coming up with Raindrop on that topic. 15:56 Solution providers look set to keep evolving into SaaS providers. Trends in the gig economy point to procurement teams becoming smaller and more specialised. 16:57 We could see Sourcing-as-a-service come into play from some of the E-sourcing platforms. 18:00 And then last but not least,  VC funding is going to continue to be tough for startups.  We've kind of got to the point now that all of the early adopters of procurement tech, have adopted it. So we've stuttered a little bit on the growth of the bell-curve. This is going to be a big challenge for the industry going forwards. 20:16 And that rounds off the first episode of Series 4! Stay tuned for more interviews to come in the following weeks. This series is going be much more diverse in terms of guests. We're branching out from our traditional structure, where we invite guests on to talk about their software. We're still going to do those, but they're going to be less common sponsored episodes that will slot in every two or three weeks. Instead we're going to branch out into much more diverse content, aimed at a wider audience. As always, please subscribe to the show and leave us a review on Apple podcasts if you like what you hear. That really helps us to reach more people. We also have a monthly newsletter where we give a round-up of everything that's happening in the procurement tech space. Links below. Get in touch! Sign up for the Procurement Software Newsletter Book an Intro Call and let's talk all things Digital Procurement!

In this episode of the Procuretech Podcast, host James Meads is joined by Ward Karson, Chief Operating Officer of Raindrop – an enterprise spend management suite based in California. They discuss the current trend for consolidation in the procurement tech space, what this means for the future, and how Raindrop plans to make some big waves. Disrupting with Accessible Solutions – Ward Karson from Raindrop In light of the recent shock acquisition of Coupa, more mergers and acquisitions are likely on the way. Against this backdrop, how is Raindrop looking to disrupt and challenge the big players in the full-suite game? 0:02:49 History and background on Raindrop. Raindrop has been around for four years, and Ward has over 30 years of experience as a procurement practitioner. Raindrop's aim is to create an enterprise Procure-to-Pay (P2P) solution to compete with legacy tech. 0:04:19 Acquisitions and their impact on procurement tech. . In the past few weeks we've seen the acquisitions of Coupa, UBS, Credit Suisse, and the Silicon Valley Bank. This is a very interesting time, where organizations that are struggling may get acquired and consumed. As a result, expect the entire P2P space to be changing in the coming years. 0:06:10 Discussing the disparity between CRM and SRM uptake. Even small startups have CRM systems, and this is testament to the changes happening in the industry. So why don't companies use supplier relationship management systems, despite the fact that it would make sense for them to do so? 0:07:35 Addressing  the growing SRM market and potential ERP acquisitions. 0:10:57 Predictions on the future of ERP. Ward draws on his experience working for Oracle and predicts that more traditional ERP providers are going to go out and acquire solutions, as opposed to developing them. 0:14:59 The true value of user-friendly solutions. Ease of use is incredibly important in any procurement tech solution. Not just from the perspective of accessibility. The real value is that it increases stakeholder adoption. 0:16:41 Exploring the pros and cons of legacy tech. Legacy tech in the P2P space doesn't exactly have a reputation for user-friendliness or accessibility. This is where there's space to disrupt. 0:22:11 Risk appetite and modular solutions. Modular solutions allow for fast strategic pivots and agile business practices. Monolithic legacy tech solutions can be so costly to implement that they present a serious risk to ROI. 0:23:48 The benefits of digitally native solutions. As Millennials rise to senior positions in the industry, it's unsurprising to hear that immediacy is becoming ever more valuable. Digitally native solutions represent the speed and ease that the market now demands. 0:24:49 Ward's advice for IT procurement managers: What to look for in a future-proof, modern procurement tech solution. And that wraps up another episode of the Procuretech Podcast! Thanks to Ward for sharing his insights with us today, and big thanks to you for listening. We'll be back at the same time next week, so see you there. If you want to learn more about Ward, Raindrop, or Procurement Software, check out the useful links below. Stay in touch! Connect with Ward on LinkedIn Check out com Sign up for the Procurement Software Newsletter Book an Intro Call and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! Connect with James on LinkedIn Follow Procurement...

Today on The Procuretech Podcast, we welcome Sarah Scudder, Chief Marketing Officer of SourceDay. They're a Texas-based supply chain software company. Sarah previously appeared on the show way back in Series 1. SourceDay's mission is to ensure that manufacturing companies always get their parts on time. I can relate to this mission, having been a direct materials buyer in the automotive industry before the 2008-09 recession. Sarah begins by talking about their career trajectory, which started with a plan to pursue fashion and eventually produce her own fashion shows. She goes on to describe how a volunteer opportunity in her senior year of college led her to procurement and supply chain. Sarah ended up working as an intern for a local company in California that did sourcing and procurement in marketing. After some soul-searching, Sarah decided that her personality and strengths were better suited for a smaller business. She then took a job working in a sales and marketing, helping to restructure and pivot the business to become a software driven procurement company. Part of this role included her taking a challenge to post on LinkedIn every day for 90 days, which resulted in people reaching out to her, rather than her reaching out to them. This led her to pivot her career to focus on her newly found passion for demand generation, pipeline creation and marketing. This ultimately led to Sarah joining Source Day as the Chief Marketing Officer, where she has been for the past year and eight months. Sarah shares how networking has been essential to her career growth and success, both in sales and marketing. She credits her networking skills for undoubtedly helping her land her current job at Source Day. Her introduction to SourceDay's CEO and co-founder came through her network. Without it, she wouldn't have landed the job. Sarah is also big on community building and hosts a meetup group twice a month, a podcast, and a series of live-streamed show formats. She leverages her network to get advice, feedback, and to secure speakers for these. Sarah gives some solid gold advice on how leveraging your network, building a personal brand and being a content creator can lead to a wealth of opportunities which otherwise would not present themselves. I can only concur with this. I highly recommend anyone out there to get started, especially if you're a bit stuck about how to pivot into a different career path. This episode will equip you with the "how" and the "what". All you then need to consider is the "why" and the "where" you want to go with it! Stay in touch! Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn Visit SourceDay's website What the Duck? Podcast (Sarah is the host - supply chain stuff) Visit ProcurementSoftware.site Sign up for the Procurement Software Newsletter Book an Intro Call and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! Connect with James on LinkedIn Follow Procurement Software's LinkedIn Page

In this episode of the ProcureTech Podcast, host James Meads is joined by Joël Collin-Demers, Principal Consultant at Pure Procurement. The two discuss readiness for digital change in procurement versus the capacity for change. Joel explains that he works with various customers on their digital initiatives and helps them optimise their processes and applications. He notes that while many companies are ready to make the jump to digital procurement, they often lack the capacity and resources to do so. Importance of change management in digital transformation We discuss how companies should first assess their current system and make sure they have the necessary resources to make the switch. He also emphasises the importance of training and up-skilling the existing workforce so they can become more proficient in digital procurement. Finally, he emphasises the importance of taking a holistic approach to digital transformation and ensuring that all departments are on the same page. Joël has been working in procurement and sourcing for over a decade and now runs his own business. He is passionate about finding the best combination of solutions for clients to help them reach their desired business outcomes. Each organisation has different needs based on their industry, budget, and constraints, so there is no one-size-fits-all solution. James adds that when a CPO of a well-known company talks about a certain solution, it may be great for their organisation, but not necessarily for yours, so you need to consider the maturity, size, country, and degree of centralisation and maturity of your own organisation when making these type of decisions. Readiness for change This conversation focused on readiness for digital change. There are five suggested components to consider: Overall software budget Your company culture Available talent (or do you need to hire?) Mindset of your team and stakeholders Having a C-level sponsor. We then look at a framework for understanding readiness for digital change. This framework is composed of Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement. Readiness for change means having an organisational attitude that is favourable to change and having an executive level sponsorship, mission vision, and a roadmap to follow. Capacity to change Capacity to change is an intangible element that includes knowledge and ability needed to successfully change. The conversation discusses how organisations need to consider both attitude and capability when looking to make changes. This includes having a change management team, an understanding of the skills and knowledge needed, a conducive company culture, a sponsor and budget, a governance structure, and the ability to measure workload and improvement initiatives. Additionally, the advantages of consulting backgrounds are discussed, as those who come from these backgrounds have seen many more businesses and have greater exposure to what "good" looks like. Finally, the conversation touches on agility and how information flow and governance structures play a role in implementing changes. Stay in Touch! Connect with Joël on LinkedIn Visit Pure Procurement's website Visit ProcurementSoftware.site Sign up for the Procurement Software...

