Monthly Top 5 - August 2023

Dear readers,

As the summer sunsets in the northern hemisphere, kids are heading back to school and the fall routine is slowly setting in. This is usually the time of year when:

• Procurement teams realize everything that’s still to be done to meet objectives before the end of the year

• Budget season begins for next year

Therefore, this month I’ve tried to pick articles that will help you:

• Craft approaches that increase chances of success with your digital Procurement initiatives

• Give you roadmap ideas for next year as you craft your budget

I’ve also given you a preview of the topic I will discuss in my long form article next month: Process Orchestration technology’s role in creating ‘Guided Procurement’.

As a reminder, if you like my content → Sharing is caring. Who is your ‘work best friend’? Send them my newsletter to slowly infuse the ideas you care about into your team (cue Inception ‘Bwong’!). The best part? You get points and free paid content as your refer new folks to the free newsletter.

Thanks again for reading. I look forward to your feedback on this month’s articles.

Best,

Joël

Top 5 Source-to-Pay Articles - August 2023

#1 - Intake Management is Not Enough…

The more I spend time working on user experience in the Procurement space, the more I realize that focusing only on Intake Management, the new trendy topic in Procurement software, is not enough…

Building on the concepts of Guided Buying, we need to be working towards providing a “Guided Procurement” experience for our internal stakeholders. Whatever a user may want to do relating to Procurement, wherever in the end-to-end value chain, we need to provide a workflow for that user that is:

• Easy to launch

• Fit for purpose

• Gives the user visibility of the entire process

In fact, this will be the topic of next month’s deep dive article. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, this article illustrates the challenge and potential solutions for bringing this concept to life beautifully.

The Power of Procurement Orchestration in Digital Transformationby Tonkean

#2 - A Good Overview of the Walmart Supply Chain

As we head into budgeting season and you scope out your improvement initiatives for next year, this piece by SCM Dojo can help!

By reviewing the supply chain policies and capabilities that drive Walmart, you can:

1. Learn some interesting facts about how one of the world’s largest retailers operates

2. Pick up ideas for your own operations/business

Walmart Supply Chain: Building a Successful Integrated Supply Chain for Sustainable Competitive Advantageby SCMDojo

#3 - Why Is Managing Scope 3 Emissions So Hard?

While this article doesn’t provide much in the way of a solution to the inherent complexity of managing Scope 3 emissions, it does a great job of laying out the challenges we are collectively faced in this task.

This is a great article to read if you are putting your emissions management program together and want to build out assumptions based on the lived experience of a peer in this space.

The Challenges of Scope 3 Data Collectionby Tony Fyler at Ivalua

#4 - The 4 ‘Must-Haves’ for your Procurement Dashboard

Historically, I haven’t shared much in the way of content produced by software vendors. It’s just way too salesy and often doesn’t provide much actual value up front. I’ve been pleasantly surprised this year with the content being produced from a couple vendors. SpendHQ is one of these.

For example, in this article they provide 4 relevant ‘must-have’ reporting ‘domains’ you should be considering as you build out your your spend reporting capabilities.

Building a Procurement Dashboard? Here are Four Must-Haves by Spend HQ

#5 - How Do We Manage Procurement Software Architecture Complexity?

The Procurement system space continues to explode with new solutions… At last count, there are over 400 solutions in the Source-to-Pay space on the global software market. To manage this complexity, we need to develop a perspective on our ‘desired end state’ before we start engaging the market.

This ensures you are looking for solutions that will provide you with the capabilities and data needed to meet your objectives. Otherwise, it’s very easy to implement different pieces of software, end up with a patchwork that doesn’t do what you need it to and be disappointed.

This article does a great job of reminding us the way forward. Vision + small steps.

Solving the Procurement Problem: Too Many Tools, Not Enough Databy Aashish Chandarana at Spend Matters