The Human Factor

The Human Factor

There is one topic, apart from entrepreneurship, that I can talk about for hours (if it is not days) on end without getting bored with myself. Trust me, those who really know me became aware of this the hard way.. This topic is the Vacancy to Pay (V2P) process for hiring of external staff.

While working on that topic with various clients over quite some years now, it keeps on surprising me how far the chemistry is usually off in this part of procurement. While the people are far from stupid, the orders and targets are often pretty clear, and even every once in a while there is someone involved with some sort of vision, still somehow the stakeholders don’t mix. Outcomes of projects for optimization can be easily predicted: pointing fingers, harsh words, unsatisfied operational agents and most of the time at least one of the stakeholders that is not reaching its goals. Off course I am talking about the Hiring-stakeholder triangle of Procurement, HR Management and IT.

Okay, sure thing that the blood types of the average agent in those three business functions do not really match. Reference frameworks of the daily work could not be further apart and the primary work focus is quite something else when you work with people, savings or technology. But usually the claim is made that optimizing their Hiring-V2P processes together is difficult because their targets are differently set. And then there is that surprise again…! Because how can it be, that departmental goals within a company do not match, and thus do not add up clearly to the company’s global goals?

For the sake of argument, let us just conclude that any professionally driven organisation simply does not let that happen, so there must be other reasons like politics, general understanding, priority settings, etcetera. To summarize: the Human Factor is involved!

When we realize this, we can also conclude that optimizing the V2P process, and organisational aspects surrounding it, for any organization is never a matter of having a proper solution-set alone. It takes some managed change efforts at stakeholder level to get there, where the focus is “common ground”. Below some of my experiences to start the right path towards successful V2P optimization:

1.       Counter one-sided focus: Get the V2P change lead by a person who is, in behaviour, not explicitly a product of one of the three blood types, but knows her/his way in all walks of business involved.

2.       Level the playing field and manage priorities: Make sure that this neutral lead does not only have access to the highest levels of internal clients, but also to the common problem owner(s) above that (SSC-owner or Board).

3.       Lead the way, don’t hassle on orders: Realize that above tips give some clear pointers on the best-fitting profile and seniority of the required resource to lead the project.

4.       Grow your playing field together: Start any project initiation phase by investing in identification of common goals before you start drawing towards end results. This can take some time and workshop effort, but will certainly pay off!

5.       Constructive solutions come from constructive teamwork: Realize that above tip gives some clear pointers on the best-fitting profiles of the mandated project members involved for the initiation.

6.       Joint success means joint failure: Eventually initiate the change from both business stakeholders Procurement and HR Management, make sure the success and failure rests on both shoulders.

7.       Solutions support vision: Involve IT from a process-driven perspective and make them accountable for their part in the success.

In the end, a proper and accepted V2P solution is driven by logic, usability, cost-cutting capabilities and, certainly not at the least, added value in managing the price/quality ratio in temporary staff. No matter what the interpretations on targets and goals are, these will (or at least should!) always stand firm in a project that carries vision. And so these should be covered by the right mind-set for all parties involved in getting there.

The Human Factor is usually the problem but can also make the difference..

Doede van Haperen
www.lakran.com
www.postulit.com

To turn best practice into best value

To turn best practice into best value

While working on several concepts and customer offers at the same time, you will sometimes find interesting challenges on your way. One that comes up more often is the challenge of “valuating” Best Practices. Within our IT practice, we are more and more getting used to (and our company even focusses primarily on this form of delivery in SAP P2P) best practice solutioning. But being honest on most Best Practice suppliers: in reality it can mainly be described as “OFTEN” practiced, instead of “BEST” practiced per se! All of us like to sell our customers the impression, but the moment they start asking supporting data…

As I have written about more often, within our Business Consulting practice, we keep ourselves pretty busy with searching into the depths of Best Value Procurement at the moment. These activities result in various customer engagements, offering and advising at both ends of the BVP-table. This new way of tendering, following less strict quality directions, challenges suppliers to offer their best knowledge into solutions. But the only way you can convince your customers about the added value, is by supporting it with facts. Where a regular tender is traditionally invented by the customer and the supplier only has to claim and convince experience, a BVP tender only knows a certain goal and the supplier is the party to invent, explain and claim added value.

As a basic thought, the concepts of Best Value Procurement and Best Practice Delivery fit like gloves and go together like a handshake. Unfortunately in reality, it is hard to let these two really meet. It is not expected that the number of BVP tenders will completely overgrow the regular tenders, so for some of the less flexible IT suppliers, there is still some hope that they can stay in business with some part of the market cornered in the old way of storytelling. But for the rest of us out there, the niche players that feel the need to add value and stand out in the crowd, it gives some nice new thought about approaching the concept of Best Practice Delivery.