In this episode of the Procuretech Podcast, host James Meads is joined by Ruth Cremer. Ruth is a former investment manager for IT startups at Europe's most active seed investor. She's also an adviser to the German version of the famous TV series Dragon's Den (or Shark Tank, for US listeners). She joins James for a conversation about how startups should behave when applying for funding, her new book, and why numbers are sexy. Funding tips for Procuretechs – Ruth Cremer from Entrepreneurial Education Timestamps: 3:11 How did Ruth get into the field? Starting her own business out of frustration and desperation. Numbers are sexy, and procurement and supply chain is sexy too! How much do venture capital companies know about the industries they are investing into? 7:22 How to gain a profile by looking at specific industries? Everyone has to start somewhere. VCs tend to focus on either B2C or B2B products. 9:17 What investors want in a pitch What investors want to see in a pitch. The classic mistakes that founders typically make. Making tech easy for non-tech savvy people to use. The importance of having a broad mix. 14:46 How big is the market for start-ups? How big the market is for a start-up. How to get to enterprise customers. 16:46 Selling to small and medium-sized enterprises. Easier for startups to sell to small and medium-sized enterprises. The VC world and what they look for. 19:17 The typical warning signs of a startup on the edge. The typical warning signs of a potential startup. Checking the business model. How to do research on startups. Resources for research on funding rounds. 24:21 Looking at the number of employees and the growth. Using LinkedIn to see if a company is growing too fast. LinkedIn insights. 26:41 How can corporates make it easier to work with startups? How corporates can make it easier to work with startups. Making the compliance process easier. Start-ups can do something here. How to learn more about Ruth. And that wraps up another episode of The Procuretech Podcast! Thanks to Ruth for sharing her insights with us today, and big thanks to you for listening. We'll be back at the same time next week, so see you there! If you want to learn more about Ruth or Procurement Education, check out the useful links below. Stay in touch! Connect with Ruth on LinkedIn Check out Ruth's website Sign up for the Procurement Software Newsletter Book an Intro Call and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! Connect with James on LinkedIn Follow Procurement Software's LinkedIn Page

In this episode of the show, host James Meads is joined by LinkedIn "royalty" Tom Mills. Tom is Head of Procurement at Bibby Financial Services and runs his own Substack newsletter called Procurement Bites. Personal Branding in Digital Procurement – Tom Mills He's built a great personal brand online and has over 30,000 followers on LinkedIn. He's here to share some advice on personal branding, the digital procurement market and how building your brand can really help you to own and shape both your personal and career development. Timestamps: 2:04 A unique blend of direct and indirect buying. A unique blend of direct and indirect buying. How procurement can be done badly. 4:11 Why do you need a personal brand? Building a personal brand in the procurement industry. The personal brand is important. 6:39 The definition of a personal brand. Building a personal brand is about building a personality. Personal brand is not fake. 9:27 Using social media to help others learn. Mentors and influencers in the early 2000s procurement space. Formal learning and development. Procurement professionals need to develop a network. Prioritise and prioritise. 15:06 Online resources for building your network. Virtual content, procurement & supply chain conferences and online resources. The difference between 20 years ago and the situation now. 17:44 Is CIPS (or any other qualification) necessary? It's one option but shouldn't be seen as the only option. Growth of CIPS in the Middle East and Africa. Tackling the topic of the "procurement dinosaur". 20:21 The problem with the dinosaur metaphor. The two-fold age metaphor for procurement. The importance of being very clear. 22:54 Who do you stand for against? Tom and James discuss a few things that they stand for and against. What are the most lacking skills in procurement? 25:19 The role of internal processes and governance in procurement. The biggest challenge in driving digital transformation in procurement. The four options to drive digital transformation. One wish to drive procurement into the 21st century. How to connect with Tom. And that wraps up another episode of the Procuretech Podcast! Thanks to Tom for sharing his insights with us today, and big thanks to you for listening. We'll be...

In this episode of The Procuretech Podcast, host James Meads is joined again by Ward Karson, Chief Operating Officer of Raindrop – an enterprise spend management suite based in California. Today they discuss the different considerations you should take when sourcing procurement technology, and what sort of questions you should be asking of your technology providers. Sourcing Procurement Technology – Ward Karson from Raindrop Timestamps: 3:06 How did you get started in procurement? Getting started in procurement 30 years ago. The third leg of the stool, the environment. Raindrop as a full suite enterprise spend management solution. Three steps to consider when buying a solution. 6:21 Pricing should not be the driving factor in choosing a procurement tech solution. The first step back and answer to the question. Risk is a big thing. How the cost can creep up over the lifetime of the contract. The typical payback or ROI: what to look for 11:28 The difference between up front cost and ongoing support. Different providers and how they might be set up from a cost and implementation perspective. The difference between the initial investment, and the cost for ongoing support. 13:30 How do you validate user experience? Validate user experience, ease of use, lack of complexity. Procurement experience, making UI right. The new wave of procurement leaders and what they're looking for. Deployment speed to value and overall ease of use. 17:13 How to know if your software is up to standard How to know if a solution is right for you. How to adapt to the needs of your business. A more philosophical approach to procurement. 22:05 How important are analyst reports to the wider market? Are reports such as Gartner Magic Quadrants useful for research and due diligence purposes? How the analyst firm is different from the wider market. The great fallacy of defining a leader as a leader. 25:04 How to choose the right vendor. Comparing RFPs to online dating. The risk of being too dependent on RFP. Providing value to the potential customer. Leadership of a procurement software company. 28:27 How do you know if you've never sat in my chair? Authenticity is important in the procurement industry. The second level discussions. The gap between the CEO and the COO. The importance of having procurement experience. 34:00 Full suite vs. Best of breed Technical implementation How do newer best of breeds stand up to more established solutions? The argument that full suites have lower overall implementation costs 40:42 What is the optimum length of a contract for procurement software? Long term contracts reduce the risk of repricing at renewal Why three years is Ward's perfect contract length How to get in touch with Ward and find out more about Raindrop And that wraps up another episode of The Procuretech Podcast! Thanks to Ward for sharing his insights with us today, and big thanks to you for listening. We'll be back at the same time next week, so see you there. If you want to learn more about Ward, Raindrop, or Procurement Software, check out the useful links below. Stay in touch!

