IASTA 10 Ways to Drive Procurement Influence Using Advanced Technology

10 Ways to Drive Procurement Influence
Using Advanced Technology

May 2, 2012

Copyright © Iasta, All Rights Reserved

Speakers


Audience Profile

Has your company been involved in or have plans
for a M&A within the next 12 months?
#1 CHALLENGE

hindering your company from becoming best
in class in procurement…

LACK OF
RESOURCES


10 Ways To Drive Procurement
Influence Using Advanced Technology

IASTA hosted Webinar

May 2, 2012
Presented by: Jason Busch

Copyright © 2012 Azul Partners Inc. All rights reserved. Not for distribution. | www.spendmatters.com - spendmatters.co.uk - www.agmetalminer.com 4

A quick background on the Spend Matters family...

The team Former:

Strategy and sourcing consultants
Metals traders
Heads of procurement
The sites

www.spendmatters.com www.agmetalminer.com
First blog in sector, now much more 4 years old, largest metals publication in
North America

www.spendmatters.co.uk www.hcmatters.com
Launched in 2010 Launched in 2011

Our supply markets still won’t rest!

• Total cost/labor cost on the rise
– Country-specific labor
– Trade/export policy
– Shipping (fuel surcharges,
bunker charges)
• Currency volatility
• Production capacity constraints
• Lean extremes
• Raw material availability (e.g.,
rare earth metals)
• New regulations
• Black Swan events


Think big for a moment... stepping
into today’s global procurement
and finance shoes
Globalization challenges
 Trade imbalances, total cost hiccups (and
missteps) and policy uncertainties
 Different definitions of acceptable
behaviors
Currency & commodity volatility
 Currency madness (Dollar, Euro, RMB,
Pound, etc.)
 Coming soon or already here: currency
inflation (or deflation)/commodity inflation

Economic uncertainty
 Quantitative Easing (continued)
 Weak demand
 Liquidity concerns, supplier access to capital


What were the top procurement and supply chain priorities we
observed last year (including finance)?

• Incremental cost reduction (including cost
reduction based on total cost analysis)
• Capacity challenges (in certain markets)
• Managing the workforce:
– Contingent/services procurement
– Getting more from the procurement
group
• Compliance and risk: supplier performance
and visibility, operational/financial stability, etc.
• Balancing demand/supply volatility (e.g.,
part/component shortages for the holiday
season)
• Evaluating alternative models vs. business as
usual – shared services, BPO, contingent
staffing (for both procurement and A/P)

What will the top procurement and supply chain priorities be
for the rest of 2012 and into 2013?
• Continued focus on cost savings – either to
protect fortress balance sheets companies
have amassed or just to survive
• Anticipating/forecasting (cash, revenue,
demand, etc.) and mapping to procurement
and working capital strategies in a
questionable recovery or possible recession
• Continuing to find new ways to become more
efficient on the periphery (e.g., A/P, indirect
spend) to focus on core operations
• Commodity, cost volatility and reducing
exposure/risk
• Optimizing for total supply chain/supply
management costs for procurement and
payables (inventory, working capital, unit
cost, logistics, tax implications, etc.)
• Risk management, albeit from an expanded
perspective/definition

10 Spend Matters ideas that go beyond basic sourcing
to enhance procurement’s value to the business

• Given the current market context, it’s critical to
think beyond the basics to deliver value to the
business
• Improving procurement’s value to the business
requires embracing new sourcing-related tools
(contract management, supplier management,
etc.) wrapped around basic strategic sourcing
activity and services spend knowledge to drive
additional savings
• There are ten ways (outside of transaction-
related focus areas) that we see to deliver this
new value


1: Go beyond basic eRFX and reverse auction
capabilities

Advanced sourcing/optimization
•Fluid RFI/RFP process
•More flexible data collection
•Supplier creativity/alternative
specifications/alternative proposals
•Ability to fully explore – not just weight –
all price and non-price factors in a tender
•Create and apply constraints
•Ability to run scenarios based on
constraints and present a menu of
outcomes for stakeholders to consider


2: Connect sourcing activity to contracts – implement
savings faster and manage compliance
Sourcing and Contract Management
•Link sourcing outputs to implemented savings
•Move from a static view of contracts as “papers in
a vault” to dynamic usage and reference
•Use contract management as an opportunity to
create greater trust and transparency with suppliers
and shareholders
•Looking at contract management as an opportunity
to locate additional savings and cost avoidance
opportunities
•Ability to integrate with – and fully leverage –
sourcing, spend analysis and related information to
create an integrated contract lifecycle solution
•A user experience built around procurement and
legal together to drive the contracting – and
contract management – process

