Articles Tag: SAP Ariba

Why Attending Procurement Events Makes A Big Difference To Our Clients

Published: By: Andrew Daley

Have you been to any of the following events in the last couple of years?

  • SAP Ariba Live
  • Ivalua Now
  • Coupa Inspire
  • eWorld
  • Amazon Business Exchange
  • The World Procurement Congress
  • Other events from vendors like Jaggaer, Proactis, Wax Digital and the rest
  • Any other Procurement Leaders or ProcureCon events

We go to almost all of them and here’s why.

The presentations educate us about the subject matter, particularly around digital transformation and this helps us understand our clients, their businesses, their objectives and challenges.

We know the relative strengths and weaknesses of many of the solutions on the market. We know the innovations they have in the pipeline and we know what their existing customers are saying about the solutions.

We observe how the various software vendors are presenting their solutions to potential customers. We engage with their salespeople, get valuable information on market trends and assess the calibre of all the people we meet in the process. We are effectively talent spotting.

Overall it’s a great chance to network across the procurement technology ecosystem. The sponsors and exhibitors are solution vendors and their partners. The delegates are procurement, supply chain and finance professionals. We can work with any of these people now and in the future. 

People from across the sector ask us: “What’s the market like?” They respect our opinions and value our insight.

Our presence there gets noticed by all these people across the various communities. They recognise our commitment to the sector and when they meet us they quickly realise we are credible business people who understand their world. 

So what benefit could that have for you as a client of Edbury Daley?

The people in the market become familiar with us and the direct result of this is that they come to us first when they are thinking about moving jobs. In other cases they are more receptive to head hunting approaches from us than other recruiters because they know that we are credible. 

This gives us access to the best talent in the market. In many cases these people only talk to us about their careers. In effect, we become a Talent Magnet for those companies that we hire on behalf of and that helps us fill vacancies that others can’t.

Because we’ve been attending these events for years, people know we were the first to make a visible commitment to this specific market. They know we’ve been around for a long time and can be confident we’ll be here today and tomorrow.

Trust, credibility, integrity, deep market knowledge and strong relationships across the sector – why wouldn’t you want to take advantage of this when furthering your career or hiring to achieve your business objectives?

The future of your career

Published: By: Andrew Daley

The Future of your Career – Part 1 – This article is the first in a regular series from Andrew Daley offering career development advice and sharing learning resources. Whilst aimed at procurement professionals with a desire to embrace the new era of digital procurement, this series should prove valuable to anyone seeking professional guidance on protecting the future of their career.

“Procurement faces a wake-up call as tectonic shifts in technology threaten to completely alter the function, leading eventually to its automation.” (Source: The Future Of Procurement Technology by AT Kearney).

This quote was the first slide in my presentation at the Basware Connect event in October entitled “Climbing the career ladder in an automated world”.

At SAP Ariba’s Procurement Summit a week earlier, one of the clear themes of the day was that the profession has a unique opportunity to change itself with the technology available, but it has to take responsibility to further its own agenda.

My conclusion from the two events was that the profession can’t wait and allow change to happen to it – it has the embrace the opportunity and dictate its own agenda.

Whilst on stage myself at the SAP Ariba event, I talked about the lack of spending by CPOs on training budgets as outlined by recent research from Deloitte. So my message to audiences at both events was to take personal responsibility for their own development, as it’s up to them to embrace the opportunity for the future of procurement, individually and as an entire profession.

So I’ve decided to continue this theme of developing yourself, or as one of the delegates at Basware put it “self education”, with some regular guidance on personal development that I hope will help you take advantage of all the resources available now, rather than waiting for your employer to invest in appropriate training.

People who take action now will give themselves a significant advantage over those that don’t next time they enter the job market.

This month I’m going to start by sharing what I consider to be some really useful learning resources for those seeking to understand more about the digital procurement revolution.

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of the Spend Matters website. It’s the ideal place to stay appraised of developments in the technology and thought leadership on the skills required for the future of procurement. I’d advise frequent visits to the site. Alternatively you should follow them on Twitter for regular updates on their excellent content.

Their writers do a great job of cutting through the hype and getting to the crux of the matter. They also keep readers updated with dates for the wide variety of procurement conferences and events which they attend themselves and then write useful reviews.

If you want to dig deeper yourself and have the time, there’s a vast amount of “thought leadership” available on the evolution of procurement. The leading management consultancies and software vendors are particularly fond of publishing research and opinion so it’s well worth registering for white papers from the likes of Deloitte (here’s the 2018 CPO Study) and AT Kearney. Hackett Group has also produced some good reports on digital transformation.

Amongst the software vendors there are always plenty of learning resources available online. Some are quite salesy, while others try to be more educational.  SAP Ariba’s Procurement 2025 is a particularly good one, and talks about the golden age of procurement. You can access it here.

One of the benefits of registering to download this content is that you’ll get updated when they publish new content and potentially get invited to their events. I’m a big advocate of attending these conferences. They are a great opportunity to hear about best practice from the profession’s leaders and learn about the power of the technology available now, and in the near future. They also offer a great networking opportunity which might prove invaluable next time you are in the market for a new job!

