Technology

By Michael Healy

Interview with Chimae Gonçalves
SupplyChainPartner.com sat down with its director and procurement guru Chimae Gonçalves to ask a few pertinent questions around procurement technology implementation:

By Anant Kadiyala, Director: Blockchain and IoT Industry Solutions, Oracle

Shrinkage, wastage, counterfeiting, contamination, mishandling, logistical delays and other challenges continue to plague today's supply chains − despite decades of investments and improvements along the way.

Companies have limited visibility into who their end-users are and how end-users actually use/handle their products on a day-to-day basis. Recent recalls with romaine lettuce, Takata airbags, and a myriad of others, have shown that supply chains have room to tighten further and improve visibility across the board.

In addition, new technology developments have been triggering rapid transformations across all industry verticals. Cloud computing, mobile, the Internet of Things (IoT), augmented reality (AR), machine learning and, recently, blockchain, have all brought a wave of new possibilities to customer experiences and expectations. Consumers prefer high-quality options, safer products, ethical sourcing, accountability, transparency and quicker delivery − along with flexible ways to buy and use products. The click-and-collect paradigm in retail is a result of such technology-enabled possibilities.

To accommodate customer and industry demands, supply chains are doing the heavy lifting of managing a transformation that is nothing short of epic.

By Dr Marcell Vollmer, Chief Digital Officer, SAP Ariba

How does a Chief Procurement Officer measure success?
In the past, executives responsible for sourcing, contracting, purchasing and payment gauged success chiefly on their ability to wring savings out of the value chain. Without question, reducing costs remains as crucial today as ever. But, with the advent of digital networks, Chief Procurement Officers find that they now have an exponentially greater opportunity to create value. By linking together buyers and suppliers in real time, digital networks allow procurement leaders to foster collaboration, spur innovation and drive much of the strategic value that fuels growth.

These activities, of course, can benefit the balance sheet. But there are others, equally important, that a spreadsheet cannot easily capture.

By Rod Robinson, Founder and CEO, ConnXus

When I graduated from Wharton in 1995 and decided to pursue a career in management consulting at AT Kearney, I had grand visions of being assigned to an engagement helping one of our multinational clients grow revenue through a high-profile M&A transaction or other topline growth strategy. Instead, I was assigned to a global strategic sourcing engagement for one of the most recognisable corporate brands in the world. I didn't know what strategic sourcing was, but quickly learnt that it was an approach to supply chain management that enabled an organisation to leverage its consolidated purchasing power to optimise the value it received from suppliers. This is when I realised that procurement was an often overlooked area of hidden corporate value.

By Angela Wilson, Senior Solutions Architect, CSS

While large companies with procurement departments often have the personnel and resources to negotiate significant savings and better terms, small and medium businesses (SMBs) typically do not. The good news is that the digital era has created new opportunities for SMBs to improve their procurement practices and outcomes, especially with cloud-based processes.

There are very different business requirements when it comes to how SMBs source goods and services: "Using modern cloud procurement solutions is the best way today to meet these requirements", says Angela Wilson, Senior Solutions Architect at CSS, a systems integrator that helps companies create supplier management and logistics programmes. With the right tools, companies can realise a number of advantages.

By Angela Mazza Teufer, Senior Vice President, Oracle ERPM WE, ERPM North Install Base

When it comes to crucial procurement data, there is no way to 'fake it 'til you make it'. Accurate information is the bread and butter of a successful organisation but our research reveals that companies are still not investing in the tools or skills to manage their data effectively. This lack of confidence in the accuracy, safety and management of information has a ripple effect across every department, influencing their ability to deliver on strategic objectives.

According to Oracle research, only 34% of finance professionals believe that their data is completely manageable. This should be a sobering statistic for any business leader, particularly as data plays an ever-growing role in how companies operate. According to Accenture, 77% of Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) say that it is their responsibility to drive company-wide transformation, and a similar percentage expect that they will play a growing role in driving their organisation's digital initiatives. But how can they deliver on this expectation when less than half feel confident in their ability to manage data?

By Helen Mackenzie
An experienced former CPO currently working with Procurious to help connect the procurement community across the world.

We're all talking about delivering value these days in procurement, aren't we? But with so many definitions around, how do we maximise its impact?

By Angela Mazza Teufer
Senior Vice President ERPM WE, ERPM North install base

Finance has always taken advantage of technology to improve productivity and collaboration. But with continuous innovation now driving our economy, the goalposts have moved. Today's organizations must adopt an agile finance operating model-- powered by emerging digital technologies and skillsets. The success of that model depends on 5 keys traits that the Finance Team must possess.

When Oracle and the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants (AICPA) decided to follow up our look at the best finance organizations, we already knew that agile finance functions were taking advantage of cloud technologies to improve efficiency; centralize process management and subject matter expertise; make greater use of analytics to contribute insights; and deploy multi-disciplinary teams to partner with decision makers.

