Simon Whatson, Vice President of Efficio Consulting, speaks to us about the changing digital procurement function.
We also discuss how leadership styles are changing as the pace of technology adoption accelerates.
The pace of evolution of the procuretech ecosystem continues to inspire the industry and we have seen digital procurement leaders rise in challenging times. So, what were the top procurement trends in 2022?
Last year’s ProcureTech100 cohort has outperformed their peers with over 40% growing exponentially, introducing new innovation, new partnerships and alliances. The 2022 ProcureTech100 cohort continue this drive with the most significant growth rate compared to their peers being in companies under 100 employees in size. Over 60% of the digital procurement ecosystem is made up of companies with under 50 employees with there being a clear step up required to building teams with over 50 employees. This correlates with the level and pace of funding within procuretech too and the step up to Series A.
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Agility, decision making, risk and collaboration drive the digitisation of procurement
65% of companies see digitalisation as being important to achieve their company and procurement objectives.
The key drivers for this digitalisation are process agility and decision making (79%), transparency, compliance and risk (78%), and supplier or partner collaboration (70%). Leaders see optimising cost and cash flow as well as improving compliance and risk as key drivers to digitalise, priorities that mirror the current 2022 global challenges.
Whilst we are living in post pandemic times and in the middle of supply chain shortages, digitalisation to help secure supply, is not seen as significant driver. Immediate issues have been addressed through the application of corporate and supplier talent. We would anticipate that this will change in the next 12-18 months through the introduction of new digital solutions to help solve these issues.
For large companies, with over 5,000 people, the digital drivers are focused on increased decision agility and risk compliance, whereas for smaller companies, less than 200 people, the drivers were stronger supplier or partner collaboration and improved transparency.
Driving revenue growth and optimising product/service demand were also evaluated as relatively low reasons to digitise. For future leaders addressing demand management will increase the importance of optimising product or services demand through greater access to data and application of digitalisation.
1 – New digital procurement categories and capabilities are emerging
As procurement’s scope continues to expand both across the company and through the supply chain, the great ‘unbundling’ of procurement continues too. This unbundling is characterised by the application of digital to either existing or new capabilities and skills. As a result we have seen the rapid emergence of point solutions to digitalise these areas from Candex for tail spend transactions to Scoutbee for supplier discovery. Their success is driven through the simplicity of the user experience which is enabled by advanced technology (which the user never sees). The application of point solutions extends to enablement through data too, for example Keelvar’s sourcing optimisation solution uses ocean and air freight benchmarking and market analytics from Xeneta, and Lytica is a standalone solution for electronic component spend analytics and risk intelligence enabled by real customer data.
The unbundling and digitalisation continues into existing and new categories too, with many new category specific solutions evolving. As companies digitalise their buying and supply channels it is possible to apply point solutions (if the volumetrics work) to most categories. Globality’s approach to services shifts the whole delivery model addressing both capacity and capability constraints. Niche solutions like Lightyear for Telecoms procurement and Zluri for SaaS procurement go deep within subcategories, often combining software with services to provide a point of differentiation and extending from the buying to management of solutions too.
“ We have spent the last decade creating toy boxes, now we have to create toolboxes that have the process, skills and culture integrated. My favourite tool box is for adoption.” Amanda Davies, Mars
2 – From interface to database
Traditionally, there is much focus by procurement on the ‘app layer’ that delivers the end to end capability. It is essential for procurement to be aligned with corporate digital and IT teams to design and deliver the whole procuretech stack. At the top of the stack the ‘interface’ and starting point of the user journey for buyers, suppliers, business users, chat bots and functional experts should be defined. Beyond a simple portal, Kore. ai can provide this conversational interface as a multichannel interface into procurement.
Often this also integrates your procurement process orchestration and intelligence layers which are either embedded or connected to your app layer. There are significant improvements in user experience through the deployment of tools like ZIP and UIPath which provide this orchestration and have established integration.
The ‘middleware’ layer that connects apps including your ERP system to data can be provided by solutions like HICX, apexanalytics and Oro. Into this advanced companies are augmenting their data layer and foundation with AI and ML from solutions like Creactives and TealBook
Get started defining your procuretech stack and fungible data fabric!
3 – Best of All ecosystem of solutions
Fact: There is no equivalent of ERP for all of procurement. There is no equivalent of PLM for procurement.
As procurement’s role has expanded so have our digital and data needs. Each and every procurement team has an accountability to define their own digital procurement operating platform. This platform should consider ALL solutions, from the capabilities provided by traditional ERP and finance solutions to the latest process workflow, apps and data solutions. From this your own ‘Best of All’ solutions ecosystem will emerge.
This trend is happening across procurement and also within individual capabilities with procurement too. Especially those areas with multiple user journeys and many data feeds. This is creating ‘micro’ platforms.
“There is no one-stop shop to cover risk management end-to-end, we will likely require an ecosystem within an ecosystem, including one for risk apps within the broader digital ecosystem. The market is moving away from one solution does it all to ecosystem suites with central management and focussed solutions for specialist areas such as: Supply Chain Visibility, Mapping or Traceability; Cyber; Finance Etc. This is reflected in the spread of different solutions here across the ProcureTech100. The ‘winners’ will likely be the ones who best integrate in this ecosystem, and also transparently with ESG, ERP and other ProcureTech areas.” Tim Perry-Ogden
4 – Digital supply and demand more in balance
Over the last 10 years the supply of digital procurement solutions has rapidly increased. If you had asked for a blockchain solution to help with the provenance of goods 10 years ago you would not have been able to find a solution – now you can. For most of the current and new use cases you can now find the digital procurement solutions that you need. Moreover, in many areas there are now multiple digital procurement solutions providing companies with choices for their digital procurement operating platform. Where digital solutions don’t quite meet what you need then many digital solutions are prepared to flex their product roadmap to align with those needs.
Fuelled by investment
The venture investment into procuretech continues to grow, there are over 1,000 venture capitalists with single investments and increasing numbers of B2B investors that have multiple investments into procuretech.
Procurement teams are also clear on the investment required, the ROI and how quickly this needs to be achieved.
“We must go on this investment journey … we may need to tighten our belt in other areas but digitalisation is not one of them.” Marielle Beyer, Roche
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As the global components shortage continues to challenge businesses, the value of a digitalised supply chain becomes increasingly clear. As the return to normal supply levels is still some way off and the situation is not expected to recover until 2023, the time to digitalise the supply chain and reap the multiple benefits is now. Whereas once supply chain digitalisation provided a competitive edge, it has since become an industry standard required to keep pace in an evolving industry with unpredictable challenges.
Make no mistake, digitalising a business’ supply chain is not an easy task and is by no means a quick fix. It takes extensive research and planning before any updates can be made and once the transformation is underway, businesses are constantly learning and improving their operations based on feedback and data collected.
However, the business benefits of a digitalised supply chain validate the time and effort required to undergo a digital transformation of supply chain management.
Improved accuracy and efficiency are two of the most impactful factors of supply chain digitalisation. With real-time tracking and the removal of human error through software-led processes, businesses gain complete transparency of operations at every stage of the supply chain.
Software-led processes and the introduction of automation can also result in reduced processing time, greater operational productivity and maximised ROI. If the old saying rings true and ‘time is money’, then improved efficiency with greater accuracy can only be a good thing for business.
Greater flexibility and agility in responding to change is another valuable benefit brought by a digitalised supply chain. As many businesses have already experienced, supply and demand fluctuations can be rapid and circumstances outside of a business’ control can also affect supply chain management.
Though there will always be some element of the unexpected, technology such as automated stock management and predictive analytics support in the identification and handling of upcoming challenges. Armed with both big data and data specifics at a more granular level, businesses can make better-informed decisions, manage a crisis more effectively and identify areas of improvement and opportunity, at all times.
Every digital transformation requires a strategy and there are multiple achievements to celebrate on the way to reaching the end goal of holistic supply chain digitalisation. Identifying the areas which need priority attention will help structure your strategy. Your digitalisation plan should be a series of incremental improvements, as opposed to a sudden and radical change.
Auditing your existing supply chain is a sensible starting point for discovering opportunities for improvement, establishing strengths and weaknesses, and honing in on risk factors and threats to your operations.
Using the knowledge and expertise of IT professionals within your business and operations management staff who are familiar with the everyday running of each stage of the supply chain is the best way to gain a clear insight into which aspects of the chain are strong and which are letting you down.
Your operation management team will also be the ones using your new digitalised supply chain so gaining their insight, expertise and buy-in from the start of the project is highly valuable for future success.
Software is at the heart of supply chain digitalisation and businesses are spoilt for choice when it comes to selecting digital logistics and supply-chain-management software (SCMS) that can oversee transactions, manage relationships with suppliers and streamline your processes.
There is a challenge however when it comes to deciding whether to build or buy your software solution.
Though ready-made software is the quicker and more simple option, out-of-the-box solutions may not meet the exact needs of your business and customised plugins or add-ons may be required to tailor your solution exactly as you require.
The alternative would be to build your own software in-house, which takes a huge chunk of existing resources, adding pressure to already busy teams.
Arguably outsourcing a custom-built solution from a reputable partner, who fully understands your pain points, risk factors and overall transformation strategy is the best way to gain a tailor-made software solution whilst keeping everyday operations running smoothly.
Real-time data should be gathered at numerous points in the supply chain and can be gathered through a range of methods. From IoT devices to Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and GPS, the data gathered by these technologies improves your supply chain connectivity at every step.
This data also facilitates increased visibility, improved security, cost analysis insights and accountability. From production to distribution to retail, IoT, RFID and GPS provide efficiency, transparency and data-driven insights to help businesses maximize ROI and continue to improve operations.
Automation and AI also support in the processing of payments, the rapid sharing of information, inventory updates, tracking information, omnichannel retail sales, email automation and setting new cost goals.
Although these technologies will never entirely replace the human touch, they can assist with repetitive, manual tasks and be the first point of contact for customers which can direct customers to the correct individual or department.
SCMS systems can integrate real-time data, automation and AI into supply chains on each level, streamlining processes to be more efficient, making more accurate predictions and protecting a business should something unforeseeable occur.
Ultimately, digitalising the supply chain, however, your business chooses to do so is the realisation of the Industry 4.0 vision which hinges on leveraging digital technology without siloed data, processes and systems.
The pillars of Industry 4.0 namely IoT, big data and data analytics are the main aspects to be updated in any supply chain digitalisation and taking a comprehensive approach to digitalising the supply chain means data is no longer siloed and useless but is integrated into every business decision, under any circumstance.
A supply chain digital twin is also a helpful tool which provides a detailed simulation of an actual supply chain using real-time data and snapshots to forecast supply chain dynamics. From this, businesses can understand their supply chain’s behaviour, predict abnormal situations, and work out an action plan. The most effective supply chain management sees digitalisation throughout and can also call upon the use of digital twins to simulate the supply chain and enable the whole ecosystem to enjoy the same level of visibility and forecasting to inform every stage of the supply chain.
Though investment in time and money, the benefits of digitalisation are evident not only in reacting to unexpected challenges but also in the day-to-day running of a business which wants to keep pace and remain competitive in the digital age.
Author: Rasheed Mohamad, Executive Vice President of Global Operations and Business Technology, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise
The list of drivers to better understand global supply chains grows every day. Motivations range from increasing operational efficiencies, the ability to better respond to supply chain shocks, managing potential reputational risks through the exposure of unexpected issues with suppliers, as well as preparing for the wave of in-coming supply chain legislation.
At Open Supply Hub, we begin our work from a clear starting point: if there’s no shared understanding of where global facilities are located, there’s certainly no understanding of the environmental or social conditions at those facilities. Historically, supply chain data has been hidden behind a lock and key which has benefited very few. In addition to this, at even as basic a level as name and address information for global production facilities, the quality of data has been surprisingly poor. What this means is that bad practices can lurk in the shadows undetected – practices which contribute to some of the fundamental issues of our time, such as deforestation, child and forced labour and the impacts of climate change.
To break it down, supply chains today have:
The key to addressing this is high-quality, open supply chain data. This term “open data” is a precise one, with a technical definition: according to the Open Knowledge Foundation, “Open data is data that can be freely used, shared and built on by anyone, anywhere, for any purpose”. There are two key elements to openness:
Through this seemingly simple mechanism of opening up supply chain data, many of the challenges described above are quickly addressed. Launching in late 2022, Open Supply Hub will be an accessible, collaborative, supply chain mapping platform, used and populated by stakeholders across sectors and supply chains.
It will provide:
We know this approach works from our experience of building the Open Apparel Registry (OAR). One compelling example of how the dataset has been used to highlight risks to investors came in the immediate aftermath of global production reopening after the pandemic lockdowns.
As India sought to re-open its economy and kickstart production, many labour laws were relaxed in the state of Uttar Pradesh, removing basic protections for workers relating to mandatory overtime, work breaks and more. Investors with holdings in major global fashion brands were able to run combination searches in the OAR to understand their exposure to risk in this area and adjust their investment strategies accordingly. Without access to this open data set, the ability to understand and divest from this investment risk would have been much more challenging during a time when global supply chains were in a constant state of flux.
As we look ahead to the raft of in-coming supply chain disclosure legislation, uncertainty remains high about what exact format these various reporting requirements will take. However, one thing that will not change is that data format and standardisation will be key to ensuring that the data being gathered and shared is of practical use to create change. If data is locked away in PDFs, tables embedded in websites or scattered between disparate databases, it becomes totally impractical to work with. The power of a centralised, open data repository lies in making data comparable, actionable and usable. That’s where creating change begins.
Author: Katie Shaw, Chief Programme Officer of Open Supply Hub
We list 5 essential procurement/supply chain management books that are reshaping the way we work today.
Trade Wars, Pandemics and Chaos
How digital procurement enables business success in a disordered world
Dr. Elouise Epstein
Foreword by Len DeCandia
In our conversation with procurement leaders, this book comes up time and time again. Dr. Epstein is a digital futurist and Kearney partner with over two decades of experience working as a trusted adviser with major clients to develop digital procurement and supply chain strategies.
An in-depth look at how to strategise, evaluate and approach the fast-changing realm of digital procurement, Epstein’s book identifies how, more than any other enterprise function, procurement has grown from back-office cost control to strategic business partner. Of course, today’s procurement practitioners are also at the forefront of innovation, sustainability, and social responsibility, and so making changes by directing where and how enterprises spend their money is proving increasingly vital.
This book is a hugely trusted partner in establishing a blueprint for approaching the complexities of modern procurement and how and where to make smart technology investments.
