In this issue:
The Tonkean team has been spending a lot of time recently at procurement conferences—DPW, in Amsterdam; SAP Spend Connect, in Vegas; etc. It’s been great! Also, instructive.
Every conference we go to, we encounter common themes. One is an increasing sense of overall excitement about the momentum of the procurement function and about the potential of technology to continue empowering procurement teams to do and be more—to operate more efficiently, produce more business value, and continue its ascent in the c-suite as a valued business partner.
Another theme, however, is a kind of anxiety—specifically about how exactly all this new and powerful technology hitting the procurement market can and should be used to truly move the needle.
The anxiety persists in part because procurement teams are constantly getting mixed messages about it. The mixed messages generally come from technology vendors themselves, who all offer one very limited and ultimately incorrect prescription for it: the key to better technology use is replacing your old tools with ours!
You hear this sort of thing most often—and, again, most incorrectly—in the context of what is for most organizations their biggest technology investments: ERP and P2P platforms.
It’s possible that vendors’ hearts are in the right place, because it’s true that these platforms—you know, the Coupas, SAPs, and Oracles of the world—while powerful tools in and of themselves, tend to be the hardest platforms for lay employees to learn how to navigate and use. We’ve all seen first-hand how procurement processes that rely on employees remembering to log into these behemoths to kick off intake, for example, results in glacial cycle times, less spend under management, and overall frustration with procurement as a function.
But replacing these platforms is also unwise—and a waste. You don’t need to rip out and replace them, and you shouldn’t. That school of thought is outdated, and it’ll cost your organization big time in the long run.
Instead, you should leverage new advancements in orchestration and AI to use big, important tools like SAP, Oracle, and Coupa more intelligently.
AI-powered intake and orchestration tools empower procurement teams to build procurement process experiences that can anticipate employees’ needs, guide them through requests, and unify processes that span many different systems—including ERP and P2P platforms.
The days of relying on employee knowledge or willingness to comply with your policies and strategies to improve results are over. But so is the expectation that you need to take a bath on your most expensive technology investments in order to leverage technology that’s more user-friendly. Instead, you can meet every employee where they are, with processes powered by orchestration. In the context of intake processes that rely on SAP, for example, you can now create processes that allow requesters to do all the work they need to do for the process from wherever it is they like to work, using plain language, while interacting with intelligent tools. Relevant data is passed onto procurement in SAP automatically; requesters don’t even have to remember how to log in to it.
This, in our mind, is what the future of intelligent technology like AI in procurement looks like. AI-powered tools are not meant to be magical substitutes for your existing technology investments—least of all the ERP and P2P platforms on which procurement depends.
Rather, their true revolutionary promise resides in their ability to empower organizations to get more out of their many different existing investments: to leverage them more seamlessly and effectively in concert with one another.
In this newsletter, we’ll offer you a series of resources that show you how to start leveraging AI and orchestration in this way step-by-step. We think they’ll be of particular interest to everyone we met at DPW and SAP Spend Connect, but, really, if you work in procurement and you use SAP, Coupa, or Oracle in some fashion—this stuff is for you, too.
But first, the latest in procurement.
If you have some insightful news or knowledge about the world of ops to share, let us know!
Does your organization use SAP, Coupa, Oracle, or any other P2P or ERP platform? Want to learn how you can leverage intake and orchestration software to fundamentally transform how you use these tools—without ripping out and replacing them—and transform, in turn, how procurement teams perform and are perceived?
If so, we have two new resources just for you.
The first is a webinar we’re co-hosting on Wednesday, October 30th, at 10am PT with Joël Collin-Demers, Consulting Principal at Pure Procurement.
Leaving the webinar, you’ll be ready to use intake and orchestration to:
Sign up for the webinar here.
The second resource is an eBook we wrote with Joël that walks readers through how to get more out of their ERP / P2P use with AI and orchestration step-by-step.
If you like what you hear during the webinar and want to learn exactly how to get started augmenting your use of things like SAP Intelligent Spend solutions with intake and orchestration, this eBook is for you.
if you want use cases—how to complete an SAP Intelligent Spend Solution catalog purchase with intake and orchestration, how to complete a complex SAP Intelligent Spend Solutions non-catalog purchase (e.g., for software) with orchestration, etc.—this eBook is for you.
This is a first-of-its-kind, in-depth eBook that provides a true foundation for process orchestration technology use, and walks readers through step-by-step instructions for how to start augmenting SAP workflows with orchestration—starting with a demonstration of how Tonkean intake and orchestration can handle one of the most dreaded procurement use cases: a low-value, high-volume spot buy. You can download the eBook now.
Tell us about clever solutions and success stories you want your procurement peers to know about for future newsletters!
Transforming procurement in a time of disruption requires both innovation and leadership. On this episode, Dwight Jacobs, Senior Vice President, Supply Chain, and Chief Procurement Officer of Duke Energy, joins host Sagi Eliyahu. Dwight shares valuable insights into navigating the evolving world of procurement and supply chain management, emphasizing the importance of long-term strategies, partnerships, and resilient systems.
Key Takeaways:
(02:57) Duke Energy’s clean energy transition is heavily dependent on long-term supply chain partnerships.
(05:00) The importance of building resilient supply chains by adding more suppliers and increasing competition.
(08:21) Leadership is portable, and servant leadership plays a crucial role in team success.
(10:00) The "Crew, Mission, Me" philosophy emphasizes putting the team first to achieve organizational goals.
(12:30) How Duke Energy’s in-house technology, Scout, optimizes supply chain material tracking and labor efficiency.
(14:35) The importance of data analytics for predictive decision-making in supply chain operations.
(16:50) The need to embrace generative AI while maintaining the human aspect in procurement.
(18:23) The best career advice Dwight received: helping peers succeed ultimately leads to personal success.
Listen to the episode here.
Subscribe to the Modern Business Operations podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Here’s everything we did in the most recent Tonkean release notes:
Formulas
We added several new formulas to Tonkean this month. Read about the new formulas below and get more information in our Reference topic for Strings formulas.
Custom Item Interfaces and Workspace Apps
Enterprise Components
You can now integrate the following new data sources with your Tonkean solutions:
Additionally, we've enhanced the following data sources:
Bug Fixes
That’s it! Thanks for checking out Ops Digest! If you’d like to learn more about who Tonkean is or what we do, we have a few different kinds of trials that you can sign up for. They walk users through our most powerful solutions, including Legal intake, Customer onboarding, Employee onboarding, and Email inbox automation. Sign up for one here!