Talking to both agile finance pioneers and those in less-advanced organizations for the new report, Agile Finance Unleashed, we discovered even deeper links between successful business and digital finance transformation. And the conversations with CFOs successfully delivering operational excellence and strategic influence using digital intelligence led to five conclusions about what makes for effective, future-ready finance leaders.

Speed to value can be elusive but it is of vital importance for any organisation.

Many procurement organisations realise the increasing pressure to maximise savings and accelerate delivery timelines. But they also want to mitigate supplier risks. Altogether, legacy manual processes and age-old frameworks compel procurement leaders to rethink their strategy.

Subhro Sen, from procure-to-pay solutions provider Zycus, discusses five core areas where digital procurement transformation augmented with artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and robotic process automation (RPA) are driving value for organisations who are seeking fast-paced growth while trying to keep ahead of the competition.

By Sammeli Sammalkorpi, VP: Customers and Co-founder of procurement analytics solutions provider Sievo

In late 2017, MIT's Sloan Management Review (in collaboration with the Boston Consulting Group) seemed to confirm what most in procurement had long inferred. Our expectations for artificial intelligence (AI) are well out of proportion with our preparedness.

In short, we are fond of talking the talk, but almost totally unfamiliar with walking the walk. The abovementioned survey of more than 3 000 executives found that, while 85% expected AI to help "obtain or sustain a competitive advantage", less than 39% had any sort of AI strategy in place. Just one in 20 had "extensively incorporated" AI into their organisation's service offerings/day-to-day processes.

Over the last half-decade or so, technology has become increasingly more disruptive within the procurement industry. Across various offerings, you are promised the next big thing in procurement management that will help you save time and money and, ultimately, improve the way your organisation approaches the end-to-end procurement process.

However, an effective procurement solution is more than simply a means to cutting costs and improving efficiencies within an organisation - particularly in a country such as South Africa, with complex compliance and legal requirements.

By James Marland, Global Vice President, SAP Centre of Excellence for Spend Management

Welcome to the world of autonomous procurement, where procurement professionals are augmented by machines and can focus on strategic relationships which require human creativity and empathy.

Not long ago, corporate leaders thought that the greatest opportunity to leave the competition behind was to invest heavily in internal R&D and to perform all innovation activities behind closed doors until new products were mature enough and ready to be launched to market. It was believed that only those companies would be able to keep up with the pace of change and innovation.

Today, the situation is quite different. Companies have moved from inward-focused, 'closed' innovation to 'open' innovation, where valuable ideas can come from both inside as well as outside a company, encouraging the use and exchange of external ideas, technologies, knowledge, talent and resources. In part, this can be achieved through the organisation of co-creation events that are often referred to as 'hackathons'.

Matthias Gutzmann, Founder of Digital Procurement World, tells SmartProcurement more.

Becoming aware of blockchain's weak spots is an important first step towards taking full advantage of what the technology really has to offer

By Bertrand Maltaverne

From a broader point of view, development in information communication technology (ICT) has radically changed the manner in which people conduct business. Speed of communication and information exchange mean that you can offer real-time answers to customer enquiries, process transactions and convert potential leads into paying clients.

"The procurement process is no exception to these changes", says Moses Manuel, a lecturer in business, legal and development-related studies and founder of the Zerite Network.

While procurement leaders increasingly turn spend data into a competitive advantage, laggards continue to repeat painful mistakes.

You may have noticed that spend analytics is a hot topic right now. According to Deloitte's Global Chief Procurement Officer Survey 2018, the majority of CPOs across the world expect analytics to have the greatest bearing on procurement over the next two years. As a provider of spend analytics software, Sievo has been busy and has seen more interest than ever from both private and public organisations to get their spend data into shape.

As leading procurement organisations find new opportunities to turn spend data into value, others repeat the same painful mistakes. Sammeli Sammalkorpi, VP: Customers and Co-founder of procurement analytics solutions provider Sievo, highlights the top six mistakes that you should avoid making in your spend analysis projects.

The transportation and logistics industry has mountains of data available, and experts encourage carriers and their customers to embrace data-backed business decisions. Ben Goldwasser, a business development professional at Spendrix specialising in risk analysis, business administration and technology issues affecting the transportation and logistics industry, takes a brief look at using data to improve supplier decisions.

How can procurement create value beyond cost savings?

David Millington, Certified Supply Chain Professional, Next Level Purchasing Association, offers ten procurement value creation ideas in this month's SmartProcurement.

Join us at Smart Procurement World Western Cape on 9 & 10 April for a discussion on reaching true partnerships with strategic suppliers. Sanet Shepperson (Executive Head: Property and Procurement, Cell C) will facilitate a session on innovation and value creation in key supplier partnerships