Sustainability, Innovation and Procurement
Edited by Sachin Kumar Mangla and Sunil Luthra
The world is in a constant state of unprecedented change with rising inflation and costs, geo-political and energy crises plus the effect of climate change upon our lives and businesses. Sustainable procurement is the hot topic right now. Indeed, the pursuit of sustainable objectives through the purchasing and supply process, while balancing environmental, social, and economic objectives is a common challenge facing procurement and supply chain leaders. But worry not, as this book will help readers develop new contemporary knowledge about frameworks, innovative tools and techniques to achieve sustainability in public as well as private procurement practices. The book will enable scholars and practitioners working in the domain of sustainable procurement to improve the overall performance of the supply chain and further achieve UN SDGs, by making various decisions at the planning and strategic phase of the business.
E-Logistics – Managing Digital Supply Chains For Competitive Advantage
Edited by Yingli Wang and Stephen Pettit
Unlocking value and streamlining processes is proving to be a driver for supply chain professionals with E-Logistics fast becoming a burgeoning function. Serving as the central nervous system for the whole supply chain enabling smooth information flow within, and between, organisations, E-Logistics offers myriad benefits and value. This new and updated edition provides the latest and most comprehensive coverage on digitalisation in logistics and supply chain and covers all transport modes, plus the role of ICT in supporting an integrated freight and supply chain network.
Buying technology is easy. Buying the right technology is much harder. While buying the wrong technology can be disastrous. With the rise of cloud services and the digitisation of all business units, procurement managers need to understand how to buy technology services in order to generate revenue, drive innovation and retain customers. The Technology Procurement Handbook provides a structured and logical view of the digital buying process, including invaluable advice on how to manage digital demand, prepare sourcing strategies, analyse the cost and benefits of proposed solutions and negotiate and implement comprehensive agreements.
The Technology Procurement Handbook examines the multiple streams of data that feed into the technology procurement process and includes case studies and extensive practical advice based on the authors experience from recent procurement projects.
Disruptive Procurement Winning in a Digital World
Edited by Michael F. Strohmer, Stephen Easton, Martin Eisenhut, Dr. Elouise Epstein, Robert Kromoser, Erik R. Peterson, Enrico Rizzon
There is no doubt that procurement has undergone a major revolution in recent years and one of the most fascinating off-shoots from this change has been Disruptive Procurement; a radical new approach to creating value and innovation by challenging the status quo in the entire product and service line. It requires going far beyond conventional desktop procurement to understand the value the company brings to its customers as well as the value that suppliers bring to the company. Disruptive Procurement Winning in a Digital World boasts a strong raft of contributors, with a wealth of experience across the procurement sphere.
To move toward Disruptive Procurement, companies need a holistic view and a complete new set of capabilities for staff in marketing, sales, R&D, manufacturing, innovation, and, of course, procurement. This will only happen if procurement is fully backed by the Chief Executive Officer and companies embrace digital tools that will help make procurement slimmer and smarter.
Author: Kevin Davies
We live in unprecedented times and such disruption and uncertainty mean myriad challenges facing organisations. And the weakest link in the supply chain can appear quickly and unexpectedly.
Over the last two years, supply chain professionals have been hit by an unprecedented raft of disruptions. As we fast forward into the future, this trend shows no sign of abating. The chaos caused by the lockdown of the world’s busiest port – Shanghai – shows that the impact of COVID on global supply chains is far from a thing of the past. The Suez Canal blockage in March 2021 and the ongoing crisis in semiconductor availability are two other examples of how macroeconomic events can impact supply chains. Now, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the sanctions it has triggered, have caused further major global trade disruptions. High global fuel prices and accessibility of other components are also affecting production and transport in many industries.
In Germany, Porsche, Volkswagen and BMW have all reduced output due to problems with the supply of wire harnesses from Ukraine, which are vital to the manufacture of cars. Russia is also an important source of many metals used in the aerospace industry and others in hi-tech and electronics.
Given all this disruption, it is little surprise that the concept of VUCA – which stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity – has rocketed up the agenda for businesses determined to ensure products arrive with customers in the right place at the right time.
This is no trivial matter. The interruption of Ukrainian agricultural processes, for example, threatens the supply of wheat to several countries, and the production lines of many consumer goods companies. In extreme cases with political consequences.
The myriad challenges facing organisations means that the weakest link in the supply chain can appear quickly and from unexpected areas. This gives organisations precious little time to pivot and build a blend of resilience and agility. It makes the need to shrink the time between planning and execution crucial as volatility continues, particularly in order to meet relentlessly high consumer expectations.
This is where supporting technologies come into play. As they look to strengthen their supply chains and make them more resilient, businesses should consider solutions using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve forecasting. AI can look at patterns across huge datasets that go far beyond human capability to write intelligent algorithms or analytics. Organisations are then able to proactively identify gaps or issues with more accurate demand forecasts, sales orders, material, capacity, shipments, and other elements of supply; with automatic alerts for any exceptions. This can then augment human expertise to help plan for the unexpected.
Organisations can go a stage further and better identify any weak or potentially weak links in supply by creating a digital twin of their end-to-end business flow. This is a virtual model that accurately represents the lifecycle of a physical supply chain using live and up-to-date data. Within a virtual environment where numerous scenarios and changes can be simulated without consequence, organisations are able to strengthen the physical supply chain’s agility and speed with tried and tested improvements.
The supply chain links at greatest risk of disruption are not the only ones that should be considered potentially weak and in need of attention.
Linear supply chain models need to give way to circularity, which allows for waste reduction and reusing and recycling of resources.
Putting sustainability at the centre of supply chain planning and decision making will add further resilience across all links, but also reduce reliance on hard-to-access and more scarcely available raw materials. It is a complex issue. However, ensuring sustainable practices would provide the resilience needed to help navigate all the challenges past, present and future.
Supply chains are today going through major transformational change, which has been driven by a range of external challenges and emerging trends. There’s little doubt that 2022 and the years beyond will bring further hurdles. Organisations need to take action now to be best prepared for the unexpected. Particularly when you consider the increasingly interconnected nature of 21st century supply chains.
As circumstances change around organisations, they need to ensure that their supply chains continue to provide the goods and services to the end consumers that rely on them. Applying supporting technologies can enable them to shine a light on any weak spots and move quickly to rectify these, keeping the flow of products moving. Organisations can then ensure that every link is as strong as the other, future-proofing supply chain operations.
For CEOs, the importance of supply chains to their business has never been clearer. They are a key engine to business, so it is critical that they remain well-funded and at the top of the business agenda.
Author: Claire Rychlewski, SVP, EMEA, Kinaxis
It’s an open secret: enterprises that want to effectively reduce their CO2 emissions need to first and foremost address their supply chain. Up to 90% of a company’s greenhouse gas emissions originate from here. A new software-driven approach to tackle these emissions is developed in cooperation of O2 Telefónica and the startup The Climate Choice – with first results and breakthrough learnings.
It’s an open secret: enterprises that want to effectively reduce their CO2 emissions need to first and foremost address their supply chain. Up to 90% of a company’s greenhouse gas emissions originate from here. A new software-driven approach to tackle these emissions is developed in cooperation of O2 Telefónica and the startup The Climate Choice – with first results and breakthrough learnings.
O2 Telefónica aims to be net CO2 neutral by 2025 at the latest. The company has already reduced the CO2 emitted directly, in Scope 1, and indirectly through electricity purchases, in Scope 2, by 97 % since 2015. Now, the aim is to discover climate-related risks and find potential solutions in collaboration with their suppliers. This leads to the biggest corporate challenge of today: a structured climate transformation process along the supply chain needs structured climate data management. However, obtaining climate-relevant data along the supply chain and successfully engaging suppliers in decarbonisation efforts is not easy. Many questions arise: what are the challenges and risks, best practices, and opportunities to collect, validate and report this data?
To find an answer to all these questions, O2 Telefónica and climate tech startup The Climate Choice have set out to launch a joint climate data program. For this purpose, the telecommunications provider uses The Climate Choice’s software platform, to facilitate the efficient and effortless collection of climate-focused data from around 1,000 suppliers. The top 40 suppliers are also invited to carry out a software-driven climate rating in order to uncover potential for decarbonisation and to identify tailor-made fields of action. The qualitative and quantitative data resulting from this serves as the basis for a Scope 3 decarbonisation strategy for O2 Telefónica. The collaboration preceded a pilot project in which the individual climate maturity of selected suppliers was recorded and validated.
Using The Climate Choice’s new solution approach and software tool, O2 Telefónica was able to develop a transparent, scalable process for collecting comparable data on the climate maturity of its suppliers.
This data fuels The Climate Choice’s intelligent data platform and allows to obtain supply chain specific benchmarks, year-to-year comparisons and actionable reporting through dashboards, which ensures ongoing control of engagement results, core KPIs and aggregated metrics. This way one can shed light on the status of its supply chain decarbonisation journey. Find in the following our exclusive insights on this process.
To fully understand the decarbonisation processes of companies such as O2 Telefónica in Scope 3, we must first take a look at the data that companies need in order to fully align suppliers with their climate strategy. Typically, if you think about climate KPIs and metrics for climate action, you might think of CO2 emissions. Of course, this is not wrong, since the carbon footprint is among the most important indicators for measuring a company’s climate impact. However, its exclusive use for supplier decarbonisation is problematic for three reasons:
That is why it is crucial to look at forward-looking metrics, so-called leading KPIs. These metrics draw a picture of the direction the company will move towards over the next few years. Thus, they reveal if a company’s climate transformation is already happening and if yes, to what degree. It is therefore important to look at whether climate targets of your suppliers are being seriously pursued and if they are compatible with your own goals. Furthermore, you must know what governance processes are in place within the company, whether the company is managing climate-related risks and opportunities, and what data is already disclosed supporting this.
Author: Lara Obst, Chief Climate Office, The Climate Choice
If we’ve learned anything from 2020, it is that we cannot predict the future. The COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted many supply chains, as businesses became dependent on procurement teams to help mitigate the impact by identifying and onboarding new suppliers in different regions.
However, a significant number of organisations have been hindered by a lack of procurement process digitalisation. New research found that 43% of UK businesses say that the rate of digitalisation within procurement is low, which is impacting agility and preventing businesses from minimising risk.
The importance of process digitalisation goes beyond navigating the immediate effects of COVID-19. Businesses that are reliant on manual processes are not only wasting an average of £1.94m per year in staffing costs, they are also preventing procurement teams from focusing on high value tasks. Savvy businesses have digitised procurement processes as a springboard to create a competitive advantage for themselves, as they can better identify new revenue opportunities, unlock innovation and improve profitability. Over the coming years, UK businesses need to move quickly to digitally transform procurement and ensure they are not left behind.
As things stand, organisations still have a long way to go, with many failing to digitalise procurement processes. Just over half (55%) of UK businesses have digitalised invoice processing, while less than half have digitalised purchasing (42%) and budget management (33%). Businesses are even further behind in digitalising strategic processes such as spend analysis (32%) and risk management (26%). Clearly, there is significant room for improvement for organisations looking to make informed decisions, identify opportunities to create revenue, or collaborate with suppliers.
Worryingly, most businesses have not digitalised supplier onboarding or sourcing processes. Identifying and bringing on new suppliers is critical for businesses searching for new opportunities to collaborate and innovate or react to a potential disruption, so digitalising the process should be a top priority. This is particularly true in times of crisis, as one of the biggest challenges UK businesses faced in reducing the impact of COVID-19 was identifying alternate suppliers.
This lack of procurement process digitalisation is creating frustration for UK businesses, and holding them back from adding value. Eight-in-ten (81%) UK businesses say a lack of digitalisation is preventing them from collaborating with suppliers and internal stakeholders, while a further 83% believe it is preventing them from innovating and executing on new revenue streams and opportunities. Without the ability to collaborate or execute on opportunities to drive new revenue streams, businesses stand little chance of getting ahead of the pack.
However, when it comes to digitalisation, UK businesses face a number of challenges. The most common obstacles to digital transformation for UK businesses were their suppliers, technology, and processes. Clearly, collaborating with suppliers is still tough. But, as supplier visibility continues to be vital to innovation and identifying revenue opportunities, it is not a problem that businesses can leave unsolved.
Most businesses understand and recognise that digitalising procurement will help them gain a competitive advantage. Furthermore, UK businesses recognise the importance of digitalisation beyond this, with one of the biggest benefits being reducing their environmental impact. Sustainability continues to become a key differentiator, allowing for greater efficiency and waste reduction, while turning being ‘green’ into a competitive advantage for eco-friendly businesses.
But to reap these benefits, it is clear a new approach is needed. Organisations need to adopt a smarter approach to procurement that can enable effective digital transformation, helping them to move away from managing processes over email, phone, or paper, to instead capturing everything digitally. This can free capacity for more strategic projects, improve access to insights for better decision-making and foster better collaboration by connecting internal stakeholders and suppliers. As a result, businesses are better able to identify opportunities to innovate, collaborate and grow revenues, giving them the chance to build better products and service offerings that will differentiate them from the competition.
n today’s uncertain and evolving landscape, procurement has become a much more strategic part of every business, but a lack of digitalisation is holding teams back. To create a competitive advantage, businesses need to digitalise manual and strategic procurement processes to provide teams with the tools they need, and give them back time to focus on creating value for the business.
Making procurement smarter can create an all-encompassing digital view of procurement and supplier management. This is increasingly important for businesses looking to restore growth post-COVID and ensure resilience for the next crisis.
A global shift to remote working has accelerated digital transformation and prompted a higher degree of focus on cybersecurity, according to Kaspersky’s latest report.
Transitioning from a corporate office environment to working from home, coupled with financial restraints due to economic recession, has seen challenges presented to cybersecurity experts not many had seen before.
From February to March 2020, a 569% growth in malicious website registrations was detected and reported to INTERPOL, including malware and phishing. In April, there was a huge spike in ransomware attacks by multiple threat groups that had been previously dormant for months.
Cybercrime threats are expected to rise as more opportunities present themselves in the coming months. Fake vaccine registration websites will aim to steal data, whilst business email compromise schemes aim to take advantage of the economic downturn and shift in the business landscape.
Protecting the perimeter of a company is no longer enough: there is a desperate need now for home office assessment with tools to scan the level of security. Discouraging poor internet practices such as connecting to an unprotected Wi-Fi hotspot should be top of the list, with VPNs and multifactor authentification systems being offered as a solution.
With an increased reliance on cloud technology and services, dedicated management and protection measures are now a necessity for businesses. Around 90% of employees use non-corporate software and cloud services, such as messaging apps, and this is unlikely to change any time soon.
To ensure that any corporate data is kept under control, better visibility over cloud access will be necessary. IT security managers will need to align themselves with this cloud paradigm and develop skills for cloud management and protection.
This is why, according to Kaspersky, the quality of protection is “no longer up for discussion.”
“Quality protection is now a must have,” report Alexander Moiseev, Chief Business Officer at Kaspersky.
