Procure IQ

As I noted in yesterday’s post, while the Quadrant wasn’t all bad, when you added up all the issues, it was more tragic than magic. And, despite the fact that one of my commenters may be right in the observation that it’s not worth the column-inches I’m going to use discussing it, I can’t let it go. Given the importance assigned to this report by the market space, which is equalled only by the Forrester Grave, I need to make sure you don’t misread any of the statements and base a bad decision on them. So, in …

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On Friday I asked if Gartner’s new Quadrant for Strategic Sourcing Application Suites was Magic or Tragic?. Even though it was better than some of the previous quadrants, the fact that it only covered 14 vendors, that 4 of them seemed to slip in under the wire, that the lack of response time probably excluded a number of vendors that should have been there, and that there were a number of statements that just make you go “huh?” (and lead you to believe the report was as rushed as the surveys), I’ve decided that it was more tragic than …

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There’s been a lot of hullabaloo about Gartner’s new “Magic Quadrant” for Strategic Sourcing Application Suites, including a lot over on Spend Matters in we report, you read, and we all decide and clarifying a few questions, and with good reason. As one of the two publications that are supposed to “define” the strategic sourcing space, the other being the Forrester Wave, there are a large number of expectations that it will be fairly complete, mostly correct, and useful to the client base. But considering that only 14 vendors made “the final cut”, that one of those was …

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While the ground crews break guitars1 and break guitars2 and break guitars3 to the dismay of Dave Carroll, Taylor and Hitler. That’s right, song three launches today! (See the Countdown Timer.) The first two songs have already garnered over 9 Million hits.)The January 2010 issue of Inside Supply Management chronicled Grace Puma’s efforts to transform Procurement at United Airlines. Through the implementation of a standard sourcing process company-wide, that used category management teams, and alignment with strategic suppliers, through collaborative relationship development, Procurement at United Airlines has been able to obtain “better knowledge around the subcomponents of …

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In the beginning, there was the reverse auction. Industry visionaries applied reverse auctions to their sourcing events for commodity and competitive categories (in the mid nineties) and saved a small fortune (which sometimes exceeded 30%, 50%, and even 70% of previous category costs). They were heroes and the world was good.Then, a couple of years later when they circled back to the first categories and held another auction, something unexpected (to them) happened. The total savings shrunk considerably. The average savings, expressed in terms of percentages, dropped from the mid double digits to the (low) single digits. The savings often …

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This series discusses the recent report from CAPS Research on the role of optimization in strategic sourcing. The primary goal is to highlight, clarify, and, in some cases, correct parts of the report that are important, confusing, or incorrect to insure that you have the best introduction to strategic sourcing decision optimization that one can have. What will the future hold? The authors predict development in the following two directions: more self-serve applications that require no third-party involvement more powerful services that handle even larger, more complex problems In other words, the same-old …

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This series discusses the recent report from CAPS Research on the role of optimization in strategic sourcing. The primary goal is to highlight, clarify, and, in some cases, correct parts of the report that are important, confusing, or incorrect to insure that you have the best introduction to strategic sourcing decision optimization that one can have. This chapter addresses the challenges associated with optimization from a user perspective, which, unfortunately, are numerous. The good news is that they are all easily overcome if you are aware of the issues and address them early on. User challenges fall …

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This series discusses the recent report from CAPS Research on the role of optimization in strategic sourcing. The primary goal is to highlight, clarify, and, in some cases, correct parts of the report that are important, confusing, or incorrect to insure that you have the best introduction to strategic sourcing decision optimization that one can have. In this chapter, the benefits of using optimization with reverse auctions are discussed and a number of case studies are presented. Specifically: Fasteners #1 Before the event, which was conducted as a reverse auction followed by …

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This series discusses the recent report from CAPS Research on the role of optimization in strategic sourcing. The primary goal is to highlight, clarify, and, in some cases, correct parts of the report that are important, confusing, or incorrect to insure that you have the best introduction to strategic sourcing decision optimization that one can have. In this chapter, the optimization enhanced sourcing cycle is enhanced. The first issue is cycle time. According to the report “at one company, the time from first exposure to the optimization concept to completion of the first pilot run was one …

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This series discusses the recent report from CAPS Research on the role of optimization in strategic sourcing. The primary goal is to highlight, clarify, and, in some cases, correct parts of the report that are important, confusing, or incorrect to insure that you have the best introduction to strategic sourcing decision optimization that one can have. The chapter starts out with a list of ten questions designed to help organizations evaluate the appropriateness of optimization for their sourcing event. And while I still contend that every event can benefit, the question list will help you determine how beneficial …

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