What is the best CPO tool or strategy in 2012?
Our field of 32 determines this year’s champion
Yes folks, it’s March Madness, Chief Procurement Officer Style, where the different procurement tools and strategies compete to get to the CPO’s Final Four.
Welcome everybody, I’m your host Andrew Bartolini and my, oh my, have we got a great tournament in store for you this month on CPO Rising. On Sunday, March 19th, 2012, 32 elite tools/strategies were selected from a field of more than 100 different ideas. The tournament selection committee spent weeks reviewing recent research and CPO interviews to short-list the 32 most important, dynamic, popular, and adept procurement tools and strategies. Now, these tools/strategies/ideas (called tools from here on out) face off in the procurement tournament to end all procurement tournaments. Let’s look at the field.
Top Seeds
Our four #1 seeds have collectively saved Chief Procurement Officers billions of dollars each year. These tools make a huge impact and are accessible by most CPOs no matter their organization’s talent and maturity. The four number one seeds are:
- eSourcing (automated sourcing technology used by millions)
- CFO-CPO Partnership & Executive Engagement (when CPOs really do access the C-Suite)
- Strategic Sourcing (classic process to identify highest-value suppliers, may or may not use technology)
- Spend Under Management (metric measuring procurement influence)
Two and Three Seeds
Talk about a group of teams that have been there and done that! This group of eight match tried and true strategies for the online and offline world and include a few tools that look outside the four walls of the enterprise.
- (2) Center-led (organizational structure for procurement departments)
- (2) Embedding Staff (getting better engaged with the business)
- (2) Spend Visibility for Sourcing (linking spend data to sourcing process)
- (2) eProcurement (granddaddy of supply management solutions)
- (3) Supplier Collaboration (extending the value discussion beyond the enterprise)
- (3) Spend Analysis (automated classification, cleansing, enrichment of spend data for analysis & reporting)
- (3) Implemented Savings (savings achieved based on actual spend)
- (3) Supply Risk Management (avoiding supply disruptions and other issues)
The Field
The remaining 20 tools include process automation, general strategies, third-party support or collaboration, and metrics. There were many tough decisions and a few tools hate were on the bubble until the last minutes. We should note that “Procurement ROI” beat “Supplier Information Management” on the “play-in” game to lock up the 32nd seed.
This group, however, is not without controversy. In fact, many wonder how “the linkage of sourcing to contracts“, and “managed spend per procurement department FTE” could each be sitting at home watching this year’s tournament after the impact they made last year. Of course, what CPO tournament of this ilk is ever without some controversy? It is part of the fun. Our final twenty is as follows:
- (4) Category Management
- (4) Supplier Networks
- (4) Procurement BPO
- (4) Cloud
- (5) Supplier Performance Management
- (5) Demand Management
- (5) ePayables (P2P Linkage)
- (5) Supplier Enablement
- (6) Supply Market Knowledge
- (6) Cash Management
- (6) Supplier Quality/Innovation Initiatives
- (6) Automated Contracts
- (7) Contract Compliance
- (7) Training
- (7) Advanced Sourcing
- (7) Sustainability
- (8) Performance-based Savings Quotas
- (8) Category or sub-process outsourcing
- (8) Recruiting
- (8) Procurement ROI
One big question from this last group is whether or not there is a Cinderella Story waiting to be told by some tool in this group? Only time will tell.
CPO Bracketology & Tournament Rules
The rules of this tournament are very simple: “Win or Go Home!” which means that the tournament is single elimination.
After seeding each tool as a 1 through 8, the game pairings were created via a random sort.
So, the question to you is – would you like to play along at home? If so,
(1) Click here to download your bracket
(2) Complete and submit the CPO Bracket to info (at) cporising dotcom by Tuesday night at 11:59 pm
(3) Winners will be announced on CPO Rising – anyone can play!
Stay tuned to CPO Rising for the first round of games.
Please tweet (#cpobracketology) and post to facebook and linkedin.
