Jason Busch's Thoughts at the Coupa Conference

Jason Busch from Spend Matters gave another great speech at the Coupa INSPIRE conference in San Francisco which I attended last week.  As an aside – Jason started Spend Matters in 2004 as a side interest because he was bored.  Look where it is today!  Spend Matters has grown to be a big part of the procurement landscape.

The premise of his discussion at Coupa was around volatility, and the need for procurement transformation to stop and take a look at itself, and understand how becoming influential is becoming a bigger imperative.  Certainly, getting P2P under control is one part of answer, but the discussion needs to be driven even further upwards.

Jason made a joke at the conference that everyone found very funny from the outset.  Showing a picture of his Ariba watch, he noted that “the only problem is that every time I look at it, it debits my bank account!” This was a reference of course to the “per transaction costs” associated with the Ariba model – one which Coupa and many others are moving away from.  The landscape for the new P2P technology was a big part of the conference, and my next blog gives a great case study of how this was applied.

On a “futuristic note”, Jason commented that with the global economy, we will have some growth overall – but some moderate growth for US GDP.  Recent data is positive and the highest in last four months.  Europe has some big issues, and China has a different situation and is moving ahead with their own model of economic growth that is unlike any other.  China has become the longest lasting firewall and has usurped the US to develop their own version of E-bay and Amazon.  But if you look at Chinese economic data, despite the nay sayers we are nevertheless seeing some level of growth.

Volatility of copper is a major driver to the world economy and how to other metals impact our economy overall.  We are going up and down and have to manage through it.  Currency risk will soon be surpassed by commodity risk.

Other important issues are around sustainable behavior.  When the US sees problems with labor, that doesn’t seem to be an issue in China.  Jason noted that “when faced by workers committing suicide, their idea of a solution to the problem is putting up safety nets!”  ….they have a very different view of how to deal with human rights issues.  This will continue to be a major issue of debate.

Enchantment is a book Jason recommends as a good read – and is a good model for discussing  how to create an environment where people want to work with you.  For procurement, that means thinking about how to play the part, and putting your self in others’ situations.   For example, what is the storyline for a treasurer around the value of procurement? In another example, he joked how marketing people he interviewed felt the biggest thing procurement people needed to do was wear better clothes – that  is, they needed to look more like marketing people!

Jason also talked about the potential of social media in procurement.  For example, how can procurement and organizations explore using crowdsourcing technology like Yelp, and find new ways of exploiting social media.  One concept is around using social media to build networks of people you can trust.  For example, if you go to a conference of people you trust in the San Francisco bay area, you can use their insights for polls, surveys, and other issues because you trust that they are experts.

Procurement needs to find news ways of fostering responsibilities.  This is important in a networked world – how to empower users on the front lines to make the right decisions.  This drives issues of chain of custody and document compliance, and drives a double edged sword about independence vs. compliance in procurement.

Finally, Jason discussed the need to understand the business of data enlightenment.  For example, in Travel and Entertainment, not just looking at data from the travel site – but looking at ways to focus on recovering VAT on trips to Europe.  This requires a better understanding of what we are buying, using geospatial tools across a finite network, as well as news feeds and issues in the correct context.  The advent of big data is to be able to see how different elements are touching my supply network, and the structured/unstructured data elements that impact it.  Orchestrating these elements will surely be challenging, but they may dramatically impact how we incorporate supplier creativity and partner creativity, and how we tap suppliers for new sources of innovation.  This was a good prologue for our presentation on “The Future of Procurement” that followed by KPMG and NC State University.