Author Archives: Mark Usher - Treya Partners
The next of my guaranteed approaches for driving the 4:55 to Deliverable City off the tracks at Milestone Curve is “Just Focus on What You Can Control, You Can’t be Blamed for the Actions of Others”. Strategy #8 typically unfolds something like this – During the development of your strategic sourcing consulting proposal you include a section, usually somewhere near the back, called “Project Assumptions and Risks” (or something similar) where you lay out all the things that could possibly … More
Would a private equity firm ever think about investing in a company without conducting a comprehensive analysis of its ability to generate an attractive future return? Of course not! A friend of mine in private equity once told me that for every one hundred million dollars a PE firm invests it has spent a million dollars in internal salaries and due diligence consulting fees analyzing the deal prior to pulling the trigger. In a somewhat similar vein, would you ever … More
KEY SUCCESS FACTORS FOR STRATEGIC SOURCING A successful strategic sourcing program generates measurable and sustainable cost savings that drop directly to the bottom line of the enterprise. Such a program must address six key success factors: Spend visibility to capture all addressable spend and identify all potential sources of cost savings (supplier reduction, internal consolidation, standardization, maverick spend reduction, incumbent renegotiation, etc.). Achieving this success factor requires a combination of (i) best-in-breed spend analytics software to cleanse, classify and enable … More
The most generally accepted value proposition for e-RFx solutions (whether reverse auction, optimization, or online RFP) is their ability to rapidly and effectively drive lowest total cost sourcing decisions through whizz-bangs such as “competition-inducing online bidding environments”, “optimization tools facilitating real-time multi-attribute evaluation”, or one of my personal favorites “a geography-negating virtual collaboration medium where buyers and suppliers can participatively create value-maximizing supply solutions”. Phew, I’d buy it. The above is all true of course; e-RFx solutions really do help … More
One of the most common misconceptions since “eggs are bad for you” or “England can win the next World Cup” is that, when it comes to selecting an automated purchasing system, an organization must choose between ERP and e-Procurement. A large number of Fortune 500 companies that have implemented best-of-breed e-Procurement systems over the last 5-7 years have shelved or are considering shelving their software due to problems pushing enough spend through the system. On the flip side, a considerable … More
The next of my guaranteed approaches for driving the 4:55 to Deliverable City off the tracks at Milestone Curve is “Just Focus on What You Can Control, You Can’t be Blamed for the Actions of Others”. Strategy #8 typically unfolds something like this – During the development of your strategic sourcing consulting proposal you include a section, usually somewhere near the back, called “Project Assumptions and Risks” (or something similar) where you lay out all the things that could possibly … More
(Note: the names, client details and even spend categories in this post have been changed to protect the “not so innocent”!) Following on the heels of my last posting “Can a Spend Analysis Have an ROI?” I feel obligated to provide a living breathing example of a situation where someone – in this case a consulting firm – decided NOT to do a spend analysis but plow ahead with sourcing. Okay, it wasn’t just any consulting firm – it was … More
Would a private equity firm ever think about investing in a company without conducting a comprehensive analysis of its ability to generate an attractive future return? Of course not! A friend of mine in private equity once told me that for every one hundred million dollars a PE firm invests it has spent a million dollars in internal salaries and due diligence consulting fees analyzing the deal prior to pulling the trigger. In a somewhat similar vein, would you ever … More
