The time has come, the CIO said,
To talk of many things,
Of ERPs, and RFx, and SA...
Well, let's just say Three-Letter Acronyms,
Why we have a burning platform
To see what a new system brings.
Sincere apologies to Edward Lear for scribbling silly verse during a "beauty parade" of e-sourcing and e-procurement providers, rather than listen to their protestations of "world-class solutions", but something had to keep me awake.
The last time I had seen such an incredulous look on the face of a vendor was in rather more bizarre circumstances (more of which later). To see it six times on the trot, well, it all just goes to show what strange times we live in. And all because we suggested using their own tools when it came to buying their wares.
Yes, we have finally decided to migrate to a single ERP platform. Gone will be the multiple, unintegrated, standalone, best-of-breed, half-cocked panoply of systems that are supposed to support our basic processes of buying stuff, making stuff and selling stuff. Instead, we'll have a single, integrated, standalone, best-of-breed, half-cocked system that will - probably - Stop All Purchasing.
The big question for us buying types was whether this shiny new beast would replace our two e-procurement suites as well. We'd bought one several years back when prices were high and functionality low, and we'd inherited the other as a result of an acquisition when prices were tumbling and functionality growing. We decided to find out where the balance lay now.
The first major challenge was convincing the IT folks to keep their hands off it. Fortunately, I managed to persuade our CIO that, server integrity notwithstanding, since it was a hosted application sitting outside our firewall, there was little value in involving her team. Phew! It was a close call, especially when I heard that dreaded phrase "in-house solution" being mentioned. I was tempted to ask whether Microsoft Excel, which seems to underwrite all the steam-driven platforms we've just decided to bin, could really run e-auctions as well, but thought better of it.
That was what led to the beauty parade. The usual RFI, RFP, RFQ process seemed quite applicable once we had determined our business needs. You're in the market to buy something that's fairly commonplace. There are lots of buyers and lots of sellers. The product is rarely tailored or customised. And, as I mentioned, prices are falling as functionality grows. So, why not run an auction? Then again, if we ran it electronically, the provider of the platform we eventually picked would have access to all the other respondents' commercial proposals - not exactly a recipe for good competition or good ethics.
There was the rub: how to run an auction for auction providers? Perhaps there should be a single e-provider that just supports bids for e-providers, though I can't imagine they would get many invites to the pointy-head Christmas party.
Finding a provider willing to host the event wasn't easy, but we eventually found a small outsourced IT processes firm willing to adapt a simple auction engine. It had been on the receiving end of such tools in the past, and seemed more interested in just taking part than being paid.
Since we had limited leverage with the vendors on our shortlist, we initially played it the old way, by having them pitch up in pairs, suits freshly dry cleaned, ready to drown us in copious PowerPoint slides with more animation than Walt Disney. Then, as the salespeople were about to launch into their presentations, we caught them off guard by advising them that we planned to run... an e-auction! "But what about our unique value proposition?" they mumbled, looking rather crestfallen.
The circumstances in which I last saw that look? Well, I was buying some fire engines. At the end of the demonstration day the local fire station commander who was helping us with the work asked the crews to turn the hoses back onto the vehicles. Two of them spluttered and coughed their way to silence as the water found its way into their sophisticated electronics. Not exactly what you want when faced with a burning platform.
Jim Frankley (not his real name) leads a purchasing function in a Fortune Global 500 company. He can be contacted at frankleyspeaking@cpoagenda.com
