Insight success the 10 most innovative procurement solution providers sept 2017

www.insightssuccess.com September 2017

PROCUREMENT

Company of the Month

CXO Standpoint

Technology Innovation:

An indispensable factor in business

Thought Leadership How Technology is Driving Procurement?

Rui Dias-Ferreira Founder & CEO

Kiki Dikmen Managing Partner

Delivering Financial Efď€ ciencies Related to Energy and Sustainability

Editorial

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n this tech-centered landscape, have you tried gathering information without using Google? Would you prefer performing complex calculations on paper, instead of using an Excel document? How would the design process commence if Photoshop were to be replaced with crayons or sketch pens? Though all of these alternative options might seem attractive for some, why would anyone prefer such options when technology single-handedly makes it easier, faster and more efďŹ cient for us to perform such activities.

Grabbing Hold the Opportunity of Procurement

The procurement landscape is no different, wherein would you prefer to shift through hundreds of line items to derive the most minute understanding of your organizations' spend? Or for tracking the performance of your thousand-odd number of suppliers, measuring each of their individual performance and ensuring compliance? Doing all these in the most traditional and manual manner is far from practical, or rather downright unnecessary considering the available tools which could function the same task in a much speedy and accurate fashion.

Today, procurement plays an instrumental role to the success of an organization. The need for businesses to implement procurement solutions is evident as organizations need tools and technology to make a difference in their respective industries, and procurement ensures just that and much more. It is responsible for an umbrella of initiatives, and makes complex business processes much easier, efďŹ cient and speedier, thereby enabling organizations to meet business expectations. Choosing an archaic method, despite having knowledge of this is equivalent to dropping a hammer on your feet.

Procurement ensures an organization to stay ahead of the race by simplifying various parts of a very complex system.

In the years to come, the procurement industry is expected to continue its rise in development and expand its ability to directly impact upon organizations.

Sourav Mukherjee

Enabling Business Processes to Deliver Upon its Business Expectations

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raditionally viewed as a backroom function, Procurement has always been a challenging process for organizations. Back then, it was manual and many of the procurement tasks required extensive time and effort to function. Additionally, the lack of transparency made it difficult to attain relevant procurement information, whenever needed. But today the influence of disruptive technologies—from Big Data to IoT—coupled with economic uncertainty has surged the need for procurement, more than ever before.

With new requisites and higher expectations plaguing procurement teams, contemplating over the need for procurement solution is an absurd thought, to say the least. Enterprises need tools and technology to make a difference in its cutthroat industry and Procurement ensures just that, and a lot more. It helps make complex business processes a lot easier, faster and efficient, thereby enabling organizations to deliver upon its business expectations.

Keeping in mind the distinctive advantages and offers that Procurement solutions bring to the table and how it is serving the industry, Insights Success has shortlisted “The 10 Most Innovative Procurement Solution Providers, 2017”, which are steering organizations ahead of their competition.

Featuring in our Cover Story, Choice Energy Services Retail, LP stands tall in the energy procurement and utility management industry with its technology-enabled energy management solution delivering financial efficiencies related to energy and sustainability. Shortlisted as the Company of the Month, VORTAL is an international leading eSourcing and eProcurement platform for the public and private sector, connecting hundreds of buyers with an international network of thousands qualified suppliers.

Apart from the above, we also have shortlisted Bureau van Dijk, which is a major publisher of business information, and specializes in private company data combined with software for searching and analyzing companies; Cleritum, which helps many of the world’s largest enterprises, leading businesses and fast-growing service providers control their complex, frequently ordered expenditure; Science Exchange, which is the world’s leading platform for outsourced research, providing an efficient procure-to-pay platform for ordering services; Xeeva, Inc., which is driving the development and delivery of the next generation of intelligent procurement and financial solutions; kg³, which is designed to achieve maximum cost-savings for the customer through an efficient and transparent bid process with advanced analysis functionality; Inspired Change Solutions, which helps businesses perform optimally by simplifying and automating business processes to ensure constant focus on business goals; GreenLight Medical, which streamlines the workflow for hospital value analysis of new medical technology.

In addition to these, don’t forget to roll your eyes and expand your knowledge base through Technology Innovation: An indispensable factor in business by Donovan Chan in the CXO Standpoint section and our articles titled, How Technology is Driving Procurement?—Thought Leadership and How Implementation of Procurement Impacts the Supply Chain Excellence—Industry Perspective.

C O N T E N T S COVER STORY Choice Energy Services Retail LP: Delivering Financial Efď€ ciencies Related to Energy and Sustainability

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COMPANY OF THE MONTH

16

CXO STANDPOINT

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VORTAL: eProcurement Solutions that Brings Value to both Buyers and Suppliers

Technology Innovation: An indispensable factor in business

22 How Implementation of Procurement Impacts the Supply Chain Excellence

32

Bureau van Dijk: Curbing Uncertainty

by Delivering Information

20 Claritum: Driving A New Wave of Easy-to-use Procurement Products

26 GreenLight Medical: An All-in-one Cloud Software for Hospital Value Analysis

28 Inspired Change Solutions: Developing Customized Solutions for Clients

30 kg3: Freight Procurement Solutions that Achieves Maximum Cost-Savings

38 Science Exchange: An Innovative and Secure Platform for Outsourced Research and Development

40 Xeeva: A Global Provider of Intelligent Cloud-based Procurement Software

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Editor-in-Chief Pooja M. Bansal Senior Editor Ariana Lawrence Managing Editor Sourav Mukherjee Co-Editors David Smith Abhijeet Parade Shakti Tomar Visualiser David King Art & Design Director Amol Kamble Co-designer Alex Noel Picture Editor Vijaykumar Dudhbhate Art Editor Mayur Koli Business Development Manager Mike Thomas Nick Adams Marketing Manager Philip Walker Business Development Executives Andy, David, Peter, Kevin, John, Brian Research Analyst Jennifer Circulation Manager Robert Database Management Steve Technology Consultant Swapnil Patil

sales@insightssuccess.com

September, 2017 Corporate Ofď€ ces: Insights Success Media Tech LLC 555 Metro Place North, Suite 100, Dublin, OH 43017, United States Phone - (614)-602-1754 Email: info@insightssuccess.com For Subscription: Visit www.insightssuccess.com 7

Insights Success Media and Technology Pvt. Ltd. Ofď€ ce No. 513, 5th Floor, Rainbow Plaza, Shivar Chowk, Pimple Saudagar, Pune, Maharashtra 411017 Phone - India: 020-69400110, 111, 112 Email: meera@insightssuccess.in For Subscription: Visit www.insightssuccess.in ,

Cover Story

Delivering Financial EďŹƒciencies Related to Energy and Sustainability

Our mission is to better businesses through technology-enabled energy management solutions

Kiki Dikmen Managing Partner

Carmen Dikmen

otorious for being unstable and unpredictable, managing an energy portfolio can be a complex endeavor for any organization. Energy plays a vital role in any company’s success, but the unprecedented fluctuation in global, and more so regional, energy prices has intensified the need for quality energy procurement expertise like never before.

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spearhead the company to the direction of success. By leveraging his unique blend of visualization and entrepreneurial spirit, Dikmen expanded the size of Choice, its geographical reach and helped facilitate its move away from the traditional energy brokerage to deliver a portfolio of services that bring superior value to the retail energy market.

Extracting the highest value from every energy dollar requires a thorough procurement strategy tailored to meet the needs of each client; a concrete understanding of both the global and the local energy markets; an active monitoring insight over the imminent and the current demand, prices and hedges. Various large organizations have benefitted from the movement towards deregulation in the energy market; but it also accompanies risk.

The Past is always Tense; it’s about Making the Future Perfect Since its very inception, Choice has been striving to deliver better business results through incorporating technology as part of its solutions. Their journey has been a continuous learning experience as the needs of its vast customer base continue to change with time and market trends.

Choice Energy Services Retail LP (CES), a full-fledged energy procurement and utility management company, overcomes these risks and challenges with its complete suite of energy management services.

Delivering Solutions of Superior Value Established in 2002 owing to the decision of the Texas State Legislature to deregulate the electricity market and open up the supply of electricity to competition, Choice currently offers the industry’s most comprehensive energy management solutions.

The formation of Choice as a retail energy services company was a natural extension of skills that the commonly-owned wholesale companies already garnered in brokering natural gas options and wholesale power. The company’s advisory and risk management model is still rooted in active participation in the wholesale markets.

Leveraging the same with in-house technology and relationships with retail energy providers and utilities separates Choice’s total energy management solution from the crowd. The company delivers solutions of superior value for its clients by saving a considerable chunk of their time and money, thereby enabling them to invest more in managing their core business and for capital project improvements.

