Trading Partners was one of the earliest technology firms I was aware of in the e-auction arena.  They were founded in London in 2001 and established a pretty strong profile quickly as far as I can remember. They certainly seemed to have ‘early mover’ advantage in that market. But last week I understand there were office closures in the US (not the main office) and some immediate staff layoffs; that was quickly followed by issue of consultation notices (the prelude to likely redundancies) in the London office amongst some support and operational staff.

Now this doesn’t necessarily mean it is critical for the firm; I also understand there has been investment in front line sales staff in an attempt to drive revenue.   And their new CFO, Ginger Gorden, may be looking to get the cost base aligned with revenues early in her incumbency.  But I wonder if the narrowness of their product range is an issue; there are competitors who are highly capable in running auctions (BravoSolution, Intenda, Emptoris immediately come to mind) but also offer a much wider range of sourcing capabilities.  Clients may be increasingly looking for that broader approach.

What does this mean for customers? Well, if you are a fairly ‘tactical’ user of Trading Partners products or services, there is no need to worry too much; let’s face it, you are likely to be owing them money rather than vice versa, and there are clearly many alternative providers of auction technology \ services if (and it is a big ‘if’) things got worse.  But if you have a more strategic relationship or are involved in longer term projects or development with them, it may be worth having a serious discussion with your account person at Trading Partners to establish exactly what is going on in the firm, and what re-assurance they can offer about meeting your needs.

Last night’s CIPS SM Awards was another success, with Rory Bremner just about staying the right side of sarcasm, a high-quality dessert (and two other courses), a good atmosphere and an excellent set from the Front Covers, featuring two of our professional colleagues.  They are  a very talented covers band, well up to the standard of many bands who playi full-time and professionally.  I have a vague memory of being provoked to wave my arms and legs around by their killer version of ‘Word Up’ by Cameo (one of the greatest party records of all time).

Well done to everyone who won, including Premier Foods / British Sugar who won the overall award, and let’s hope that the sponsors such as BravoSolution, Hays, QinetiQ and Amex felt they got something out of it as they’re a key part of supporting the event.

As we said previously, the short list for the Purchaser of the Year was the strongest ever, so particular congratulations to Ian Bolger. And our Young Purchaser of the Year has great hair – I was very jealous (of his youth, his talent and his hair).

The full list of winners is below but a few other highlights;

1. Which senior procurement executive has obviously mastered the art of being in two places at one time, being listed in the programme under two different job titles on two separate tables?

2. The reception for the Caravan Club was amazing – they obviously struck some deep-seated emotion in the crowd and got the biggest cheer of the night when their nomination was read out. BDR Thermea were then booed for winning the category and denying the Club their big moment!

3. The Defence Storage and Distribution Agency prize was collected by a gentleman in the uniform of the Logistics Core who looked like he could probably defeat the entire Taliban in hand to hand combat on his own … impressive! (Rory Bremner very noticeably did not take the p**s out of him!)

4. The Best Wine Served at a Table Award went for the 49^th year in succession to The Buying Team for a cheeky little 2003 Claret…

5. The Front Covers’ encore, Mustang Sally, featured a glamorous impromptu backing chorus including eminent professionals such as Ms Wilber and Ms Gibbs. Rumours of a 4- CD deal with a multi-million £ advance were rife… Meanwhile, a very nice pink chiffon scarf was modelled beautifully by one of our recent (very male) CIPS Presidents….

LIST OF WINNERS

The public sector did less well than it has in some recent years, and there was generally a good split of winners across a pretty wide range of sectors.

………..

Supplier Relationship M’mgment  - Premier Foods / British Sugar

Corporate Responsibility  - Allied Bakeries

Cross Functional Teamwork  - Axa UK

People Development  - Defence Storage & Distribution Agency

Most Improved (Start-Up) -  BDR Thermea

Most Improved ( Step Change) -  Co-operative Group

Best Public Project  - Surrey County Council

International Project -  Jaguar Land Rover

Young Professional  - Stephen Harratt

Professional of the Year  - Ian Bolger

OVERALL WINNER Premier Foods / British Sugar

For those of a wider political bent, the Spectator, which is one of the very best political and current affairs websites whatever your political persuasion, has been running a series looking ahead to the Spending Review.  As part of that, they’ve had articles on how Canada and New Zealand managed to cut their deficits successfully; and very interesting they are too.