“Another major trend is that deep integration between various components of corporate security, ideally from a single vendor, now plays a bigger role. For instance, there was a long-held belief in the industry that various specialised solutions from various vendors can help create the best combination for protection.
“Now, organisations are looking for a more unified approach with maximum integration between different security technologies.”
You can read Ksapersky’s “Plugging the gaps: 2021 corporate IT security predictions” report in full HERE.
With an ever-increasing demand for digital and online payments, Paypal will increase the utility and usability of cryptocurrencies by making them available as a funding source for purchases, with nearly 26 million merchants accepting the currencies.
The service has been enabled by a partnership with Paxos Trust Company and has seen PayPal secure a first-of-its-kind conditional Bitlicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services.
With over 5,300 different types of cryptocurrencies, PayPal has been selective in its choices, and will only offer support to Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash. Customers will then be able to instantly convert their cryptocurrency balance to fiat currency.
In addition to this, PayPal will offer educational content which aims to help account holders understand more about cryptocurrency and blockchain, as well as the risks and opportunities associated with investing.
Dan Schulman, President and CEO of PayPal, said: “The shift to digital forms of currencies is inevitable.”
“This shift will bring with it clear advantages in terms of financial inclusion and access; efficiency, speed and resilience of the payments system; and the ability for governments to disburse funds to citizens quickly.”
“Our global reach, digital payments expertise, two-sided network, and rigorous security and compliance controls provide us with the opportunity, and the responsibility, to help facilitate the understanding, redemption and interoperability of these new instruments of exchange.”
However, there are concerns from the crypto community, as customers currently cannot move the cryptocurrencies to other accounts either on or off PayPal, and PayPal will not provide customers with the private key. There will also be a transaction fee for any purchase or sale, but these have been waived until 2021.
Upon the news, Bitcoin’s price hit a record high for the calendar year, rising 13% to $12,900 on Thursday. PayPal’s share price had a similar reaction, with shares up 7% to $215.
The global opportunity to disrupt the professional services industry has never looked better.
Many practices still prefer to deliver a traditional consultancy approach, which typically starts off with a face-to-face session with consultancy time charged by the minute.
Professional services, like accounting, legal, and consulting have only just started to embrace the digital revolution, although there is some way to go on this front. These sectors are not known for their love of digitalisation.
However, due to the speed and seriousness of COVID-19 that is going to need to change.
Just about every business has been forced to go into survival mode with the UK economy shrinking by 2% during the first three months of 2020.
At Myriad Associates, we believe the short-term is all about businesses preserving cash, battening down the hatches, and hopefully securing some form of bailout from the government.
Coincided with this, companies have needed to trust their teams to work from home as well as come up with a new business model or a major pivot as soon as possible.
Change is coming to the professional services sector, whether we like it or not. We can’t sit by and do nothing; we either embrace it or fade away.
Can you digitise your expertise and knowledge?
Innovations in AI technology have opened more opportunities to incorporate expertise and knowledge into digital platforms.
Digital delivery of professional services will enable alternative monetisation opportunities and grow without the need to hire more people. As Deloitte reports, it’s expected the tipping point where AI technology will be mainstream for ‘white-collar jobs’ is in 2025.
The traditional time and materials fee model can be replaced with a subscription or outcome-based pricing.
Clients are increasingly focused on desired business outcomes rather than the effort associated with the delivery, driving new contract structures and relationships with providers.
This means a success or outcome fee model will eventually become the new normal. The digital delivery of services will be a great enabler of these new pricing models.
We already have the tools to work anywhere in the world at any time.
Powerful collaboration platforms and video conferencing platforms, like Zoom, have been around for a number of years, but many in the professional services industry have been reluctant to follow.
Despite many practices still working remotely, these types of digital platforms are open 24/7 – allowing professional services to flexibly meet customer demand.
Will this become the new normal? It’s certainly here for the foreseeable future and we’re seeing many businesses that are adopting this way of communicating permanently as part of their service.
We have seen a number of businesses embrace digital transformation, including Receipt Bank.
Founded in 2010, the Receipt Bank platform was born as a solution to relieve the amount of time and money lost in forgotten expenses, keeping track of a company’s expenses and sharing it with their accountant.
Its platform has unlocked the true value of accounting data.
Using a unique combination of human verification and AI-powered OCR technology, documents can be turned into digital data extremely quickly and with far greater accuracy than before.
There’s no time wasted on data entry or admin tasks either and general ledger can be updated in real-time.
Lightwork Business, which – as the name suggests – set up a business ‘light work’ by automating it as much as possible, is another good example of how the digital revolution can be adopted.
In particular, they offer new companies the use of a prestigious central London office address and provide extras, such as digital versions of all the statutory registers, required to keep and maintain, as well as First Board Meeting minutes and share certificates.
When it comes to digital, software like Tax Cloud portal is becoming invaluable, due to their self-service approach that helps a number of businesses and accountants thrive and make their life easier.
A lot of them are also free to use. Companies can use the Tax Cloud portal to work out exactly what R&D tax relief they can claim using their own figures, with applications created in a fully supported but hands-off fashion.
A number of these services now also come with telephone and online support but you still get the telephone and online support of a highly experienced R&D tax consultancy to help you along the way.
The upheaval and uncertainty surrounding the economic impact of COVID-19 are not going away any time soon.
With this in mind, now is an excellent time for businesses across the professional services world to reshape their business models in order to compete.
Not only will this give your company the best chance of surviving and thriving, but your customers will love you for it too.
About Barrie Dowsett…
As CEO and owner of Myriad Associates, Barrie Dowsett is responsible for overseeing all R&D tax credits claims and R&D grant applications. With over 15 years of experience, Barrie ensures that every R&D tax claim is maximised and that his clients have the best chance of securing grant funding. Prior to establishing Myriad, Barrie worked as a hands-on Finance Director for a number of large international manufacturing and engineering businesses. Barrie is a qualified Cost and Management Accountant (CIMA) and Member in Practice (MiP).
Financial uncertainty remains rife as COVID-19 caused a widespread market crash on March 12th, sparking fears of a global recession.
However, there are already signs of a recovery, with some firms already back at pre-crash values, notably those in the home delivery market.
The biggest name of those is Amazon: having suffered a 13% drop in share price on March 12th, Jeff Bezos’ ecommerce colossus is now just four percentage points down on its March 5th share price, having rebounded 10% in the past week.
This is further emphasised by those stay-at-home bets like Netflix trading up 5% this week, reinforcing the view that self-isolation and quarantine measures are having a positive effect on those companies that could see an uptick in usage times due to the working-from-home
Supermarkets are also taking less of a hit due to the inordinate amount of panic buying being witnessed in certain countries. Walmart dipped just 10% from $116 to $104, subsequently rebounding and now sitting at $114 at the time of writing.
Data gathered by InsideBitcoins.com, meanwhile, indicates that whilst Bitcoin has been impacted by the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic, it has remained more resolute than oil and S&P 500.
In the period of 22nd January and 22nd March, Bitcoin dropped by 48%. Having started March around the $9,000 mark, it dropped 46% to hit $4,850 on 12th March but has had one of the strongest rebounds since – a 28% rise sees it hit $6,200.
However, on withstanding the effects of COVID-19, Bitcoin (BTC) is the least affected compared to the S&P 500 (SPX) and Crude Oil (USOIL). On the YTY chart, Bitcoin decline is at -19.2% which is two times better than the S&P 500’s -34.3%, while Crude Oil is at -64.57%.
Bitcoin has showed fluctuations even attaining 2020’s all-time high of $10,334 on February 12 but a month later the asset hit its lowest mark of the year at $4,987 on March 16.
Despite the market continuing to fluctuate, there are reasons to remain optimistic for the months ahead.
When Malta-based construction and property enterprise Vassallo Group embarked on a company-wide digital transformation, it looked to CIO Carlo Aquilina to build the entire infrastructure, operations and innovations at the group…
Walk through the streets of the beautiful island of Malta and you will not be able to escape the work of the Vassallo Group. Property, hospitality, education and healthcare, the Maltese construction and property company completely reshaped Malta following the devastation caused by the Second World War. Indeed, Vassallo Group embarked on a mission to ‘rebuild the nation’ to its former glory and beyond.
Building on its strengths, the Group carries a legacy that is over 70 years old, and over the years has diversified its operations that have brought about expansion and investment. Today, Vassallo Group, stands at the forefront of several different sectors in the local market that include property and construction, furniture and interiors, elderly and disability care, catering, hospitality, architecture and education. The Vassallo Group is a large, complex enterprise and represents a unique challenge to its IT function, which provides technological solutions and support to all of the companies and their users.
Carlo Aquilina was approached to take on the role of CIO at Vassallo in 2015, having spent a while building up an IT team at a manufacturing enterprise. “When I started in manufacturing, IT needed lots of work. We started from scratch. We built up the whole IT department and the whole team. When Vassallo approached me, they offered me that challenge again as they really lacked IT. It was a real challenge, but I built my team and we started on what needed to be done.”
Vassallo Group previously had a shareholding in an IT company and this sister company was providing IT, but the level of support was not sufficient for their local clients, thus Aquilina was asked to build the IT function that would serve the 1,900-plus employees and its extensive client base. “When I joined, I was tasked with the project: to start from scratch. I gave the board of directors a number of options. Should we go on premise, should we go with another hosting company, should we go hybrid, should we go cloud? The main ambition was very simple and I was given six months to come up with a solution where we gave our clients, our clients, meaning our users basically, a brand new environment with zero downtime. It was all firefighting in that first year.”
Vassallo went 100% cloud with Microsoft Azure, which Aquilina believed to be the best short-term, and long-term solution. “We’re a Maltese company. We’re not an IT focused company. IT is here to provide service to the business. Our business is not IT. We’re not a gaming company. All of our products are Microsoft, and so it was an obvious choice to move to Azure.” Vassallo agreed to go 100% to the cloud, having drawn a blank against the large capital expenditure associated with on-premise. “With cloud, you don’t invest in anything and everything is top of the range. Of course, it also helps to be paying operational costs and not capital costs. That was the way forward and then they (the board) embraced it. There was a number of partners who approached us to do this, to help us with this migration. I chose CyberSift, which was a start-up, actually.” An advantage to working with a start-up is that they’re not encumbered by a large kind backend and can move audaciously and quickly and this was certainly an appeal to Aquilina and his team. “I knew one of the technicians; a brilliant engineer and that helped. Plus, the price we were given was also from a start-up perspective.”
CyberSift viewed the chance to work with Vassallo with similar relish and the then start-up provided a specific engineer to be onsite with the IT team at Vassallo for the full duration of the migration. “Whatever I was asking, I was getting,” Aquilina explains. “‘Okay, we’ll do it for you, but you’ll have to promote us, after.’ Now I’m promoting them. So, we had engineers working for us and I didn’t need to grow my team. In fact, we’re a very small team.”
The key thing Aquilina and his team built in that crucial first year was ‘trust’. “I had the trust of the board of directors because every time they asked me something, I satisfied their request. So, there was trust. At the end of the day, it’s a family-owned company. Trust is very important.”
Aquilina and his team were given six months to deliver the project and took 2-3 three months to design and implement the infrastructure. The following three months, they contacted suppliers, before moving the software. “If it’s on premise or on cloud, there was remote access. It was teamwork, everyone pulling the same rope. Whenever one of the suppliers told us, ‘Listen, we’re not available this week. Let’s do it next week. We’ll slot in someone else. We’ll set meetings. We’ll explain what we are doing.’ All they needed to know is that we were moving from server A to server B. They did it for us because it was their software, their app, their solution.”
With any large-scale technological transformation there are challenges although Vassallo seemed to evade many of the pitfalls through great organisation. “I don’t think we had actually the biggest challenges because it was all planned out. We used to meet every day with the engineer who used to work for us and my team. It was a case of ‘What happened yesterday, what happened today, what is going to happen tomorrow and why? Are we on track? Yes. If not, why? What can we do?’ We worked late at night so that we could achieve it. It was all based on trust and teamwork. It was a case of open-heart surgery because the business wanted to work. The business kept on working even though we were doing open-heart surgery. We had that support from everyone. Everyone understood that this needed to be done. We had support from everyone, from all the partners, from Microsoft, everyone.”
Even though digital transformation involves technical infrastructure, software, servers and cloud, people are still integral to a successful outcome. “Yes, they are extremely important,” Aquilina explains. “There are the users, the customers and the IT team. We are a very small team and that really helped, because a huge team would require lots more organisation and more hand holding. It was me who was both sponsoring and managing the project. I had the lead engineer who was doing the actual work, remotely. They had an assistant administrator who was assisting. People are so important.”
Vassallo Group holds an annual internal awards and in 2016, the IT department was awarded ‘Best Customer Focused Department’ even though it had been, in Aquilina’s terms, firefighting. We were there constantly, anytime, any day of the week. The team and I were presented with this trophy, which proved my theory that the company had move to something much more stable.”
Now Vassallo Group is reaping the benefits of this transformation. “IT-wise, we are working on a business intelligence project. Now we have the infrastructure ready and a solid base or foundation, I want to give something back to the business. We implemented an ERP solution, which Finance, Logistics and Operations are using. I don’t want the directors to go into board meetings with huge amount of papers. I want them to go in with just a laptop. The data is live. We’ve already done that for one of the companies and it’s working. You can connect to the TV to project live data. That is business intelligence. We’re working on the other companies too. Now that they know what they can get, everybody’s bombarding us with requests. Of course, we’re taking our time and that is ongoing.”
From BI, Aquilina wants to harness the power of AI in board meetings. “I want to give them the facility to project live data, but I also want to give them the facility to change the data accordingly. They will see the results with AI.” Recruitment could be a big beneficiary of these initiatives too. “What if we employ 100 people? AI will work out the costs, work out the benefits of employing that many people. Then you can take an educated decision. ‘Should we employ 100 or 200? Let’s put in 200 more employees. What’s the cost?’ AI will work out the costs as well as the benefits. That’s all in progress. However, these are very sensitive tools that we need to use and if the tool gives you the wrong information, then you will make the wrong decision. I explained this to the board and they gave me the time needed to do it properly. We have to be very meticulous. They understood and told me, ‘Whenever you’re comfortable, we can start using.’ The CIO has to have 100% trust from the board of directors, because if there’s no trust, they keep on asking, ‘But why and how?’ That is the way forward.”
Providing technological infrastructure, new software and cyber security for such a large company means that Aquilina’s hands are certainly full. “We support about 1,900 employees and 500 users. I can afford to have a relatively small team because we have a solid base, and a solid infrastructure. I have a wonderful team. I recruited everyone from outside the business. I didn’t find anyone here, so they all respect me. We’re all friends at the end of the day, although I am their manager. We talk about anything and I help when needed. So, there’s trust from them and the senior management, which I believe is extremely important. It’s a wonderful place to work.”