3: Go beyond the contracting basics

Advanced contracting philosophies
•Pursue an active compliance approach that
leverages internal systems and marketplace Contract
information (e.g., commodity pricing trends,
currency rates)
•Make your contract management system a
repository for the entire organization to rely on
(procurement, legal, etc.)
•Rethink the notion of a contract
– Make the contract a living document designed to manage
and govern the relationship versus serving as a static piece
of paper to refer back to for re-sourcing or legal purposes
– Influence up front – introduce contract terms (e.g.,
indemnification) into the negotiation phase of a relationship;
this can result in material savings and can foster a basis of
mutual understanding and trust
– Think long-term – the ownership and transference of risk is
often as important as the exchange of physical goods


4: Invest in capabilities to support basic supplier
management activities
Supplier Management Activities
•Supplier on-boarding (i.e., the need to efficiently
electronically enable suppliers for eProcurement and
invoicing)
•Supplier portals (i.e., basic portal capability designed to
capture supplier information for a range of initiatives:
eProcurement, supplier diversity, green/CSR, e-sourcing)
•Supplier performance and quality management (i.e.,
tracking qualitative and quantitative supplier performance
metrics such as on-time performance, escapes, PPM;
surveys such as ISO, QS, TS to qualify suppliers and
ensure claimed credentials were real)
•Supply risk management (i.e., monitoring supply risk
factors including financial data, operational data,
compliance information)
•Spend visibility/supplier enrichment at the item level (i.e.,
creating a common – or virtual – vendor master with
detailed and accurate information into spending data to
drive sourcing strategies)


5: Leverage supplier management initiatives to drive
advanced cost and risk reduction
Advanced Activities Risk Exposure vs. Cost per Supplier
$ Carbon Footprint
Cost
(High)

•Go multi-tier Factory Audit

Cost per Supplier
•Embrace approaches that leverage the
intersection of different datasets to drive visibility Catalog Supplier
Toxic Substances

and predictive analytics (supplier performance
Enablement

Supplier Diversity

information, supplier financial risk, geospatial, On-boarding
New Supplier
Ape-Invoice
Enablement

country risk, etc.) $
Cost
Insurance Certificates

(Low) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

•Invest in supply chain traceability to support the Risk Exposure

business in new ways Source: Aravo

– Market entrance/new product introduction
– Avoidance of “conflict” items such as conflict
minerals
– Certification that products do not contain
restricted or hazardous substances
•Consider network, BPO and other approaches


6: Hunt for big category game (even if anti-poaching
types are defending their territory)
Next Level Categories
•Combine sourcing, contract management,
compliance and transactional management
•High visibility (and high-value) services
categories
– Marketing
– Legal
– Accounting
– Consulting
– BPO and outsourcing

•Pursue direct materials spend in new ways
– Alternative specifications
– Demand aggregation
– Commodity management/hedging
– Supplier-generated innovation


7: Embrace specialists and specialty tools for
advanced services categories
Supplier Management Activities
•Consider specialty advisors (just as you would
when buying BPO)
– Focus on knowledge transfer and building
internal self-sufficiency
– Identify internal/external candidates to lead
efforts for larger opportunities
•Understand the importance of generating trust
within the business and winning executive
support
•Use advanced (standard) toolsets when
possible for sourcing activities, but leverage
additional solutions as needed in specific
categories (marketing spend intelligence,
matters management/legal, etc.)
•Leverage a VMS for SOW/project-based
engagements when required

POLL QUESTION

From a solution standpoint, what's your top investment area
outside of strategic sourcing and procurement cost reduction
(excluding transactional procurement)?

O Services procurement
O Contract management
O Supplier management
O Savings implementation
O Other


POLL RESULTS


8: Partner with suppliers in creative ways including targeting
total cost
Focus on the total relationship cost
•Understand the TCO of doing business with
global suppliers
– Balance of global sourcing and regional sourcing
– Re-shoring
•Embed cost models at all stages of the sourcing
lifecycle
•Put on your operational efficiency hat
Source: Chainlink
– Joint cost take out programs
– Put waste in the crosshairs
– Just-in-time (JIT), vendor management
inventory (VMI) and related programs for
direct spend
•Understand “sweet spot” for preferred services
suppliers and pooling the right set of business for
them

