Meet George Jetson – Your New Chief Procurement Officer

Transcript of a discussion on how rapid advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning are poised to reshape procurement.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Download the transcript. Sponsor: SAP Ariba.

Dana Gardner: Hi, this is Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, and you're listening to BriefingsDirect.

Gardner

Our next technology innovation thought leadership discussion explores how rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are poised to reshape procurement -- like a fast-forwarding to a once-fanciful vision of the future.

Whereas George Jetson of the 1960s cartoon portrayed a world of household robots, flying cars, and push-button corporate jobs -- the 2017 procurement landscape has its own impressive retinue of decision bots, automated processes, and data-driven insights.

We won’t need to wait long for this vision of futuristic business to arrive. As we enter 2017, applied intelligence derived from entirely new data analysis benefits has redefined productivity and provided business leaders with unprecedented tools for managing procurement, supply chains, and continuity risks.

To learn more about the future of predictive -- and even proactive procurement technologies -- please join me in welcoming back Chris Haydon, Chief Strategy Officer at SAP Ariba. Good to have you with us, Chris.

Chris Haydon: Great to be here again.

Gardner: It seems like only yesterday that we were content to gain a common view of the customer or develop an end-to-end bead on a single business process. These were our goals in refining business in general, but today we've leapfrogged to a future where we're using words like “predictive” and “proactive” to define what business function should do and be about. Chris, what's altered our reality to account for this rapid advancement from visibility into predictive -- and on to proactive?

Haydon: There are a couple of things. The acceleration of the smarts, the intelligence, or the artificial intelligence, whatever the terminology that you identify with, has really exploded. It’s a lot more real, and you see these use-cases on television all the time. The business world is just looking to go in and adopt that.

And then there’s this notion of the Lego block of being able to string multiple processes together via an API is really exciting -- that coupled with the ability to have insight. The last piece, the ability to make sense of big data, either from a visualization perspective or from a machine-learning perspective, has accelerated things.

These trends are starting to come together in the business-to-business (B2B) world, and today, we're seeing them manifest themselves in procurement.

Gardner: What is it about procurement as a function that’s especially ripe for taking advantage of these technologies?

Transaction intense

Haydon: Procurement is obviously very transaction-intense. Historically, what transaction intensity means is people, processing, exceptions. When we talk about these trends now, the ability to componentize services, the ability to look at big data or machine learning, and the input on top of this contextualizes intelligence. It's cognitive and predictive by its very nature, a bigger data set, and [improves] historically inefficient human-based processes. That’s why procurement is starting to be at the forefront.

Haydon

Gardner: Procurement itself has changed from the days of when we were highly vertically integrated as corporations. We had long lead times on product cycles and fulfillment. Nowadays, it’s all about agility and compressing the time across the board. So, procurement has elevated its position. Anything more to add?

Haydon: Everyone needs to be closer to the customer, and you need live business. So, procurement is live now. This change in dynamic -- speed and responsiveness -- is closer to your point. It’s also these other dimensions of the consumer experience that now has to be the business-to-business experience. All that means same-day shipping, real-time visibility, and changing dynamically. That's what we have to deliver.

Gardner: If we go back to our George Jetson reference, what is it about this coming year, 2017? Do you think it's an important inception point when it comes to factoring things like the rising role of procurement, the rising role of analytics, and the fact that the Internet of Things (IoT) is going to bring more relevant data to bear? Why now?

Haydon: There are a couple of things. The procurement function is becoming more mature. Procurement leaders have extracted those first and second levels of savings from sourcing and the like. And they have control of their processes.

With cloud-based technologies and more of control of their processes, they're looking now to how they're going to serve their internal customers by being value-generators and risk-reducers.

How do you forward the business, how do you de-risk, how do you get supply continuity, how do you protect your brand? You do that by having better insight, real-time insight into your supply base, and that’s what’s driving this investment.

Gardner: We've been talking about Ariba being a 20-year-old company. Congratulations on your anniversary of 20 years.

Haydon: Thank you.

AI and bots

Gardner: You're also, of course, part of SAP. Not only have you been focused on procurement for 20 years, but you've got a large global player with lots of other technologies and platform of benefits to avail yourselves of. So, that brings me to the point of AI and bots.

It seems to me that right at the time when procurement needs help, when procurement is more important than ever, that we're also in a position technically to start doing some innovative things that get us into those words "predictive" and more "intelligent."

Set the stage for how these things come together.

Haydon: You allude to being part of SAP, and that's really a great strength and advantage for a domain-focused procurement expertise company.