The Empires of the Future are Empires of the Mind Since growing up playing competitive tennis, Kiki Dikmen, the Managing Partner at Choice Energy Services had a similar approach to management as he had to his training. While smashing the green layered tennis balls with ferocious pace and immaculate timing and precision, Dikmen grabbed hold of the skill to predict and calculate his shots prior to the ball’s contact.

Later on, Dikmen utilized and incorporated his fair share of predictive abilities attained on the tennis court to envision the market scenario, set appropriate business targets and

Currently, Choice is experiencing a classic industry maturity transformation. Back when deregulation was introduced as a new concept, customers were unaware that they could “shop for energy.” This created a new layer of sometimes non-discerning intermediaries who created value simply by finding better prices than what the incumbent suppliers offered. As the market slightly matured, customers became aware of their choices in “shopping” for energy, which also included shopping for their brokers and consultants thereby sharpening the initial role and relatively low value of the intermediary space. Fast-forward a few years, and the growing market and the ameliorating customer maturity is forcing all existing and aspiring players in the energy space to figure out where they can add lasting or unique value if they indeed want to stay in the business. Choice has always been on the forefront of the changes in retail consulting, and today the company delivers a consultative business model underpinned by proprietary technology and centered on creating long-term, ongoing and sustainable value.

Engraving its Footmark within the Procurement Industry and Beyond Choice is active and licensed in all of North America’s deregulated natural gas and power markets. It aligns each client’s specific risk management objectives with strategically focused fundamental and technical market analytics. This provides clients with the requisite information and tools needed to make the most informed decisions about their future energy requirements.

In addition to these, Choice leverages the common ownership of OTC Global Holdings to empower clients to be price setters by ensuring price transparency into each market. This unique advantage ensures that clients are aligned with the best retail supplier.

Moreover, Choice not only focuses on procurement; rather, it lays focus on optimum savings and value to its clients.

“Its a la carte program gives clients the opportunity to

determine which services best fit their individualistic needs. The company continues to spread its tentacles by offering services: Strategic Power and Gas Procurement, Risk Management, Tariff Analysis, Budgeting, Utility Sales Tax Recovery, Utility Data Management, Engineering Consulting, Sustainability and Bill Pay. Choice is transparent and unbiased in its consultations and recommendations, thereby allowing clients to make smarter, data-driven decisions about their energy consumption and spending,” asserts Dikmen.

Going the Extra Mile as it’s Never Crowded Unlike most other energy consulting companies, Choice grew out of a wholesale market into a retail energy adviser to offer a portfolio of services.

Through Choice’s common ownership with OTC Global Holdings, Choice now stands in a superior position to independently monitor energy markets, advise on market related trends and aggressively negotiate and validate proposed energy rates.

Utilizing its unique market position and relationship with its affiliate company, OTCGH, Choice is able to empower clients to be price setters by ensuring optimum price transparency into each market. This distinctive market advantage ensures that its clients are aligned with the best retail supplier at the best price for their business, hence setting the company apart from its competitors.

It is because of these distinctive and individualistic services that have propelled Choice to experience relentless success since its inception in 2002. Choice has been named as Houston Business Journal’s Best Places to Work in Houston since 2012.

Formerly, Choice was named Houston’s Top 10 Fastest Growing Companies in 2012, Top 10 Most Promising Energy Management Solution and Top 20 Most Promising Procurement Solution Providers of 2016.

Choice Energy Services leads its clients through the entire procurement process; from identication of the opportunity, through the bid process, to contract negotiation and execution

“Choice Energy Services provides the nation’s most comprehensive energy management solutions built on integrity, customer value, expertise, and fostering strong partner relationships”

Adapting to the Evolving Industry Landscape The retail commodity industry is no longer about rate-shopping but rather a comprehensive approach. Companies are on a continuous lookout for solution providers and partners that can come in and address all clients’ needs. This includes rate shopping in deregulated areas, meter installs, expansion projects, solar applications, utility data management solutions and much more.

Through its technology-enabled energy management solutions, Choice strives to deliver better businesses outcomes.

According to Dikmen, “Choice has positioned itself to offer a comprehensive service through an award-winning active and intuitive proprietary online platform, CESConnect. Choice recognizes that innovation and enhancements around CESConnect is the key for its organization’s growth.”

With this in mind, Choice is on a continuous surge to improve its user experience by strengthening its mobile presence. The company has also witnessed a tremendous value in consolidating utility-level, meter-level and submeter-level data to create a single-access platform across currently fragmented, piece-meal solutions.

A Relationship that Offers Value As mentioned above, Choice leverages its access to wholesale markets through OTC Global Holdings, which is one of the largest liquidity providers to the NYMEX. OTCGH brokers around 50% of the natural gas options traded on the NYMEX; giving them the largest market share of any firm.

As Choice shares a common ownership, the relationship offers Choice valuable market knowledge about future prices for natural gas and wholesale power. This, in turn, gives Choice clients access to the widest variety of products and lowest prices available for active management of energy costs in real-time. There are only a handful of firms, around the globe, which have this kind of visibility into the commodities market that drives retail power prices.

The Picture Ahead for Choice In order to drive profitability and customer satisfaction, Choice is dedicated to building a strategic energy team that supports the rapid national growth by investing in employee talent. Choice will also continue to participate in its extensive community, giving back to local organizations like the Houston Food Bank. Currently, Choice is running the Meal for Deal campaign – an initiative to raise funds and awareness to help feed hungry families in the Houston area.

At a higher level, Choice is keeping a close eye on Mexico’s energy markets not only because they are the indirect drivers for energy markets in the U.S., but also for potential business opportunities and expansion.

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Company Name

Management

Brief

Bureau van Dijk bvdinfo.com

Mark Schwerzel Deputy CEO

BvD is a major publisher of business information, and specializes in private company data combined with software for searching and analyzing companies;

Choice Energy Services Retail, LP choiceenergyservices.com

Kiki Dikmen Managing Partner

CES is a Technology-enabled energy management solution delivering financial efficiencies related to energy and sustainability.

Claritum claritum.com

James Samuels Co-Founder & CEO

Claritum helps many of the world’s largest enterprises, leading businesses and fast-growing service providers control their complex, frequently ordered expenditure such as marketing & operational print, promotional products, uniforms & apparel, packaging, IT & consumables and related services.

GreenLight Medical greenlightmedical.com

Austin Dirks Founder & CEO

GreenLight Medical streamlines the workflow for hospital value analysis of new medical technology.

Inspired Change Solutions ics.co.za

Phillip De Jager Founder & CEO

Helping your business perform optimally by simplifying and automating business processes to ensure constant focus on business goals.

kg³ kgcubed.com

Lee Eden Founder

kg3 has created a powerful software solution for logistics procurement and tender management. It is designed to achieve maximum cost-savings for the customer through an efficient and transparent bid process with advanced analysis functionality.

PEMEX Procurement International pemexprocurement.com

Salvador Escobedo President & CEO

PEMEX Procurement International, Inc. is a wholly owned company of Petróleos Mexicanos that was created to provide procurement services for Petróleos Mexicanos and its subsidiaries.

Science Exchange scienceexchange.com

Elizabeth Iorns Co-Founder & CEO

Science Exchange is the world's leading platform for outsourced research, providing an efficient procure-to-pay platform for ordering services from a network of more than 2,500 qualified scientific service providers.

VORTAL vortal.biz

Rui Dias Ferreira Founder & CEO

VORTAL is an international leading eSourcing and eProcurement platform for the public and private sector, which connects hundredsof buyers with an international network of thousands qualified suppliers.

Xeeva, Inc. xeeva.com

Dilip Dubey Founder & CEO

Xeeva is driving the development and delivery of the next generation of intelligent procurement and financial solutions.

Company of the Month

eProcurement Solutions that Brings Value to both Buyers and Suppliers

T

he relationship between buyers and suppliers in procurement industry has always been tumultuous at best. There is a lack of realization among both parties concerning their need for each other. For a procurement environment to move forward in a proactive and strategic manner, buyers and suppliers need to collaborate with each other. But oftentimes, an important idea, such as the one above, gets lost in translation when shifting from its concept stage to real-world execution.

Enters VORTAL, where both buyers and suppliers take part in an efficient, open and competitive bid process, thereby bringing-in opportunities for everyone to creatively expand their businesses.

A global leader in offering eSourcing and eProcurement solutions, VORTAL possesses a cloud eMarketplace, wherein thousands of public and private buyers are connected, with an international community of qualified suppliers to make everyday business.