With digital transformation now mainstream in enterprises worldwide, business leaders are no longer asking “why?”, but “how?”. At the core of digital transformation is enterprises’ ability to build organisational and technological agility, which together enable business process agility. The rapid evolution in digital technologies such as cloud, IoT, AI, data, positioning systems, AR/VR, APIs, etc. can help to create new business outcomes if the enterprise is adaptive and composable at its core. As organisational structures and cultures across industries are at the tipping point of change, enterprises are challenged to build and retain a technically savvy, culturally diverse and agile workforce.
Becoming digitally-adaptive
With change being the only constant, enterprises that thrive in the digital economy do so by creating lean, agile teams of people who implement technology as an extension of themselves and are ready for life-long, continuous learning. For employers, the onus then becomes creating a culture that encourages learning and providing their workforce with the resources and tools to help them along this journey of continuous improvement.
By providing constant learning opportunities, enterprises benefit from a workforce that is ready for disruptive, daily changes in technology. A digitally-adaptive workforce produces greater innovation, enterprise agility, and the capacity to predict rather than react to market changes. Creating a culture of learning also helps enterprises hire and retain top talent, as studies have shown that for new-age employees – particularly millennials – the ability to learn while working is a top factor attracting them to a company.
With that in mind, here are five steps business leaders and change drivers can take to support a culture of continuous learning:
Evolve your “interview and onboarding” processes
In the digital age, expertise is far more important than years of experience, and the ability to collaborate exceeds individual brilliance. Many years ago, Tim Brown (founder of IDEO) established the term “T-shaped employees”, which represented depth, expertise and the ability to collaborate as the key attributes for future employees. Enterprise hiring practices need to change to reflect this transition. It’s time to move beyond scripted interview questions and GPAs, and test potential hires by putting them into real-life situations they could expect to face at work. An effective technique is hack-to-hire initiatives, which test candidates on not just subject knowledge, but their ability to innovate, collaborate with people they don’t know well, fail fast, and bounce back – all attributes that signal resilience, collaboration and adaptability.
Interlink learning and performance
While the current generation of employees is typically more learning-focused than its predecessors, it is important for organisations to do their part by incentivising continuous learning. This might involve initiatives that link individual performance with a drive to learn. Well-exemplified by companies that support temporary cross-functional roles for their employees, these initiatives allow them to build expertise beyond their function and gain a more holistic view of enterprise operations. Enterprises should also ensure that employees get the opportunity to practice what they learn in real life, weaving continuous learning into the fabric of the organisation long-term.
Create learning paths
Rather than leaving it up to employees to define their learning and find resources to enable it, enterprises should create learning tracks tied to career progression, both within and outside the organisation. This can be done in-house, or with the help of external vendors to create activities customised to a specific industry. Some organisations are also partnering with universities to launch credit-based programmes that allow employees to upskill, upgrade their resumes, and gain practical on-the-job experience by applying these skills.
Ensure resources are accessible
Merely creating learning programmes is not enough, however. Organisations should ensure that the HR and IT departments work together to make the content easily accessible, ideally on consumer-grade technology platforms. It’s also important to ensure that work and learning do not interfere with each other. For instance, instead of mandatory group sessions that could cause scheduling issues, enterprises could record webinars to be replayed on-demand.
Ideally, employees should also be able to gain experience by interacting with the teams working on projects that demand these skills. This promotes internal mobility while fostering cross-functional teams.
Revitalise the learning and development function
Since it has the responsibility of maintaining continuous learning within the enterprise, the learning and development function must play a role beyond building course catalogues for employees. It creates innovative, employee-centric experiences and promotes interdisciplinary thinking, so the learning and development function should shift its focus. Rather than solely content creation, learning and development should have a more complex role, leveraging technology that leads the enterprise’s cultural transformation toward continuous learning.
Investment in continuous learning matters
Enterprises need to rethink, restructure, and reinvent their approach to upskilling and educating their workforce. It may not yield instant returns, but creating a culture of learning is no longer a matter of choice, but a necessity. Businesses that get it right will find themselves attracting and retaining the best talent, and in possession of a workforce that can keep up with the challenges presented by a dynamic digital economy.
The CPOstrategy Podcast welcomes Paul J. Bailo, who is widely recognised in the industry as a leading digital strategy expert.
Paul calls himself the “Chief Digital Officer of Chief Digital Officers” and prides himself on being the “voice of reason” for Fortune 500 companies.
In this episode, Paul discusses the definition of “digital” and the secrets to undertaking a successful digital transformation.
Black Friday is fast approaching, but retailers have been preparing for this event since last year – or they should have been, according to Gartner’s Vice President Supply Chain EMEA, Frank Vorrath.
“This is not the first Black Friday event,” said Vorrath, in an interview with The Digital Insight podcast. “Learn from the past: use data from previous years and look at what it tells you about the peaks and demands.”
“Black Friday is a special event, so use that data to make a prediction for the next one. This is an important consideration when it comes to your ability to respond to demands.”
“To help this, make sure your environment is prepared to collect as much data as possible throughout this event.”
Planning and making educated predictions are recurring themes when it comes to advice on making a success of Black Friday, but Vorrath is also keen to place emphasis on widespread collaboration.
“Work with your partners, both your logistics providers and your other providers such as outsourced manufacturers and suppliers,” said Vorrath.
“Consider that the activities on Black Friday will not only be about selling your products but also delivering them to your customers. When you sit and collaborate with your partners, you will have better outcomes.”
All this preparation, however, could go out the window if there’s more demand than expected.
“Consider risk mitigation. Things may happen that result in more demand than you ever legislated for, so consider increasing the risk mitigation to avoid being on the backfoot when demand over exceeds your ability to respond.”
The latest episode of The Digital Insight welcomes Lisa Moyle, Director of Strategy at VC Innovations.
Lisa discusses the disruptive market that is financial services, and she explores what it means to seek out and embrace innovation – whether you’re an incumbent or a startup.
Lisa also discusses how VC Innovations works to enable businesses to demonstrate thought leadership and expertise, educate the market on new solutions and products develop and maintain business relationships and associate their brands to a community, theme, or subject.
The latest International Data Corporation (IDC) Innovators report highlights five companies who are disrupting the procurement world with their use of technology, with a particular focus on improving and streamlining supplier relationships. Here is our round-up of who they are and why you should be checking out their offerings.
Written by: Lucy Dixon
FairMarkIT
Boston-based FairMarkIT offers a tail spend management platform that uses
machine learning to take charge of procurement. In other words, it will save
time and money on the significant amount of expenditure that is not already
actively managed by procurement processes – the sourcing and buying of
low-value items that can make up the majority of an organisation’s purchases.
It is a web-based SaaS platform that offers an alternative to outsourcing and
integrates with ERP and P2P. FairMarkIT’s customers typically see between six
and 12 percent in cost savings.
fairmarkit.com
LVRG
LVRG promises easier and stronger supplier relationships, and it delivers on
this by freeing up more of your time to work on those relationships rather than
supplier research or data entry. The system builds up summary snapshots of all
your suppliers using available data and integrates with existing software, from
Asana and Slack to Dropbox and Salesforce, which will help give the full
picture of your suppliers. Security is a top priority for LVRG, and it is
committed to getting the right balance between transparent communications and
privacy concerns.
lvrg.ai
SirionLabs
SirionLabs is shaking up the procurement world by using technology to disrupt
how businesses think about contracts. Its contract management software offers
supplier governance, revenue assurance and enhanced visibility. It automates traditional governance
processes end-to-end and delivers real-time data-driven analytics, which will
streamline contract management and automatically generate new contracts, while
tracking the real-time performance of existing contracts. Its latest innovation
is SirionBI, which enables real-time access to big data generated during large
services engagements between organisations, including data for obligations,
service levels, invoicing, issues, actions and spend.
sirionlabs.com
Tealbook
This Ontario-based company is a global network of buyers and suppliers, created using software developers, machine learning engineers and procurement experts. Machine learning and analytics give the user a transparent view of every supplier, with more valuable insights produced as usage increases. Tealbook’s in-house data scientists support procurement teams with constantly evolving technology to drive change. It invests heavily in research through a partnership with the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence and has a growing partner community of innovative companies working together to transform procurement.
tealbook.com
Vizibl
Vizibl is all about growth through supplier innovation and collaboration –
harnessing the expertise of all the organisations in your network. It is a
cloud-based system with the ability to help you manage all supplier
relationships, and at the same time bringing the benefits of enhanced
collaboration, improved speed, transparency and efficiency. Vizibl is built with
input from specialists in procurement, innovation, strategy, marketing,
manufacturing and finance, with a focus on building software that enables
companies to create more valuable relationships with their partners.
vizibl.co
By Elif Ecem Seçilmiş, an Associate at Kılınç Law & Consulting
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was created with the aim of homogenising data privacy laws across the EU. GDPR also applies to organisations outside the EU, if they monitor EU data subjects, or offer goods and services to them. The GDPR applies to personal data, which is defined as any information relating to an identifiable natural person.
In certain cases, frameworks such as the EU-US Privacy Shield have been implemented to ensure the protection of data being transferred outside the EEA. However, such frameworks have not been established in all countries outside of the EEA. In such cases, businesses need to be keenly aware of the data protection laws in each territory, in order to ensure compliance.
Businesses based within the EEA that wish to send personal data outside the EEA also need to pay particularly close attention to GDPR. GDPR restricts the transfer of any personal data to countries outside the EEA.
The European Commission has made “adequacy decisions” as regards the data protection regimes in certain territories. Territories, where the data protection regime has been deemed adequate, include Andorra, Argentina, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Israel, Jersey, New Zealand, Switzerland and Uruguay. The EU Commission has also made partial findings as regards the adequacy of the regimes in the US, Japan and Canada.
If a business wishes to send data to a country that is not in the EEA, and which is not covered by an “adequacy decision”, it will need to ensure that the appropriate safeguards set out in the GDPR are implemented.
In order to facilitate data transfers within multinational corporate groups, “binding corporate rules” may be submitted to an EEA data supervisory authority for approval. If these are approved, then all members of the group must sign up to these rules and they then may transfer data outside the EEA, subject to the binding corporate rules.
Another way to make a restricted transfer outside the EEA is for both parties to enter into a data-sharing agreement, which incorporates the standard data protection clauses adopted by the European Commission.
The Commission has published four sets of such model clauses, which set out the obligations of both the data exporter and data importer. The clauses may not be amended and must appear in the agreement in full. The penalties for non-compliance with GDPR are significant since organisations can be fined €20 Million or 4% of their annual global turnover for breaches.
Article 49 of GDPR also sets out derogations from the GDPR’s general prohibition on transferring personal data outside the EEA without adequate protection. The derogations can apply, for example, where there is an important public interest, or the data must be transferred for legal proceedings. A derogation can also apply where the data subject has been fully informed of the risks but has given their explicit consent to the transfer.
The advent of GDPR has significance for companies doing business internationally. However, companies doing business internationally also need to think beyond GDPR. Companies may find themselves subject to the data protection regimes of third countries, even if they do not have any physical presence there. For example, international companies without a presence in Turkey may be subject to Turkish data protection law if their activities have an effect in Turkey.
A registration system for data processors is currently being rolled out in Turkey. Data processors based outside Turkey whose activities have an effect in Turkey may need to register by 30 September 2019.
Turkey’s 2016 Law on the Protection of Personal Data is based largely on EU data protection law. As a candidate state for EU membership, Turkey aligns much of its legal system with EU law. Many of its requirements are broadly similar to EU law. However, there are also some very important differences which companies whose businesses have an effect in Turkey should be mindful of.
Turkish data protection law allows for administrative fines of up to three per cent of a company’s net annual sales to be levied if personal data is stolen, or disclosed without consent. Turkish data protection law applies to both sensitive and non-sensitive personal information.
Personal data may not be transferred outside Turkey without the consent of the data subject, except in strictly limited circumstances. Regulatory approval is required for such transfers where the transfer may harm Turkey or the data subject.
Unlike GDPR, however, “explicit consent” is required by Turkish Law to process both sensitive and non-sensitive data. The exceptions to this general rule include where there is a legal obligation on a data processor to process the data, and where such processing is necessary to protect the life of the subject. Further processing is not allowed without specific consent, and there is no “compatible purpose” exception in Turkish law. The definitions of consent also differ in Turkish law and under GDPR.
GDPR has caused many EEA companies to consider in detail the laws restricting the transfer of data out of the EEA. However, companies may also be subject to laws restricting the transfer of data into the EEA.
Elif Ecem Seçilmiş is an Associate at Kılınç Law & Consulting
How digitalisation is bringing the fight to industrial security threats ~
It’s no longer a question of whether your business will be attacked, but rather when it will be attacked. Cyber attacks, particularly those on public sector and utility businesses, are now a regular, often daily occurrence. Here, Robin Whitehead, managing director of systems integrator Boulting Technology, explains how this is impacting the role of the chief information security officer (CISO) and resulting in the need for end-to-end digitalisation.
It’s a simple fact that data makes the modern economy turn. Being the first business to take action, based on the insights gained from some pivotal piece of information, gives businesses a distinct competitive advantage. However, it’s also quickly becoming a fact of life that the same data is being targeted by skilled cybercriminals intent on stealing this new currency and even causing maximum damage to infrastructure.
We can see the potential scale of cyber crime if we look at the number of data breaches made each month. For example, in December 2017, security firm IT Governance reported that 33.8m records — including a mixture of personal and business information — had been leaked around the world. In November 2017, the number was 59m.
Sophisticated cyber attacks
With the world facing the likes of WannaCry, Petya and NotPetya in 2017, sophisticated cyber threats are the biggest technological fear in 2018. Although sectors such as financial services and the public sector are most at risk, there have also been numerous high-profile attacks on utilities, oil and gas and food manufacturing environments in recent years.
At 9:30am on 27 June, 2017, confectionary manufacturer Cadbury was hit by a cyber attack, which halted production at its Hobart factory in Australia. Computers at the facility were infected with the Petya ransomware virus and displayed a message on the screen demanding payment in cryptocurrency.
Later that same day, NotPetya — a variant of the Petya virus — went on to do further damage to facilities across Europe. NotPetya exploits a backdoor in the update system of a Ukrainian tax-preparation programme running on Windows and used by around 80 per cent of all Ukrainian businesses.
It uses a vulnerability in the Windows operating system called EternalBlue — originally believed to have been developed by the US National Security Agency (NSA) — to encrypt the filesystem’s master file table (MFT), preventing the system from locating its own files.