In this week's episode of The Procuretech Podcast, Clive Heal, CEO of LavenirAI is my guest. Clive is here to introduce a cool new startup idea he's been working on, as well as sharing his thoughts on the current digital procurement landscape. Procurement and the Metaverse – Clive Heal from LavenirAI Timestamps: 2:36 How did Clive get started in the industry? From R&D to sales and marketing Lavenir AI, his startup, uses AI and virtual avatars for ongoing negotiation training. 7:02 What is the metaverse? And what is the procurement metaverse? What the metaverse is, and how it works. What the procurement metaverse will be like. Clive's prediction that all procuretech will have an existence in the metaverse. The metaverse is being developed on both consumer and commercial sides. 11:45 The benefits of the VR world. VR is just one example of the metaverse from a procurement perspective. The future of VR, and how it will change the world. Adoption of the metaverse on the consumer and the socialising side. The future of procurement, sourcing, contract management and risk assessments in a world of VR and the metaverse. 18:10 Innovation adoption and the innovation gap. Innovation chasm between innovators and early adopters. Procurement people tend to be risk adverse. Technology is a great catalyst for change. Procurement can often feel ultra-conservative. 22:54 Taking the example of the introduction of the cell phone The first cell phone and the first laptop. How technology changes over time. 24:45 Will AI ever take over from human negotiators? Lavenir.AI touches on negotiation and negotiation training. Will AI take over from humans? Factors to consider when negotiating with alternative suppliers. AI is about first insight. 29:06 The opportunity to create value in new ways. AI creates the opportunity to create value in new ways. Negotiation training is an ongoing process. The difference between theory and practice in the sales process. The future of the sales avatar. And that wraps up another episode of the Procuretech Podcast. Thanks to Clive for sharing his thoughts with us today, and big thanks to you for listening. We'll be back at the same time next week, so see you there! If you want to learn more about Clive, Lavenir.ai, or Procurement Software, check out the useful links below. Stay in touch! Connect with Clive on LinkedIn Check out Lavenir.ai Sign up for the Procurement Software Newsletter Book an Intro Call and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! Connect with James on LinkedIn Follow Procurement Software's LinkedIn Page

In this episode of the Procuretech Podcast, host James Meads is joined by old friend and procuretech founder Sheldon Mydat - CEO of Suppeco. Sheldon is here to talk about ESG and sustainability, as well as sharing his thoughts on the current digital procurement landscape. ESG and Sustainable Supply Chain – Sheldon Mydat, CEO of Suppeco Timestamps 2:01 Sheldon's career to date A quick overview of Sheldon's career. How Sheldon became a startup founder. 4:18 What is the difference between the Suppeco platform and other ESG platforms? Nailing the jelly to the wall. How Suppeco differs from other ESG platforms. The differentiator for Suppeco is relationships. 8:37 The further you go along the supply chain, the smaller the companies become... Working with smaller organisations in the supply chain. Current challenges in the industry. 11:25 How the Suppeco platform is designed to be collaborative Creating a truly collaborative platform. Stakeholder mapping to control the flow of data. Third-party auditors brought straight into the platform. Creating a different experience for the user. 17:13 How is this different from a documents repository like SharePoint? Getting auditors involved in the negotiation process. Keeping confidentiality in a modern supply chain. Using live data to drive compliance. 20:06 What are the cornerstone functionalities that hang together to make this work? Keystone functionalities to make this work. The value of process automation. 22:53 What's the future of procurement technology? Two approaches to implementation, fast implementation or end-to-end solution. E-sourcing platforms in the procurement landscape. Partnerships and alliances are the future of procurement technology. Examples of use cases for Suppeco. 28:27 The value is in the narrative, not the numbers. Examples of big systems driving relationship-driven performance improvement. Examples of smaller systems driving value. How to get in touch with Sheldon. And that wraps up another episode of the Procuretech Podcast. Thanks to Sheldon for sharing his thoughts with us today, and big thanks to you for listening. We'll be back at the same time next week, so see you there! If you want to learn more about Sheldon, Suppeco or Procurement Software, check out the useful links below. Stay in touch! Connect with Sheldon on LinkedIn Check out com Sign up for the Procurement Software Newsletter Book an Intro Call and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! Connect with James on LinkedIn Follow Procurement Software's LinkedIn Page

In this episode of the Procuretech Podcast, host James Meads is joined by a multiple published author, procurement training business owner and SaaS entrepreneur - Jonathan O'Brien, CEO of Positive Purchasing. Jonathan is here to talk about the big changes he's witnessed in the industry over the last 20 years, and to look forward to the future of digital procurement. Training to procurement SaaS – Jonathan O'Brien from Positive Purchasing Timestamps  2:19 What are the biggest changes in procurement over the past 20 years? Biggest changes in procurement over the past 20 years. Cost focus and recognition. Mitigating price rises and deflation. Conversations with procurement and sales teams.  8:27 How much of the transformation has been accelerated by the pandemic, and how much has been a more general transition away from in person work? Transition from in-person negotiation to digital transformation. Sustainability, supply chain risk, digital transformation and visibility. 10:34 How to get people to engage with online training. Building a broadcast studio for live online instructor-led training. Adoption of technology during the pandemic. Online training needs to be high-energy and engaging. The backlash against remote work. 15:28 How digital transformation is impacting the travel and training category. Making travel essential rather than nice. Budgeting for training and digital transformation. 18:21 How do you convince your CFO to invest in digital transformation? How to convince CFOs to invest in procurement. The 10% of value from procurement. The snakes and ladders board of digital transformation. Five books on procurement. 24:07 What's going to replace category management in this digital world? Category management is the first step. A tool that combines artificial intelligence and category strategy. 27:06 How to get stakeholders to buy into the fact that procurement is steering the direction. Adoption of category management is still early. Why most companies are first-base on category management. Changing hearts and minds to do category management. The most painful thing about category strategies. How technology can help procurement professionals embed sustainability principles. Sustainability in the supply chain. And that wraps up another episode of the Procuretech Podcast. Thanks to Jonathan for sharing his thoughts with us today, and big thanks to you for listening. We'll be back at the same time next week, so see you there! If you want to learn more about Jonathan, Positive Purchasing, or Procurement Software, check out the useful links below. Stay in touch! Connect with Jonathan on LinkedIn Check out Positive Purchasing online Sign up for the Procurement Software Newsletter Book an Intro Call and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! Connect with James on LinkedIn

Host James Meads is joined by two guests, this week. Nick Vekroost is the CEO of procurement tech company Canopy. Anna Williams is head of procurement at the office design and build organisation Unispace, where Canopy has been successfully implemented. This is a rare opportunity to speak to a procurement tech provider and one of that provider's clients at the same time. We'll talk about their implementation journey, share their successes and hopefully give you some ammo for making a business case to your CFO or CEO. Customer Case Study – Nick Verkroost (Canopy) and Anna Williams (Unispace) Timestamps  2:36 The challenges and advantages of working with a smaller organization vs a larger company. Anna's journey in the early stage tech space. Challenges and advantages of working with a smaller organization. A huge learning curve. Implementing canopy as a solution. 7:56 What is the reach of Unispace? How many staff will have access to the data? The reach of Canopy within Unispace. How many staff will eventually have access to Canopy? 10:05 The supply chain is so critical to everybody's business. No business would survive without a supply chain. The most important supplier in 2020. Accounting for the system and building structures. Integrating with different ERP systems. 14:43 Canopy is like an intelligence layer that sits on top of ERP. ERP systems are rigid and need to be flexible. Working with an API or third-party system. Granular details of the Canopy platform.  19:46 Risk management and Unispace What Unispace is all about. Evolving towards a full-stack supplier risk management tool.  22:23 Risk and the Canopy platform. Risk is at the heart of every single profile on Canopy. How Canopy connects with third party credit agencies and risk management platforms. Bridging the gap between cloud-based and on-premise solutions. The journey of using Canopy. 28:54 When we say data, what do we mean? What Canopy means by data, and why they break it down. How Canopy works with customers. And that wraps up another episode of the Procuretech Podcast. Thanks to Nick and Anna for joining us today, and big thanks to you for listening. We'll be back at the same time next week, so see you there! If you want to learn more about our guests, Canopy, Unispace or Procurement Software, check out the useful links below. Stay in touch! Connect with Nick and Anna on Linkedin Check out Canopy Check out Unispace Sign up for the Procurement Software Newsletter Book an Intro Call and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! Connect with James on LinkedIn Follow Procurement Software's LinkedIn Page