Supporting Customers at a Global Scale Formed in 2000, VORTAL has grown in stature to support customers globally with offices in Portugal, Spain, Germany, Italy, UK, Mexico, and Colombia – serving large multinational corporations, and administrative organizations both big and small, including municipalities, governments, national central procurement bodies, etc. In addition to these, the company caters its support to a vast number of diversified SMEs as well. VORTAL’s references include Health Ministry of Portugal, AENA – Aeropuertos de España, Metro de Madrid, Mota Engil, Colombia Compra Eficiente, City of Vienna, Siemens, Austrian Post, and Bunge. The company is even rated regularly by Gartner in the Magic Quadrant for Strategic Sourcing Suites and is

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mentioned by Forrester and Spend Matters as a top market player.

The Beginning of Something Big VORTAL’s journey couldn’t have started any better, as it managed to get one of the most important marketplaces during its foundling years. Back then, almost 70% of the largest construction companies in Portugal used its platform.

Soon, VORTAL entered the public sector, becoming the platform of choice with the highest number of public tenders launched and electronic proposals submitted. It wasn’t much later when the company started working with partners across Europe and Latin America, thereby becoming the most global eProcurement Solution provider.

A Seasoned Leader Who Paved the Way for Success Rui Dias-Ferreira, Founder and CEO of VORTAL, is the visionary who has led the company to what it is known as today. Prior to founding VORTAL, Rui served 12 years as an Associate Partner at Accenture; managing Supply Chain projects in the Engineering and Construction sector. At Accenture, he worked on a wide-range of projects involving medium-sized and large companies in Portugal, UK, Spain,, and Italy.

A regular guest speaker at seminars and conferences, Rui holds a degree in Engineering and has a post-graduate diploma in Production Management from APICS – The Educational Society for Resource Management. He has also completed an Advanced Managing Program from IESE, Universidad of Navarra.

September 2017

We help companies and organizations to buy better and to sell more

Rui also boasts an impressive profile in the public sphere with his involvement in the development of entrepreneurship as a mentor of several start-ups at Startup Lisboa and a promoter of the Junior Achievement, and is extensively involved with social initiatives like working for the homeless.

It is also worth-mentioning that Rui is a sportsman and sailor, competing regularly in small catamarans and is a former Portuguese national champion in Hobie Cast 16.

Rising above the Imminent Industry Changes According to the CEO, “Procurement platforms will be much more dependent on supplier’s communities than before. This means that users are increasingly looking for dynamic solutions to discover and qualify suppliers that avoid searching the web for potential suppliers without references or credentials. Standalone solutions where a buyer is closed in a silo with the suppliers they are used to working with for years will lose perspective of the market competitiveness and will become less competitive in the medium term.”

The ability to aggregate thousands of opportunities with a plethora of suppliers, possessing a network of partners fully-trained to implement the company’s services and by aligning both public and private procurement in one single multitenant infrastructure, VORTAL is already leading this 2nd wave of eSourcing solutions.

Extending their Solutions in the Procurement Industry VORTAL was primarily founded to build and operate an eMarketplace for the Engineering and Construction industry. Later, the company expanded its solutions portfolio to extend coverage to other industries like health, public administration and corporate. Eventually, VORTAL became a specialized eSourcing provider in project procurement, wherein a

September 2017

Rui Dias-Ferreira Founder & CEO

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Company of the Month

“The VORTAL management team

brings decades of experience and international leadership that guides the company’s direction” significant amount of resources required regular discovery, qualification, and negotiation with new suppliers.

The company realizes that an effective Procurement Solution is one that offers highly tangible benefits.

Prompting it to develop several instruments that demonstrate those benefits, including savings to the buyer side – buy better, and more business opportunities to the supply side – sell more. It provides an easy-to-use platform where suppliers are registered; not because VORTAL mandated by its clients, rather it has services specially designed for them and intelligence data that makes it more competitive.

For VORTAL, management of B2B communities over procurement technologies for the private and public sectors are its DNA. Delivering a Suite of Services for both Buyers and Suppliers What distinguishes VORTAL from its contemporaries are a highly configurable eSourcing platform and a two-sided value proposition with a suite of services for both buyers and suppliers. The solutions offered by the company, delivered in a SaaS model, are focused on supporting the following:Ÿ

Ÿ

Ÿ

Ÿ

Ÿ

eSourcing Suite - Tactical and Strategic Sourcing from Private Companies and Contracting Authorities from the Public Sector. eCommerce Suite - Pre-sales, eMarketing, Market and Business Intelligence and Productivity Tools for Suppliers.

Suppliers Network - Identifying the right suppliers to deal with; based on classification of products and services, rating and reputation concepts eMarketplace - eMarketplace operations, linking buyers and suppliers, and generating market and business intelligence data in order to increase competition and market awareness.

Mobile - Mobility on access

e-Procurement Solutions that Guarantees Results VORTAL offers an eProcurement solution with an easy to configure and robust set of digital processes in place that guarantees optimal results. Rui further expands its advantages by mentioning, “It helps users save money, streamline public spending, and shape economic activity

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without undermining any existing or planned services offered. A full range of services are in place to ensure that users can integrate the platform with any of their existing ERP. Communications, database encryption and timestamping are in place to ensure a great level of security and full traceability of transactions.”

For both Buyers and Suppliers, VORTAL brings-forward the following unrivaled advantages in their ways of doing business:Buyer Value – VORTAL’s solutions ensure more transparency and less risk for the buyers. It helps in achieving savings up to 20% due to more competition; reduce costs by 40% in searching and qualifying suppliers and save up to 60% in time analyzing and comparing proposals. Add to that, VORTAL also improves buyer’s visibility over the emerging innovations in the market, manages the Indirect Spending and Tactical Sourcing efficiently and enables buyers to make better decisions based on more market information.

Supplier Value – VORTAL’s solutions for suppliers give them access to more business opportunities matching capabilities, improves knowledge about the market and competition and strengthens relationships with current customers. In addition to these, suppliers get higher visibility over decision-makers and it provides a cost-effective lead generation when compared with traditional processes.

Future of Continual Innovation and Expansion VORTAL has been growing at two-digit levels for several consecutive years and will continue to develop the most innovative of services for buyers and suppliers, both in the public and private sectors. The company will also be leading the interoperability movement and will position itself as one of the most complete providers of services to suppliers.

“Whether a public or private organization, we'll save you money” VORTAL aims to reinforce its cooperation with integrations and consulting partners, to be able to deliver new services and innovative solutions to deal with corporate and public sector spending.

September 2017

Bureau van Dijk: I

nformation is transforming our economy, society and the business landscape in ways that we cannot fully comprehend or realize.

Information affects decision-making, behavioral traits and outcomes, and businesses need solutions that add value to their company information to find, analyze and compare companies across the globe – and work more efficiently.

Bureau van Dijk (BvD) is one such company meeting this need with its various solutions. It provides the richest, most reliable private company information in the market to companies asking risk-related questions. It helps its vast customer base to make better decisions and increase efficiency. The Amsterdam-based company distributes financial information and private company datasets of 247 million companies. Its solutions add value and make a tangible impact on the clients’ businesses. BvD provides them with access to precise, standardized information on private companies, as well as corporate structures that they would need to confidently and quickly make the most informed decisions possible. The company’s product range

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Curbing Uncertainty

by Delivering Information

combines data from regulatory and other sources, including 160 information partners. Its flexible software allows users to manipulate data for a range of research needs and applications. BvD was acquired by Moody’s Analytics in 2017 and boasts a significant global presence with more than 30 offices worldwide.

Helping Businesses Make Better Decisions for Decades Founded in 1991, BvD over the years has built partnerships with more than 160 mostly independent information providers, addressing a broad range of business challenges, thanks to its innovative platform, Orbis, that connects customers with data. BvD’s solutions support areas such as credit analysis, investment research, tax risk, transfer pricing, compliance and thirdparty due diligence needs of financial institutions, corporations, professional services firms and governmental authorities worldwide.

And, as well as these, Procurement is an important area for BvD. The firm captures and treats private company information for better decision-making and increased efficiency, making it

ideally suited to help procurement professionals.

BvD brings supplier data ‘o life’ by enriching it and presenting it in simple dashboards. Hence, users can interpret it quickly and work more efficiently.

They use it to mitigate against financial and reputational risk, as well as some regulatory risks.

It’s All about Time, Care and Attention Since its inception, BvD’s journey has always been one of gradually and painstakingly building up coverage of private companies from around the world. This takes time, care and attention, and BvD is continuing on that journey for the foreseeable future, although the company’s methods have evolved with time and will continue to do so in future.

Likewise, its customers’ interests are also changing, with corporate ownership becoming increasingly important. Users want their information to be less “siloed”. BvD recognizes this and does what it can to create links between different types of information. And this ties in with the

September 2017

We capture and treat private company information for better decision-making and increased efciency Mark Schwerzel Deputy CEO efforts to improve technology that allow its users to blend their information with BvD’s.