The machine-learning capabilities that are part of a native SAP HANA platform, which we naturally adopt and get access to, put us on the forefront of not having to invest in that part of the platform, but to focus on how we take that platform and put it into the context of procurement.

There are a couple of pretty obvious areas. There's no doubt that when you’ve got the largest B2B network, billions in spend, and hundreds and millions of transactions on invoicing, you apply some machine learning on that. We can start doing a lot smarter matching an exception management on that, pretty straightforward. That's at one end of the chain.

It's not about upstream and downstream, it's about end-to-end process, and re-imagining and reinventing that.

On the other end of the chain, we have bots. Some people get a little bit wired about the word “bot,” “robotics,” or whatever, maybe it's a digital assistant or it's a smart app. But, it's this notion of helping with decisions, helping with real-time decisions, whether it's identifying a new source of supply because there's a problem, and the problem is identified because you’ve got a live network. It's saying that you have a risk or you have a continuity problem, and not just that it's happening, but here's an alternative, here are other sources of a qualified supply.

Gardner: So, it strikes me that 2017 is such a pivotal year in business. This is the year where we're going to start to really define what machines do well, and what people do well, and not to confuse them. What is it about an end-to-end process in procurement that the machine can do better that we can then elevate the value in the decision-making process of the people?

Haydon: Machines can do better in just identifying patterns -- clusters, if you want to use a more technical word. They transform category management and enables procurement to be at the front of their internal customer set by looking not just at their traditional total cost of ownership (TCO), but total value and use. That's a part of that real dynamic change.

What we call end-to-end, or even what SAP Ariba defined in a very loose way when we talked about upstream, it was about outsourcing and contracting, and downstream was about procurement, purchasing, and invoicing. That's gone, Dana. It's not about upstream and downstream, it's about end-to-end process, and re-imagining and reinventing that.

The role of people

Gardner: When we give more power to a procurement professional by having highly elevated and intelligent tools, their role within the organization advances and the amount of improvement they can make financially advances. But I wonder where there's risk if we automate too much and whether companies might be thinking that they still want people in charge of these decisions. Where do we begin experimenting with how much automation to bring, now that we know how capable these machines have been, or is this going to be a period of exploration for the next few years?

Haydon: It will be a period of exploration, just because businesses have different risk tolerances and there are actually different parts of their life cycle. If you're in a hyper growth mode and you're pretty profitable, that's a little bit different than if you're under a very big margin pressure.

For example, maybe if you're in high tech in the Silicon Valley, and some big names that we could all talk about are, you're prepared to be able to go at it, and let it all come.

If you're in a natural-resource environment, every dollar is even more precious than it was a year ago.

That’s also the beauty, though, with technology. If you want to do it for this category, this supplier, this business unit, or this division you can do that a lot easier than ever before and so you go on a journey.

If you're in a hyper growth mode and you're pretty profitable, that's a little bit different than if you're under a very big margin pressure.

Gardner: That’s an important point that people might not appreciate, that there's a tolerance for your appetite for automation, intelligence, using machine learning, and AI. They might even change, given the context of the certain procurement activity you're doing within the same company. Maybe you could help people who are a little bit leery of this, thinking that they're losing control. It sounds to me like they're actually gaining more control.

Haydon: They gain more control, because they can do more and see more. To me, it’s layered. Does the first bot automatically requisition something -- yes or no? So, you put tolerances on it. I'm okay to do it if it is less than $50,000, $5,000, or whatever the limit is, and it's very simple. If the event is less than $5,000 and it’s within one percent of the last time I did it, go and do it. But tell me that you are going to do it or let’s have a cooling-off period.

If you don't tell me or if you don’t stop me, I'm going to do it, and that’s the little bit of this predictive as well. So you still control the gate, you just don’t have to be involved in all the sub-processes and all that stuff to get to the gate. That’s interesting.

Gardner: What’s interesting to me as well, Chris, is because the data is such a core element of how successful this is, it means that companies in a procurement intelligence drive will want more data, so they can make better decisions. Suppliers who want to be competitive in that environment will naturally be incentivized to provide more data, more quickly, with more openness. Tell us some of the implications for intelligence brought to procurement on the supplier? What we should expect suppliers to do differently as a result?

Notion of content

Haydon: There's no doubt that, at a couple of levels, suppliers will need to let the buyers know even more about themselves than they have ever known before.

That goes to the notion of content. It’s like there is unique content to be discovered, which is whom am I, what do I do well and demonstrate that I do well. That’s being discovered. Then, there is the notion of being able to transact. What do I need to be able to do to transact with you efficiently whether that's a payment, a bank account, or just the way in which I can consume this?