As we approach the UK Spending Review next month which will lay out more detailed plans for our own reductions, I’ll leave you to judge whether the Coalition is going down the right track based on these experiences elsewhere.  In all honesty it is probably too early to say, and how well the process is being managed may not be clear until we are well into implementation phase.  But it does concentrate the mind to think that one day in not too many years’ time, the current UK experience will be used as a case study itself; and in all probability, as an example of either great success or great failure.  The scale of what is planned here means it is unlikely to end up somewhere between!

I was delighted to be invited to tomorrow’s CIPS Supply Management awards by BravoSolution, the main sponsors of the event (yes, being a typical procurement person, I’m still trying to find out how much it cost them…)

Anyway, last night was spent trying on my ballgown and pearls and deciding which tiara to wear ready for the dinner…well, OK, I’ve been checking that my dress shirt is reasonably clean and I have a bow tie that doesn’t revolve or light up when you squeeze it.  Women have much more fun when it comes to these things; although I have to say our masculine lives are much easier. But given my total lack of any sense of design, colour or style I don’t think I’d be getting featured in Vogue or even Supply Management whatever my gender..!  Rory Bremner is the host – he did it quite a few years ago and was very funny, if a touch sarcastic about our profession at times, so I’m looking forward to seeing him perform.  Has he perfected his Clegg and Cameron yet?

Hope to see many friends and colleagues there; I’ve thought about trying to live blog from the event but I suspect that may be too difficult.  Subject to reception etc I will try and Twitter…. so why not sign up to follow us on Twitter and make sure you hear the latest on who is winning the big awards, which CPO has fallen over the balcony in a drunken haze, who has come to blows over the future of reverse auctions.  All the news that is fit to Tweet in fact.

Continuing our look at technology providers that aren’t as yet high profile, but are showing strong growth based on interesting products…today a bit about Science Warehouse. SW (as we’ll call them) were formed about 10 years ago in a ’spin off’ from Leeds University.  Their particular niche is in providing eProcurement technology to customers with specialist  scientific needs; largely universities, but also research bodies, pharma companies and similar.  “Providing an Amazon type buying experience to the user in the laboratory” was how Dr. Jonathan Betts, their Sales & Marketing Director described it to me.

Their strength lies in their ability to catalogue highly complex scientific products – for an example, click here to see a Spend Matters feature which has a great example (screen shot pictures ) showing the complexity of some of the products that SW are successfully cataloguing. As the Spend Matters piece says:

What you see above is an example of a k. lactis Expression Kit that offers “an easy method of expressing a gene of interest in the yeast kluyveromyces lactis.” A paperclip or stapler in an eProcurement catalog it is not! The SKU attributes, images and related materials and attachments are all important to the potential buyer, yet it’s unlikely that a standard catalog content management solution could easily manage all of the attributes and information, especially in an environment where suppliers self-manage at least some aspects of their own information.  Science Warehouse excels in the cataloging, search and presentation of this information to a technical buying audience.

As well as the catalogue capability, SW have developed an eProcurement suite of products that can sit alongside and interface with a customer’s ERP system (for instance, as a ‘punch -out’ from Oracle or other ERP), or can act as a standalone P2P procurement platform with RFQs for mini-competitions and other capability.  The last couple of years have been very successful with growth of around 50% per annum, and they’ve gained some blue chip clients particularly in the university world.

They’re based in Leeds and their senior team have serious scientific backgrounds.  Their focus is very clear; and they seem to have found an interesting niche here with some capability that is quite distinct.

The Guardian reports a rush to bet on Paul Weller for the Mercury Music Prize.  His odds have dropped to a frankly ridiculous 1/10 on.  Which probably goes to show the imperfections of markets…

Anyway, despite this (below) from my post on July 30th , it wasn’t me distorting the odds over the last couple of days, promise!