Simplifying Users’ Supplier Selection Screening Processes BvD’s solutions simplify its users’ supplier selection and screening processes. The company’s flagship platform, Orbis, is the world’s most powerful comparable data resource on private companies. It holds information of 247 million private companies worldwide. Orbis enables users to identify and validate companies, so they know that they are assessing the right entities. Information that the platform carries includes company financials, financial strength indicators, details of managers and directors, and extensive corporate ownership structures.

Apart from Orbis, BvD has created Compliance Catalyst – a centralized, automated platform for risk assessment. This allows users to combine their supplier data with the company information on Orbis. Among other things, it can be used to: monitor changes to suppliers; screen suppliers against sanctions lists for financial compliance; access potential suppliers against users’ benchmarks; and check suppliers against adverse media and news.

Orbis and Compliance Catalyst are used together to manage users’ workflows and decision-making processes. This brings greater understanding of their supplier portfolio, including: group spend analysis; supplier dependency;

September 2017

distribution of supplier bases by location, size or financials; and the latest developments on suppliers, such as adverse news, ownership, and management.

Heading into the Future Data – some of it open-source – have gradually become more digitally available and more transparent. Going forward, data across the internet will in many cases be unstructured. Technologies most likely to emerge in the procurement space to deal with these issues are AI and automation. BvD is likely to use elements of this technology to integrate data, add value and become users’ central point for data discovery and better due diligence across international borders.

Moving forward, BvD will carry on trying to make customers’ lives easier. Its vision involves all companies, institutions and public bodies around the world using BvD as their primary source of information. Its mission is to make customers more successful by providing them with company solutions that help improve their efficiency, grow their revenues and mitigate their risk. And this very much applies to procurement specialists. Whether through the scope and quality of its data, the number of data sources it uses or the accessibility and power of its functionality, all of which will continue to evolve along with BvD.

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Thought Leadership

HOW

TECHNOLOGY

IS DRIVING PROCUREMENT?

22

September 2017

A

cquiring or buying goods, services and work often via tendering or competitive bidding process is known as procurement. Corporate and public sectors unit seeks it to be a fair and open competition process of trade for their business with minimizing risks, such as exposure to fraud and collusion. Procurement process include business affecting factors such as marginal benefit, shipping, delivery and the fluctuating prices of many goods and services. Conventional procurement process generally consumes a certain amount of resources such as employees, time and money of an organization, which is counted in general as the non-liable assets and it affects the growth of an organization in the current tech-arena.

The advancement in technology has given a boom to the procurement process and for the leading procurement organizations; it does not just act as quick decision enabler but also a key driver of next-level performance and results.

Procurement teams are now capitalizing on innovative sources of technology to optimize processes, building trust, and to enrich relationships to improve their strategic reach and deploy cutting-edge procurement resources. Technology is continuously driving improvements in processes, data, insights, and as all technologies are ultimately implemented to savings. Following are the current market driving technology, which are affecting procurement processes:

September 2017

Cloud Services

Expenditure Management

The ease in buying, selling and getting the right resources across a full array of business services and goods are the natural needs for the young generation of tech-professionals to drive into budget management roles. This has now become possible due to cloudoriented services available in the market for procurement professionals.

Leading to a quickening pace in cloud services, the companies are now looking to ditch clunky, in-house systems and are replacing it with accessible cloud solutions to avoid being lumbered with rapidly superseded systems. Cloud is proving to be very helpful in determining services such as supply chain, a process to pay, purchasing, and much more.

Many organizations are strong at expenditure analysis but still, this only proves to be a little aspect of expenditure management. Even this task is full of difficulties, with no set of particular standards to define how much and what goes into which category during operations. Once an organization starts looking at the details across its budgets, it gets really difficult to understand its level of expenditures and whether the best value is achieved. With the availability of technology, organizations are improving their view on future expenditures.

Online Global Access to Marketplace Technological advancement in procurement processes is helping to recede geographical limitations, resulting in greater participation of organizations to access global pools of suppliers for business services and resources. With this advancement, larger enterprises will achieve greater efficiencies and can easily identify hidden cost savings factors across the wider areas of their business, particularly within their indirect spending. Online platforms are streamlining their purchasing potential and helping them to get quick access to high-quality suppliers while ensuring in-house compliance.

Artificial Intelligence & its Future Scopes AI is gaining trust across different sectors in almost all leading organizations and will continue to evolve till we adopt more consumer buying behaviors at different workplaces in leading procurement organizations. The area of expertise, locations, size and the credit score requirements of almost every supplier is required to get clarity over project deliverables. Organizations are getting support from AI platforms to increase the spectrum area of search, speeding up their processes and avoiding the risk of bias, fraud and error rectifications produced by humans.

AI is proving to be a boon for Procurement organizations but still, there is a long way to go in advancement. AI can help in

23

Thought Leadership

submitting e-bidding of tenders or in purchase of material by relocating resources according to requirements, the arrangement of data and sheets in array fashion, special dedicated software’s and many more things will get lined-up in accordance to time evolution.

tight timeline and data from Apps will improve measurement of each step on procurement journey. Mobile applications are also helping in the transfer of data through secured channel, cost-cutting and better resources utilization.

Summary

Mobile Applications Mobile channels are helping microservices like raise of purchase orders, approvals & continuous checks on delivery times, and billing especially for procurements goods to get faster and reliable. These services will continue to adopt lighter client-side mobile apps. Apps also help with measurement. Business goods are on

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Technology has provided the ability to deploy spend management platforms that will help in automating or enable employee self-service for tactical procurement activities and due to it, procurement organizations will find mundane supplier activities waning.

This will provide procurement professionals with extra hands-on time to focus on higher value-add from

suppliers. Further, technology will continue to evolve over the medium to longer term to a mode with a core “container” with a myriad of transactional apps. Companies will see the impact as they start to control a much larger percentage of indirect spend. With the integration of sources, purchasing and procurement technology, and its interface, into wider and specialized business applications, has been single-handedly transformational for every organization that has had the acumen to implement it to date. If organizations haven’t done it yet, it is imperative for them to start today!

September 2017

Claritum: P

rocurement of relatively low cost, unpredictable products and services is still highly manual, inefficient, and error prone.

Typical procurement solutions focus on strategic procurement within large enterprises, whereas there is a significant demand for easy-to-use tools for mid-market companies to manage this type of expenditure.

Recognizing these inefficiencies of purchasing marketing services across multiple countries, James Samuels and Paul Barker founded Claritum in 2002 to help companies streamline the purchasing of print and marketing services. Today, Claritum’s cloud based spend management platform streamlines the buying and selling of products and services. It helps many of the world’s largest enterprises, leading businesses and fastest-growing service providers to control their complex, frequently ordered expenditure such as marketing & operational print, promotional products, uniforms & apparel, packaging, IT & consumables and related services.

Optimizing Spend Visibility, Control, Cost Savings and process Efficiencies Claritum automates sourcing, procurement and invoicing in one,

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Driving A New Wave of Easy-to-use Procurement Products

easy-to-use, cloud based platform while enabling business users, customers, procurement experts, buyers and suppliers to collaborate globally and in real time. By streamlining sourcing, supplier management, catalog, procurement and invoicing, it enables small and medium businesses and fast growth procurement services to optimize spend visibility, control, cost savings, and process efficiencies. Over 150,000 users in 35 countries rely on Claritum to deliver significant, measurable and sustainable savings.

A Varied Range of Unparalleled Solutions Amongst its varied range of unparalleled solutions, below are some of the ground-breaking ones:

from a combination of its current supplier base and by inviting suppliers from the Claritum Network of thousands of pre-approved suppliers.

Catalog Management: Customers can capture orders, aggregate demand and centrally control local buying from multiple approved suppliers with easyto-use, highly configurable storefronts.

Procurement: It automates your sales order and purchase order procurement processes while enabling faster and more compliant requisitions, orders, approvals and goods receipting.

Invoicing: With Claritum Invoicing, you will always know where you are and what’s pending and what’s outstanding, hence keeping you in complete control of your cash-flow.

Sourcing: Its cloud based sourcing capabilities are proven to deliver a transparent and consistent best practice, transactional sourcing process to users; whether it be a novice employee, an experienced buyer or third party agency or outsourced service provider.

Reporting and Analysis: It enables you to get granular line item visibility of every transaction globally and real time. You can also get share management reports, performance dashboards and analytics with customers, suppliers and co-workers.