In this episode of the Procuretech Podcast, host James Meads is joined once more by Ward Karson, Chief Operating Officer of Raindrop – an enterprise spend management suite based in California. Today they discuss the pros and cons of tackling supplier risk management from within an S2P Suite. Supplier Risk Management Within an S2P Suite – Ward Karson from Raindrop Timestamps 2:34 Background on Raindrop. Introducing Raindrop. UI, UX and speed of implementation. The grand fallacy of the procurement industry. 6:55 How long does it take to deploy a product? It takes 12-24 months to deploy a piece of software. Deployment takes forever money. 9:46 The problem with technical debt. The grain fallacy of the procurement software industry. How to prevent legacy providers from changing. Rising tide lifts all boats. The tech foundation of the company is important. S2P and P2P software is complex. The letter 'P'. 15:56 Integration with other procurement systems. Challenges of integrating with multiple technology solutions. How to integrate with each technology solution provider. Implementation of P2P tools for procurement and finance. Procurement resource per minute. 19:01 User interface user experience and integration. The importance of quick and painless solutions. How to make the procurement process quicker and easier. User experience and why it matters. B2B and B2C adoption of UX. UI/UX is what is going to drive the industry. The ERP industry needs more modernity. 25:03 What are the structural and people problems? Nobody gets fired for recommending IBM. The age old conundrum.  27:09 Ease of use solutions increase stakeholder adoption. Mindset problem, not a capability or leadership issue. B2B vs B2C, ease of use. Benefits of ease of use solutions. Reduce maverick spend, increase addressable spend and manage spend. Self-service from stakeholders. Reduce the transactional workload of procurement. 33:05 Why do you think large consultancies still partner with legacy technology? Why the industry has not shifted. Time and materials businesses need consultancy. Risk cap, 20-30% risk factor for projects. How do you fix the problems with legacy providers? World class talent and the right change management strategy. How to get in touch with Ward. And that wraps up another episode of the Procuretech Podcast! Thanks to Ward for sharing his insights with us today, and big thanks to you for listening. We'll be back at the same time next week, so see you there. If you want to learn more about Ward, Raindrop, or Procurement Software, check out the useful links below. Stay in touch! Connect with Ward on LinkedIn Check out com Sign up for the Procurement Software Newsletter Book an Intro Call and let's talk all things Digital Procurement!

In the world of cross-border supply chains and procurement processes, innovation is revolutionizing the way businesses operate. In this exclusive interview series recorded live at the Procurement Summit, we dive into the minds of some visionary procuretech startup founders who are at the forefront of driving change in the industry. First up is Romain Fayolle, Founder and CEO of Holocene Holocene is a startup that optimises and automates logistics processes for cross-border supply chain. As I touch on in the interview, this has traditionally been a very manual process. Automation AND visibility in this space is much-needed, and it's great to come across innovation for this topic. Next up is Christoph Moll of beNeering. We often get frustrated as procurement professionals about incumbent ERP systems, and how inflexible or complicated they are to use because of their front end interface and vast array of features. The reality is though, companies aren't going to abandon them overnight. This conversation looks at making life easy with an intuitive front-end that seamlessly works in tandem with a SAP environment. I then spoke to one of the industry stalwarts and one of the major sponsors of Procurement Summit, Jan-Hendrik Sohn, country manager DACH for Ivalua. Even though I'm a huge fan of best-of-breed tech, this was actually a conversation I really enjoyed. It was really cool to get an understanding of how one of the established suites is positioning itself in such a rapidly changing market, and where they see their advantage and USP over some of their fierce competitors. Keeping on the topic of Source-to-Pay, next up is Eberhard Aust, CEO of ebidtopay. They're a niche provider of S2P solutions for mid-market manufacturing businesses and their software does a LOT for its price point. They've been around a while but are really focusing on offering a suite-like set of features at a price point that doesn't require an enterprise software budget. Full disclosure, ebidtopay is one of our software partners at ProcurementSoftware.site, and you can reach out to me if you'd like to learn more about them. Christoph Kunel, COO of e-procurement platform Crowdfox is next up. Catalogue procurement is not new technology. However, using generative AI - the same technology that powers ChatGPT - to assist and enhance the requisitioner's front end experience, is a simple but huge value add enhancement. He explains how "ProcureGPT" works in their platform.

In this episode of the Procuretech Podcast, host James Meads welcomes Leo Cavalcanti, CEO and founder of Linkana, a vendor master data management startup from Brazil. The conversation revolves around the challenges and opportunities in the procurement and supply chain technology industry in Brazil and Latin America. Cavalcanti talks about the need for standardised supplier data management and explains how Linkana addresses this issue. Procuretech in Brazil & Latin America - Leo Cavalcanti from Linkana In this episode, the focus is on the growth and investment in procurement and supply chain technology in Brazil and Latin America. Leo Cavalcanti from Linkana confirms this growth and highlights the emergence of local solutions in Brazil's ecosystem. The Brazilian market, previously dominated by SAP Ariba, now faces competition from Coupa and GAP, indicating a promising future for procurement and supply chain tech in the region. Leo introduces his company, Linkana, specialising in supplier data management solutions with a focus on Latin America and Brazil. He discusses the limitations of current approaches to handling supplier data in procurement technology and shares Linkana's strategy to address these challenges. He also explores the unique obstacles and advantages faced by procurement tech in Latin America, drawing comparisons to the European and North American markets. Timestamps: [00:01:50] Introducing Leo Cavalcanti, CEO of Linkana. [00:03:22] Procurement technology in Brazil. [00:08:37] Slow adoption of procurement technology. [00:17:04] Localisation key for successful expansion. [00:20:23] Localisation is key for expansion. [00:25:31] Implementing procurement technology is challenging. [00:31:30] Future of procurement is data-driven. And that wraps up another episode of The Procuretech Podcast. Thanks to Leo for joining us today, and big thanks to you for listening. We'll be back at the same time next week, so see you there! If you want to learn more about our guests, Linkana, or Procurement Software, check out the useful links below. Stay in touch! Connect with Leo Cavalcanti on LinkedIn Check out Linkana online Sign up for the Procurement Software Newsletter Book an Intro Call and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! Connect with James on LinkedIn Follow Procurement Software's LinkedIn Page

In the second part of our series of live interviews recorded at Procurement Summit in Hamburg, Germany, we dive this time into the practitioner side of digital transformation. Discover how digital transformation and procurement tech is shaping modern procurement leadership, through the captivating stories of three great professionals who joined me in my VW camper van on the exhibition floor. Tanja Ridder,  Head of Commodity Group Procurement at ThyssenKrupp Bilstein Tanja shares her story about how she grew her career starting out as a purchasing clerk and working her way up through internal promotions. She's proof that it's possible to grow without going down the traditional university degree straight after school route. We discuss how that mix of operational and strategic experience has helped shape her career. Tanja has only been in her current role a few months, so we also explore some of the considerations for how to approach shaping a digital procurement strategy when starting a new role. Nina Bomberg, Director of Global Indirect Procurement at dormakaba Nina and I have known each other for a while and she changed jobs in September last year. Our conversation looks at her journey of starting in a greenfield role in a relatively immature procurement organisation, especially from a digitisation standpoint. Mario Bruggmann - Social Procurement Mario is based in Switzerland and is a freelance interim manager, typically taking on senior procurement & supply chain roles for a few months at a time to bridge hiring gaps or to manage special project requirements. Mario's other passion though is what he calls Social Procurement - leveraging the power of social media to both build a personal brand and also to raise awareness of the procurement profession. Through their stories, we witness the fusion of operational prowess and strategic vision, illuminating the multifaceted landscape of success in this dynamic field. As the procurement landscape continues to evolve, their experiences provide invaluable insights into shaping digital strategies and propelling the profession forward.