Paul Weller:   PS rating 8;      Betfair odds (approx) 30 – 1;    PS odds 6-1

A very strange but often quite wonderful album. As I said when I reviewed it here; “one of the most interesting and occasionally perplexing album I’ve heard for ages”.  If they want an established artist doing something brave and a bit mad, pushing the boundaries after 30 years in the business…this is it.  A good long shot.

Always thought 30/1 were daft odds though… and yes, I did get a piece of that on Betfair so I will be delighted if he comes through!

TOUGH TIMES FOR UK GOVERNMENT SUPPLIERS?

The Sunday Times reports that the negotiations with major suppliers to Government “could”  lead to profit warnings shortly from some companies, and that Francis Maude has ”demanded’ £800 milion “off suppliers’ bills”.  Their headline is; “Government’s summer cost-cutting drive forces 19 companies, including BT, G4S and Serco, to sign agreements to shrink operations”.

The article talks of them ’shrinking the scope of their public sector work’, which to me sounds subtly different from price cuts (which is how this was originally positioned).  “The government is expected to reduce the specifications of some of its supply deals, which will save money on both sides”, is another comment; which sounds eminently sensible, but again is not actually a ‘price reduction’.  We have been somewhat negative about the way this programme has been carried out, but remain open minded and wait with interest to see the detail of these outcomes…

KIWIS BUY TRAINS, DON’T JUST PLAY RUGBY SHOCK

At the other side of the world, KiwiRail has today released its Request for Proposal documentation to the 11 companies short-listed to manufacture new electric trains for Auckland, New Zealand, reports NZNEWSUK.  11 sounds a bit of a long short list; I would not normally want to see more then 8 absolute maximum.  11 creates a real burden for the buyer, and is requiring 10 firms to do a lot of work for nothing, which is not very productive. So as we move out of the northern hemisphere summer….  do you need any consulting support in Auckland, guys?  Very reasonable rates….

NOT SO SWEET FOR PROCUREMENT STAFF AT ZAMBIA SUGAR

We’ve been predicting growth in procurement outsourcing for a while but to be honest we weren’t particualrly thinking of Zambia Sugar, which has “outsourced its procurement department to Circle Transtra, one of the largest freight forwarding and clearing company in the country”, according  to The Zambian Post Online.

“The development has also declared staff in the department redundant, and they will soon be separated from the company”, it reports; doesn’t look like there is any of this TUPE stuff in place here?  There is no real explanation as to the drivers behind this decision, but the spokesman does assure local suppliers that they won’t be disadvantaged in any way by the move.

While we’re still in the enthusiastic, weather still good (well…), back to school mood, our next ‘New Year’s Resolution’ is to stand back and take a hard look at your current and future strategy around procurement-related technology.

Since I got into this blogging thing, and made a conscious effort to get more up to date with this whole area, I’ve bean amazed by how much things have progressed in the few years since I had a more direct interest in running procurement functions (as a full time then interim CPO).  It really is worth making sure you’re up to date.

So for some organisations, reviewing your current opportunities may mean looking to take first steps into real ‘eSourcing’ or P2P automation.  For others who are already well advanced on the journey, it means reviewing recent market developments to ensure you’re remaining at the leading edge.

Spend Matters published this a few weeks back, which I thought proposed a very good way of classifying procurement and supply chain technology into three high-level sectors or “uber-segments” as Jason called them:

1. Supplier information management – incorporating supplier enablement, performance management,  risk, and spend analysis (which could arguably be seen as a separate ‘uber-segment I guess).
2. Next generation sourcing / collaborative sourcing – which includes the well-known strategic sourcing toolsets from vendors including Ariba, Intenda, Emptoris, BravoSolution, Iasta etc; sourcing decision support (e.g. optimisation), marketplace offerings, and also commodity strategy / trading type technology in more specialist categories.
3. Finance-driven purchasing; including ERP systems, but also technology supporting working capital and treasury objectives.  Jason points out that this sector is very  dynamic, and that the dominance of traditional ERP providers is perhaps not as embedded as you might think.