Launched on June 27, 2017 — on the eve of Ukraine’s Constitution Day holiday — NotPetya quickly spread to networks in Russia, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, the UK and the US and affected many sectors. “It’s massive,” Christiaan Beek, a lead scientist and principal engineer at McAfee, told WIRED about the situation in Ukraine. “Complete energy companies, the power grid, bus stations, gas stations, the airport, and banks are being targeted.”
The new CISO
It should come as no surprise then that the advice of IT and security experts is now being sought at the highest levels of business. The role of the chief information security officer (CISO) is also changing in response. Acting as the head of IT security, the CISO has traditionally been responsible for things like operational compliance and adherence to ISO standards as well as performing IT security risk assessments and ensuring that the business is using the latest technologies.
However, increasingly, the CISO must now also drive IT security and strategy, guiding everyone from the shop-floor staff to the most senior officials in the business on how best to protect them from cyberattacks. The modern CISO now takes a seat at the boardroom table, ensuring business continuity, come what may.
Modern CISOs need to be visionaries and good communicators in their own right, exerting their influence at all levels of the business to bring about long lasting technological and security change.
End-to-end digitalisation
For industrial businesses, this change cannot come soon enough. The desire to integrate manufacturing networks with the outside world and the increased use of smart data is driving efficiencies and cost savings in sectors from food and beverage, pharmaceutical and automotive to utilities such as gas, water and energy. At the same time, it’s also leaving them vulnerable to attacks that can lead to business disruption and extended periods of downtime.
Part of the reason for this is that many businesses have traditionally operated in silos, with information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) experts not historically well aligned to the same objectives and outcomes. However, as we increasingly use more internet-connected devices such as PLCs, HMIs, intelligent motor control centres (MCCs), telemetry devices and smart meters — all relaying millions of data points to centralised and often remote SCADA and ERP systems — it will become crucial to take a joined-up approach to industrial operations. Cue end-to-end digitalisation.
For many businesses, replacing hardware and software to allow functionality such as standardised Fieldbus communications, real-time cloud data, analytics and centralised control across every aspect of their operations is neither a cheap undertaking nor one that is quick to enact.
After all, most engineering plant managers have built up a complex system over many years, retrofitting new components and modules to existing equipment. This is driving the need for end-to-end digitalisation, moving away from fragmented system control, maintenance and upgrade towards a holistic approach that encompasses system-wide transparency, alarms and notifications, including analytics that can deliver actionable insights to improve process efficiency.
At Boulting Technology we’re helping our customers introduce cybersecurity measures to retrofitted equipment in existing industrial setups. Our range of control systems, networking products, intelligent motor control centres and more, form an integrated system that gives engineers easy and secure access to their operation around the clock. Ultimately, end-to-end digitalisation will help companies respond to attacks and breaches in minutes rather than hours or days.
So, while we come to the realisation that cyber attacks are simply a normal part of doing business, take heed of your CISO’s advice and rethink your end-to-end digitalisation strategy.
Technology is becoming a tool for expanding human senses and abilities. This requires intelligent and immersive interfaces. Will voice, gesture and thought control soon replace keyboards and touchscreens?
Reply’s study, conducted with the trend platform SONAR, examines trend-setting concepts for interfaces between humans and computers – Human-Machine Interfaces – which are now becoming real possibilities for communication between humans and machines. For companies, there is significant potential for more personalised and emotional customer interaction as well as new possibilities for the visualisation and analysis of information.
Voice assistance
20 million people worldwide already use voice assistants daily to search for information, make purchases or play music. Also, in the corporate environment, voice assistants enable a completely new way of using technology and automate many tasks. The smart assistants perform entire tasks, record things or make calls without any human intervention. This increases productivity and leaves employees with more time for challenging tasks. Through voice interfaces devices can be controlled using voice input, and smart software agents will be able to perform an increasing number of services in the future. What’s more, electronic in-ear devices, so-called hearables, can be used for a wide range of applications, from wireless data transmission to communication services.
Extended Reality (XR)
The technologies combined under XR enable barrier-free interaction between man and machine and eliminate geographical distances. They revolutionise people interaction with the environment: Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality support consumer decision, reduce costs, increase efficiency and a more productive environment. Other emerging trends include gesture control and 3D displays, which create a virtual three-dimensional image of an object and offer interactive possibilities. Smart glasses, which provide the wearer with additional information about what they are seeing, are also among the XR trends.
Full Immersion
Full immersion technologies allow the direct exchange of information between man and machine. Advances in fully immersive technologies and neurosciences show that a world in which people are fully connected to computers is coming. Scientific research in medicine is leading the way into a future in which the human brain can control computers with mere thoughts and exchange ideas via headsets or brain implants. Companies are already working on neurally controlled interfaces. They offer direct communication channels between a networked brain and external devices. Another trend technologies are in the area of augmented bodies, which aim to strengthen the human body and its performance using things such as implants or electronic tattoos.
Furthermore, the study also identifies four visions that could soon become reality:
“Communication between man and machine is one of the most exciting topics of our time. Technologies at the interface between us and intelligent systems will enable a paradigm shift in all areas of life in the near future. The resulting new products and services will offer completely new solutions for telling stories and visualising information. The three trends identified by SONAR and the four visions provide companies with guidance on their journey towards digital transformation,” says Filippo Rizzante, CTO Reply.
The Human Machine Interfaces report is part of a series published on the following topics AI, Retail Revolution and Consumer-IoT.
To read the full study, please click here.
by Alex Tebbs, Founder of VIA
Does anyone know what is going to happen come the final Brexit deadline at the end of March? Although not currently legally binding, MPs have now voted to try to prevent a no-deal Brexit after passing an amendment which rejects the UK exiting the EU without an official ‘Withdrawal Agreement’. Despite this, sceptics are still unsure whether there’s going to be any formal plan in place, in time for next month; will the government delay or will a deal be struck? Either way, many businesses are already noticing implications from this level of uncertainty.
In this article, unified communications specialist Alex Tebbs, Founder of VIA, discusses his thoughts on the various business repercussions of a no-deal Brexit, particularly across the tech sector.
Within the tech sector in particular, businesses are used to being agile and innovative, and various changes that crop up usually pose opportunities as well as challenges. In this way, companies will no doubt learn to adapt to Brexit and will work around any new legislation in a way that is suitable to their business. After all, isn’t that what business has been doing for decades?
What can we can expect moving forward after the deal, or indeed no-deal, has taken place? Alex offers some practical tips on what business leaders can do to mitigate any risks from these changes.
The situation
As the potential of a no-deal Brexit looms, the economic uncertainty is throwing up interesting questions for many businesses in the UK and across Europe. Unfortunately, across certain industries, these changes and challenges are driving jobs and investment away from the UK in some cases. There are already many plans in place to try and mitigate any potential issues this may cause, such as the European Commission which has already begun implementing a “no-deal” Contingency Action Plan in order to prepare for a worst-case scenario. In the event of a no-deal, the public, consumers, businesses and public organisations will have to respond immediately and in appropriate ways to changes as a result of leaving the EU.
What happens next?
So, what can we expect moving forward? Some sectors will inevitably be more affected more than others, but we’re yet to know which will benefit and which will face challenges. From a consumer perspective, people have mixed feelings. According to reports, some British made products may be subject to new certification meaning businesses could place additional tariffs on goods imported from the EU, which making products more expensive. On the flip side, additional certification might mean products are subject to further checks and scrutiny, meaning better quality across the board. There are many possibilities.
How this will look for the tech sector
But what about tech? Due to the industry’s flexible nature, the tech sector has long had a name for being adaptable. However, as technological innovation has made its way into every industry, there will be knock-on effects for a variety of business areas.
One thing we need to really consider is talent. The tech sector, in particular, uses a huge amount of skilled European workers as part of its task force. If there is any change to freedom of movement, such as if it is halted or restricted, this will not only affect current skilled European workers in the UK, but it will also affect the acquisition of new talent. It may become intrinsically more difficult to arrange Visas and work permits for European workers to come over to the UK and vice versa. This means that there may be talent shortages within the UK across the board, as it will no longer be viewed as a preferred destination of choice for many Europeans. Currently, many workers travel to the UK without employment and look to join the tech industry while they are here.
Potential solutions
We already know that the rise in flexible working will help the tech sector address these issues. With remote working, European workers will still be able to be based in their home countries but can work for UK based companies without the need for lengthy Visa/work permit applications. Using unified communications (UC), remotes workers will be able to communicate seamlessly with the UK office while still feeling they are connected to the team. It is important companies enable the telephony, instant messaging and video conference tools that will enable teams to seamless to communicate across various geographical locations.
Additionally, shifting away from a more rigid full-time employee structure could aid in this transition. There could be a rise in contract and freelance positions, which will be enabled by UC tools.
When it comes to talent, as more European workers will be based in the EU, there will be a rise in the “virtual” interviews, where video calls will take the place of face-to-face interviews. We’re at a point in technology today where this can be carried out seamlessly, as video calls feel almost as if that person is in the room. After an initial, relatively cheap and easy remote interview the company can then decide whether to progress the interview through face-to-face meetings.
What’s next?
One thing is for certain if there is one industry that is going to be able to adapt it is the technology industry. Whatever the outcome, an orderly transition is in the best interests for everyone, businesses and consumers from all sides.
IPsoft has introduced 1Bank, the first conversational banking solution featuring virtual agent Amelia. It has been rated the top virtual agent in conversational AI by Everest Group.
Chetan Dube, CEO at IPsoft, commented: “With 1Bank we provide the most humanlike digital experience in the marketplace, built from the knowledge we’ve gained serving six of the world’s leading banks with conversational AI. We are giving banks the possibility of providing customers with their own personal banker around the clock.”
1Bank answers FAQs, but also resolves complex customer needs, by understanding customer intent. It can also switch context, mid-conversation. Its machine learning Learning (ML) abilities also mean that 1Bank can improve over time.
Some of the tasks 1Bank can carry out are:
1Bank can integrate with existing tools and interfaces, and it can be added to existing applications to help customers quickly access the information and service they need. This includes mobile apps, desktop or kiosk apps, website modules, or within consumer chat applications, such as Facebook Messenger and Amazon Echo.
Technology continues to drive supply chain change and innovation with Voxware, cloud-based voice and analytics supply chain solutions company, announcing two new strategic partnerships. The first is with Ai Links Limited – a Singapore supply chain consulting firm – and the other with Onlog AS – a supply chain and logistics solutions provider in Norway.
The second part of Total Retail’s series on Tariffs and Inflation looks to the need to forward-buy inventory and the benefits and disadvantages thereof. For those who missed the first part, it can be found right here.
Another company looking to shift how its practices influence the environment and deforestation is Olam Cocoa. The company has revealed its plans to end deforestation in its cocoa supply chain and to work with farming communities that depend on cocoa for their livelihoods.
Energi Coast has declared the region’s supply chain as fit and ready for growth after an announcement of the Sector Deal for offshore wind. CEO of Tekmar Group and Chairman of Energi Coast, James Ritchie, said: “The sector deal for the offshore wind industry is a significant step forward in creating a sustainable industry and providing real value creation to our local supply chain, which is fit and ready to serve our growing sector.”
Inspecto has revealed its development of a nanoscale portable device that can detect food contaminants in the field from an early stage. It can be customised to detect contaminants per business requirement and is suited to farmers, producers, suppliers, retailers and quality assurers along the supply chain. It even provides results in real time.
ISSA’s Cleaning Management Institute has partnered with Marquette University to develop online training courses for the supply chain. The programme is designed to enhance understanding of the fundamental principles of the supply chain.
Also in the news today: Quantzig, an analytics advisory firm, has announced their new article on the Importance of Demand Analysis that highlights the objectives and helps businesses improve supply chain efficiencies; retail imports have dropped to an annual low with retailers between seasons and tariff hike on hold; the winners of the first NextGen Supply Chain Awards have been revealed; EasyJet is shoring up EU supply chain in case of no-deal Brexit; Chain Business Insights released new book entitled Blockchain in Legal Cannabis: Weeding out Supply Chain Inefficiencies; and Procter & Gamble’s supply chain to go under the microscope at Supply Chain Conference taking place towards the end of March.
A sector deal announced by Energy and Clean Growth Minister Claire Perry means that one third of British electricity is set to be offshore wind power by 2030. In a recent release, the offshore wind industry announced that it is to invest £250 million into the UK supply chain due to an anticipated increase in exports by 2030.
The Supply & Demand Chain Executive magazine announced that Fusion Worldwide’s Tobey Gonnerman, executive vice president of global trade, was a 2019 Practitioner Pro To Know. Fusion Worldwide, an open market electronic component sourcing company, was one of more than 500 entries for the award. Another company to receive the accolade was Dan Clark, founder and president of Kuebix. The transportation management system company owner was selected for his extensive industry expertise and his implementation of Software-as-a-Service solutions.
A recent release from Nestle has opened up about the company’s action plan to help end deforestation and restore forests in the cocoa supply chain. The entire plan is available in a downloadable PDF book that outlines the company’s commitment to support the Cocoa & Forests initiative.
SpendEdge, a procurement intelligence solutions provider, has released their supply chain study for a fast fashion retail company. The study provides insights into how companies can boost customer services, assess short-term trends, and improve sourcing processes to build a responsive supply chain.
The Zurich Insurance Group announced a new strategic partnership with riskmethods GmBH, a supply chain risk management firm. The goal is to help clients better identify, assess, mitigate and transfer their supply chain related risks. Roby Kuchinski, Global Head of Property and Energy at Zurich said: “We are committed to offering our customers solutions that go beyond risk transfer. This new offering is a great example of how Zurich is focused on customers’ needs by combining the highly complementary skill sets of our own Risk Engineers and scientists with the state-of-the art artificial intelligence services available through riskmethods.”
Also in the news today: a new survey conducted by Sage Growth Partners found that 98 percent of hospital leaders said supply chain optimisation can improve margins; Khol’s posted its 12th straight quarter of inventory reduction; Resilinc released the 2018 EvenWatch Report that showed how global risks have increased overall and that uncertain geo-political conflicts present costly and disruptive supply chain impacts; and Huawei is about to sue the US regarding the ban of its products from American shores.
The market is crowded and the volume deafening. Customers are pelted with sales and slogans from every device and corner. To stand out from the crowd you need more than just an excellent business strategy and remarkable product offering. You need an online audience. However, catching the attention of this audience has become an art form – from hashtags to visual campaigns to viral videos to content development you need a dash of experience, a splash of technology and a whole lot of creativity.
These three campaigns took the tools of technology and marketing and content to really capture audience attention and marketshare.
Experiential marketing isn’t exactly hot news but few people realise exactly how well it works and how it can help a brand build its online presence. According to the 2015 Event & Experiential Marketing Industry Forecast, 65 percent of brands say it has a positive impact on sales. A direct, positive impact. It uses a physical event combined with video, hashtags, and social media, to create a digitally blended experience that gets people talking. After all, people want experiences and they want to share great experiences even more.