Lately, I am working with a software company who seemed to have really understood this dilemma: Organizations need solutions not only because they want them but because they have an issue and need an actually performing setup to counter them. This company sells software for business process modelling, that is often used as a delivery channel for best practice templates. But besides the solution push, there is a feature incorporated in the software, that helps you as a supplier to monitor the actual performance of your process. So designing it, automatically also gives you the tools in hands to monitor your success. And the beauty is: this allows you to actually change your ways, optimize your delivery impact by improving your solution. So this software (but of course most of all this line of thinking) allows you to go grow your product through all phases: 1. get a lot of experience, 2. design a nice commonly used solution, 3. sell it, 4. monitor closely, 5. Evolve it, and 6. sell it better again and again.

Most competitors stop at #3 but we want to stand out...

Doede van Haperen
www.lakran.com
www.postulit.com

Turkey time and looking back

Turkey time and looking back

It has finally happened: the first day off in my Christmas break. The last (full) working days of the year have passed by last week in a rush. End-year stress in one of the projects we are involved in, last steps of strategy/planning for the foundations I work for, checking in with all of my colleagues, the usual that most of you will recognize I guess..

But sitting on the sofa, thinking back on a successful year for ourselves, you realize that it has been a strange year, business wise. The crises period of the previous years was still very much all around and still we were able to grow?! We had a good 2012, but starting last January, it was not at all sure how much we would be able to keep up with that trend. In hind side it is easy to conclude that 2013 was even better than the year before, but it took real focus and strategy. For myself I think we can conclude that 2013 was somewhat of a turnaround. My own time directly involved in clients' projects has been reduced. I wanted (and heard: needed?!) to make myself more available for strategy, new business, product development and vision forming. Struggling with all kinds of questions, I tried to evolve myself over the past 12 months from an entrepreneurial procurement consultant, into a business leader in procurement consultancy. There is of course still a lot to learn, the ones that really know me will be sure of that, there is much more to take in and even more to digest. But the first confidence is there that we are heading into a distinct and successful direction! This feeling shows in the growing pile of orders toward 2014..

Considering a little wider circle than only our little firms, I started wondering how others in (procurement) consulting have dealt with getting out of the crises, or are still dealing with it. Fortunately, Google has the answer as Always. There and then it struck me. How little entrepreneurs are actually able to change their ways.. So many of them have started a business based on professional skill alone, they had learned an (often great!) trick before and started doing that, and doing that successfully. But then economy struck. They keep on doing the same thing and doing it harder and faster to keep up with the slowing down numbers. But is that an answer to survive? The few main things that I recognized while reading were the following:

1. Growth in the business stopped by anxiety and lack of focus.
2. Innovation in the business stopped by capacity drain to catch every billable hour possible.
3. Sales opportunity slows further and further down by the previous 2 points.
4. And then there is the changing customer perspective in consulting, that is a wrecker all alone.

...I know, all in all no rocket science for the experienced organizational advisors out there, but still four main points that I am proud to say we have broken with during the last year. We were able to create room to work, create ability to focus and ability to think. These 'simply' paid out!

All fair, I did not do this all alone, besides our own hard-working winners, I used some strategy advisors and outside-perspectives to reach to this point. Helping me make decisions, reminding me of the things "we" have said... But it is a nice conclusion to draw at the end of a year. We had a plan, started in 2012, saw growth, drafted a better plan for 2013 and stuck with it.. Now the plans for 2014 are final, brushed up and ready to roll!

To all our business relations, we hope that 2014 brings the same insights, but first a Merry Christmas!

Doede van Haperen
www.lakran.com
www.postulit.com

Procurement fashion

Procurement fashion

Today I was triggered by a Twitter contact (thanks @RuudOlthof) on the suject of trends in Procurement. As it is with all other subjects, the last weeks of the year inspire all kinds of (self-proclaimed?) guru's to pick up their christall ball and predict the future based on trends. But what is a trend in Procurement?

Any business function is prone to trending and fashions. Where for instance in "sales" these trends tend  to be (wauw, say that 15 times in a row: "trends that tend...";-)) supported by a somewhat objectifyable base in market analyses, within "procurement" trends appear to come from nowhere other than these guru's. Procurement has a firm basis in the area of Logistics where the common ground seems to be the explainable flowing of goods, money and information. Then why is it that we implement high-value P2P tools only because our competitor does, or that we talk about Social Return in Procurement when we do not even master the KPI management of a simple outsourcing deal on a callcenter service? No logic at all in flowing of information, but just over-eagerly copycatting where someone else was having succes. Marketing is everything, not only in "sales", but also within "procurement"!