9: Track implemented savings, cost avoidance and
results from a finance-driven perspective
Savings Implementation
•Savings tracking and forecasting systems help companies
drive savings opportunity identification in a way that goes
beyond spend analysis
•They can accelerate the execution of savings implementation
initiatives and objectives and reduce savings leakage by
pinpointing and documenting specific areas where lost savings
occurred
•For tracking information, users can get extremely granular with
the inputs they want to report against on a high level including
market indexes, rebate structures, baselines, currency rates,
cost structures, dimensionality, target costing/pricing, budgets
and forecasts
•On the actual reporting side, procurement leaders can define
specific savings tracking mechanisms and fields (e.g., price
savings, market/commodity/index fluctuation savings, currency
fluctuation savings, substitution savings, batch size savings,
spend reduction savings, external savings, realized savings)
they wish to measure against

10: Deploy commodity management programs
alongside sourcing activities
Get Serious About Direct Spend
•Develop a point of view and explain to management and
shareholders the underlying reasons driving commodity
volatility and forecasting uncertainty
•Reduce commodity exposure
•Understand how to best price the underlying risk elements of
contracts
•Explore how suppliers price (and potentially misprice) risk
•Lower overall costs (potentially) despite upward pressure on
raw material inputs
•Build more collaborative relationships with suppliers that help
make us a customer of choice
•Aggregate the buy (to enable hedging, to buy forward in rising
markets, to create more effective
budgeting/planning/forecasting, etc.)
•Statistical modeling for demand planning and forecasting, plus
more to correlate factors on the supply side. Gathering
intelligence and building tools around it (looking for
correlations)

Contact details

Jason Busch
Managing Director, Azul Partners, Inc.
Founder and Executive Editor, www.spendmatters.com
Email: jbusch@azulpartners.com
Phone: 773-525-7406


Smarter Procurement to Drive Corporate Growth
A Partnership

Joanna Martinez,
Executive Managing Director & Chief Procurement Officer

© Joanna Martinez, May 2012, All Rights Reserved

Overview

• Cushman & Wakefield, a privately held company, is one of the world’s largest commercial real
estate services firms with brokerage, facilities management, consulting, capital markets, and
other services.

• The company was founded in 1917 and the firm’s largest shareholder is Exor, the investment arm
of the Agnelli Family.

• Cushman & Wakefield currently has 231 offices in 58 countries, and 13,000 talented
professionals.

• Cushman & Wakefield was named the exclusive leasing agent for 1 World Trade Center, the
Freedom Tower, by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The Freedom Tower, will
total 2.6 million square feet upon its completion in 2012.


Facilities Management Trends

• Facilities Management is evolving from localized building management
and office services to a centralized workplace solution
• Sourced through corporate procurement groups and/or consultants
• Focus on operational and performance management to deliver best in
class price points and service delivery levels.

Major changes in FM include:
– Investments in energy and utility management
– Expanding scope
– Focus on enterprise goals
• Sustainability and LEEDs mandates
• ISO compliance
• Diversity
– Risk Management


Many Standard FM Services and Resulting Skill Sets are Not
Necessarily Procurement Core Competencies

 Critical Systems  Compliance & Regulatory
 Energy Management Management
 EH&S Administration
 Emergency Preparedness
 Sustainability Program
 Work Order Management
 Financial Management &
 Predictive Maintenance Reporting
 Housekeeping  Office Support Services
 FM Staff Development  Knowledge of building codes
 Project management, and and regulations, and how
they differ across the globe
resulting partnerships with
GC’s, subecauseontractors

But our core competencies are
complementary, and by working together
we can do a faster, more effective job for
our clients and our suppliers


The Circle Charts: Partnering to Better Serve our Clients

Former Process

FM Professionals Purchasing
RFI, RFP Spot Buys for Corporate Spend
Supplier Selection
Negotiations
? Transactional Processing
Order Entry
Ongoing SRM Delivery Tracking

Current Process

FM Professionals Supplier Evaluation Corporate Sourcing
Business Requirements Sourcing Strategies Procurement Tools and Techniques
Detailed Specifications Negotiations Manage Strategic Sourcing Process
Scope of Work Total Cost Analysis & Measurements
Contracts
Final Decision Category Management
Supplier Mgmt


What Happens When a New FM Account Relationship Begins?

FM Action Related Procurement Competency

• Manage people transition • Contract Management Systems

• Organize contracts and
understand key expiration dates


Contracts Management Benefits

How a Contract Management System helps the Strategic Sourcing
process:
• Automated alerts and reports on contract expiration.
• Captures payment terms to support early payment discounts
• Provides visibility to supplier rationalization options
• Helps the accrual process by providing visibility to contractual
commitments
• Assists in assessing compliance to signatory policy
• System features help employees know where to go for purchases
• Improves planning:
- Workload management
- Business cycles (union contracts, energy peaks, etc.)

