Monthly Top 5 - May 2020

Author

Joël Collin-Demers
May 20, 2020 • 📖 10 minutes

Hi there,

I hope you and yours have been keeping well as we continue to deal with our new collective reality.

I'm particularly excited for this month's edition of the newsletter. I've been doing this exercise for a few months now and this was by far the hardest month of curation to date. There was a particularly dense amount of great Procurement content floating around the web so it was hard to stick to a top 5. The good news is that all 5 articles I shared are outstanding.

You'll also notice that I spent my free time producing audio this month instead of writing a new article for the blog. I don't put out Podcasts often, but when I do it's because I see an interesting story that will generate value for you. This month I wanted to address the myth that you need a Source-to-Pay system to have good Procurement spend data. See? Now you're wondering how this can be! I hope you'll give the podcast a listen.

Please enjoy this edition of Pure Procurement Monthly.

As always, don't hesitate to get in touch to share interesting content you've come across, to give me your feedback or just to say hello.

Best,

Joël

New Pure Procurement Content

Interview with Susan Walsh, The Classification Guru

I recently sat down with Susan to discuss how organizations can better leverage existing spend data (whatever state it is currently in). We discussed a variety of subject, most notably, one of my favorite Source-to-Pay questions:

  • When should you turn to Data Classification instead of turning to a Source-to-Pay software implementation to get value from your data?

You can listen to the episode directly on the Pure Procurement podcast player or on iTunes, Stitcher or Google Play (links on the episode page).

Length: 45 min.

Last month's post, Rules for Your Procurement Digital Transformation, was recently featured on the Digital Procurement World blog. If you haven't read it yet, it's gotten really good feedback. What other rules would you add to the list?If you haven't heard about Digital Procurement World, check out their site. They host a killer conference in Amsterdam every year. It will be interesting to see how the format evolves this year given our current collective challenge.

Of late, I get lots of questions around the use of ERP vs. Source-to-Pay vs. other technologies to support procurement. There are so many options today that it's hard to know how to mix and match the right solutions to support Procurement processes in the most efficient way possible.James Meads invited me to his ProcureTech podcast and we went through the basics of how to make good Procurement software buying decisions. We also spent a bit of time discussing why I think you will hit an "innovation wall" if you rely solely on traditional ERP systems such as SAP and Oracle to support Procurement processes.Head over to James' podcast page if this is of interest.

Length: 30 min.

My Favorite Procurement Articles This Month

A fascinating look at the fishing industry's traceability requirements and the solution they've put in place to deal with the numerous challenges related to tracking the origin of fish. A must for anybody approaching the "origin traceability" problem.

This article could have made the list because of its tag line alone, the 5Ps: "Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance". The article makes the case that re-balancing your sourcing mix is essential to stay prepared for any eventualities in your business. I see it very much like personal investing!

We all know that technology can help us do things more efficiently whether in our professional or personal lives. However, this piece profiling Christopher Robert, Director of Procurement at Comcast NBC Universal, really nails the "why" we should be turning to technology - for better outcomes! You can feel and feed off of Chris' passion when reading this article.

While interesting, the real "find" from this article was being exposed to Unilever's Sustainable Living Plan (USLP). This is an impressive, comprehensive framework put together by the Unilever team to drive sustainability within the company and its supply chain. If you have any interest in sustainability, taking a look at the USLP as a reference is an absolute must!

This article went into the weeds on different concrete tactics and tools you can use to monitor, evaluate and improve the motivation of your supply base. The more you treat suppliers like members of your internal ecosystem, the better the results you can drive!

Source to Pay in the News

  • 2020-04-20 - Basware released its new AP Pro (AP automation) solution which boasts a new user interface and additional features around invoice processing and exception handling. Read the details HERE.

  • 2020-04-21 - SpendMatters released their 2020 “50 Providers to Know” and “50 Providers to Watch” lists. You can find the press release HERE.

  • 2020-04-24 - SAP Ariba is expanding its SAP Ariba Start Sourcing offer to include five users and 90 sourcing events for 90 days at no cost to buyers that sign up before July 31, 2020.

  • 2020-05-01 - SAP Ariba extended the Ariba Live thought May by producing additional content (Fireside chats & on-demand sessions). You can see the details HERE.

  • 2020-05-04 - Coupa has acquired the supplier diversity specialist ConnXus. Oddly, there isn't much detail on this news on either company's website. However, you can read the SpendMatters brief HERE.

  • 2020-05-06 - Tealbook concluded it's 8-week free Webinar on the "Supplier Data Crisis: The Importance of a Solid Data Foundation".You can see all the replays HERE.

  • 2020-05-14 - Jaggaer announced their first feature release of 2020 and there are some interesting predictive analytics and natural language processing use cases. Check out the details HERE.

Did I miss something interesting? Send me the link!

Upcoming Procurement Conferences

Other events to include in this list? Let me know.

Subscriber of the Month

Susan Walsh and I got to know each over the past couple months after I was exposed to her content on LinkedIn. I just couldn't get enough of her pragmatic and authentic approach to data cleansing and classification (plus she's hilarious). So much so, that I invited her for a chat on the Pure Procurement podcast to deepen my understanding of her approach.She's the founder at The Classification Guru, a data cleansing and classification consultancy based in the UK. She saw a need for more expertise in this space when she realized firms were always focusing on analytics but much less on the accuracy of the data, which, at the end of the day, has the biggest impact on the ROI of analytics.If you like valuable, pragmatic, tangible information on the value of data delivered in the most entertaining of ways, you can connect with Susan on LinkedIn or listen to the podcast we recorded together.

Reply

or to participate.