Procurement departments should be more into marketing techniques, also in their trends of execution. Where a sales department does a thourough study on the demographics and culture of a target audience before picking up on a trend, procurement should do so too. What is their internal market thinking, doing, expecting of them? What is the maturity of the organization, what can it handle and what cultural fits are there or are there not? And only in the end ask yourself "How to mix these with trending successes in the world or procurement?"

Still too often we are asked to help implement solutions that are basically only chosen because it is trendy, not because it is supported and really helping this organization to reach for the next level... Hopefully 2014 brings the trend of breaking with trends...

Doede van Haperen
www.lakran.com
www.postulit.com

BVP and closing the loop

BVP and closing the loop

Two things were mentioned before on this blog that will be coming together: Best Value Procurement and investing in new ideas. A few weeks ago, after reading up in some business materials involving Best Value Procurement (prestatie inkoop in goed Nederlands), I wondered on the practicalities in that new trend. Conceptually I love the thought of buying in business the way you buy average things at home, getting ready to activate huge growth in price/quality ratios. But I see difficulty in structuring the process, making it measurable, beforehand as well as in retrospect of the deal (read: while sourcing as well as in contractmanagement).

We are curious about this thing and want to get into more depth on it. How to maximize the effect of Best Value Procurement, while getting it ready to automate in a closed-loop line of thinking? Is this at all possible? Are we thinking too old-school on the whole subject? Is there already tooling available that fits perfectly? ... We are curious because these are questions that simply NEED answering before the whole trend can become a real staying force on the wider scale of procurement.

So the first step is to ask if people already have a vision on this aspect of BVP? Or are we the first to wonder? Please get onto discussion, let's all join forces to make this concept work on a wider scale for I firmly believe in the principles. But in the end, I am just a techy,, an IT nerd that simply wants it hunted down and kept in a box... lets see if we can combine the two?!

Doede van Haperen
www.lakran.com
www.postulit.com

11-12-13 14:15

11-12-13 14:15

Nice date to have put it all together. Yesterday, december 11th 2013, at about 15 minutes past 2 PM, during my third meeting of the day (and after a few of those inspiring days), the business plans for coming year(s) kind of materialized. There were more then enough plans of course, but reality makes sure that you cannot do it alone! You need people to help, partners to play along and a little bit of luck every now and again.

The partnerships we wanted to explore seems to be picking up and the checks with the ourside world seem positive. The plans we had surrounding SAP SRM, and in the broader sence SAP Procurement are yesterday more or less concluded as "feasible" by the rest of the world (to put it mildly). That is for an entrepreneur an important step, because that makes sure that people can be persuaded in place, that surroundings can be managed toward desired outcome and, important, that you can have some fun in the process...

Of course, now the accountant part starts...and the bank wants to get involved somehow as well... So oke, there will be parts with less fun surrounding the process, but as it appears now, during the next year, I will be able to take you along in some nice activities:
1. Partnerships with SAP
2. Marketing / branding campains
3. Joint (venture?) developments on SAP with technology-/businesspartners
4. Travels abroad, far and close, to prepare for some real growth
5. New employees
6. and...an important bonus...some new clients of course!

Some more days of calculation for me, some inspiring meetings to finalize things towards Christmas, only about two more weeks to prepare the practical sides, but I am starting to be convinced that we will double our business again, for the third year in a row, keep reading!

Doede van Haperen
www.lakran.com
www.postulit.com

New year dawning

New year dawning

It is December already! My agenda is exploding on client meetings, partnership coffees and strategy solutioning. Great fun, but also very time consuming..

But the most positive side of this development, apart from the personal fun, is clear: we are moving, no corrected, we are running towards the dawning new year of 2014! All kinds of news is supporting the situation:

- uplift in temps hiring

- uplifts for months now in de NEVI PMI index

- our own jobs portfolio

- every expertise bureau I talk to

- ...etcetera

The new year is dawning. The truth will be exciting, experts are announcing "a new reality" for months and years now, but what will this reality be? IT markets in the western world seem changed structurally, but we still see a lot of movement on our worlds of SAP SRM and Procurement / P2P in general. But the biggest mistake would be to "just carry on", so we too will keep on changing and re-inventing ourselves.

Still, the picture of this morning seems to hold sone truth, the sun dawns through the mist, the new year...?

Doede van Haperen

www.lakran.com

www.postulit.com