In this episode of The Procuretech Podcast, host James Meads focuses on how technology is shaping the future of the procurement profession with Jan Ellerbrock, founder and CEO of Swiss Smart Contract Platform trueLedger, who discusses smart contracting in the professional services space and how software can help manage services post-contract signature. Jan's background is in insurance and management consulting, which inspired him to pursue entrepreneurship and found his own company. Smart Contracts for Services Procurement - Jan Ellerbrock from trueLedger This episode explores the benefits of smart contracting in the professional services industry. Smart contracting ensures transparency, compliance, and savings of 10% to 25% on professional service spending. The use of a smart contracting engine enables real-time tracking of progress, budget, and automatic invoice generation. By leveraging machine-executable smart contracts, organisations can maintain the latest contract versions and delivery tracking information. Focusing on the untapped potential after the contract signature helps prevent value erosion and improve efficiency. Real-time cost tracking is essential to control overspending on service parts, allowing for immediate root cause analysis and issue detection. It also enables daily projections, proactive budget management, and better resource mix control. Access to real-time information enhances project management and cost control, mitigating unexpected expenses. Timestamps: [00:01:57] Introducing Jan Ellerbrock from trueLedger. [00:06:27] Value erosion in professional services. [00:09:02] Managing service contracts effectively. [00:10:49] Collaboration and transparency in projects. [00:14:18] Collaborating with vendors. [00:18:27] Invoice automation and compliance. [00:20:52] Resource Mix in Consulting Contracts. [00:24:53] Efficiency gains in professional services. [00:27:43] Procurement savings potential. And that wraps up another episode of The Procuretech Podcast! Thanks to Jan for sharing his insights with us today, and big thanks to you for listening. We'll be back at the same time next week, so see you there. If you want to learn more about Jan Ellerbrock, trueLedger, or Procurement Software, check out the useful links below. Stay in touch! Connect with Jan Ellerbrock on LinkedIn Check out net Sign up for the Procurement Software Newsletter Book an Intro Call and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! Connect with James on LinkedIn Follow Procurement Software's LinkedIn Page

In this episode of The Procuretech Podcast, host James Meads talks to David Doyle, the co-founder and CEO of Forestreet. David, coming from a tech background, explains how he identified a problem in the technology market research industry and decided to create an independent platform that utilises data analytics to overcome cognitive constraints. The conversation dives into the genesis of Forestreet and its aim to provide an unbiased perspective for buyers in the procurement space. Generative AI and B2B Searches - David Doyle from Forestreet In this episode, David delves into generative AI, explaining how it creates content from learned patterns in various media. He emphasise the importance of choosing the right tool for specific tasks when using generative AI. While it excels as an assistant for tasks like policy writing, and offering content suggestions, its limitations are evident when accuracy is crucial, such as in sustainability policies. The episode stresses that generative AI isn't a one-size-fits-all solution, advocating for a balanced approach by integrating it with other technologies. Notably useful in policy creation and idea generation, chat GPT showcases its role in crafting policy recommendations. However, the episode cautions against relying on generative AI for basic internet searches due to potential misinformation. David underscores the value of a modular approach, suggesting a blend of generative AI with other tools to maximise outcomes while acknowledging each tool's limitations. The episode concludes by highlighting the importance of discerning when to use generative AI effectively, tailored to specific tasks for optimal results. Timestamps: [00:02:10] Introducing David Doyle, CEO of Forestreet. [00:03:36] Information outside the enterprise. [00:08:01] Generative AI limitations and benefits. [00:10:44] Technology as an automation tool. [00:15:28] Excess capacity and space. [00:18:14] Deployment of new tools. [00:22:09] Data-driven decision making. [00:25:01] Changing procurement function architecture. [00:27:23] Business resource finding becoming urgent. [00:31:54] The strengths and limitations of generative AI. And that wraps up another episode of The Procuretech Podcast! Thanks to David for sharing his insights with us today, and big thanks to you for listening. We'll be back at the same time next week, so see you there. If you want to learn more about David Doyle, Forestreet, or Procurement Software, check out the useful links below. Stay in touch! Connect with David Doyle on LinkedIn Check out forestreet.com Sign up for the Procurement Software Newsletter Book an Intro Call and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! Connect with James on LinkedIn Follow Procurement Software's LinkedIn Page

In this episode of The Procuretech Podcast, host James Meads features Dominique Kindt, CEO and founder of consultancy With and Birdseye. Kindt developed a contract lifecycle management platform in response to the lack of effective solutions in the market. He believes that many companies focus too much on the pre-contract signing phase and neglect the post-signature phase, which is where 80% of contract lifecycle management occurs. Contract Lifecycle Management: A Deep Dive with Dominique Kindt, CEO and Founder of With and BirdsEye In this episode, the "holy triangle" concept for successful software implementation is discussed, emphasising a well-defined process, proper training, and optimal software utilisation. Merely purchasing licenses is insufficient; correct software usage within a clear process and training for employees are essential. A well-defined process involves configuration, installation, and adoption, preventing underutilisation of the software. Proper training ensures user awareness and maximises the benefits of the process and visibility tools. Optimal software use provides visibility and must be facilitated for effective process execution. Organisations should prioritise the holy triangle of process, software, and people rather than focusing solely on license acquisition. This holistic approach aims for visibility and effectiveness through process, software, and people alignment. Timestamps: [00:02:00] Introducing Dominique Kindt CEO of With and Birdseye. [00:03:40] Contract life cycle management. [00:10:01] Post-signature contract lifecycle management. [00:11:01] The Holy Triangle. [00:14:09] Leveraging supplier relationships. [00:18:20] Value leakage in contracts. [00:22:10] Driving visibility with dashboarding. [00:24:35] Procurement's added value in negotiations. [00:28:11] Demoing platform features. And that wraps up another episode of The Procuretech Podcast! Thanks to Dominique for sharing his insights with us today, and big thanks to you for listening. We'll be back at the same time next week, so see you there. If you want to learn more about Dominique Kindt, Birdseye, WITH, or Procurement Software, check out the useful links below. Stay in touch! Connect with Dominique Kindt on LinkedIn Check out WITH and Birdseye Sign up for the Procurement Software Newsletter Book an Intro Call and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! Connect with James on LinkedIn Follow Procurement Software's LinkedIn Page

In this episode of The Procuretech Podcast, host James Meads welcomes Iyad Aldalooj, founder and CEO of Penny, a source-to-pay solution and B2B marketplace, based in Saudi Arabia. They discuss the challenges and nuances of the procurement technology space in the rapidly developing Middle East and Gulf region. Tune in for an insightful conversation on the future of procurement in the Middle East. The Procurement Technology Landscape in the Middle East In this episode, Iyad underscores the need for user-centric design in enterprise software, aligning it with consumer app experiences like Uber. Iyad critiques the persisting complexity and outdated interfaces in enterprise software and advocates for prioritising simplicity to enhance employee engagement and productivity. Using Penny as an example, he showcases how a user-friendly approach can attract suppliers without extensive training. The episode also discusses the importance of governance policies in procurement software, emphasising the values of saving, control, and efficiency. CEOs and CFOs are identified as advocates for digitising procurement to ensure compliance and governance, especially in rapidly growing mid-market companies. Penny targets such companies driven by governance needs, regardless of location or industry. Timestamps: [00:01:45] Introducing Iyad Aldalooj from Penny. [00:05:37] What makes Penny unique. [00:09:09] Focusing on market size. [00:13:24] Millennials and Gen Z's [00:16:39] Automation of procurement work. [00:19:27] Procurement software market complexities. [00:24:03] Reseller as a unique product. [00:29:14] Digitising the full value chain. And that wraps up another episode of The Procuretech Podcast! Thanks to Iyad for sharing his insights with us today, and big thanks to you for listening. We'll be back at the same time next week, so see you there. If you want to learn more about Iyad Aldalooj, Penny, or Procurement Software, check out the useful links below. Stay in touch! Connect with Iyad Aldalooj on LinkedIn Check out Penny. Sign up for the Procurement Software Newsletter Book an Intro Call and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! Connect with James on LinkedIn Follow Procurement Software's LinkedIn Page