One campaign really stands out in this field – Red Bull’s Stratos event. This marketing experience broke records as Felix Baumgartner set the world record for the highest skydive. He jumped from a helium-filled balloon, Red Bull streamed the event online, and the result was the highest viewing traffic of any live stream in YouTube in history.
Key takeaways: Blend the traditional with the digital to create an experience that will pull customers into your brand. By inspiring customers to share your hashtags, your experience and your brand, you are not just connecting with your audience but building it.
The rules of social media exist for a reason. Many brands have broken them to their detriment. But some, like Wendy’s, have taken the rules, thrown them out the window, and won the day. The company took its social media campaign out of the traditional and into the utterly engaging.
Wendy’s chose to roast its customers. In a smart, sassy, right on brand and tone of voice kind of way. The campaign was a success. Not only did the company rack up significant social media traction as the posts trended, but it also received a ton of free publicity from leading media outlets. The campaign met with positive reviews from critics and customers and the company has just posted an increase in sales for the 17th year running.
Key takeaways: Social media rules can be broken or bent in favour of brand voice, intelligent communication and clear understanding of audience. Wendy’s paid attention to the people that frequented its stores and talked to them in their language.
The audience you want to reach is online but the problem is that not all of your customers are on the same channels or platforms. While their voice and tone and needs may match, their preferences may not. What you need to do is build an online presence that offers multiple touchpoints with the same content. This will ensure your content and brand have reach. By developing a multi-channel, multi-media strategy you can share the same content across every platform to build a cohesive narrative that’s easily found by your prospective audience.
Gucci is an excellent example of a brand that has taken its messaging across various platforms to build its audience. The company has used social media campaigns, viral digital marketing campaigns, interactive instore displays and digital experiences to engage with its customers.
Quest Solution Inc, provides supply chain and artificial intelligence (AI) based machine vision solutions. It has been awarded a project by a leading supply chain and logistics provider in the US. The release doesn’t detail who the leading supply chain provider is, but it does reveal that the project is valued at around $US7 million.
A patent that will allow for a robot to live at your home and handle your deliveries has been filed by Amazon. The patent outlines plans for a robot that will completely transform last mile delivery capabilities, even potentially delivering packages in the early hours between 2am and 6am.
Back to AI, NFI Industries and Transplace are paying attention to this technology through partnerships with firms that add AI capabilities to transportation and distribution. Both companies have announced a partnership with Noodle.ai with the goal of enhancing logistics services and technology capabilities.
In a video interview with CNBC, Lance Fritz, the CEO of Union Pacific, is concerned that supply chain disruption won’t return to normal. He believes the biggest concern lies in trade and that the challenges with China should be resolved as soon as possible.
In an interview with Sky News, Peter Schwarzenbauer, BMW board member responsible for Mini and Rolls Royce, has said that the firm will need to think about moving production from the UK in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Remaining would be too costly for the organisation and some production would move to countries like Austria. Toyota shares similar concerns with Johan van Zyl, head of Toyota’s European operations, telling the BBC that Brexit hurdles would ‘undermine Toyota’s competitiveness’.
Blockchain remains an interesting solution for many in the supply chain and Blockchain Labs for Open Collaboration (BLOC) has recently started working with NYK, a Japanese shopping company, and BHP, a mining company, to establish a sustainable biofuel supply chain using BLOC’s blockchain fuel assurance platform.
Also in the news: HighJump, a global supply chain solutions provider, awarded five women in its Top Women Leaders in Supply Chain awards; Cryptobriefings Kiana Danial examines whether VeChain can deliver a supply chain solution; Apple releases a supply chain document that reveals how iPhone, airpods and other products are all zero waste; and SIGTTO GM, Andrew Clifton, looks to the LNG supply chain.
According to Gartner, few organisations know how to turn their business digital. Around 57 percent have not yet found their starting point for digital transformation (DX). It’s an understandable conundrum considering the complexity of the process, but there are steps that every business can take to ensure of long-term success. Steps that will reduce the noise to an understandable level so you can pick out the strategy that will best suit your organisation.
The first and possibly most crucial step is to determine exactly what business goals your digital transformation strategy is setting out to achieve. There’s following the herd and leaping onto solution and service with the desperation of those who don’t want to be disrupted, and then there’s plotting the strategy that will drive the digital transformation chariot. Before embarking on any investment, ensure you can measure success by asking the ‘So What’ question. Then fine tune your answer by asking, ‘Why’…
When it comes to DX there will be roadblocks that will impact on efficacy and uptake. The C-Suite and the board are often hung up on cybersecurity and how this threat landscape will influence any digital strategy as well as on cost, time to market and short-term impact on the business. Stakeholders often don’t agree on a cohesive direction for the business or the ultimate goals that DX is to achieve. The solution is to develop a robust governance and compliance framework that addresses concerns and guides the DX strategy consistently across implementation and investment.
Your DX journey shouldn’t follow the traditional, staid pathways of technology investment. That’s precisely what digital is designed to avoid. To truly benefit from the potential of DX you need to balance your traditional operations and models alongside the digital ones. The latter are often not compatible with the former so the business needs to be agile in its approach and flexible in its implementation.
DX is a long-term investment that won’t show results overnight so it can’t come out of the operations budget nor can it be handed pieces of budget that aren’t dedicated for the long haul. Having separate funding not only ensures that the project remains on track but that it won’t consistently fall by the wayside when budgets are cut or re-allocated.
DX must be put in place alongside clearly defined measurement parameters and must be consistently monitored to ensure that it meets targets and delivers on its promise. The digital journey may promise vast improvements in productivity and potential but, the reality is that many DX implementations fail due to lack of monitoring and measurement and employee engagement. In addition, regular monitoring and clear measurement ensure that your DX strategy remains focused and that you are addressing any challenges that arise before they leave a mark.
The Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) awarded first place in the 2019 RTech Supply Chain Innovation Awards to Onfleet, a cloud-based software company that helps organisations refine last mile delivery operations. Lisa LaBruno, RILA’s executive vice president of retail operations and innovation said: “This year’s RTech winners not only embody the spirit of innovation propelling the retail industry forward today, but they have developed tangible solutions to some of retail’s biggest supply chain challenges as well.”
Pepperfry, a furniture and home products marketplace, has announced its intention to strengthen its supply chain operations to ensure improved customer reach. The announcement comes alongside the company’s expansion plans as it sets up more than 100 offline stores.
Singapore and US-based startup StaTwig has revealed its plans to streamline the vaccine supply chain using its blockchain-powered solution. The company is working with UNICEF – the company distributes around four billion doses of vaccines globally – and is in talks to continue with its expansion into new markets.
Agriculture retail sellers with a worldwide gross income of more than $US 200 million may be required to disclose employment violations if proposed legislation goes through in Washington. The Senate Bill 5693 is directly targeted at removing slavery, peonage, working to pay back debt and human trafficking.
IBM has announced that its hatches are being battened as the risk of a no-deal Brexit looms every closer. The company is preparing for the loss of the four freedoms of the EU – movement of goods, services and data, labour and capital across borders.
Zebra Technologies has released a report entitled ‘The Future of Fulfilment Vision Study’ that examines the logistics challenges in an omnichannel shopping landscape. The report takes a global look at how manufacturers, retails and logistics firms are meeting the growing needs of the on-demand economy.
Ocado lost its flagship distribution centre in Hampshire in the last week of February in a blaze that lasted for more then two days. It struck a blow for the company as it was the prototype for its robotic plans for the future and the loss from the fire is estimated at around £100 million.
Also in the news: Retailers are asking congress to pass tariff relief legislation; a study by Alix Partners examines the 2019 Global Container Shipping Outlook; and Revolut – the bank plagued by misconduct and toxic working environment claims – is fighting back.
FedEx has announced the development of an autonomous delivery robot that helps retailers to make same-day and last mile deliveries even smarter and faster. Executive vice president and chief marketing and communications officer for FedEx, Brie Carere, said: “The FedEx SameDay Bot is an innovation designed to change the face of local delivery and help retailers efficiently address their customers’ rising expectations.” The company is having conversations with brands such as Walmart, Target and Pizza Hut around how this bot can work for their delivery needs.
Home Depot has revealed that it has achieved 70 percent same day delivery capabilities in the US and has said that it is planning to invest a further $US 1.2 billion into its supply chain to further this reach. Best Buy has reported strong financial results that are believed to have been driven by the supply chain. The sales of wearables, appliances, smart home devices et al had a positive impact on sales in the festive season and the company’s investments into supply chain capabilities played no small role in this success.
In the UK, Aldi, Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Co-Op and Waitrose have become founding partners in an initiative dedicated to responsible recruitment in the supply chain. The ResponsibleRecruitmentToolkit.org is a capacity building tool that allows for improved selections and more strategic recruitment for those in the industry.
Remember the KFC crisis of 2018? Well, it turns out that it is the same company running the NHS supply chain. DHL will be put in charge of delivering medicines that are expected to be in short supply post-Brexit and it raises concerns. If they can’t do chicken….
On the research front, ResearchAndMarkets has found that the South American supply chain market is to achieve $US3.7 billion by 2023. It is a growing market and the research company predicts that blockchain is to play a significant role going forward.
Also in the news: Dollar Tree chief supply chain officer, Gary Maxwell says the supply chain needs a reputation makeover; perhaps the cure for the sustainable supply chain is Spotify; and the digital bank Revolut has had its money laundering lapse exposed…
Tableau Software has announced the introduction of Ask Data, which uses the power of natural language processing to enable people to ask data questions and instantly get a visual response.
This means that anyone, regardless of their technical know-how, can engage with data and produce analytical insights they can share with others within a business. For example, a user could ask a question such as “What were my sales this month?” and Ask Data will produce a visualisation of the response, with the option to drill down or alter the question to see further analysis.
The users don’t require a deep understanding of the data structure or any programming skills, as the software uses finely tuned algorithms that are driven by an understanding of the person’s intent, not keywords, which helps produce more relevant results.
Expedia Group has tested Ask Data, and technical account manager Scott Webber had this to say: “Now more than ever we need to connect our teams with self-service analytics that enable faster business insights. We look forward to how this and other natural language models could support a wide spectrum of our analytics scenarios. For example, sales managers could analyse performance by region around the globe simply by asking questions. Ask Data also supports our augmented analytics strategy, allowing non-technical users to automate data analysis and insights.”
Tableau’s chief product officer, Francois Ajenstat, added: “With Ask Data, we’re helping make analytics ubiquitous by enabling anyone, regardless of expertise, to analyse data. Our unique, conversational approach to natural language allows people to ask questions how they naturally think.
Ask Data provides a more intuitive and natural way to interact with data, lowering the barrier to entry for analytics and allowing people to ask questions in plain language and get highly relevant insights.”
An opinion piece by Inbal Axelrod examines the use of predictive analytics to develop more efficient supply chains. Not a new conversation, but one that’s gaining relevance as analytics and data tools grow in both capability and validity. These technologies can potentially revitalise how the industry approaches supply chain dynamics in the future.
When it comes to the cold chain, technology offers the industry some interesting opportunities to shift transparencies and capabilities. Traditional systems are outdated, limited and introduce unnecessary delays when fresher solutions can transform how operations are handled and real-time data transfer, among other things. Still in the cold, Lineage Logistics has announced that it is to acquire Preferred Freezer in a deal worth around $US1 billion. The deal will see the company take top spot in the cold storage market.
Manger for Public Medical Supply Chain, Joe Chen, announced that his division is anticipating rapid growth in 2019. In a release, he explained: “Serving as a medical equipment supply company with access to critical spare parts and consumables defines our competitive advantage in the vital medical supply business to over 500 hospitals between China, the US market and Europe.”
The supplier collaboration platform for the construction industry, Command Alkon, has announced that its executives have been named the 2019 Provider Pros to Know by Supply & Demand Chain Executive magazine. The award is given to those execs who are working on, and delivering, innovative supply chain initiatives.
At the 2019 LINK supply chain conference taking place in Orlando, Redwood Logistics talked about the importance of technology in the retail supply chain. The spokesperson, John Centres Executive VP of Sales, said that “For many years the transportation and logistics sector was the last group that got its resources from technology. Now it’s on the forefront of technology because of the on-demand product environment. We have not seen – outside of food – any huge price inflation of consumer products. And that is because of the innovations taking place in the supply chain.”
In other news: the need to increase the fairness of the global supply chain and the companies already engaged; how technology can improve the grocery supply chain; Horizon Robotics raises $600m in funding; M&S and Ocada to start a home delivery service in 2020; and Resolution Foundation shows that retail has the highest employee redundancy rate.
The UAE is making a concerted move to place the region at the centre of the pharmaceutical manufacture and export chain. Dubai Science Park already boasts 19 factories producing around 1,500 different types of medication and medical instruments and the park is aiming to achieve a total of 36 factories by 2021.
Fresh new startup, Supplycompass, has entered the market in a bid to help organisations set up reliable supply chains seamlessly and efficiently. The technology-powered startup is described by one of its founders, Gus Bartholomew, as a ‘design-to-delivery sourcing platform for fashion, accessories and brands’. Another startup, Roadie, has just achieved backing from Home Depot, bringing the company’s fundraising total to $US 62 million. This forms part of the startup’s $37 million Series C funding announced at the LINK2019 conference.
In the USA, Bristlecone, an organisation specialising in supply chain transformation, announced a strategic partnership with Tradeshift, a global supply chain payment and marketplace solution. The partnership is focused on automation and collaboration to drive supply chain efficiencies and simplify payments and procurement.
Smithfield Foods has announced changes to its grain supply chain that are aligned with sustainable farming and reduced costs. The company has engaged with 80 percent of its grain supply chain in these sustainable practices, exceeding is original goal of 75 percent and making a significant step towards reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2025.
Kraft Heinz stock dropped by as much as 28 percent in spite of the use of zero-based budgeting and investments in supply chain technologies designed to help curb costs. The company has showed impressive innovation in the supply chain space and this may yet see it turn around over the course of the year.
Tive announced the arrival of the Tive Solo, a brand new tracker product for the supply chain. The Tive Solo’s features include the ability to measure and report temperature data every 15 minutes along with shipment location, plus a 30-day battery life.
Also in the news: Mastercard, Amazon and Accenture announced a partnership that’s focused on building a transparent blockchain supply chain; General Electric has sold its life sciences unit for $US21 billion; Primark reveals a strong performance and profits; and Brexit continues to be top of mind for firms as they prepare for its impact – both BASF and Bunzl are among those in the pre-Brexit news today.
In the news again, retail giant Walmart has revealed that it is taking control of its own rail supply chain. The company has launched a pilot programme that will see them use name-brand freight containers to cut out third-party rail companies and middleman fees.