© Joanna Martinez, March 2012, All Rights Reserved
© Joanna Martinez, May 2012

A Contract Management tool can be a powerful asset
and a “To-Do” list for years to come

Number of Contracts Archived
10000

Information = Sourcing Projects
9000

8000

7000

6000

5000

4000

3000

2000

1000

0
Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct No7 Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct

• Note: The trend line indicates the number of contracts identified, including contracts in queue.




• Manage people transition • Contract Management Systems
• Organize contracts and
understand key expiration dates • Global processes and linkages
• Assess for cost reduction
opportunities


Procurement Understands Global Relationships …
and understands that not all spends should be global

Global
Client Preference Global
Maintenance Help Desk

Elevator Maintenance

Suppliers
ability to
deliver Local Regional

Security
Lease
s

MRO

Local
Specific Generic
Business Needs



• Manage people transition
• Organize contracts and • Contract Management Systems
understand key expiration dates
• Assess for cost reduction • Global processes and linkages
opportunities
• Support facilities on behalf of • Different sourcing approaches
the client
• Automate/ apply sourcing tools
• Manage projects on behalf of
to the general contractor
the client relationship


Corporate Procurement Supports Facility Management

 Supported the facility management sourcing team consolidation for the integration of two large
banks.

 Team charter, spend analytics, supplier leverage opportunities

 Utility company used eProcurement tools to speed up NDA process for 30 potential vendors

 Large bank reduced cost audio conferencing via benchmarking

 Created a client specific Contract Management System template as part of new client on-
boarding.

 Allowed facility teams to quickly identify sourcing opportunities

 Enabled advanced negotiation tools to allow immediate pricing feedback to suppliers.

 Immediate Pricing Feedback Tool – eProcurement tools for General Contractors to obtain “Best
and Final” Pricing

 Dynamic Bidding – spreadsheet bidding over several day to allow subecauseontractor input/
participation


Savings Beyond Standard General Contractor Methods

Budget Actual Savings % Savings
Electrical $270,000 $229,588 $ 40,412 15%
Doors Frames Hardware $170,000 $132,000 $ 38,000 22%
Glass Glazing $100,000 $89,500 $ 10,500 11%
HVAC $146,000 $157,900 $ (11,900) -8%
Drywall Accoustical $205,000 $140,500 $ 64,500 31%
Paint Wallcover $60,000 $49,000 $ 11,000 18%
Flooring $140,000 $138,500 $ 1,500 1%
Millwork $140,000 $116,000 $ 24,000 17%
Mechanical $1,400,000 $1,224,765 $ 175,235 13%
Electrical $1,300,000 $1,175,000 $ 125,000 10%
Drywall $700,000 $574,615 $ 125,385 18%
Computer Flooring $146,000 $138,730 $ 7,270 5%
Paint $98,000 $73,900 $ 24,100 25%
Millwork $85,000 $76,000 $ 9,000 11%
Cabling $592,000 $522,382 $ 69,618 12%
Furniture - new $1,847,850 $1,129,616 $ 718,234 39%
Car Parks - 300 $600,000 $443,000 $ 157,000 26%
Carpeting $277,500 $198,860 $ 78,640 28%
Carpet II $580,000 $385,000 $ 195,000 34%
Movers $120,000 $55,453 $ 64,547 54%
Dallas Office VOIP $165,000 $147,000 $ 18,000 11%
Glass Door & Glazing $124,000 $117,500 $ 6,500 5%
Ceiling $215,000 $143,000 $ 72,000 33%
Telecom Software and Hardware $335,000 $261,000 $ 74,000 22%

Total $9,816,350 $7,718,809 $2,097,541 21%


C&W’s Reverse Auction Tool
C&W’s Immediate Feedback Pricing Tool
C&W’s Online Pricing Tool
ELECTRIC
AL


C&W’s Online Pricing Tool: Back and Front Covers

Some other thoughts…


We found a place with no gatekeeper: The Process Itself!

