• Are your records current, do you have all the important facts, have you managed to sift through the numerous redundant data points that are continuously being collected?
• Are you paying the right vendor, only once per PO, using the right payment terms -- without running afoul of internal compliance, IRS or other regulations?

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To bring scenario four alive, let's consider two examples of how Global Supply Chain Intelligence [will] Dictate Winners and Losers in the next procurement decade. Beginning with supply chain risk, it does not take much imagination to consider the impact on suppliers and supply availability of a hypothetical natural disaster in Asia later in 2013 combined with demand uncertainty in the EU. Under this example, with reduced commitments to suppliers from smaller order volumes in Europe -- which may cascade and create working capital challenges for smaller, sub-tier suppliers -- combined with the temporary shut-down of facilities from potential weather/earthquake related damage and power outages, the potential for supply disruptions much larger than the type we've faced from hard-drive shortages owing to the flooding in Thailand in 2011 becomes abundantly clear.

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The fourth scenario in our procurement predictions for the next decade focuses entirely on the central nervous system of procurement and the ability of organizations not only to sense what is going on around them ahead of others -- and the market -- but to also respond accordingly. Specifically, we have titled this scenario: Global Supply Chain Intelligence Dictates Winners and Losers. Supporting the assertion that supply chain intelligence will triumph über alles, our belief is that 2012 (and beyond) will mark a continuation of the volatility we've seen in the broader economic, commodity, geographic and political landscapes. For example, if we add up just some of the factors comprising supply chain risk that have increased dramatically in recent years (e.g., financial, labor, product/material compliance, CSR practices and natural disaster/weather) it becomes abundantly clear how important successfully sensing and responding to distributed intelligence across the globe will become for procurement organizations.

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D&B's new D&B Direct offering (which packages D&B content and makes it available to consume via API in packaged software applications or via other web applications) required the content provider to reexamine its pricing models given the real-time access to current data that the offering provides. D&B's Supply Management API pricing is based largely on four different characteristics: the number of users transaction with the system, bundled & term discounts, number of calls per year and any premium or additional add-on services/content tied to the contract. Pricing ultimately ties back to the number of hits or calls to the D&B data which also, of course, ties to the number of users based on tiers (e.g., 1-10, 11-50, 51-100, 101-200, 201-500, 501-1000, >1000+).

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In the first two posts in this series (which you can read here and here), we offered up a first look into The Coupa Spend Optimizer product, a new spend analysis solution that is actually much broader -- but in places not as deep -- as other spend analysis offerings in the market today. These posts contain numerous screen shots of the product in addition to a couple of new additional screen grabs at the end of this post. In this final post looking at Coupa's new spend analytics solution, we'll include our analysis and recommendations for Coupa customers/prospects and competitors/partners:

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When users log-on to Coupa's Spend Optimizer solution, they are greeted with a welcome screen that allows them to quickly navigate to different reports and activity-specific dashboards. What immediately stands out about Coupa Spend Optimizer is how the solution is tightly integrated with Coupa's P2P capability. Popular reports not only show purchase price trending, on/off contract spend and related reports, but also trending details and insights focused on the actual P2P approval process, including average approval times, number of orders and recent spending. Users can also opt to analyze new data "mashups" -- an actual tab! -- that can combine both internal and third-party enrichment data to provide an even deeper view into spending insights. Coupa shared with Spend Matters that this type of mashup information might include supplier demographic data, market data (e.g., index information), commodity rebate information, pricing data and general market trending information.

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