So, we can’t generalise about what the right strategy is for any particular organisation, but why not take the opportunity this Autumn to review where you are, where you want to be, and how technology across these three sectors can help you get there.  And Spend Matters and Procurement Excellence will do what we can to help – without pretending we have all the answers!

Here is the recording of my interview last week with Paul Mallory of the IACCM (International Association for Contract and Commercial Management).  The topic is ‘buying professional services” and the disucssion covers key issues discussed in our book.

It goes on for an hour ….. and it’s not like desert island discs I’m afraid, I wasn’t allowed to play “Oliver’s Army” or “Surrender” half way through….

And another plug for IACCM; a very forward thinking and interesting organisation with a lot of good ‘open access’ material available on their website, and further benefits for members.  Have a look if you haven’t done so before.

Liam Fox has scuppered the idea of a shared UK / French aircraft carrier.   Spend Matters have a good piece here including the first time I have seen the word ‘buggary’ included in that blog…and a classic Monty Python excerpt…but we can go one better.

We have just obtained a copy of a secret document from our sources in Whitehall, and despite great personal risk we have decided it is in the public interest to publish it.  It tells the full tragic story of what went wrong with this innovative and potentially highly cost effective idea…..

SECRET

Notes from the first (and last) meeting of the Anglo-French Aircraft Carrier Strategy and Design Committee

Present:

Admiral Sir Archibald Nelson-Mountbatten  (2nd Sea Lord, Britsh Navy)   (ANM)

William Hudson, GCMG (UK Ministry of Defence)       (WH)

Amiral Napoleon Marquis de Sade de Carrefour  (French navy)      (NMSC)

Francois Leclerc (Minstere de Defence, France)      (FL)

FL opened the meeting with traditional French fraternal greetings (’ou est le stylo de ma tante?’)

WH responded ’sur le pont D’Avignon’.

ANM called ‘Heads’ successfully, so once FL had inspected the coin, the meeting was held in English.

ANM said he was very happy to be discussing this collaboration.

FL said that ‘collaboration’ was perhaps not the best word to use with the French military leadership.  ‘Cooperation’ had fewer historical resonances in France.

NMSC said there were a few things he needed to get on the table.  Notably, that the lunch break was a non-negotiable 3 hours, and wine would be served at every meal including breakfasts.  He was also worried that now female ratings were part of the ship’s company, then clearly the British sailors wouldn’t get a look in with all the handsome French sailors around.  Although from what he had heard, maybe les Anglais weren’t all that interested in the ladies, si vous savez what I mean?

ANM’s response has been struck from the records.

There was then a long discussion about the recreational facilities to be provided.  A multi-purpose Boules and Croquet pitch was agreed as a good compromise.

WH commented it was a good job the Spanish weren’t involved, we’d have to build a b****y bull-ring on the aft deck.

The likely mobilisation of the ship was discussed.  FL said he couldn’t really see it going any further than Marseilles, not much point really, maybe have a little sail around the Med in September, nice that time of year.

ANM stressed the need to provide South Atlantic and possibly Antarctic capability.  NMSC said he couldn’t really see his men putting up with all that cold, it was only a few stupid islands anyway.

ANM’s comment has been struck from the records.

It was agreed that the ship should have some guns.  Big guns were very much preferred if there was any money left after building the ship.

WH stressed that the contracts for construction would have to be let in a fair and transparent manner.

FL said he agreed, his procurement team in Paris were already working on it, and it would be let in exactly the same professional manner as all other French military contracts.  He was confident that British suppliers would have an excellent chance of winning the business.  NMSC appeared to have a coughing fit at this point.

Unfortunately, the project was deemed cancelled after agreement could not be reached on two key points:

1. Whether the planes would take off / land from the starboard or port side
2. Left or right hand drive?

The meeting was cordially terminated at 12 noon precisely (dejeuner).