Category Archives: Reviews
Basware Analytics – new product joins the portfolio
Basware have today announced a significant addition to their product range, with the launch of Basware Analytics, a spend analysis product that integrates with their existing suite. The business, which is head-quartered in Helsinki, is the largest P2P and e-invoicing firm in the world outside the mega-ERP providers, with revenue of around 130 million Euros. They’ve moved further into the purchase to pay space over the years, having started really in the invoicing area, and this latest addition takes them more firmly into positioning as a genuinely broad e-Procurement solutions provider. I had a quick look at the new product [...]
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Zycus focus on suppliers – a broad solution and a growing global prescence
Zycus have been an Associate Sponsor of ours for a while, (thanks!), but I’m ashamed to admit I only got round to looking properly at their solution, or some of it at least, quite recently. The firm started out and built their reputation on the back of one of the strongest spend classification and analytics platforms in the market, but they have expanded with some speed over the last few years into a range of other areas. With more than 600 employees, and strength in APAC, Europe and North America, they are also one of the most genuinely international solution [...]
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NHS Supply Chain – committed spend drives better value
We talked about the general progress and issues around the NHS Supply Chain operation, run by DHL, in part 1 here. Today we’ll dig into a couple of more specific initiatives. One successful idea has been the “capital trading fund”. This idea, developed by the Department of Health and DHL, saw DH providing initial funding so that DHL could go to the market with commitment and actually buy outright health capital equipment – items that they knew their customers were going to need, but for which they didn’t necessarily have firm orders. The results demonstrated what we probably would have [...]
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NHS Supply Chain – saving money for the health service with really, really big warehouses
I recently paid a visit to a really, really huge warehouse. Now let’s be honest, there are only so many things you can say when faced with this situation. “Wow, that’s a really huge warehouse” is probably the most obvious. “Isn’t it tidy and well organised”? That doesn’t apply in all cases, but certainly did in this case. “What a lot of tea-bags and washing up liquid” – now, that was one I didn’t quite expect. Because the NHS Supply Chain warehouse at Rugby operated by global logistics firm DHL is huge, certainly appears to be efficiently run, and does [...]
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ProProcure – bringing a cease-fire to the marketing / procurement wars?
It’s not often these days that I meet a solution provider in our world who does not fall neatly into an existing business segment or market. XYZ Corporation? That would be sourcing software with a focus on auctions perhaps. ABC plc? Consulting and outsourcing firm offering strong category management capabilities in the Indirect are. And so on. But recently I came across ProProcure, and met Frank Treanor, their CEO, and Sally Fraser, Marketing Head, for a chat. Formed by Treanor back in 2000, and based in that centre of global software innovation, leafy Gerrards Cross in Buckinghamshire, England, it seems [...]
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ProcureCon Indirect – a successful event, a confused procurement profession
As it clashed with my Real World Sourcing session, I could only make day 2 of the ProcureCon Indirect event last week. I’ll give you some general impressions today, then come back with a couple of more detailed articles later based on the presentations I saw. The Millennium Mayfair in London was a good venue, with a pleasant ambience, and a good conference room. Organisation and administration were good (during my visit anyway) as you’d expect form an organisation of ProcureCon’s experience. They had “200 registrations” but on the Thursday morning, there were about 100 people in the conference room. [...]
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Enrich aim to make Oracle a more attractive procurement proposition
You may remember the news in February that e-Three, the UK based procurement consulting and services firm, were merging with enrich IT, a larger US based systems integration and IT services outfit, to form Enrich. The common theme was (and is) both organisations’ focus on Oracle in terms of their expertise and customer base. I got the chance the other day to meet Dave Evans and Jenny Saward of Enrich for a chat about the merger. Saward was one of e-Three’s founders, and is now the new firm’s UK MD, whilst Evans is the UK Sales Director. On the morning [...]
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Supply Business – a review of the new CIPS / Redactive magazine
We wrote the obituary for the CIPS supported CPO Agenda magazine a few months back here. It has been replaced by Supply Business, and the first issue of that new quarterly journal came out a little while ago. It’s published, like Supply Management magazine, by Redactive, in conjunction with CIPS (the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply). The difference from CPO Agenda is in the positioning. CPO Agenda was aimed squarely at the senior procurement audience, and started out with aspirations to be the Harvard Business Review of the procurement world, with serious thought leadership type articles. But for reasons [...]
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Coupa Sourcing – enabling end users to professionalise their procurement?