Of course, social media is another way to find all this sort of content. You don’t need to be particularly active on the various platforms if you don’t like them, you can still gather useful information when it suits you.

Much as we love LinkedIn, the more people you connect with, the more noise and irritating Facebook style behaviour you are exposed to. This reduces its effectiveness as a news source in my opinion.

One way to address this is to use its group functionality effectively. By joining relevant groups you are able to refine your content and focus on areas where the information is more relevant to you.

There are lots of good procurement options to research. We’ve assembled a great community around the procurement tech’ market which you are welcome to join here: Procurement Technology Specialists

You should also take a look at Procurious if you haven’t done so already. They are a much more specialist resource for procurement pros. They are doing a great job of promoting developments in the profession through their “Big Ideas” initiative. You can register as a digital delegate for their forthcoming Big Ideas Summit in Zurich here.

This is what they’ve had to say about this event:

“For the first time ever, we’ll be filming and streaming the entire day’s event via the Digital Delegates group on Procurious. If there was ever a time to register for one of our summits, it’s now. Featuring presentations and interviews from some of Europe’s top procurement leaders, we’ll be discussing procurement and supply management towards 2030, the future of talent, automation, blockchain, diversity and so much more.”

I hope you find some of this content interesting, hopefully even inspiring, and it will help you to start thinking about the future of your career more if you haven’t done so recently. We’ll be looking at other subjects such as further education and training opportunities as this series develops, but I’d like to finish with a couple of points from me.

A great lesson I learnt a few years ago when Simon and I started the business was to “begin with the end goal in mind”. So I’d advise that you start by developing a vision of where you see yourself career wise in say five or 10 years.   Then try to work out a plan for how you are going to achieve your goals using all the resources available to you in the modern world.

Finally, some thoughts on what I’m going to focus on myself for my personal development. At the aforementioned Basware event I particularly enjoyed the keynote speech from respected “Futurist” Rohit Talwar. He’s inspired me to look further into the future about what’s next in business technology so I’ve just started one of his books – The Future of Business.

Here’s one of his presentations on YouTube – he’s well worth watching.

Also having really enjoyed my recent public speaking engagements I’ve decided it’s time for us to take the next step and do some video content for our website for the first time. I’ve challenged my colleagues to join me so watch out for our vlog debuts in January. Filming starts just before Christmas. Should be an interesting challenge!!

My next article in this series will be in January. Please let me know if you’ve got any questions that you would like me to address (confidentially of course!!!) via andrew@edburydaley.com I’m also interested to hear about what you are doing in terms of your professional development.

Alternatively follow us on Twitter or Linked In.

If you’ve found this article useful, you REALLY need to read our Procurement & Spend Management Insider report. It’s designed to give you an insight into the employment market conditions for your skills, so it really would be remiss of you to miss it! You can register to download the latest edition here.

Andrew Daley

Director, Procurement & Spend Management

Procurement Leaders – The Talent Attraction Reality

Published: By: Andrew Daley

We attend a lot of procurement conferences and events and as a result we hear a lot of CPOs talk about their businesses, their priorities and their objectives.One of the common themes is the attraction and retention of talent.

In a recent report on the Future of Procurement by SAP Ariba they quoted some interesting statistics: 63% of procurement leaders do not have an established talent management strategy. The main barriers to achieving organisational efficiency enabled by digital procurement are:

Lack of data – 23%
Budgetary restrictions – 19%
Lack of internal talent/knowhow – 17%
Shortage of external talent – 13%

So when you combine the two figures for talent shortage (internal and external) you get 30% which effectively makes it the biggest barrier to organisational efficiency.

So CPOs are making all the right noises about the importance of people but what is the reality?

Or to put it another way, is procurement making savings or adding value in the recruitment process?

Procurement has gained significant savings in the recruitment category over the past 15 years. The implementation of PSLs and the leverage of the company’s buying power yielded easy wins. But with many recruitment companies now operating at tight margins the opportunity for further savings seems limited.

In light of this Procurement needs to add value to the business in terms of supply of recruitment services. Rather than view recruitment as a commodity to be bought mainly on price is there opportunity to find value? Let’s not forget, barely an annual report is published without a CEO reminding us that ‘people are our greatest asset’. So why is such a business critical category reduced to the lowest common denominator?

The commonplace commoditisation of recruitment is underpinned by the binary perception that a vacancy is simply either filled or not filled. Therefore it is just a question of filling the position for the lowest possible cost. To move away from this view requires insight in to time to hire and performance of the new recruit over a sustained period of time.

The first variable is easy to measure but a little harder to evaluate, particularly for highly specialist positions where the potential candidate pool is small. For example it’s unreasonable to compare time to hire for an office based admin position, where the candidate pool is huge, to time to hire for a rare skill set position, where only a handful of relevant candidates exist in a given geographical region.