The Raymond Group in India has announced that it plans to reshuffle its own supply chain so as to manage demand and supply more effectively. The move is powered by the shifting sands of economic outlook and market demand and is designed to put the company on a more competitive footing.
A smart sensor that allows for total supply chain visibility and increased security has been implemented by Kerry Logistics Network. The sensor forms part of the organisation’s shift to using the Internet of Things (IoT) to optimise its supply chain and its deliverables.
On the security frontier, research from security specialist Symantec has found that vulnerabilities in commercial software and operating systems were increasingly being used to launch cyberattacks. These supply chain attacks use loopholes in third-party solutions and increased by a startling 78% from 2017 to 2018.
Along with security issues, technology and the changing nature of the supply chain will be hot topics at the 2019 Retail Supply Chain Conference that opened its doors in Orlando, Florida, today. Keep an eye on the hashtag #Link2019 to keep up to date on insights and commentary from the event.
ResearchAndMarkets has released its global supply chain analytics market forecast to 2023 today. Focusing on supplier performance analytics, demand analysis and inventory analytics, the research has estimated that the market is set grow to $US 7.1 billion by 2023 with a CAGR of 14.6 percent. The release stated that there is a ‘need to analyse demand patterns, develop effective production plans and improvise forecast accuracy…’ To add some weight to the research burden, Acumen Research and Consulting released its own research on 24 February that outlined how the supply chain analytics market will be worth around $US10.7 billion by 2026.
Meanwhile: the release of foldable smartphones – a trend that’s now impossible to ignore as Samsung reveals remarkable, Huawei competitive and LG broken – has a knock-on effect on the supply chain; there are fabrics that can remember your passwords; a Business Insider Intelligence’s research report examines the impact of edge computing solutions; and IBM reveals five technologies that it believes will disrupt the food supply chain.
In a bid to shift the costs of drugs for patients and hospitals, non-profit organisation, Civica RX, is preparing to up-end the supply chain for drug sourcing in the USA. According to Bloomberg, the company is aiming to address critical drug shortages by finding the quickest routes to market. Using a three-pronged approach that includes sourcing from existing drug companies and hiring contract manufacturers, Civica RX is looking to change the high cost of critical drugs and increase supplies.
KPMG has released a report that outlines the risks and the hype that surround the digital supply chain. The report takes a long hard look at the security threat that comes in alongside digital investment and transformation and warns that cyber criminals are ‘realising that the shortest way is not through the front door, but through the “weaker links” that make up a digitally enabled supply chain’.
Still with KPMG and technology threats, another report released by both KPMG and Oracle examines the security gaps that exist in cloud services. The global survey is designed to provide decision makers with relevant insight into the threats with commentary from 450 participants.
In Canada, the Supply Chain Management Association (SCMA) celebrated its 100th anniversary and used this as an opportunity to announce the beneficiaries of the SCMA Fellow Award. The prestigious award that recognises excellence in supply chain leadership was given to Madeleine Paquin, President and CEO of Logistec Corporation in Montreal, and Robert Wiebe, Chief Administrative Officer for Loblaw Companies Limited in Toronto.
Data Analyst, Ken Gibson of Black Ink Technologies, examines how blockchain can play a pivotal role in reducing the increasing complexities of the supply chain. He points out that ‘supply chains have gotten to be ridiculously complex…’ and points to the growing need for reliability in management, administration, sourcing and control.
AP Møller Mærsk (APMM)’s fourth quarter results were released on 21 February, revealing a company still busy with its restructuring. The numbers released were didn’t impress investors, however, and it seems the company has a way to go before reaching the levels that will rebuild confidence.
Also in the news: Goldspot Discoveries, the first AI mining company, has just listed on the TSX Venture Exchange; the Tri-County Defense Supply Chain and Business Resource Fair allows for businesses to connect to government contracting; supply chain integrity solutions provider, Overhaul Group, announced that Robert Pocica has joined as a Senior Advisor to the board of directors; and Gizmodo wins the headline of the day with ‘Thank god phones are getting weird again’…
A blog released by Amazon today has revealed the technology and distribution giant’s goal of delivering shipment zero for 50 percent of its shipments by 2030. The company’s blog discusses its history of sustainable investment and goes on to discuss how it plans to move towards its shipment zero target.
While on the topic of giants, JP Morgan analyses the finances of firms in the iPhone supply chain and has found that the month-to-month aggregate revenues for suppliers dropped by 24 percent, two percent more than the average in 2018. However, when balanced against year-on-year results, the company has said that this could be a sign of stabilisation for the iPhone supply chain.
Utah-based company, Visible, has revealed its three-colour FFG folder gluer that’s designed to give the small to medium enterprise (SME) the edge in the supply chain market. The FFG delivers high-quality printing that reduces times and costs while assuring of high-quality packaging. Still in the USA, Walmart’s fourth quarter earnings showed that the company saw a 40% increase in eCommerce sales but this growth had impacted its deliverables and last mile efficiencies.
In the UK, Honda has announced that it plans to close its Swindon vehicle manufacturing plant which currently employs around 3,500 people. The move comes as part of its restructure and focus on electrified cars and will see the company close the doors at the end of the current model’s production lifecycle in 2021.
Tesla’s CEO revealed that supply chain challenges were behind production delays, lost deadlines and missed quotas. Elon Musk was quoted as saying that Tesla was in ‘delivery logistics hell’ in a tweet to an increasingly annoyed customer base. More on Reuters as to what lies ahead for the automotive manufacturer.
Also in the news: IBM Watson’s enhanced NAVIK AI platform has been integrated into Absolute Data to improve insight mining; in spite of Brexit-powered brain drain, the UK’s AI sector attracted record funding; AI4EU – a 20 million Euro project funded under Horizon 2020 – has launched and provides a collaborative platform for AI development; Google announced its plans to focus on Africa for AI and machine learning innovations; Professor Duncan McFarlane weighs in on the Internet of Things for industry; and Cisco estimates that there will be more than 12 billion connected devices by 2022.
In a piece penned by Mike Orcutt for the MiT Technology Review, it turns out that blockchain isn’t the super secure vault that everyone thought it was. An increasing number of security holes have appeared in the cryptocurrency and many of them form the foundations of how these systems were built. At the same time, a new survey released by Globant has found that many companies aren’t quite ready to tackle blockchain technology yet, even though they recognise its benefits.
Of course, this isn’t changing the unprecedented innovation and investment into blockchain solution and company as evidenced by a release revealing that Ternio – a blockchain architect – has been accepted as an Amazon Advanced APN Technology partner. The framework developed by Ternio is capable of handling more than one million transactions per second, is fully decentralised and on-chain.
Still on blockchain, the technology remains a strong contender for transformation in the supply chain as it can positively impact on trust, speed and reliability. There are even some solid examples of how this technology has already been used to effect positive results.
Moving beyond the blockchain and into the supply chain, Cause Technologies announced that it has acquired Donseed UK, Enhanced BDM and NJW Limited as part of its growth strategy into international markets. The company focuses on providing software solutions for the supply chain industry that drive efficiencies and capabilities.
Forbes tackles the US-China trade talks, examining how these will impact global supply chains and the changes that will inevitably come. The article postulates that regardless of the outcome, the supply chain is already changing to adapt to market demand and challenge. In BusinessWire, JDA has announced its development of a supply chain management platform as part of its plan to achieve an autonomous supply chain. The company’s AI-powered platform is designed to blend a bevy of powerful technologies into an accessible space that will help companies transform their processes and systems.
Also in the news: Aspirus was named Best 50 supply chain in the GHX list, a new technology that can capture the movement of quantum particles was revealed, a new joint unit designed to bring digital to the NHS was announced, AstraZeneca announced it would be adjusting its supply chain to prepare for a no-deal Brexit.
In the news this Monday, technology advancements in the supply chain dominate the conversation. Royal Canin, a pet food manufacturer with a global footprint, has adopted the FuturMaster cloud-based, demand-planning platform to improve its management of ongoing supply chain complexities. The company is using the technology to control supply and demand across its 16 global factories.
Also, in the supply chain field, Nisa Retail Limited has become the first company based in the UK to invest into pallet-tracking technology. The spokesperson, Nigel Mitcheson said, “The technology is helping us to be more efficient and sustainable when it comes to using pallets for our distribution requirements. It’s also helping us make significant cost savings by enabling Nisa to improve delivery accuracy when servicing Nisa partners.”
On the topic of IoT, the Port of Rotterdam has revealed that it is using a hydro-meteo IoT application designed to manage its shipping operations. The device collates data from water, tide, wind and visibility to deliver a comprehensive report that drives efficient real-time decision making.
Across the rest of the news there have been some interesting developments in viewpoint, innovation and conversation. The Guardian reported on how Facebook has been labelled ‘digital gangsters’ by a report on fake news, the Financial Times lifted the lid on China’s steadily growing legal technology patent portfolio, Forbes looked into how blockchain – that inscrutable technology few can explain – can provide a secure way of sharing information across the supply chain, a professor from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay developed a hardware-based encryption system to safeguard data, and a journalist got an inside look at Amazon’s technology test bed complete with robotics and AI and the impressive warehouse of tomorrow.
The supply chain has become a complex ecosystem that demands seamless management and control to deliver ongoing results to the business. According to the Supply Chain Leadership survey by Deloitte, 79 percent of organisations with superior supply chain capabilities achieve above average revenue growth but only 8 percent with low performance supply chains report the same levels of growth. In short, failures in supply chain strategy impact the bottom line and long-term success.
There are several reasons why a supply chain strategy could fall short of its goals. Here are five of the most common and five steps to solve them…
Early 2018 saw leading fast food retailer KFC shut down more than 600 stores. The reason? Supply chain failure. Somewhere between signing the contract and planning the distribution something had failed. For some experts, this was due to KFC opting into cheap rather than efficient.
In tight economic times it makes sense invest into solutions and service providers that help reduce the weight of the supply chain on the bottom line. After all, according to research by Oliver Wyman, this can be anything from 10-20 percent of overall revenue. This is further supported by insights from an Accenture report which found that most cost-saving initiatives only see three to four percent in category reductions year-on-year.
The solution: Look to zero-based supply chain strategies that can potentially resolve future cost challenges rather than redress those cost burdens that sit in the past. This, according to Accenture, can potentially see 5-10 percent savings while simultaneously introducing an agile operating model that’s capable of leaping incoming economic hurdles.
Disruption is the norm, as is frantic grabbing at strategic investment that gives the business the edge it needs to be prepared for what is to come. The problem is that many supply chain strategies are so busy looking outwards that they fail to look at how disruption will hit from within.
The solution: Existing supply chain management processes and operations can be disrupted internally. At the recent Infor Executive Forum, three areas of the supply chain stood out as the most relevant for self-disruption: granular segmentation to manage customer and segment change, integrated supply chain versus linear, and holistic cost assessments that funnel back into innovation.
Rapid change demands rapid decisions. Just as the supply chain strategy has to disrupt from within it has to be flexible and agile enough to handle the digital evolution from without. The consumer, the market, and the channel are moving at ever-increasing rates of change and the business that can’t keep up with demand will likely be the one left lying on the side of the digital highway.
The solution: The supply chain strategy has to include investment into technology and innovation that allow for the executive to make rapid decisions in a fast-moving environment. This includes developing modern, business-ready metrics that answer questions defined by the organisation’s long-term strategy. Deloitte found that industry leaders were more likely to use optimisation software, analytics, and visualisation software.
The Deloitte survey above also found that it is critical for the organisation to not just develop talent but to empower the executive. Supply chain leadership has become crucial to supply chain strategic success. Those organisations showing above average rates of growth and high supply chain performance are more likely to have supply chain leaders (56 percent) and clearly outlined talent strategies (88 percent).
The solution: Ensure that the talent is not just aligned with the strategy but that the strategy is aligned with the talent. This should also include investment into skills that ensure supply chain leadership is au fait with the technology that’s about to disrupt the supply chain and the business.
When an organisation’s culture and mindset fail to recognise the benefits of digital, then it is very likely that the strategy won’t reflect this either. Digital may be hype and may fail if implementation isn’t done in line with the business or existing supply chain challenges, but it adds immense value if done well.
The solution: Look to how digital can refine supply chain management, process and operations. From the driver to the last mile, from the data used to define short-term strategic goals to the cost-cutting advantages of the right technology in the right place.
From using virtual reality to hire employees to Russia (maybe) taking a break from the internet, the past week has seen some interesting news released to the world. Starting out in the UK, Accenture has revealed that it plans to use technologies such as augmented reality and virtual reality to try and up its skills game. The goal is to attract a more diverse pool of talent with new recruitment practices that harness the potential of both these technologies and applicants.
Adrian Love said to ComputerWeekly: “Our approach is designed to level the playing field by ensuring that everyone, no matter their background, colour or gender, is evaluated based on talent alone. And by using technology in a smart way, we can deliver a higher touch human experience to candidates during the moments that matter.”
Moving to the edge, a report from Business Insider Intelligence entitled ‘The Edge Computing Report’ has revealed how advances in edge computing can likely help manage the challenges faced by the healthcare, telecommunications, and automotive industries. The report found that edge computing has the ability to limit the exposure of critical data, enhancing security, and improve transmission efficiency. Also on Business Insider today is the reveal that Verizon successfully tested edge computing on a live 5G network – a test that saw them reduce their network latency by half. The test required that engineers installed a weight of tech to get started, but it seems the results made it worthwhile.
From the technology that powers business to the skills needed to power the technology, Global Knowledge published a report that revealed the 15 top paying IT certifications of the year. These range from Project Management Professional to Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Architect – the latter being the one that garners the highest salary.
Microsoft’s security chief has released a warning – he recommends that those who use Microsoft Internet Explorer as their default web browser are putting their systems at risk. The browser is no longer supported by the company which means it could very well be littered with holes, ripe for the hacking and the phishing. Any organisation still allowing the use of the platform is juggling with security fire.
Also in the news: Apple is about to launch it’s own news subscription service with a Netflix-style membership plan, Russia is apparently about to turn off the internet just to see what happens, South Korea is prying into SNI traffic in another attempt at censoring, and Xnor.ai revealed a battery-free, solar AI technology that will likely spur on greater developments in edge AI computing.
The future of the supply chain industry has long been held in the hands of technology and innovation. These have shifted the goalposts, placing customers in the driving seat and changing how they engage with brands and business. In a recent article by James Manyika and Susan Lund in the Harvard Business Review, this shift is taken into deeper context as they examine how the ‘Next Era of Globalization will be Shaped by Customers, Technology, and Value Chains’. Kicking off with the statistic that three quarters of companies say that their global investment strategies are changing thanks to uncertainty over trade policy.
