BravoSolution’s North American User Conference, held this past Wednesday, delivered a great blend of user case studies, best practices and thought leadership. Set in the heart of Chicago at Café Brauer in the Lincoln Park Zoo, the event was a steady stream of enthusiastic and successful customers that followed my morning presentation (which was, unfortunately, given in the throes of mono-like symptoms; my temperature today is 101 – I am still not well). The event also included an evening on the rooftops overlooking Wrigley Field for a Cubs/Mets game. For those that are interested, the contents of my talk were based upon a research report published earlier this year which can be found here (registration required).

(1) Strategic Sourcing

A global customer jump-started the day with an overview of their full BravoSolution (“Bravo”) suite implementation. This company selected Bravo because of its “strong customer centric approach, price and user model, references, its multi-national and multi-lingual support, and training capabilities” and seven months in was able to report significant success to date. For example:

• For spend analysis, more than $4 Billion drawn from a collection of multi-currency and multi-lingual ERP systems has been processed and is now being used to drive the company’s sourcing activity.
• The sourcing program has really taken off, particularly since a successful training program was delivered at the end of 2010. The number of sourcing projects continues to accelerate and the company has not yet hit a steady-state of usage. The presenter did make special note of the company’s first reverse auction, calling it a ‘work of art,’ in no small part because the savings from that event paid for the entire Bravo program several times over. Bravo!
• 6,000 contracts are currently managed in the system
• The team also utilizes a project management solution to manage six distinct process within the sourcing and procurement department.

The executive presenter sees many more opportunities ahead for his group but left the audience with some lessons learned – some standard ones, as well as, a few great tips for those companies looking to begin an international project. A few notable lessons:

• Budget wisely when dealing with an international project  – different cultures may require different processes and templates; the path to process standardization, training, and adoption can be different within different regions
• Each region needs local champions
• Things to have in place early:
  • Project KPIs to help track and propel adoption
  • Defined user access/privileges
  • Internal support team with context of the deployment process

(2) Perimeter

My favorite presentation of the day was given by the Chief Procurement Officer of another large Bravo customer who presented his take on what we often refer to as Spend Under Management on the pages of CPO Rising – defining what he called the “Perimeter” of spend or what spend is in scope for procurement to manage and what is out of scope.

This CPO laid out a clear path to accelerate the impact and value that his department could have on the larger enterprise by developing a systematic plan of managing the spend in the Perimeter to its greatest effectiveness and actively working to place more spend inside the Perimeter. In a graphical display of concentric circles, this CPO showed the progression that his organization has made to place more spend under management and manage it both well and continuously. The CPO made an interesting point when he said that one of their sourcing goals is to ‘group sourcing events in a way that synergies are identified and both maximized and aligned with business timing and the company’s go-to market strategy. Acknowledging the political challenges in tackling the forbidden categories, this CPO and team have been undeterred in their strategy to expand the Perimeter and drive increasing value. Bravo!

(3) Transportation Spend Management

An interesting category case study was presented at the end of the day by another global company with significant transportation or logistics spend. From both a sourcing and contract management standpoint, the customer was originally working in an environment with multiple Business Units managing multiple systems and processes, little to no visibility into contracted rates, poor service levels, and a large number of resources required to manage the category. Using collaborative/advanced sourcing solutions and strategies, the company has been able to centralize the management of the category, provide visibility to all stakeholders, while driving prices down and service levels up. Bravo!

Tagged in: Case Study, Chief Procurement Officer, CPO, CPO Shop Talk, Events, Solution Providers, Sourcing, Spend Analysis, Spend Under Management, Strategy, Technology