Supplier Management: Its platform helps supplier managers create and manage Private Supplier Networks

User Access and Admin: With its powerful user access and administration tools, you can centrally

September 2017

Our integrated cloud based spend management platform enables our customers to gain granular visibility and control every transaction, globally and in real time James Samuels Co-founder & CEO control local transactions. Its intuitive and easy-to-use application ensures compliance of best practice while maximizing efficiencies and quality of management information.

Web Services API: Claritum’s Web Services API enables you to streamline your entire source-to-settle workflow and integrate with buy-side and supply-side software platforms.

A Leading Marketing Expert with Vast Experience Serving as the Chief Executive Officer of Claritum, James has 20 years EMEA marketing experience in the automotive and technology sectors for enterprises such as VAG, Peugeot, Intel and HP. His experience in managing major international spends highlighted the need for marketing procurement tools to address the needs of both procurement and marketing functions. This was the catalyst for starting Claritum.

Whilst Paul focused on product and data, James led the strategy, sales, marketing and services teams. By working closely with large businesses, service providers and suppliers, both he and Paul established Claritum as one of the most capable cloud based procurement platforms on the market. The company grew by proactively servicing and retaining high quality clients and partners, and now has clients in Europe, US and AsiaPac.

integration and data are key drivers of procurement technology. As such, Claritum is part of the new wave of easy to use, cloud based procurement products and reflects the demand for business users to be able to self-serve, or get assistance from expert buyers or access a fully-managed purchasing service. Claritum is optimized for cross border trading, therefore enabling centralised visibility and control of every transaction locally, nationally and globally.

Future of Endless Solutions Considering the ever-growing procurement industry and its future, Claritum is automating the entire source to settle process including demand side integration and supply side fulfilment. It is investing in highly configurable workflows that eliminate the need for manual intervention, deliver the data required for experts to deliver significant and measurable value across the supply chain.

Claritum is also working to automate IoT devices to autoreplenish parts and components, improve service delivery through intelligent service bots (agents), intelligently route transactions directly into fulfillment or manufacturing including 3D printing on demand.

Enabling Users to Access a Fully Managed Purchasing Service James believes that automation, globalization, ease of use, September 2017

27

GreenLight Medical: T

he concept of Physician Preference Items (PPI) has been the lifeblood of clinical value analysis for many years. It has dominated the Interventional and Perioperative worlds as often the largest expense in the acquisition of new products and technologies.

However, hospital procurement has witnessed a big shift; hospitals have moved away from PPI to hospital “value analysis” committees. Value analysis committees require the input of multiple stakeholders, and with current, manual tools for collaboration, procurement can take over nine months from initial request in a hospital facility to availability. Frustrations on all sides from hospital administrators, physicians, and medical suppliers cannot be solved with traditional tools of email and excel spreadsheets with process bottlenecks being a huge hurdle to overcome.

Having first-hand knowledge of hospital procurement and eyeing how it would transform, Austin Dirks laid the foundation of GreenLight Medical to manage the overall workflow needs specific to hospital procurement, aligning all parties, people, data, documents, and decision-support in one cloud-based architecture. Now in its fourth year of operation, GreenLight exists as all-in-one cloud software for hospital value analysis of new medical technology; with over 50 hospitals and more than 350 medical device

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An All-in-one Cloud Software for Hospital Value Analysis

companies using the software.

GreenLight’s software streamlines workflow coordination, project management, decision-support, and comprehensive product knowledge to help hospitals efficiently evaluate newly introduced products.

Continuing to Evolve with the Customer Needs Like any other growing start-up in the ever-changing ecosystem, the journey for GreenLight has seen and tackled its challenges. After GreenLight had a fully developed product, gaining its first adopter in the hospital market was an uphill battle. A beautiful, sophisticated product that solved an unmet need was no match for the question of “Who else is using it?”

Alongside an absence of early adopter mentality in the hospital setting, GreenLight faced challenges of operating as a small company in a highly regulated market with traditionally long sales cycles. Gaining that initial traction required patience and perseverance to get to a hospital partner who trusted in GreenLight. But GreenLight continued to evolve with customer needs and overcame every obstacle along the way.

Revolutionizing the Hospital Procurement Process GreenLight’s cloud platform continues to revolutionize the hospital procurement process with some

amazing advancements within the portal. Hospitals now have full access to GreenLight’s end-to-end portal to manage all stakeholders, informationexchange, communication, and decision-making needs. A few of the solutions GreenLight equips users with are summarized below: Ÿ Project Management: Track incoming new technology requests across an entire system with one standardized data entry portal. Ÿ Workflow Automation: Information dissemination to all corresponding team members in one-click, with real-time progress updates and process transparency for stakeholders. Ÿ Decision Support: Aggregate all pertinent product data, documents, and decisions into one common portal for access by critical team members. Ÿ Product Research: Up to date product insights at users’ fingertips including clinical, reimbursement, pricing, and regulatory data. Ÿ Physician Engagement: Harness difficult to include clinical input from physicians throughout the review process. Ÿ Connected Hospital System: Connect all hospitals and stakeholders in an IDN under one digital roof. Ÿ Team Communication: Cloud based team communication channels aligned to medical technology in review.

September 2017

We simplify hospital value analysis of new medical technology through a collaborative online platform Austin Dirks Founder & CEO A Veteran of the Healthcare, Medical Device, and Technology Industry GreenLight CEO, Austin Dirks founded GreenLight Medical with a vision: to create a tool that helps hospitals and physicians get the medical technology they need to advance surgical outcomes and patient care. A former biomedical engineer and medical device sales executive, Austin noted the outdated process which hospitals were using to review new medical technology with the recent surge of hospital value analysis committees. From there the concept of GreenLight Medical was born. Austin developed GreenLight Medical’s cloud software to streamline workflow, project management, and decision-support for hospital value analysis committees. Today, over 50 hospitals are using GreenLight to manage their technology procurement process.

Before founding GreenLight Medical, Austin worked in business development for Thoratec where he worked with senior leadership on improving the company’s medical device portfolio. Prior to Thoratec, Austin worked for St. Jude Medical as a medical device sales representative in the CRM and EP divisions. Austin is a Biomedical Engineering graduate of Vanderbilt University and received an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Staying Ahead of Moving Trends in the Industry Austin believes the future of the hospital industry will revolve around consolidation, data mining, and digital organization needs with cloud technology being the ultimate integrator. GreenLight, as a cloud technology, has

September 2017

a well-positioned opportunity to stay ahead of moving trends in the industry, able to adapt and command new features in a nimble environment. Austin trusts that GreenLight Medical will be an essential tool for the procurement of all types of technology that enter the door of a hospital facility. Beyond the procurement of new technology, GreenLight seeks to help hospitals evolve their full understanding of technology’s clinical impact after the point of purchase, helping doctors make the best decisions for their patients with real-time, shared, instantaneous product performance data using GreenLight as an embedded partner for many years to come.

“Our future perspective is to sit as a direct information and communication conduit between hospital systems, manufacturers, and GPOs to get new technology into the physicians’ hands faster. The hospital procurement world will be powered by our digital interface. Medical manufacturers will be able to talk directly to physicians for their clinical feedback on products. Hospital IDNs will be able to talk directly to manufacturers about their product pipeline, breaking down barriers with digital connectivity.

And ultimately, physicians will be able to provide better outcomes for patients while improving the hospitals’ financial health. As we grow in our footprint we will be able to manage all types of technology introduction from capital equipment to high tech medical devices, solving a great collaboration need, using GreenLight to advance new technology through hospital procurement,” Austin concludes.

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Inspired Change Solutions: W

ith its resolute focus on consulting in business process re-engineering and automation, Inspired Change Solutions (ICS) was founded back in 2002. From its very inception, the company realized that information technology can have a great impact on the productivity of companies and save valuable time. One of the core motivations of ICS were to move qualified people away from timeconsuming, data capturing, and report compiling, instead helping them focus on the analysis of data. This empowered management to make informed decisions, which resulted in greater efficiencies.

ICS developed customized solutions for many listed companies, and in the process, it has established long-term relationships with many of its customers.

Choosing the Preferred Industry and Path Breaking Products ICS understands the fraud and risks involved in the procurement process. It is passionate about removing risks for the company and the temptation for the

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Developing Customized Solutions for Clients

employees by ensuring the required internal controls and segregation of duties are implemented. Additionally, the organization also understands the stringent requirements surrounding budgets, thereby ensuring that the budget is directly linked to the approval process.

Inspired Change Solutions has developed its own proprietary software solutions in Business Intelligence, and Business Process Automation. Both of which have proven to be of great value in the procurement process for its clients. ICS’s software solution – PICS – can bring together multiple parties on a single platform. The solution allows clients, internal staff, and suppliers to collaborate regarding required needs, available solutions, and services, prices and time frames on a single platform.

These allow the procurement process to become more accurate and faster with cost savings.