In this episode of The Procuretech Podcast, host James Meads invites Thejo Kote, CEO and founder of Airbase, into the hot seat. Thejo introduces guided procurement as a new feature recently launched by Airbase. Airbase focuses on serving the underserved mid-market sector, offering a platform that brings together all workflows and payments related to non-payroll spending. Bringing guided buying in mid-market organisations In this episode, James and Thejo discuss the company's mission to create a procurement tool that strikes a balance between simplicity for employees, alongside the necessary features and maturity for professionals and practitioners. They acknowledge the daily complexities faced by procurement experts but also recognise the need for a user-friendly experience for employees. The challenge lies in catering to different company preferences and accommodating individual personalities. The company's approach is to build a flexible tool that guides employees through the procurement process without extensive training. It focuses on clarity, easy navigation, and a consumer-grade user experience, aiming to consolidate all spending needs into one platform. The value proposition of a single interface for all spending, offering both breadth and depth, is highlighted as a compelling solution. Timestamps: [00:02:09] Introducing Thejo Kote, CEO of Airbase. [00:04:47] Procurement tech for underserved markets. [00:05:31] Procurement process automation helps businesses. [00:13:33] Underserved middle segment in procurement. [00:16:00] User-friendly procurement platform with consolidation. [00:21:20] Collaborative tool for guided procurement. [00:26:00] Balancing complexity and user experience. [00:31:57] Airbase's focus being mainly on the North American market. And that wraps up another episode of The Procuretech Podcast! Thanks to Thejo for sharing his insights with us today, and big thanks to you for listening. We'll be back at the same time next week, so see you there. If you want to learn more about Thejo Kote, Airbase, or Procurement Software, check out the useful links below. Stay in touch! · Connect with Thejo Kote on LinkedIn · Check out Airbase. · Sign up for the Procurement Software Newsletter · Book an Intro Call and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! · Connect with James on LinkedIn · Follow Procurement Software's LinkedIn Page

In this episode of The Procuretech Podcast, host James Meads welcomes Laura Sellers, a procurement coach who runs her own business, Olive Executive & Leadership Coaching. We discuss the role of coaching and how it can aid and assist leaders in the context of digital transformation. Tune in to hear their insightful conversation on shaping the future of procurement through technology. Can coaching for procurement leaders help them succeed? In this episode, we embark on a transformative journey into the realm of self-awareness, uncovering its profound impact on our ability to create a lasting impression without the need for constant justification. Laura guides us through the art of understanding our reactions and behaviours within our roles and organisations, empowering us to consciously shape our image. With courage as our compass, we explore the terrain of self-awareness, taking charge of our thoughts, feelings, and actions. This new-found control allows us to redefine our place and influence at the table, which can ultimately magnify our impact. Moreover, we also delve into the vital role of coaching in navigating the complexities of habit change and combating burnout. Despite the challenges of implementing lasting change, coaching emerges as a steadfast ally, offering ongoing support and guidance. Even when the path forward may not be crystal clear, coaching aids in unveiling hidden patterns and pathways for improvement. Timestamps: [00:02:02] Introducing Laura Sellers from Olive. [00:04:06] Change management in procurement. [00:09:10] Developing executive presence. [00:10:36] Burnout and work-life balance. [00:15:36] Reluctance to invest in procurement. [00:19:39] The fabled seat at the table. [00:21:29] Great leaders and how they practice self-awareness. [00:24:11] Coaching as a partnership approach. [00:28:19] Soft skills and self-awareness. [00:31:19] Investing in procurement software. And that wraps up another episode of The Procuretech Podcast! Thanks to Laura for sharing her insights with us today, and big thanks to you for listening. We'll be back at the same time next week, so see you there. If you want to learn more about Laura Sellers, Olive, or Procurement Software, check out the useful links below. Stay in touch! Connect with Laura Sellers on LinkedIn Check out Olive Sign up for the Procurement Software Newsletter Book an Intro Call and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! Connect with James on LinkedIn Follow Procurement Software's LinkedIn Page

In this episode of The Procuretech Podcast, host James Meads welcomes Karthik Rama, also known as The Procurement Doctor, to discuss the current state of procurement and the barriers preventing investment in innovative startups and procurement tech companies. They explore the history and symptoms of the issue, and then offer potential solutions. Join us for an exciting and insightful conversation in the digital procurement space. Plug-and-play procurement technology: is it a fallacy? In this episode, James discusses digital procurement with Karthik Rama, The Procurement Doctor, who leverages his nearly two decades of procurement experience to assess the current state of procurement. They explore barriers to investing in innovative startups and procurement tech companies, emphasising the need for procurement to embrace technology. Karthik's status as a second-time guest underscores his expertise, with insights from working with both legacy suites and startups. A compelling SharePoint utilisation example illustrates how cost-effective solutions enhance processes and profitability. This episode offers valuable insights into digital procurement's challenges and opportunities, highlighting the importance of tech-savvy procurement professionals collaborating with startups for innovation. Timestamps: [00:01:45] Introducing Karthik Rama, aka The Procurement Doctor [00:05:51] Legacy suites and newer solutions. [00:08:29] UI and integration concerns. [00:12:46] Organisation size and procurement technology. [00:15:42] Risk aversion in procurement. [00:20:07] Demand for better UI/UX. [00:23:58] Marketplace or app store function. [00:29:41] Sustainability and ESG integration. [00:31:07] Low-code, no-code revolution. [00:34:32] Website refresh and relaunch. And that wraps up another episode of The Procuretech Podcast! Thanks to Karthik for sharing his insights with us today, and big thanks to you for listening. We'll be back at the same time next week, so see you there. If you want to learn more about Karthik Rama, Procurement doctors or Procurement Software, check out the useful links below. Stay in touch! · Connect with Karthik Rama on LinkedIn · Check out Procurementdoctors.com · Sign up for the Procurement Software Newsletter · Book an Intro Call and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! · Connect with James on LinkedIn · Follow Procurement Software's LinkedIn Page

In this episode of The Procuretech Podcast, host James Meads first introduces the new look and feel of the website procurementsoftware.site. After months of work, the website now features a fresh and modern user interface, making it easier for users to navigate. Additionally, 65 new solutions have been added to the database, bringing the total to over 400. The episode also mentions the launch of two new digital products as part of the website refresh. Tune in to learn more about the exciting developments in the procurement technology space. Current and future trends in the procurement technology market James has divided this solo episode into two sections. In the first section, he discusses fundamental challenges and opportunities in procurement, highlighting the change management process during digital transformations as a significant hurdle. He stresses the importance of involving stakeholders, as well as the need to improve internal marketing and communication efforts. We need to communicate what we do better to the wider business, and articulate how this fits into their objectives. The second section focuses on procurement technology trends, including generative AI's potential role in source-to-pay and procure-to-pay processes. Digitisation and sustainability are also explored, with James suggesting that sustainability initiatives present an opportunity for procurement professionals to secure investment into technology. Throughout the episode, the importance of effective change management and stakeholder engagement in procurement is underscored, emphasising the need for improved strategies and communication in the field. Timestamps: [00:01:52] Digital Procurement 101. [00:06:18] Change management and communication. [00:09:13] Modern tech stack in procurement. [00:13:48] Sustainability driving procurement technology. [00:17:21] Building in-house procurement tech - yes or no. [00:22:03] Tech companies cutting marketing budget. [00:25:48] Boom in sustainability and supply chain transparency reporting software. And that wraps up another episode of The Procuretech Podcast! A big thanks to you for listening. We'll be back at the same time next week, so see you there. If you want to learn more about Procurement Software, check out the useful links below. Stay in touch! Sign up for the Procurement Software Newsletter Book an Intro Call and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! Connect with James on LinkedIn Follow Procurement Software's LinkedIn Page