We featured in brief the Coupa Inspire event last week and the various posts from Jason Busch based on his time at the event. One of the announcements there was the new “Coupa Sourcing” product, an addition to their software’s capability and range. The announcement wasn’t a big surprise. To recap, Coupa started with spend management software focused on ordering (requisition and order management, catalogues) and expense management, then broadened out into invoicing and spend analysis in more recent times. Sourcing always looked like the next piece of the jigsaw. It does raise some interesting market issues, as it take [...]
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New research paper – Indirect Category Sourcing Savings : Fact or Fiction?
We’ve got a new research paper available for download this week. It is titled: Indirect Category Sourcing Savings : Fact or Fiction? Delivering Credible Benefits from Sourcing and Category Management Programmes I’ve co-authored it with Ed Cross, (pictured here), Executive Director of Xchanging Procurement Services, also a serious triathlete and heavy metal music fan. (I’d love to say we developed the material during our regular 20-mile training runs… but I’d be lying). We start by looking at what makes sourcing and category management programmes successful. As well as technical skills, procurement has come to understand that people skills are also [...]
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Coupa Inspire event – despatches from Jason Busch
My US colleague Jason Busch has been at the Coupa event in California this week, where he was giving a keynote speech (more on that to follow) and picking up on the latest announcements from the firm. Purely in terms of growth rates, Coupa has been the software firm to watch in our market for the last couple of years, and from Jason’s regular blogs from the event, you certainly get the idea that the pace is continuing. We’ll have more detail over the next couple of weeks, but for today, let’s just highlight some of Jason’s posts if you [...]
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Proactis in India? Interesting developments behind steady financial results
Proactis, the Yorkshire-based procurement software firm, and one of the few UK publicly quoted software firms in our market, announced their results for the six months ended 31 January 2013 recently. The highlights included: · Reported revenue increased by 7% to £3.9m compared to the equivalent period in 2011/12. · But the underlying operating profit of £143,000 was down on the equivalent of £196,000 the previous year. · The firm says they have a “strong balance sheet with cash balances of £2.0m” but there was a net cash outflow in the period due to dividends and investment (see below). · [...]
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Spend Matters in Dubai – growth and a buzz around Tejari
As regular readers know, I was in Dubai last week presenting our first “Real World Sourcing” event outside the UK with BravoSolution. We’ll have several articles on the visit, and in this one, we’ll take a look at Tejari, the BravoSolution joint venture with Istithmar World (a leading UAE investment firm) in the region. Then we’ll discuss some wider procurement aspects and issues in the region, followed by a collection of random thoughts about Dubai based on my extensive (two-day!) visit there. Tejari was until a couple of years back an existing Dubai based firm offering a range of procurement [...]
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Taulia – million dollar guarantee from dynamic discounting
We’ve talked about dynamic discounting a number of times here in the context of an extension of e-invoicing benefits into something that can be very tangible. The basic proposition is that buyers can receive discounts on invoiced amounts in return for paying early. Bbut rather than it being a fixed “2% discount for 14 days payment” which isn’t exactly new (I remember that from my first role buying dairy products), it is “dynamic” in the sense of different discounts can be applied by the buyer, or even bid for by suppliers, at different times and for different suppliers. Anyway, Taulia, [...]
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App for SAP?
(Here is another in our series from Hadewij Van De Kamp, who writes for our new site Spend Matters Netherlands. She’s reviewing Apps, deisgned for your smartphone or tablet, with a procurement or supply chain angle…) How annoying is it when your business inbox has become infected with umpteen purchase orders and other authorizations, that lie there because you just do not have the opportunity to approve them? SAP has developed an app that can help you with this. With the SAP Cart Approval you have access to a mobile app for your iPhone, which enables you to manage the [...]
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Future Purchasing – Category Management Survey
Future Purchasing have started to publish results from their 2012 published their Category Management Surevy. FP (as they’re known to their friends) are a relatively small but high-octane procurement consulting firm who not only do lots of good work, but put an impressive amount of their considerable intellectual property into the public domain via their excellent website. And their Chairman, Jon Hughes, did his thing in front of the Public Administration Select Committee recently as well. Their review is based on a survey of over 200 respondents, with average sales revenue of €2.6billion, average procurement spend of €650 and 70 [...]
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- Dark Procurement – ethics and moral dilemmas : Gordon Murray said: Excuse the poor English in the previous reply, that should have been: Can you just confirm... more
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Spend Matters Compass research is based on a year-long editorial calendar, exploring bigger picture areas and issues
Next Level Sourcing and Commodity Management
New Paper P2P and Working Capital
Services Procurement Innovation
ERP Procurement and Spend Management Applications
Spend Matters Perspectives research is focused on targeted topics that impact specific areas in procurement