Thanks to PICS, the procurement process is completely automated, resulting in time savings and the reduction of the workload that is often associated with procurement processes.

PICS automates the procurement process by controlling the workflow through segmentation of duties but also allows for internal risk management as needed per client. The solution also allows the management of various suppliers and the rating of suppliers, thereby creating a history of supplier performance that can be passed from one person to the next and even from one department to the next. PICS also provides for multiple customers and suppliers to be connected as the need arises.

PICS is designed with three key strengths, including Ÿ It can be adapted to the procurement needs of various companies’ by changing the configuration. Ÿ It is web-based, cloud-based and mobile-based, making it scalable; this way, more and more users can be added very easily. Ÿ It automates the process so that the workflow between suppliers, staff, and clients is easily set out and tracked. Goals can be set and performance can be monitored. It also allows for internal control

September 2017

In our years of experience we have designed our software around four key areas to achieve growth for our customers

Phillip De Jager Founder & CEO

Ÿ measures to be included.

A Visionary Leader Phillip De Jager, CEO and Founder of Inspired Change Solutions, is a true visionary who led the company to what it is known as today. His main target was to assist companies in re-engineering and automating business processes. Prior to ICS, he worked for various large corporates, during which he saw them struggling with the bureaucracy of heavily loaded procurement processes. His passion to see processes being automated came into fruition through the PICS software solution. Phillip has successfully grown ICS to scaling heights, which now include multiple divisions and has successfully developed multiple software products that have proven to be the inspired change that many companies need.

Delivering Broader Results Through Path Breaking Solutions ICS’s procurement solutions have introduced renewed mindsets within the companies that it has helped to date.

The company has seen greater efficiencies and cost savings.

Adding to all that, ICS has witnessed many effective control measures through automation.

Inspired Change Solutions has a vision of centralized procurement solutions across company borders and even the creation of supplier portals for specific industries. This

September 2017

can include public rating and pricing. This kind of collaboration will play a big role in speeding up procurement approval and minimizing risk by ensuring its clients are working with reliable suppliers.

Tackling Initial Ups and Downs Working with a solution like PICS has allowed ICS to learn and grow with each client. As it is a flexible solution it can easily be adapted to the client and supplier needs as required. Customers are so used to working in a set way that when Inspired Change Solutions presents what PICS can do for them, it is hard for the customers to believe that the procurement process can become so streamlined and effective at the same time. The time and cost savings seem almost impossible in an old mind set.

Future Roadmap Nowadays companies are sitting on large amounts of unexplored valuable data. Data science will play a big role in mining for the gold in data. Thanks to the tried and tested techniques and tools coupled with massive experience in multiple industries, ICS can easily find gold from data where others see dust. The ICS methodology makes business intelligence systems easier, more accessible and more effective by simplifying and integrating services into a standard platform. This not only allows companies to save money, but to be more efficient and have better control.

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Industry Perspective

How Implementation of

Procurement Impacts the

Supply Chain Excellence

P

rocurement is an important concept as it is the process of finding, agreeing terms and acquiring goods and services or works from an external source, mostly via competitive bidding process. The process in procurement is used to make sure that the buyer receives goods, services or works at the best possible price, without sacrificing in quality, quantity, time and location. Procurement activities are often divided into two different categories, direct and indirect procurement. Direct Procurement refers to the purchase of goods and services that become part of what your organization sells to its external customers. Whereas, Indirect Procurement concerns with purchase of goods and services that does not become part of what your organization sells to its external customers.

In today’s economic environment, doing what you have always been doing—even if you are best at it— is no longer up to snuff. Under pressure supply chain managers must redesign the operations rather than just improve them to contain costs and produce results, despite challenging circumstances. This proves that adopting philosophies, methods, and processes elevate an organization on “top-of-the-line.”

If any organization is implementing some of these below mentioned practices, they can see a strong impact on supply chain excellence.

Need for Governing Supply Chain Council – A governing council is established so that objectives and strategies of supply chain organizations directly correlates with the corporate strategy. The council is also beneficial in removing barriers to success that exist inside the organization. Since the supply chain organization is now aware about the barriers, they have the opportunity to perform upto their potential.

Technology Should Work for You – Many companies choose software that they hope will make them more efficient, and then they structure their workflows and processes around that chosen technology. Instead, they should first review the processes that need improvement, and only then select the technology that best satisfies those process needs.

Big organizations recognize the importance of an efficient purchase-topay process and have adopted strategies and mechanisms to get the greatest benefits from technology.

An alliance with Key Suppliers – Big companies work along with suppliers even after a deal has been signed. In many organizations these days, it is called “supplier relationship management.” But that only implies one-way communication (telling the supplier how to do it). For

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September 2017

more effective relationship between buyers and sellers twoway communication is required.

Collaborative Strategic Sourcing - Strategic sourcing is the core of booming supply chain management, although a collaborative strategic sourcing drive delivers better outcomes. Few organizations also include customers in decision making process. This approach not only ensures accessibility of supplies, but also results in reducing aggregate cost, streamlined procedures, and increased understanding to customers’ evolving needs.

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) over Price – Setting up a “Total Cost of Ownership” outlook is an objective that the supply management organization needs to embrace and sustain throughout the entire enterprise. It won’t be simple, however, to convince your company’s executive leadership to truly prioritize value over price.

Contracts Under the Supply Chain Network - More companies are moving responsibility regarding contract management to the supply chain organization instead of leaving it in buying, legal, finance, or operations. One advantage of this move is that it ensures the contracts are gathered and kept up in a central store.

The migration of the contract management network to the supply chain organization also

permits the supply chain leader to more viably use the company’s spend, especially in the area of services where there is a huge chance for cost-reduction and risk moderation.

Enhance Company-Owned Inventory - The worldwide economic downturn implies that many CFOs have kept inventory on their radar screens, and their financial teams are continuously searching for new ideas to enhance the bottom line and reduce working capital. Supply chain organizations should therefore continuously review the inventory quantities and endeavor to keep them at an ideal level.

Lack of planning and forecasting are direct causes of inventories that are out of stock with the business's needs.

Hence, best-in-class organizations also are placing more emphasis on demand planning and forecasting as other means of ensuring ideal inventory stocks.

Set up Appropriate Levels of Control and Reducing Risk - Supply chain management policies and procedures ought to follow a suitable sequence and structure, and it is essential to review them constantly and update them from time to time.

However, going too far in building policies and procedures is a possibility. This is why best companies regularly audit their policies and controls to confirm that they are not creating congestions.

Some organizations are inducing sound techniques that include: (1) Analyzing all the risk elements; (2) Figure out the chances of the risk incident occurring; (3) Estimating the dollar impact on the sourcing decision if the risk incident certainly takes place; and (4) determine the order for dealing with risks for monitoring and prevention.

Taking Social Responsibility Seriously - While making any purchases, social responsibilities are also considered by buyers and consumers. Social responsibility is deigned in such a manner so that it is of measurable corporate policies and procedures that results in favor of better workplace.

When it comes to risk evaluation and purchasing of goods, social responsibility plays a vital role in best in class supply management.

A company that has a meaningful social responsibility program protects offensive comments from workers and/or consumers.

September 2017

33

CXO Standpoint

TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION: An Indispensable Factor in Business The factors are simply too compelling to ignore. In the following paragraphs, I hope to give you a snapshot of how embracing the convergence of storytelling and technology, changed our business dramatically.

Jocelyn and I set up Beach House Pictures 12 years ago to create content that we are passionate about. Sure, it was also important that there was a gap in the Asian marketplace for great international quality programs, and that Singapore supported the media in a myriad of ways, but from the very beginning, it has always been about the storytelling.

Jocelyn Little Managing Director

W

e used to say that the storytelling business is all about the people. Talents from different fields – writing, producing, editing, the list goes on – come together to craft amazing video content that go on to inform, inspire and entertain people through their television sets.

These days, technological innovation plays a huge role in not only democratizing the filmmaking process; making it more affordable to tell stories at a professional quality. It is also transforming what kind of stories we tell, where people can get it and how they consume it. And it’s not just about the television anymore, it’s the second screen, wait no, it’s also the virtual screen. Technology is reshaping the very face and fate of the content business and those who can grasp its true potential early and make the brave leap forward, could reap the rewards.

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We learned quickly that running the company is like running a marathon. You keep one eye on the future, while you build on what you’ve got. So, while we were a twoman team moving our own furniture, we kept investing in diversification and scaling up. We learnt to remain steadfast to our vision (great stories, globally), but to stay flexible to adapt. Good thing too, because in the last 12 years, technology threw us curveball after curveball.

