Push for Open Architectures and Networks in Indirect Spend
Finally, we come to our last recommendation in this series of how to make indirect spend more effective: providing an open architecture that will allow procurement and business users to access multiple communities and networks including supplier-led models, GPOs, BPOs, MSPs and related intermediaries. Ironically, Ariba is the poster child for “closed models” in this […]
Empty Apps Are Out – How To Target Indirect Spend More Effectively
Empty apps are so 2012. When it comes to enabling indirect spend today, if you plan to leverage empty-apps without pre-populating additional content and even third-party contracts in certain cases, you might as well outsource indirect spend entirely without even doing a cost/benefit analysis. What we term “pre”-enablement is key to get away from the […]
Applying Contextualized Concepts to Indirect Spend
We must build greater empathy into the indirect procurement solutions that we deploy to frontline users. Part of this effort requires thinking of guided buying as a key enabler. This includes the concepts of “multi-channel,” contextualized and intuitive shopping and buying models. If we get contextual approaches right, we can steer users to the right […]
Procurement Doesn’t Manage Indirect Spend – Suppliers and Stakeholders Do
One of the toughest challenges for procurement organizations tasked with managing indirect spend is that they don’t do it – their suppliers and stakeholders do. Consider the sometimes limited visibility procurement has into demand, pricing, contracts and related areas for indirect spend, especially those that are managed and/or negotiated at a decentralized level in the […]
Ariba Breaks Up With "The Cloud," Romances "Enterprise Networks"
It seems that for every few “persons of interest” Kim Kardashian is seen with, Ariba comes up with a new corporate umbrella from which to dangle its overall company and product positioning. Fortunately, we all know the results that goo…
Spend Analysis: The Definitive Book on Next Level Performance
Even though Michael Lamoureux (Sourcing Innovation) and I love to quibble (and as some folks know, escalate our rhetoric from time to time) I have to lavish unrestricted praise on a new book he just co-authored:
Spend Visibility: An I…
Rant: Custom Software Development – Is There a Point?
I had a demonstration earlier this year with an organization (that will go unnamed) that decided to build its own internal Spend Management applications, starting first with an application to span the traditional purchase to pay (…
Friday Rant: How Will the Spend Management Technology Landscape Look in 2013 (Part 2)
In the first rant in this series, I proffered an opinion about how the Spend Management P2P technology landscape might look in 2013. Today I’ll turn my attention to the e-sourcing and related category management, advanced sourcing…
2011 Prediction: Embedded Analytics Become Mainstream in Certain Procurement Application Areas
I’ve been slow to make a set of predictions for 2011, but I’ll continue to trickle them out in the coming weeks. One prediction I’ve been thinking quite a bit about — which is already becoming reality in contingent procurement vi…
With Ketera, Will Rearden Prove a Viable P2P Competitor to Ariba, Basware, Coupa, SAP, Oracle, etc.?
See our initial coverage of Rearden’s acquisition of Ketera here. One thing has been for sure in terms of Ketera in recent years, and that’s the fact that few dispute whether the vendor has gotten enough at bats relative to compet…