OPPORTUNITY ANALYSIS
High Level Potential Cost Improvement

High Category Improvement Creative Solution
Opportunity Opportunity

20%+ 10%+

Historical
Procurement
Significant Benefit Strategic Sourcing Process
Expertise and
Opportunity Opportunity
Effort
40% + 30%+

The Process…
Low

Low Category Content and Technical High
Knowledge

…Skip the obstacles and go back later

Portfolio
Professional fees
Rent
Capital
Print and Fulfillment
MRO
Travel
Tech - Maintenance, Leases
Recruitment, Training, Outplacement
Office Equipment & Services
Telecom
Tech - Consulting
Meetings
T&E
Promotions and Servicing
Misc. Employee Benefits
Employee Fringes
Misc. Business Fees
Sourceable Spend

… because you can build a “tidal wave” of Justification.

Annualized Value of Cost Reductions (P&L and non-P&L)

$

Start Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Year 6


Q&A

 Please submit your questions…


Q&A: Of the 10 ideas that go beyond sourcing,
which do you think is most underused?
Jason: We think Supplier Management is becoming a very big deal, especially if you can
manage supplier relationships effectively and you have all the data to do so on a vendor & SKU
level (for direct materials, safety, environmental issues). More broadly, we think there is so
much potential in supplier risk management, supplier performance management and supplier
development opportunities. Over the past 6 months RFP’s have been increasing in supplier
management. It’s a smaller market, but advanced procurement organizations are determining
how they can get on top of this information. It’s not just compliance or driving effectiveness in
certain programs (like risk or diversity), there are also actual savings to justify the business
case.


Q&A: Based on the poll released in your
presentation, were you surprised that “Savings
Implementation” won the day?
Jason: Yes, companies try to rig spend analysis to monitor savings per spend over time and tying
that into implementation, but in many cases you see companies monitoring the implementation of
savings in basic workflow tools, assignment tools and even complicated excel models. There’s been
a real wake up call to the savings that procurement has generated on paper and a lot of it is not
incumbent savings, but has had a hard time of implementing. Being able to track effective
implementation is key. That goes back to contract management as well and the contracting process,
which are huge hurdles regarding why we don’t see greater introduction of more suppliers despite
rationalization programs; it’s painful implementing these suppliers. If you can streamline the
contracting & supplier management process then you have a much better shot of bringing new
qualified suppliers on board, which can go for all types of spend. I think one of the travesties of
supplier diversity is a lot of companies have punted to their tier one suppliers to manage supplier
diversity on their behalf and rolling-up those metrics because it’s hard to work with smaller suppliers
if you’re trying to rationalize the supply base, but it doesn’t have to be. If you can automate a lot of
these processes then you can get beyond having to add bodies to manage contracting
vendor onboarding and the alike.


Q&A: As it relates to savings implementation, as a
technology provider, what is Iasta doing in the
market today?
Scott: Iasta SmartAnalytics gets you places, as far as keeping track of suppliers, reporting on
supplier scorecarding information. I think our answer over the last few years has been a little
different than just technology. We are seeing Iasta’s Client Strategy Group, Iasta Acceleration
Center, human factors and our industry experience become a big deal in how we’ve helped our
clients regarding savings implementations over the last several years.


Q&A: You suggested to skip the obstacles and go
back later. How do you prioritize which source-
able spend categories to tackle first?
Joanna: Do some detective work and understand the pain points in the organization. Ask yourself,
“What’s working?” “What’s not working?” In one business I was in, travel spend wasn’t working. Although
it wasn’t a large spend category compared to the others, making an improvement there helped us get
some credibility and use it as a spring board for other projects. In other place- financial services, it was a
problem getting financial reports out on time, which is an issue because there’s a government/FCC
mandated schedule by which reports need to be mailed out to shareholders. Even though a lot of that is
moving to the web there are still certain things where physical copies have to be made. So that was a bit
of a supply chain problem we fixed. It’s that kind of thing… just asking in the organization and accepting
the fact that it might be small. I was at a CPO roundtable a couple of weeks ago and the question came
up relative to marketing spend and there were lots of people around the table who were effectively
running the marketing spend for their companies. There were 2 dozen people there and 1 person said he
went right to the senior person and started with the hardest, most difficult, complex project first. Every
other person in the room, including the really big name companies with successful sourcing
organizations, said the opposite. They said they started with the pain point areas, and even though many
were modest, they built from there.