Within the first two years, a co-production for Discovery Channel called Man Made Marvels challenged us to upgrade from Standard Definition (SD) program deliveries to High Definition (HD) deliveries, to keep up with international benchmarks. For a small outfit with limited resources, it was a tough learning curve. You can either turn it into an opportunity to grow. Or fail and be viewed as inadequate to compete with the rest of the world. The choice was simple.

That transition paved the way for our next technological leap – 3D filmmaking. Not too long ago, the world was going ga-ga over Avatar and the latest 3D TV sets.

Manufacturers saw an opportunity to make a lot of money, but making the content that would keep people glued to the device was no easy task. The main problem was making it fast enough, good enough, affordable enough, and at volume. We couldn’t compete with the larger companies throwing millions at mega-productions, but we could September 2017

Donovan Chan Creative Director

About the Author Donovan is a founding partner of Beach House Pictures and spearheads strategy and content development. He also executive produces, writes and directs many of the company’s international productions, and is overseeing BHP’s expansion into online content with the integration of new technologies. One of Asia’s most experienced factual filmmakers, Donovan has worked on award winning shows including Lonely Planet Six Degrees for TLC (Best Entertainment & Best Editing – Asian TV Awards) and Megastructures: Singapore’s Vegas for Nat Geo International (Silver World Medal – New York Festivals).

develop cost effective methods of filming 3D that achieved a documentary aesthetic (most 3D footage were slaves to a tripod, we made ours handheld) and passed QC at the highest levels. More importantly, they had to be good stories. We made over 15 hours of content in just two years, which was a great measure of success.

However, 3D TV eventually faded away due to a lack of demand, with another video format rising through the ranks – Ultra-High Definition (UHD), commonly known as 4K. Within a space of a few years, we had to innovate again to stay ahead of the curve. By this point, we had grown as a company from a two to twenty-man team. We had a September 2017

growing business to feed, yet we could not ignore the opportunities of UHD. A lot of effort and time was put into multi-tasking in both growth areas. Culminating in successful early UHD deliveries to Nat Geo Wild (Otter Town) and Channel News Asia (Aerial India). With Otter Town getting the nod as finalists at the 2017 New York Festivals for Best Nature & Wildlife and Best Sound Design.

As UHD looks set for explosive growth, another exciting new area of story-tech convergence came to our attention.

And the timing was too good to ignore.

35

CXO Standpoint

By this time, we were a 70-man company with more resources to invest in the potential new revenue stream - Virtual Reality.

We believe that the ’experiential’ content have come and gone and that VR (especially 360 video) need to be enhanced by great storytelling and directed towards definitive user groups, like education. BHP soon became the first company that the Ministry of Education allowed to pilot VR in Singapore schools and, in addition to the MOE we also worked with Samsung for hardware. This single experience has led to even more opportunities, which could fundamentally change our business yet again.

You could say that the moral of the story, is to well, stick to telling a great story, your story, while embracing change. Less simply put, never ignore how seemingly divergent ideas could converge to transform your business. We live in a rapidly evolving status quo. And while it can be very scary, it is also full of hope.

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September 2017

Trust your next adventure to nothing less than a sanDisk memory card

1800 102 2055

3

kg : N

owadays, there seems to be a lot of paperwork involved in the transportation industry and much less usage of technology then one would expect, especially in commercial business processes, which are still largely performed in Excel sheets. Based in Brno, Czech Republic, kg3 is one such company with its eSourcing software for freight that delivers reduced rates for shippers by bringing-forward transparency to the whole process.

While managing global freight procurement at electronics manufacturer Celestica, Lee Eden – Founder of kg3 – spent a few years pushing Excel to its limits before deciding that this was a process in dire need of a proper software solution, and hence the company was established in 2013. kg3 boasts two distinct freight procurement products, each of which approaches a different aspect of the freight buyer’s job.

Two Equally Efficient yet Distinct Products The first product, titled Procurement, is for running large tenders: going out to market for rates that should be valid for 6-12 months on regular lanes. The

38

Freight Procurement Solutions that Achieve Maximum Cost-Savings

Logistics Service Providers (LSPs) quote rates either online or by uploading a validated Excel template to the kg3 system. This way, instead of spending weeks trying to clean up, validate, and compare Excel files, the customer gets an immediate apples-toapples overview of completing offers and can even use the system’s powerful analysis and scenario-modelling capabilities to build award-winning strategies.

The system makes it easy to release targeted and constructive feedback, thereby driving improved rates over the next round. After the bid process, kg3 becomes the customer’s ratemanagement system and communication platform for fuelsurcharge updates, for both new-lane quotations and for freight-invoice verification. By taking care of the math involved, the system allows the customer to focus on the more strategic elements of the negotiation and upon LSP relationships, hence pushing the freight-buyer’s job further up the value chain and making it a lot more rewarding.

The second product, Spot Quote, is for one-off ad-hoc shipments. The slick request process delivers the RFQ to

LSPs who quote their all-in rate online for the specific shipment. The customer selects the best offer and can use kg3 for internal approvals to keep the premium freight cost under control and address its root causes, instead.

Choosing an Industry of Expertise Any firm willing to launch a start-up should recognize their expertise and choose an industry which they understand well. Lee Eden had been delivering excellent savings year-onyear at Celestica, using a transparent process with constructive feedback to bid participants to leverage his $50m freight spend. Add to that, a proficient IT department, and the results would surely be even better.

“Transportation does not fit nicely into generic eSourcing software: ratestructures are typically just too complex and you need to be able to model the impact of unpredictable shipment sizes and volumes over a large number of shipping lanes. The procurement module of the Transportation Management System we were using at Celestica did not understand incoterms or non-USD currencies and did not have enough columns to cope with our LCL ocean-

September 2017

We aim to offer innovative, lean and easily manageable technology solutions Lee Eden Founder

freight rates. There was clearly a gap in the market to which we could apply our expertise,” mentions Lee Eden.

customer’s real-world challenges, Lee’s experience and background plays a key enabler.

Overcoming the Odds

A Future Driven by Continual Improvement Lee mentions that “Transportation procurement will not be Excel-based ten years from now. It will take time because it is complex, but there are massive efficiency gains for all parties in moving the process online. The combination of kg3Tender Management (for LSPs) with Procurement software (for shippers) is unique in the industry and will drive adoption on both sides of the table.”

kg3 runs without any external financing, thereby allowing it to primarily focus on the product rather than worrying about keeping the VC happy. The company doesn’t necessarily have a large marketing budget, nor does it possess a big team (but effective nonetheless), but it gets ample amount of support from its first big customer. A global freight forwarder, which uses the company’s software for Tender Management, pushed kg3 to develop functionality that it had not planned originally. Though, the Tender Management product looks at the process from the other side of the table, it has really strengthened the Procurement solution, as kg3 now has something that works both for the customer and for the bid participants.

kg3 hopes to get bigger and leverage that escalation to add more functionality, improve the solution further and become THE platform for freight procurement; something that is already on the verge of happening.

A Leader who Brings Forward years of Industry Experience A specialist in Transportation Procurement, Lee Eden, boasts 20 years of extensive experience in Supply Chain and Logistics. Initially, Lee used to write much of the code himself but owing to his position at the company, today he is much less active on the development front and more focused on the business aspect and looking after the customers. When kg3 implements its solutions upon a

September 2017

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Science Exchange: T he world relies upon the brainpower of scientists to discover and develop novel and innovative products. However, there are pressing operational challenges that scientists face, including R&D productivity issues.

Companies have explored a myriad of strategies to optimize productivity – including acquisitions and reorganizations – with many turning to outsourced R&D – now a growing, global industry. However, the cost, inherent delays in contracting and managing projects, and intellectual property (IP) and data security issues can challenge the benefits of traditional outsourcing. Elizabeth Iorns, Ph.D., – a scientist and entrepreneur – realized the need to streamline R&D outsourcing and facilitate access to qualified scientific service providers.

Along with co-founder Dan Knox, Elizabeth set out to democratize access to the world’s scientific expertise, in order to increase innovation and move the research world forward at a faster pace, resulting in the founding of Science Exchange.

Six years from its inception, Science Exchange today is the world’s leading and most secure platform for outsourced research, providing an efficient procure-to-pay platform for ordering over 6,000 services from a network of more than 2,500 qualified scientific service providers, all with pre-established contracts in place that protect client intellectual property (IP) and confidentiality. Increasing

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An Innovative and Secure Platform for Outsourced Research and Development

scientists’ access to innovation and improving productivity, while freeing them up from the administrative tasks and delays, Science Exchange serves the entire R&D outsourcing continuum. From procurement and finance to R&D leadership and the researchers who are using outsourced services for critical scientific projects, Science Exchange enables R&D organizations to consolidate research outsourcing spend into a single strategic relationship, thereby driving efficiency and cost savings, while also increasing the speed of innovation.