In this episode of The Procuretech Podcast, host James Meads welcomes Ryan Belcher, founder and CEO of Spendwise. They discuss the importance of sustainable and profitable growth for businesses of any size. Tune in to learn more about how technology can give businesses a leg up in today's competitive landscape. Solving the procurement talent shortage through automation The episode looks at why smaller organisations often are better off buying an off-the-shelf Source-to-Pay solution, rather than pursuing in-house custom product development. With the need for maintenance, training, and resource constraints, it's often a false economy trying to build your own product. Smaller organisations often lack IT expertise and procurement capabilities, which can make in-house development impractical unless they are larger and have the necessary resources. We also look at how automation and simplification of tactical and operational processes, thanks to technology, can offer an alternative to the difficulties faced when it comes to recruitment and retention of operational procurement team members. The discussion with Ryan also focuses on achieving profitability through bootstrapping and maintaining a robust customer pipeline. Despite strong competition and an array of solutions in this segment, Ryan still sees manual processes and Excel as prominent in procurement. Educating customers about the benefits of automation is key, especially among his typical potential customer base. The episode also explores the benefits of shortening processes: increased productivity, improved employee satisfaction, and enhanced reputation, all of which impact project completion and business success, even though quantification can be challenging. We round off by looking at the threats to the traditional software-as-a-service model from Generative AI and low code / no code platforms. Timestamps: [00:02:20] Introducing Ryan Belcher, CEO of Spendwise. [00:04:35] How Spendwise started [00:06:43] Greenfield space and competition. [00:10:01] Addressing recruitment challenges in SMEs. [00:12:20] ROI and customer objections. [00:16:37] Increasing dominance of low-code/no-code platforms. [00:21:23] AI in procurement tech. [00:24:10] The importance of profitable growth. And that wraps up another episode of The Procuretech Podcast! Thanks to Ryan for sharing his insights with us today, and big thanks to you for listening. We'll be back at the same time next week, so see you there. If you want to learn more about Ryan Belcher, Spendwise or Procurement Software, check out the useful links below. Stay in touch! Connect with Ryan Belcher on LinkedIn Check out Spendwise Sign up for the Procurement Software Newsletter Book an Intro Call and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! Connect with James on LinkedIn Follow Procurement Software's LinkedIn Page

In this episode of The Procuretech Podcast, host James Meads explores the challenges of sourcing consultancy services and how to optimise the process. He is joined by Laurent Thomas, the co-founder and president of Consulting Quest. Together, they discuss the unique complexities of sourcing consultancy services and provide insights on how technology can help streamline the process. Tune in to learn more about this final frontier of procurement and discover strategies for sourcing consultancy services effectively. Can procurement tech help us source consulting services? This episode explores optimising consultancy sourcing through technology amidst today's challenging economic landscape. Laurent draws parallels between consultancy procurement and other professional services, emphasising the distinction lies in decentralised procurement usually being the norm for consultancy. A central theme is viewing consultancy as an investment, rather than mere cost-cutting. By employing structure and technology, organisations can lower costs and elevate service value. Laurent's company offers a platform with resources for this endeavour. Additionally, the episode acknowledges challenges tied to personal relationships and cronyism affecting senior-level sourcing decisions. In sum, it highlights the vital role of technology and structured methodologies in consultancy sourcing, promising cost reductions, added value, and informed procurement choices. Timestamps: [00:01:40] Introducing Laurent Thomas of Consulting Quest. [00:04:10] Digitalising sourcing of consulting services. [00:08:33] Challenges in buying consulting services. [00:11:43] Buying projects multiple times. [00:15:38] Managing consulting beyond sourcing. [00:19:52] The power of healthy competition. [00:22:30] Independent consulting firms. [00:25:07] Biased rankings in consulting. [00:31:08] Average spend on consultancy. [00:31:37] Consulting as a golden goose. And that wraps up another episode of The Procuretech Podcast! Thanks to Laurent for sharing his insights with us today, and big thanks to you for listening. We'll be back at the same time next week, so see you there. If you want to learn more about Laurent Thomas, Consulting Quest or Procurement Software, check out the useful links below. Stay in touch! Connect with Laurent Thomas on LinkedIn Check out Consulting Quest Sign up for the Procurement Software Newsletter Book an Intro Call and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! Connect with James on LinkedIn Follow Procurement Software's LinkedIn Page

In this episode of The Procuretech Podcast, host James Meads welcomes back Edmund Zagorin, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Arkestro. They discuss the use of predictive models in various areas of procurement and supply chain. Tune in for an insightful and forward-thinking conversation about the future of procurement and technology. Predictive procurement orchestration: what is it? This episode focuses on user-friendly technology in the procurement industry, catering to the expectations of the new generation. The discussion underscores the need for technology that doesn't alienate suppliers and simplifies the procurement process with a "one-click" approach. It highlights the power balance between procurement leaders and suppliers, and how fostering positive relationships through efficient processes benefits both parties. The episode also explores the use of predictive models and their integration into existing procurement systems, offering valuable insights and enhancing decision-making. Arkestro supports various procurement activities and seamlessly integrates with ERP and other systems, providing real-time insights and automating workflows. It emphasises the value of centralised systems in tracking contract renewals and projects, ultimately streamlining and automating procurement processes for success. Timestamps: [00:01:09] Introducing Edmund Zagorin of Arkestro [00:01:27] Predictive models in procurement. [00:06:17] Clarifying Arkestro's value. [00:09:02] An interesting topic. [00:14:06] Meeting people where they are. [00:19:48] What's next for procurement? [00:23:09] Overturning the old procurement model. [00:25:57] Are there cool folks in procurement? And that wraps up another episode of The Procuretech Podcast! Thanks to Edmund for sharing his insights with us today, and big thanks to you for listening. We'll be back at the same time next week, so see you there. If you want to learn more about Edmund Zagorin, Arkestro or Procurement Software, check out the useful links below. Stay in touch! Connect with Edmund Zagorin on LinkedIn Check out Arkestro Sign up for the Procurement Software Newsletter Book an Intro Call and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! Connect with James on LinkedIn Follow Procurement Software's LinkedIn Page