At the NRF 2019 Big Show, this trend was placed in sharp relief as brands showcased the technology designed to drive customer experiences. From artificial intelligence to virtual reality, numerous solutions were on display, all providing the sector with much-needed insight into what could potentially lie ahead and what could be used, right now, to transform customer experiences.
While on the topic of experiences, Ford has decided to shift its focus from comfortable cars to intelligent beds. The company believes that these high-tech beds will save marriages as an embedded conveyor belt – built with car technology – gently rolls unruly sleepers back into position. Using the Lane Assist technology, it’s called, somewhat unimaginatively, the Lane Keeping Bed.
Pensa Systems and Birdzi, two startups immersed in the development of retail experience technology solutions, have revealed they’re joining a Dallas-based venture firm called RevTech. The company specialises in retail technology and tools that allow stores to become part of the so-called Age of Amazon with innovations in in-store drones, voice-activated assistants and more.
Retailers are under pressure to invest in digital and its potential. The question is – who will succeed? The digital leader or the digital explorer? An in-depth article in Retail Customer Experience tries to answer the question as to which mindset is winning the race to digital transformation, and why.
In New Zealand, the government announced a proposal to merge all of the 16 polytechnics around the country into a single national institute. The goal is to reform the organisations in an attempt to redress some of the challenges it faces in falling enrolments and increasing debts. According to the report, out of the 16 institutions, nine were in deficit while 11 suffered falling enrolments in 2017.
Also in the news was: the Selfcare Summit 2019 that reimagines retail for wellness, Virtual Vision’s launch of a platform designed to create smarter physical stores, the partnership between the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) and the startup Smarter Sorting for AI-based compliance, an analysis as to what lies ahead for retail with regards to predictive analytics, and FDA testing of a secure supply chain pilot programme.
The technology landscape is always changing, that much is a given, but since the week has started there have been significant shifts in regulation and application. In the United States, it was revealed that President Trump had signed an executive order to boost investment into artificial intelligence (AI). The order came about amidst concerns about competition with China – a report released by the United Nations revealed that while the US was still in the AI lead, China was catching up fast.
Trump said: “Continued American leadership in Artificial Intelligence is of paramount importance to maintaining the economic and national security of the United States.” [as reported by The Register]
In the UK, a new £8 million facility has been proposed to form part of Nottingham Trent University’s dual-site Medical Technologies Innovation Facility. The project has yet to be approved, but the goal is to accelerate the development of medical technologies that could transform health and innovation in a field that is currently seeing significant global investment.
Technology innovation is also being used by some of the world’s largest brands as a way of measuring their impact on deforestation and look for a way to harvest palm oil responsibly. Nestle, Unilever, and Mondelez are working with new satellite technology that provides them with a ‘big brother’ bird’s eye view that can potentially help them police tree felling more effectively.
While on the topic of legalities and compliance, it was revealed that Karan Bhatia, the vice president of global public policy and government relations at Google, has asked for there to be increased ‘convergence’ around global technology regulation. While the one size fits all mantra has never worked for either technology or clothing, there is a need to develop more ‘common rules of the road’ that allowed for improved collaboration, protection and compliance.
On the flip side, Apple is currently being sued by Fundamental Innovation Systems for its infringement on multiple patents that pertain to USB charging and communication technologies. Apple has stated that it believes the patents to be invalid, saying as much in a latter to the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board. In spite of potential licensing deal meetings, Apple filed a declaratory judgement action on February 07. Where to from here, nobody yet knows.
A quick roundup of news also includes technology being used by the Kremlin to force self-employed tax payers to cough up, a new technology that could potentially stop school shootings before they start, a new technology that can protect drinking water from the toxins present in Lake Erie, engineers developing a room temperature, two-dimensional platform from quantum technology, and how technology can potentially have a negative impact on domestic violence victims.
Blockchain has the potential to support business digital strategies and transformation
There has been plenty of hype around the possibility and potential of blockchain, an emerging technology that’s complicated to explain and even more complex to understand. According to Gartner, the emerging technology’s potential may be there, but few Chief Information Officers (CIOs) have put it on their agenda or anywhere near their spend. In fact, in a recent analysis entitled ‘The Reality of Blockchain’, Gartner revealed that only 5% of CIOs have rated blockchain as a gamechanger.
That said, blockchain is emerging from beneath the cryptocurrency shadow where it first rose to prominence and may very likely disrupt more than one way of doing business. Here are five that stand out…
The Human Resources (HR) department is driven by technology. With the balancing of employee volumes, needs, rights, payments and status comes the need for systems that can track individuals and their data with exceptional accuracy. Blockchain can potentially streamline HR processes and minimise fraud by protecting data, managing and securing payroll, and securing personal data to ensure absolute compliance.
The financial services sector has already invested into the potential of blockchain. The ability to securely and transparently manage complex contractual obligations and ownership contracts is priceless in this space. Blockchain provides a secure, tamper-proof, digital trail that can be used to assure customer and institution of absolute visibility. It is also the foundation for numerous startups that are disrupting this weighty, traditional space with inventive solutions to make banking accessible to everyone.
The use of blockchain to manage smart and secure contracts isn’t limited to financial services. With blockchain, any organisation can use the technology to create infallible contracts that reduce fraud and secure the data. The added advantage of blockchain is that it can be used to reduce the costs currently associated with contract development in the business arena – smart contracts cost less to create, can be managed in real time, and are less likely to be influenced by third-party errors or fraud. The fact that nobody can amend any one blockchain-powered smart contract without the permission of all other parties is also a powerful added advantage.
Blockchain’s ubiquity makes it an ideal companion for the accounting profession. It supports the professional in managing complex tax code specifications and business operations that demand absolute precision. Blockchain can manage many of the processes within the profession, providing a layer of efficiency and capability that supports the profession significantly.
Managing the logistics of the supply chain is as complex a task as managing the numbers of an organisation. No matter how robust the processes or the technology, shipments can go missing, orders can be misplaced and theft remains a challenge. Blockchain is transparent and incapable of being corrupted – these qualities offer the supply chain the opportunity to add an extra layer of transparency and accountability to supply chain management.
When it comes to digital transformation and technology innovation, the procurement industry has plenty of choice
The reality of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is that every industry and profession is being fundamentally disrupted by technology innovation. In the procurement industry, technology is bringing fresh winds of change, allowing for professionals to streamline processes and enhance their roles. According to Gartner’s procurement technology predictions for the future, professionals are looking for solutions that ‘generate revenue, drive innovation and retain customers’.
For those looking to invest in technology that will tick these three boxes, here are five of the best…
Best-of-breed procurement software has become a critical tool for long-term strategic success. The right software allows for improved collaboration and insights and provides the professional with comprehensive control over the procurement ecosystem. With accurate tracking, control over purchasing activities, granular insight into spend and supplier performance, and customisable metrics, it’s the all-purpose multi-tool that forms the foundation of a successful business. Procurement software can be further boosted by investing into eSourcing software that adds another layer of control across spend analysis, finding suppliers, managing contracts, and managing relationships.
To manage real-time pricing guidance, execute predictive models, gather predictive pricing insights and use monitor user feedback and fine-tune model outcomes, it’s time to invest into AI, machine learning and advanced business intelligence tools. These systems can be designed to streamline everything from costings to systems to process and provide fast and accurate information that can redefine spend and investment,
It is the time of the automated assistant and chatbot. AI and machine learning and investment have seen costs come down while effectiveness and efficiency increase. Chatbots and virtual assistants are highly specialised and capable, offering an automated solution to common requests and managing basic tasks in the background. Over the next year, chatbots and virtual assistants will become voice activated, making them even more powerful tools in supporting the procurement industry in streamlining operations.
This particular trend has been seeing steady growth over the past few years and has emerged as a reliable platform for managing tail spend and competitive pricing. Online business-to-business (B2B) marketplaces have changed the way tail spend purchases are handled, making them far easier to manage and increasing profitability. Not only have marketplaces such as Amazon Business become reliable resources for tail spend management but they are likely to become increasingly competitive over the next year as they grow in popularity.
While not technically a technology, training and skills development has become crucial in ensuring that procurement professionals take full advantage of the technology on offer. For many, the increase in technology proficiency and capability has become a barrier to adoption. According to Gartner, procurement staff will need ‘business, digital and analytical skills to realize business innovation and growth’. More than half of the number of employees in procurement will struggle to realise the potential of technology without investment into their skills and training.
A large majority of procurement leaders believe making better use of existing digital procurement technologies is a key next step in their digital journeys, according to ‘Procurement 2025: Is digital transformation driving more effective transformation?’, a study we have conducted in collaboration with Cranfield University. In our view, this focus on harnessing existing digital technologies rather than investing in new ones is a result of companies failing to realise the benefits of past technologies in the way they had originally expected.
We surveyed 225 procurement leaders globally about their five-year plans to digitally transform their procurement functions.
A significant 4 in 5 (82 percent) say they are keen to make better use of the digital tools they already have in their technology suites. This suggests that investments made to date as part of the digital transformation journey have yet to live up to expectations. In the same survey, however, the capability of current technology is the least-cited barrier to technology delivering the expected benefits, with just 37 percent of respondents referencing it as an issue.
So why do procurement leaders appear to feel let down by technology?
When it comes to digital procurement, for many organisations the first challenge is defining success. If a procurement function wants better transparency of spend it may consider investing in a spend analytics tool. But before that it needs to give proper thought to the outcome it wants to achieve once it has gained improved transparency, otherwise the investment is likely to fall flat.
So, for example, spend transparency only delivers value if insights that can be generated from the tool are acted upon, such as which categories to prioritise through sourcing and addressing maverick spend. If these are the objectives defined at the outset, then it’s clear that a spend analytics suite can only be one part of the solution. Driving continuous improvement in terms of data quality and employing people who can interpret the data and run sophisticated analysis are additional requirements to achieving the desired outcomes.
There is often an over-estimation of the capability of software, which invariably leads to unfulfilled expectations. Software is generally focused on managing and controlling workflows, as well as capturing data – both of which are important tasks. It can also run pre-programmed analysis, although there is a limitless list of analysis that can be done on the data captured by the tool which cannot all be pre-programmed. Finding alternative ways to run this analysis will help procurement professionals make better use of software.
Consider a sourcing platform that allows a company to run competitive tenders with a built-in analytics suite to automate the evaluation of supplier bids and aid supplier selection. Depending on the category sourced, company profile and supply market landscape, there are likely to be a number of custom scenarios that will need to be run to make the right supplier selection decision. If the tender has been set up well, the data with which to make this decision will be captured in the tool but will require people with specific data analytics skillsets to run the powerful analytics required, often using an additional business intelligence tool to visualise it, such as Tableau or Qlikview.
Without this additional skillset, procurement departments are likely to continue to feel underwhelmed by their technology investments.
A procurement professional is typically not someone with a technology background. This means that when procurement buys technology, they are less likely to understand what it is they are buying, e.g. how it works and whether it’s the most suitable solution for their needs. They are more likely to be influenced by branding and marketing, such as being sold on the benefits of having a piece of software from a company that has an established market position. The reality is that much of the innovation in procurement technology comes from agile start-ups that are often less well known.
Patience is key to deriving the benefits from existing technology. A new solution is unlikely to show immediate benefits but, without this, people are unlikely to be motivated to use it and change the way they work. This means procurement practitioners need to lift themselves out of the day-to-day challenges and think of what their role could be tomorrow and how to adapt to it so that they are able to progress their objectives.
For example, a contract management tool can help companies make considerable cost savings during the contract lifecycle. Once the tool is used in the right way and the benefits are clear to everyone, it creates a pull effect. But getting to that stage takes a significant amount of investment in time that involves mapping out the metadata that needs to be captured, ensuring it is captured from each contract, running the analysis that helps to manage supplier performance, proactively managing renewals and maximising contract coverage, and so on.
With new technologies continually coming onto the market and a wide range of vendors with clever marketing and branding initiatives, it is hardly surprising that many companies have been driven to make technology investments from which they feel they have yet to see any benefit.
Regardless of role or age, everyone has a responsibility to become more digitally literate and understand how systems can potentially transform ways of working. Through an inquisitive attitude, enhancing one’s knowledge of the ‘art of the possible’ and an understanding of forecasted future disruption, it is possible to make better decisions. This is open to anyone who works in procurement and wants to make technology work better for them. Read thought leadership, attend panel debates and teach yourself new skills online or in a classroom.
To read Efficio’s new research study, “Procurement 2025: Is digital transformation driving more effective procurement?”, developed with Cranfield University, visit: https://bit.ly/2UfIPvE
The events that deliver relevant business value and networking opportunities in the procurement space for 2019
Conferences and events provide industry professionals with a forum to share knowledge and best practice while gaining strategic insight into industry trends and challenges. Over the next 12 months, the procurement industry has a number of high-level events lined up in both the United Kingdom and Europe, each one adding practical business value for attendees.
World Procurement Week describes itself as the event that caters to the wider procurement team, from Chief Procurement Officers (CPOs) to strategy heads and category leaders and beyond. The agenda includes strategic deep dive sessions into leading trends and challenges, awards and in-depth industry analysis.
Dates: 14-16 May 2019
Location: London, UK
ProcureCon is targeted at senior level procurement and focuses on strategy, insight and case studies that allow for leaders to share global learnings and best practice. The speakers include CPOs and executive heads and are representative of some of the largest manufacturers in Europe.
Dates: 21-17 October 2019
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Gartner’s conference is designed to provide decision makers with relevant and timely analysis into the industry and the challenges that litter its landscape. The theme of the 2019 event is ‘A New Era: Converging the Physical and Digital Supply Chains’ – a topical theme that examines the blurring of lines between the physical and the digital in the procurement arena.
Dates: 17-19 June
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Considered one of the premier events in the procurement industry, World Procurement Congress is an immense global gathering that focuses on providing professionals with the experiences and insights they need to make informed business choices. The event includes some of the industry’s leading professionals and provides superb networking and strategy development opportunities.
Dates: 15-16 May 2019
Location: London, UK
Procurex is a forum for professionals working in procurement in the public sector. The events include tailored discussions and sessions designed to engage with the sector and give them the tools they need to manage compliance and legislation, among other relevant topics. The events are situated across the UK with different dates allocated to different areas.
Dates: 30 April in North England
Dates: 04 April in Ireland
eWorld Procurement & Supply is about innovation, invention and technology. The event focuses on the leading technology solutions and applications that are fundamentally transforming the procurement landscape today. The event gives procurement professionals a space where they can learn more about procurement trends, blockchain, automation and more.
Dates: 05 March 2019
Location: London, UK
Defence Procurement, Research, Technology and Exportability (DPRTE) 2019 does what it says on the tin – defence procurement and supply chain skills development, analysis and business. The official partner for the event is the Ministry of Defence and the agenda addresses the procurement requirements of the defence sector.
Dates: 28 March 2019
Location: Birmingham, UK