Uniquely Combining Software Innovation with An Experienced & Qualified Team Science Exchange uniquely combines a software platform with the support of a 60+ employee team to deliver an endto-end solution for streamlined R&D outsourcing. The Science Exchange platform was also the first to offer access to thousands of scientific service providers under a single, comprehensive contract, which is managed by contracts and compliance team that brings decades of industry experience and has personally negotiated more than $2 billion in R&D services agreements.

Additionally, Science Exchange employs the largest and most qualified team of advanced-degree and industrytrained staff scientists to assist with sourcing of complex studies and project management. Its scientists publish in peer-reviewed journals,

come from diverse scientific backgrounds, and have collectively sourced and managed thousands of studies, including the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology — the largest replication study ever conducted.

The firm also supports its customers procurement strategies by merging R&D services, sourcing, contracts, and payment processing into a single strategic service provider relationship.

It configures category-specific approval workflows into its marketplace model and delivers real-time tracking of key performance indicators (KPIs) related to outsourced R&D investments.

Moreover, standing apart from the other industry marketplaces, Science Exchange is SOC 2- Certified and Privacy Shield certified, ensuring that customers’ data are secure and that they remain compliant with laws regulating the transfer of personal data.

Additionally, Science Exchange is the only R&D outsourcing platform that operates under an ISO 9001-certified quality assurance program, with continuous performance monitoring ensuring that the network contains only the highest quality of suppliers.

Rising Above the Obstacles Entering in an industry like biopharma that is risk averse and reluctant to change, Science Exchange’s mission – to enable breakthrough research by fundamentally changing the way science is done – was not an easy proposition. At the outset, Science

September 2017

We exist to enable innovation in scientic research, making it faster, more effective, and more accessible to researchers everywhere Elizabeth Iorns Co-founder & CEO Exchange explored several approaches to connect scientists with service providers, uncovering challenges with protecting IP and enabling full transparency in pricing for the customers and service providers. The company has since remained consistent with a business model that aligns growth incentives with its client’s ROI.

Because of the platform’s clear benefits to procurement and scientific leaders at biopharma R&D organizations, Elizabeth has successfully negotiated enterprise-level agreements between Science Exchange and 12 out of the world’s top 20 biopharma companies, as well as with numerous biotech and pharma startup incubators.

Science Exchange charges a volume-based transaction fee, with its customers realizing more in annual direct cost savings through competitive bidding and time saved than the total amount paid in fees. Science Exchange is also the only platform to ensure full cost transparency by not charging fees to its service providers, removing barriers to entry and eliminating the need for providers to mark up pricing to cover lost margins. The business model has proven to be successful as the company has grown its enterprise-wide strategic sourcing agreements with leading pharmaceutical companies by more than 2000 percent since 2015.

Moving Forward at Faster Pace In addition to supporting innovation across R&D organizations, Science Exchange offers reporting tools to help its clients, including some of the world’s top pharma and biotech companies, to perform real-time KPI monitoring.

Transforming Vision into Reality Co-founder and CEO of Science Exchange, Elizabeth leads the firm from the front. The life sciences research community has been transformed by Elizabeth’s ability to execute upon her vision to transform the procurement and delivery of outsourced R&D services. Thanks to her tenacity and drive, and her deep understanding of the need for improved R&D efficiency, Science Exchange is enabling breakthrough scientific discoveries by providing researchers with an online platform for efficient access to the world’s best outsourced R&D service providers.

September 2017

“The Science Exchange enterprise dynamic report gives me the ability to tease out diverse suppliers and export spend data. Our procurement management team has been thrilled with the report,” is the testimony of Greg Smith, Associate Director, Indirect R&D Procurement, Teva Pharmaceuticals Industries, Ltd, proving Science Exchange’s importance to the procurement industry.

With venture capital funding of close to $60 million secured since its inception, Science Exchange is embarking upon continued expansion of its platform. In addition to continued dominance of the biopharma industry, Science Exchange is quickly gaining traction with the R&D organizations with the agriscience, cosmetics, animal health and nutrition industries.

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Xeeva: P

rocurement’s significance as a key business process has expanded profoundly in recent times. Initially, procurement began as an approach to incorporate purchasing into supply chain management amid a period when most large organizations were attempting to deal with their operational expenses. Truth be told, the exact date of procurement’s ascendance can be traced back to October 1983 when Peter Kraljic recognized that purchasing must be a strategic implementation in an organization, instead of a simple strategy in their supply chain management process. Before this change, organizations had just considered procurement as a subdiscipline of the supply management process.

Today, procurement is separated into direct and indirect procurement.

Indirect procurement is the demonstration of purchasing services or supplies required to keep the everyday business alive. Without indirect procurement capacities, organizations wouldn’t be able to work in a powerful manner. Realizing the complex needs of indirect procurement

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A Global Provider of Intelligent Cloud-based Procurement Software

solutions, Dilip Dubey formed Xeeva in 2014. Since then, Xeeva is driving the development and delivery of intelligent procurement and financial solutions.

Intelligent Source-to-Pay Process Driven by Artificial Intelligence Today, Xeeva is a global provider of intelligent cloud-based procurement software and financial solutions for indirect spend and MRO. Used in over 45 countries and available in 18 different languages, its software suite automates the source-to-pay process with open communication for einvoicing, procurement, and sourcing.

Xeeva’s innovative and patented technology is driven by advanced artificial intelligence and simplifies the procure-to-pay process with a focus on driving results – leading to increased productivity, improved compliance and control, and a sustainable bottom line impact.

Delivering Detailed Visibility into Saving Opportunities Xeeva offers 4 solutions that make up a full source to pay suite – procurement results, sourcing results, visibility results, and supplier results. Xeebot,

the company’s AI, is active across all 4 solutions. Xeebot is part-human, partrobot, and entirely awesome. Its unique artificial intelligence mixed with embedded domain expertise is what powers Xeeva. “With Xeeva, the steps involved are reduced and there is less human intervention required to manage your procurement and sourcing effectively. Putting our unique AI technology in place, it continues to learn and provides you with continued results,” Dilip explains.

Xeebot does the heavy lifting for you – picking suppliers, automating tasks, providing recommendations, and most importantly, finding you savings. He takes unstructured spend data that is scattered across various systems and quickly cleanses and categorizes it in order to provide you detailed, granular visibility into opportunities to save. He also takes the outcomes from strategic sourcing initiatives and converts them into usable catalog items, making sure that you gain optimal results.

Xeeva is easy to use, IT friendly, ERP agnostic, and supports all major file formats. It is accessible anywhere, secure, reliable, and easily scalable.

September 2017

For organizations that struggle with controlling spend, driving down costs, and gaining complete visibility into indirect spend, we provide intelligent procurement solutions that deliver sustainable results Xeeva’s patented AI technology is powerful, enabling you to optimize your indirect spend, discover value rapidly, and realize results immediately.

About the Key Executive Dilip is the founder of Xeeva, and serves as the Chief Executive Officer. Dilip is responsible for business strategy, talent management, and is the chief architect behind the company’s intelligent procurement and einvoicing solutions. Dilip is also the co-founder and chairman of Netlink. Under his able leadership, Netlink was named as an Inc. 500 company multiple times and recognized as the fastest growing company and largest privately held company in Michigan by Crain’s Business.

Dilip has received numerous awards, including Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, Automation Alley Emerging Leader of the Year, and has even been inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame for his professional work.

He has also been featured in WDIV TV, WJR AM and National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. Dilip serves on multiple corporate and community boards. This includes serving as the chairman of Little Caesars’s Pizza Bowl (Motor City Bowl) and a member of the Board of Trustees at the Detroit Music Hall. In 2009, he supported the launch of the Netlink Foundation for Children. The Netlink Foundation supports non-profit organizations including UNICEF Child Rights and VIP Mentoring to help children achieve their potential.

September 2017

Dilip Dubey Founder & CEO Dilip received his BE in Mechanical Engineering from Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology and his MSE, Engineering from The University of Michigan. He also attended S.P Jain Institute of Management & Research.

Building a Technology that Makes it Easier to Find Savings Simplifying the procurement process for the enterprise, Xeeva builds a technology that makes it easier to find savings. Its innovative software helps organizations automate the P2P process, track spending, and handle requests and invoices using its patented technology.

According to Dilip, the future of procurement is AI and machine learning and they are right at the forefront of that.

Xeeva has multiple patents on its AI technology and is expanding on that and increasing the scope of what its software can do. Due to its advanced technology and the way it delivers immediate results, Xeeva is experiencing a massive growth. Xeeva is continuing to roll out on new features and components of its source to pay suite.

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