Q&A: Dealing with how procurement can work
with finance, what key words can be used to build
credibility and speak the financial language to
ensure successful collaboration? How important is
that in terms of driving value?
Jason: 1) Empathy the exact role and what they’re after- you need to understand how / what
Finance is being measured on. Someone in AP is going to be incentivized differently than someone
in treasury. Figure out what their goal is in more effective supplier relationships, implementing
savings and working capital. You’ve got to think of yourself as that internal consultant/ psychologist
to understand what they’re after. 2) Skill set/ knowledge. Being able to read a balance sheet,
understand a PNL and how companies are measured more broadly, being able to articulate what
enterprise value is, etc. It’s critical. If you don’t have an MBA, it’s not an issue, you can learn these
things. But having a basic knowledge on the finance side and managerial accounting side is very
important as well. And that’s just finance. If you’re going to engage the general counsel/ CMO,
having the empathy in those areas is just as critical. I don’t want a generic consultant. I want
somebody who knows marketing. I want someone who knows legal to walk me through
that. If your spend is high enough, hire someone within or bring in someone as a
specialist on a full time basis. There is no substitution for that.


Q&A: You probably needed executive leverage.
Then again, it seems to reason that you use a lot
of collaboration. Can you speak a little on that?
Joanna: I think Jason was spot-on in his observation. There are a couple other points. 1) you
need to admit your expertise (or lack thereof) in certain areas instead of moving forward with
something you know nothing about. It’s important to be honest. One of the things that helped
me in facilities management is I said early-on “I don’t understand anything about ‘this’ but I do
understand ‘this,’ so how do we work together because I think I can help you in this way.” I
think if you’re a decision-maker or the leader of the team, I’d encourage you to think about
having your team members co-located with your internal clients. I think there’s no substitute
for being there. Particularly when you’re trying to get a relationship up and going, if you can
think about “In my case, I have folks who are sitting with facilities management people, who
are sitting with the marketing community or other key decision-makers, and I don’t have a
large staff.” But by understanding they’re better off being as close to their internal clients as
possible to really get embedded in the organization by giving up that personal ego thing of
having your staff clustered wherever you are. It’s an important step forward in terms of getting
folks engrained and through the natural course of your team, attending other people’s
staff meeting, coffee pot chit chat sort of thing, etc. It’s another thing to get invited
to the party and being involved in activities that are coming up.


Q&A: Continued…
 Scott: As a provider, over the last couple of years collaboration is a soft term that we’re
starting to see more often. A lot of democratization of data itself, marketing data inside of
the spend analysis tool (Smart Analytics), finance data lying right next to/ integrated with
the spend analysis data. Data systems that used to be in their own silos are now not just
being requested, but required to comingle with each other. User pools of the technology
are as collaborative as we want them to, which has been a huge movement for us as a
provider over the years. I think that speaks to the softer point of collaboration, we’re
actually starting to see now, all of that data come together into one system which as a
technical provider is something we hope to be helpful in.


Q&A: Clearly, what you’ve done has required
investment on the software side. You’ve
mentioned using category experts, or maybe even
a 3rd party. How did you go about justifying ROI?
Joanna: There’s less extent than you’d think. We didn’t go out to the big names in this space, the
very expensive/ established providers. In each case, we went with people. Without this being a
commercial for Iasta, the reality is we went with companies that have the right tools that were a
price point that was palpable to the organization. Some of the very big names that have been out
there with the big ERP systems where everything is tied together, is not what you really need in a
lot of cases. Usually, something a lot smaller is a lot more digestible to the company. Another thing,
in order to get category experts and things like that, you can do a lot of personal networking. I’ve
been in environments, financial services in the early 2000’s when there were lots of investigations
going on with financial services practices and money was very tight. Or real estate a couple of years
ago in the recession, where there wasn’t money to join large organization or go to expensive
conferences, you still figured out ways to do webinars like this to learn… to do other kinds of
networking things and lots of times you may know something about a category or someone
else knows about legal spend, so you trade the information.


The End

Thank you


Related Resources
WEBCAST
Building Blocks to Achieve Sourcing Credibility: Gain Fortune 500 Value with Mid-Market Resources
 http://www.iasta.com/resourcecenter_webcasts_buildingblockstoachievesourcingcredibility.phtm

ESOURCINGWIKI ARTICLE
Contract Management 101
 http://www.esourcingwiki.com/index.php/Contract_Management_and_Compliance

WHITEPAPER
Dynamic Procurement: The CPO as a Collaborator, Innovator and Strategist
 http://www.iasta.com/resourcecenter_aberdeenbenchmarkstudies_dynamicprocurement.phtm

WHITEPAPER
Spend Analysis: The Nexus of Spend Management
 http://www.iasta.com/resourcecenter_aberdeenbenchmarkstudies_nexusofspendmanagement.phtm

IASTA INSIGHTS NEWSLETTER
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