Supplier management technologies have come far in recent years, buoyed by their early adoption to enable specific initiatives (e.g. supplier diversity, supplier on-boarding for eProcurement, supplier performance management). For broader sourcing, modern supplier management covers not only the data points needed to keep the accounts payable team happy when they onboard new suppliers -- it spans a broad range of areas such as commodities, capabilities, capacities, credit and other supply chain risk, corporate and regulatory compliance, geographical coverage, diversity, performance and more. This topic and others are explored in more detail in our latest Spend Matters Compass brief: Supplier Management -- Recent Trending, Musings on SAP's Core Offering and General Deployment Pitfalls (for all Solutions) to Avoid.

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Today, we announce our most recent research focused on the services procurement area: A Statement of Work (SOW) Backdrop -- The Foundation of a Business Case. The paper can be downloaded for free via the previous link. Like other observers of the services procurement market, we have witnessed a significant ramping up of many contingent workforce and services procurement programs within Global 2000 organizations over the past few years. For companies serious about general procurement programs and enablement through technology, the additional investment in a VMS (vendor management system) to tackle contingent spending is a logical extension to core capabilities in the indirect purchase-to-pay arena. It also enables additional spend analysis, e-sourcing, contract management and supplier management capabilities.

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Electronic invoicing (e-invoicing) and invoice automation can deliver a range of hard-dollar savings and working capital improvement benefits to procurement (both sourcing and supplier management/development teams) and finance (treasury and A/P, rolling up to the CFO) organizations. If you need any proof of this (or how to effectively build a business case for electronic invoicing), download our latest research on the subject (available for free, courtesy of Basware, Coupa, OB10, Rearden Commerce and Verian). This paper, E-Invoicing Comes of Age -- Discovering What's Possible From the Latest Electronic Invoicing/Invoice Automation Capabilities, provides an ideal primer on the opportunity for e-invoicing, put into business terms. But country-specific regulations still appear to be the key motivating force for organizations to adopt a set of key technologies that they should be doing anyway.

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We've done it again. Spend Matters has made yet another attempt at distilling an important topic into a piece of core research that we hope will become essential reading for companies both getting started or wanting to accelerate their efforts in a specific area of the market. In the case of our latest Compass research series, we've focused on electronic invoicing and invoice automation. We purposely took a counter approach to Gartner and Forrester ratings in this report (read: no MQ/wave or vendor shortlist), completely avoiding mentions of key vendors.

Rather, we've distilled to the core at a level we've not seen in P2P research so far of what comprise e-invoicing capabilities as well as its fit within a broader procurement, AP and treasury environment. Download this report, E-Invoicing Comes of Age -- Discovering What's Possible From the Latest Electronic Invoicing / Invoice Automation Capabilities, today, at no charge.

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In my first real job out of graduate school, I spent much of my day analyzing structured and unstructured information to come up with potential scenarios for companies, industries and markets. The firm I worked for specialized in what's known among corporate strategy-types as "scenario planning." This type of scenario modeling work differentiates from purely data-driven financial and supply chain forecasting exercises by introducing qualitative inputs as well as enabling participants in the exercise to have a say, and in fact participate in the outcome and analysis that results. I've always found scenario approaches for conceiving where the future may take us to be a useful exercise, and one that can be accomplished in surprisingly pragmatic ways with actionable output. Moreover, scenarios can help inspire those who either participate in their creation or review the resulting materials. In our latest Spend Matters Compass research brief, The Future of Procurement Analytics and Content -- Three Scenarios For Company Adoption, we've attempted to bring alive multiple scenarios for where analytics and embedded content will take procurement in the future based upon technology that is available is today.

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We're excited to announce the availability of our most fun -- and we believe most insightful -- research analysis of procurement BPO to date: Tips for Making the Promised BPO Benefits Real -- Alignment, Focus and Integration. The paper, co-authored by HfS' Phil Fersht and Spend Matters' Jason Busch, personalizes what it takes to get the most from procurement BPO relationships. The secondary title just about says it all: "Jason Busch and Phil Fersht Apply Lessons From Dating and Marriage to Procurement BPO." Despite the whimsical lead-in, this Compass research brief is not all fun and games (though we hope the more informal tone will leave you amused). In fact, the analysis offers some highly prescriptive areas for company introspection before heading down the BPO path (e.g., process maturity examinations, dangers of "lift and shift" thinking and skills, and knowledge awareness) as well specific advice on what potential partners should bring to the table.

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Today, Spend Matters and HfS Research announce the first paper in their jointly authored research series: Expecting More From Procurement BPO. For those who don't know HfS, the firm has quickly grown from a means for CEO Phil Fersht to hide his costly single malt collecting habit from his lovely wife into a rapidly expanding global powerhouse on the BPO analyst front with an open expense account at all the Mandarin Orientals (and a few more dodgy establishments as well). While some might suggest the concept of this jointly authored series grew out of Phil's and my desire to collaborate on an analyst/research model in the spirit of the convivial execs in Mad Men, the truth is that we started working together on this thing because we were both flabbergasted by the opportunity that procurement BPO presents for many companies in contrast with the lack of sustaining value delivered in past engagements. Thus the charter behind this joint research series was born: to highlight how procurement BPO should work in practice based on lessons learned, both past and present.

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When we publish an article on Spend Matters looking at supply risk, commodity volatility, supplier performance or another topic that I often find of significant genuine interest from a public service perspective, we're lucky if we get five hundred views in a twenty-four period (contrast this with an article highlighting the use of a somewhat undifferentiated technology and you'll see that "what sells" is not always what I see as the most important topic). Alas, given the importance of the supply risk, I'll never give up on the discussion and plan to continue to share stories such as this one, which highlights the potential of disruptions in the supply chain. The above-linked piece provides solid historical context, from what I often describe as the logistical secret of certain manufacturing industries, the air freighting of parts (which was heavily disrupted during the volcano eruption in Iceland earlier this year), to older but still useful stories including how Nokia trumped Ericsson during a capacity constrained situation for radio frequency chips.

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Spend Matters is thrilled to announce our most recent Compass Research brief, Making ERP Procurement Technology Work -- Essential Third-Party Technologies, Solutions and Deployment Models to Accelerate Returns, part of our third Compass volume series: Getting the Most from ERP Procurement and Spend Management Applications. It's based not only on our recent research in the area, including dozens of interviews with practitioners, systems implementation experts, and vendors, but also our many years of past analysis and deep dives into examining what's been successful or not in SAP and Oracle P2P implementations. The best part about it -- like all of our other research -- is that there's no cost to download. It's free.

Our analysis takes a detailed look at three separate areas where third-party vendors and ERP partners (including those which are not formally aligned with the ERP ecosystem) can help practitioners greatly improve the returns they get from their procurement and general P2P investments. These three areas are: supplier onboarding, catalog and master data management (MDM) and invoice automation/connectivity.

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