In this episode of The Procuretech Podcast, host James Meads explores the digitisation challenges faced by mid-market companies with guest Hans Boot, a partner from consulting firm Durch Denken Vorne, specialising in this sector. They discuss their experiences working with small and mid-sized companies in Austria, Switzerland, and Germany. They touch on topics like organisational development, digitisation of processes, indirect costs, and risk management. Tune in to gain insights on navigating the digitisation journey in the mid-market procurement space. Procurement transformation challenges in the mid-market This episode focuses on the challenges of digitising procurement in mid-sized companies. Hans Boot is from Durch Denken Vorne. They are a German procurement consultancy which is part of a wider alliance callled Procurement Excellence Group. Hans highlights that many mid-sized firms still rely on manual, outdated methods for procurement, particularly in areas like supplier management, risk management, and sustainability. The episode stresses the importance of analysing and improving procurement processes, contrasting them with the more professional and modern practices of larger companies. Additionally, it advocates for giving operational procurement employees the chance to engage in strategic tasks, emphasising mindset over skills. The episode addresses the difficulties in finding experienced individuals in the job market and suggests investing in training and coaching for existing employees as a long-term solution. Ultimately, it underscores the need for a mindset shift to foster a more strategic procurement function within mid-sized companies. Timestamps:  [00:02:04] Introducing Hans Boot of Durch Denken Vorne [00:05:47] German business culture challenges. [00:08:22] Thinking long-term vs. short-term. [00:13:01] Analysing procurement departments. [00:17:10] Traditional companies in Europe. [00:21:10] Giving time for strategic tasks. [00:26:04] Operational buyers adopting a more strategic mindset. [00:30:13] Adoption of digital software in procurement. [00:34:02] The importance of procurement to these organisations. And that wraps up another episode of The Procuretech Podcast! Thanks to Hans for sharing his insights with us today, and big thanks to you for listening. We'll be back at the same time next week, so see you there. If you want to learn more about Hans Boot, Durch Denken Vorne or Procurement Software, check out the useful links below. Stay in touch! Connect with Hans Boot on LinkedIn Check out Durch Denken Vorne Sign up for the Procurement Software Newsletter Book an Intro Call and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! Connect with James on LinkedIn Follow Procurement Software's LinkedIn Page

In this episode of The Procuretech Podcast, host James Meads discusses the use of Generative AI in spend and data analytics applications with Sam Clive, Head of Product at Rosslyn. Sam recently delivered a keynote on this topic at ProcureCon EU, and James attended this presentation and thought it would make a great podcast. They dive into the potential of Generative AI and its impact on procurement. Tune in to learn more about how this technology is shaping the future of procurement. Generative AI and spend classification: is it accurate? The episode delves into the challenges faced by traditional AI and machine learning approaches in spend analytics, mainly due to overcoming data quality issues in customer data. Rosslyn undertook the challenge to try to understand whether Generative AI could solve this problem. In collaboration with industry giants and universities, they sought an answer and a process to run some experiments. Classification is a subjective task. It has been historically difficult to standardise. To address these challenges, the episode explores the use of Generative AI as a possible solution. This technology could automate data classification, providing insights and making spend analytics more accessible, even for smaller businesses. In their recent trial, Rosslyn found that Generative AI has the potential to revolutionise data classification, improving efficiency and accuracy while democratising its use. Timestamps: [00:01:37] Introducing Sam Clive of Rosslyn. [00:03:54] Challenges in spend analytics. [00:07:19] GPT and its capabilities. [00:11:23] AI's decision-making transparency. [00:16:08] Line item data challenges. [00:19:13] Generative AI and language understanding. [00:23:12] Bringing data together en masse. [00:25:28] Generative AI-driven spend analytics. [00:29:15] Our Digital Procurement 101 Course. And that wraps up another episode of The Procuretech Podcast! Thanks to Sam for sharing his insights with us today, and big thanks to you for listening. We'll be back at the same time next week, so see you there. If you want to learn more about Sam Clive, Rosslyn or Procurement Software, check out the useful links below. Stay in touch! Connect with Sam Clive on LinkedIn Check out Rosslyn Sign up for the Procurement Software Newsletter Book an Intro Call and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! Connect with James on LinkedIn Follow Procurement Software's LinkedIn Page

In this episode of The Procuretech Podcast, host James Meads is joined by Simon Geale, VP of Procurement at leading UK-based consultancy Proxima. This is a fireside chat-style episode about the latest trends in procurement technology. Simon talks about his background and role at Proxima, and the company's focus on serving large enterprise clients with complex procurement problems. They also touch on Proxima's acquisition by Bain and its potential impact. Tune in to hear their insights on how technology is shaping the future of procurement. Digital procurement: ongoing developments and trends In this episode, the exploration of generative AI's role in procurement tasks reveals a perception gap between its potential and the value offered by traditional providers. Despite acknowledging generative AI's capabilities in vendor discovery and strategy development, the episode highlights some of its potential ineffectiveness if not used properly. The discussion raises questions about software vendors being able to adapt to this gap, and also touches on the democratisation of tools like ChatGPT and its role in automating procurement tasks. We discuss the continued flourishing of digital procurement startups, which significantly expand technology options for digitisation and innovation in our profession. Emphasising the importance of realistic expectations, the episode underscores the evolving landscape where innovation is not solely dependent on budgets, and it concludes by urging effective communication about AI capabilities and limitations, in a world where the belief in the omnipotence of systems persists. Timestamps: [00:01:09] Introducing Simon Geale of Proxima [00:05:33] Interacting with Proxima clients. [00:08:29] Digital maturity and procurement. [00:13:16] Lack of dynamism among CPOs. [00:15:02] Digital transformations and failure. [00:18:49] Setting realistic expectations in procurement. [00:23:02] Perception gap in AI advancements. [00:26:41] Industry 4.0 revolution. [00:30:57] The future of ERP. [00:34:10] The future of procurement tech. And that wraps up another episode of The Procuretech Podcast! Thanks to Simon for sharing his insights with us today, and big thanks to you for listening. We'll be back at the same time next week, so see you there. If you want to learn more about Simon Geale, Proxima or Procurement Software, check out the useful links below. Stay in touch! Connect with Simon Geale on LinkedIn Check out Proxima Sign up for the Procurement Software Newsletter Book an Intro Call and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! Connect with James on LinkedIn Follow Procurement Software's LinkedIn Page

In this episode of The Procurement Software Podcast, host James Meads announces the rebranding of the podcast and explains the reasons behind it. Initially launched as The Procuretech Podcast, the show has evolved over the years and now aligns with the procurementsoftware.site brand. Tune in to stay updated and inspired by the exciting developments in the field. How to get a budget for procurement tech This episode delves into the evolving procurement technology market, highlighting a trend towards niche solutions tailored to specific industries and geographies, driven by the unique procurement needs across sectors and regions. Companies are now focusing on developing specialised tools to address particular industry challenges, thereby enabling organisations to select technology that closely aligns with their requirements. This shift towards customisation is leading to better technology adoption and effectiveness. The episode also emphasises the importance of starting with the "why" when developing a business case for ProcureTech, advising to focus on addressing the most significant challenges within procurement processes. It draws on Simon Sinek's principle of understanding the purpose behind actions, suggesting that identifying key pain points can guide the selection of targeted solutions. Furthermore, the podcast advocates for a value-driven approach over merely cost-saving, urging consideration of technology's impact on both the top and bottom lines. Moreover, the podcast outlines various factors justifying ProcureTech investment, including cost savings through streamlined processes, risk management in complex supply chains, enhanced supplier relationship management, and the promotion of sustainability initiatives. It also touches on financial optimisation by automating tasks and potentially reallocating or reducing personnel, highlighting the multifaceted benefits of investing in procurement technology. Timestamps: [00:01:10] Rebranding the podcast. [00:05:13] Funding challenges in procurement tech. [00:08:12] Intake category and its impact. [00:14:28] Companies' approach to procurement. [00:15:21] Best of breed solutions. [00:19:19] Due diligence on IT suppliers. [00:23:15] Supply chain disruption and risk. [00:27:30-00:27:40] CO2 emissions measurement in procurement. [00:31:01] Giving up salary for tech. And that wraps up another episode of The Procurement Software Podcast! Thanks to Graham for being a great interviewer, James for sharing his insights with us today, and big thanks to you for listening. We'll be back at the same time next week, so see you there. If you want to learn more about CASME, Graham Crawshaw, or Procurement Software, check out the useful links below. Stay in touch! Connect with Graham Crawshaw on LinkedIn Check out CASME Sign up for the Procurement Software Newsletter Book an Intro Call and let's talk all things Digital Procurement! Connect with James on LinkedIn Follow Procurement Software's LinkedIn Page