Technology

With cost pressures likely to mount up as we recover from COVID-19, mining and manufacturing companies must find alternative methods to reduce total cost of ownership relating to product procurement and product consumption.

"A product information management (PIM) system can help", says Isak Marais, CEO, DigiTeams, which specialises in bespoke digital transformation within the mining, manufacturing, wholesale and retail sectors.

Cloud procurement means different things to different people. In this article, Leigh Weimer and Anthony Vieira dispel some of the dominant myths around implementing cloud‑based products to equip you with information for the decision‑making process.

By Lari Numminen, Chief Marketing Officer, Sievo

Having a robust spend analysis solution in place has become a prerequisite for running a professional sourcing organisation. But do you get all the possible benefits from your current spend cube?

At Sievo, we have worked with hundreds of clients across most industries. Here are 12 of the most important benefits that sourcing organisations can get from advanced spend analysis. The question is: are you already leveraging all of these?

By Michael Healy, Supply Chain Partner

The outbreak of COVID-19 has forced companies to get creative about how they connect and meet with customers and teams.

Working with cloud applications allows us to workshop, design and configure systems remotely. With apps like Zoom and Microsoft Teams, working remotely can be easy and cost effective. But making it a positive and productive experience for everyone joining in does take some planning.

Here is a checklist from Supply Chain Partner to help you get the most out of your remote sessions:

By Vijay Pandiarajan, Director: Product Management, IBM Sterling

What is next in supply chain systems? There is plenty to be excited about...
First-generation supply chains were good at automating and optimising processes. But they were restricted to functional silos - and that is not enough for what we need in supply chains today.

Advances in supply chain technology are needed if procurement teams are to manage supply chains that are dynamic, responsive and interconnected with ecosystems and external processes. New tech needs the capacity to manage much, much more data (by several orders of magnitude). This, in turn, will make it possible for an individual procurement manager to make sense of entire supply chain ecosystems in real-time.

These demands are driving progress - which is why I am excited about the future of supply chain 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.