Nevertheless, the recruitment supplier’s ability to find and place candidates as quickly as possible undoubtedly has a clear value to the hiring company, therefore should be part of the supplier selection criteria.

The second variable is the performance of the new recruit over a period of time. Anecdotally, most senior managers will know who their star team members are and who are only just meeting the minimum performance requirements. However, turning this into quantifiable data is a real challenge. And how often does the senior manager trace back the origins of the high performer in terms of which recruiter sourced the candidate, and then use this information to influence the choice of recruitment supplier going forward?

The typical PSL based contingency recruitment supplier arrangement serves to reinforce the commodity view. By instructing, say, three agencies on a vacancy using the ‘no placement, no fee model’ urgency is created amongst the suppliers. This helps minimise time to hire as the agencies race to ‘win’ the fee but incentivises the suppliers to submit only candidates they can access immediately rather than seek the best possible fit for culture and performance potential which may be a little more time consuming. In other words the long term value to the business may well have been sacrificed for speed.

Much is made by forward thinking procurement leaders of supplier relationship management. By forming a true partnership with suppliers they can create an opportunity for collaboration and innovation that benefits both supplier and customer. Examples cited often come from the procurement of components or raw materials but could this extend to recruitment services?

We have written many articles on how companies can improve their talent attraction, streamline their selection processes and get a deal done with the right candidate. Our knowhow and experience has the potential to be a game changer for a customer looking to be better. Will procurement embrace that opportunity?

Movers and Shakers

Published: By: Sharmina August
blog-pic-movers-and-shakers

Leadership change at SAP Ariba EMEA

The big news in the sector so far this year is that Paul Devlin, EMEA General Manager of SAP Ariba left the business just before Easter. Devlin was a highly respected leader with a strong sales background and great passion for working closely with his customers. He was a key part of the growth of Ariba in Europe since the SAP acquisition and will be a significant loss to the business.

His move to Edenhouse keeps him firmly in the SAP Ecosystem and it will be interesting to see if they enter the Ariba market under his influence to supplement their strengths in SAP and specifically Success Factors.

However, the business has moved to restructure the sales function under new global leader Pat McCarthy who is highly regarded, particularly in the US. McCarthy reports into the President Barry Padgett who took over after Alex Atberger’s move to SAP Hybris at the end of 2017.

The excellent commercial team assembled by Devlin is part of his legacy to the business, and in former Emptoris stalwart Justin Sadler-Smith, the business has a very experienced leader in the UK. His background will make him the ideal person to leverage the huge potential of their partnership with IBM on cognitive procurement.

Justin’s boss Dean Pathak continues to lead Northern Europe with Patrick Hyati leading the southern half of the continent. Both have impressive teams including a newly appointed Sales Director in France.

In terms of consulting, implementation and customer success, there has been some senior level restructuring rewarding a number of high performers with bigger roles.

In summary, SAP Ariba looks as well set to attract and retain both enterprise and midmarket customers as ever despite the departure of Devlin.

Shares rise as Coupa hits profitability

There’s also a positive outlook at Coupa where they have reported a first quarterly profit and a healthy share price which is bucking trends in US markets weighed down by a potential trade war.

Diginomica reported that “Coupa announced a strong end to their fiscal 2018 as the spend management firm turned in its first non-GAAP quarterly profit of $884,000, on revenues up 41% year-on-year to $53.8 million. Subscription revenues were 46.6 million, up38% year-over-year and comprised 87% of total revenue.”

CEO Rob Bernshteyn commented: “From a financial perspective, just three short years ago, over 75% of our new subscription revenues came from our core procurement applications. But today, that figure is less than 50%, with more and more coming from expense management, invoice management, supplier information management, and a host of other key offerings.”

Coupa lost an established, well respected European leader in Alex Kleiner last year. Their European Marketing Director Carina Hoogeveen also left, following Alex to Apptus. Both have since left Apptus with Carina joining Icertis, the cloud based contract management business who have been hiring aggressively in the UK in past six months.

In our last report we covered the news that long time European GM Gerard Dahan had left Ivalua to join Determine last September. Ivalua moved to replace him with Franck Lehereux joining from JDA Software early in 2018.

Acquisitions & Mergers

There have also been significant changes in ownership in the sector, most notably Jaggaer’s acquisition of BravoSolution and what was effectively a reverse takeover of Perfect Commerce by Proactis.

It’s still relatively early days for both newly formed organisations. There were a number of departures at BravoSolution in the US shortly after the deal was announced but the European businesses are largely untouched so far in terms of headcount. Given Jaggaer’s relatively small presence in Europe prior to the deal, this seems sensible.

It will be interesting to observe if there is any further restructuring, redundancies or senior hires, and of course how they intend to align the various technology offerings now available in both
newly merged companies.

More recently Advanced Solutions acquired Science Warehouse for £16m as part of their ambitions to grow its portfolio of cloud based solutions. Science Warehouse has an established client base which is at its strongest in the UK public sector including the NHS and various Universities.

This article was originally published as part of our Spring 2018 Procurement and Spend Management Insider Report. To read the full report click here.