Then, there is also this last notion of the content. What content do I need to be able to provide to my customer, aka the end user, for them to be able to initiate the business with them?

These three dimensions of being discovered, how to be dynamically transacted with, and then actually providing the content of what you do even as a material of service to the end user via the channel. You have to have all of these dimensions right.

If you don't have the context of the business process between a buyer and a seller and what they are trying to affect through the network, how does it add value?

That’s why we fundamentally believe that a network-based approach, when it's end to end, meaning a supplier can do it once to all of the customers across the [Ariba] Discovery channel, across the transactional channel, across the content channel is really value adding. In a digital economy, that's the only way to do it.

Gardner: So this idea of the business network, which is a virtual repository for all of this information isn't just quantity, but it's really about the quality of the relationship. We hear about different business networks vying for attention. It seems to me that understanding that quality aspect is something you shouldn't lose track of.

Haydon: It’s the quality. It’s also the context of the business process. If you don't have the context of the business process between a buyer and a seller and what they are trying to affect through the network, how does it add value? The leading-practice networks, and we're a leading-practice network, are thinking about Discovery. We're thinking about content; we're thinking about transactions.

Gardner: Again, going back to the George Jetson view of the future, for organizations that want to see the return on their energy and devotion to these concepts around AI, bots, and intelligence. What sort of low-hanging fruit do we look for, for assuring them that they are on the right path? I'm going to answer my own question, but I want you to illustrate it a bit better, and that’s risk and compliance and being able to adjust to unforeseen circumstances seems to me an immediate payoff for doing this.

Severance of pleadings

Haydon: The United Kingdom is enacting a law before the end of the year for severance of pleadings. It’s the law, and you have to comply. The real question is how you comply.

You eye your brand, you eye your supply chain, and having the supply-chain profile information at hand right now is top of mind. If you're a Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) and you walk into the CEO’s office, the CEO could ask, "Can you tell me that I don’t have any forced labor, I don’t have any denied parties, and I'm Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) compliant? Can you tell me that now?"

You might be able to do it for your top 50 suppliers or top 100 suppliers, and that’s great, but unfortunately, a small, $2,000 supplier who uses some forced labor in any part of the world is potentially a problem in this extended supply chain. We've seen brands boycotted very quickly. These things roll.

So yes, I think that’s just right at the forefront. Then, it's applying intelligence to that to give that risk threshold and to think about where those challenges are. It's being smart and saying, "Here is a high risk category. Look at this category first and all the suppliers in the category. We're not saying that the suppliers are bad, but you better have a double or triple look at that, because you're at high risk just because of the nature of the category."

Think larger than yourself in trying to solve that problem differently. Those cloud deployment models really help you.

Gardner: Technically, what should organizations be thinking about in terms of what they have in place in order for their systems and processes to take advantage of these business network intelligence values? If I'm intrigued by this concept, if I see the benefits in reducing risk and additional efficiency, what might I be thinking about in terms of my own architecture, my own technologies in order to be in the best position to take advantage of this?

Haydon: You have to question how much of that you think you can build yourself. If you think you're asking different questions than most of your competitors, you're probably not. I'm sure there are specific categories and specific areas on tight supplier relationships and co-innovation development, but when it comes to the core risk questions, more often, they're about an industry, a geography, or the intersection of both.

Our recommendation to corporations is never try and build it yourself. You might need to have some degree of privacy, but look to have it as more industry-based. Think larger than yourself in trying to solve that problem differently. Those cloud deployment models really help you.

Gardner: So it really is less of a technical preparatory thought process than process being a digital organization, availing yourself of cloud models, being ready to think about acting intelligently and finding that right demarcation between what the machines do best and what the people do best.

More visible

Haydon: By making things digital they are actually more visible. You have to be able to balance the pure nature of visibility to get at the product; that's the first step. That’s why people are on a digital journey.

Gardner: Machines can’t help you with a paper-based process, right?

Haydon: Not as much. You have to scan it and throw it in. Then, you are then digitizing it.

Gardner: We heard about Guided Buying last year from SAP Ariba. It sounds like we're going to be getting a sort of "Guided Buying-Plus" next year and we should keep an eye on that.

Haydon: We're very excited. We announced that earlier this year. We're trying to solve two problems quickly through Guided Buying.

Our Guided Buying has a beautiful consumer-based look and feel, but with embedded compliance. We hide the complexity. We just show the user what they need to know at the time, and the flow is very powerful.

One is the nature of the ad-hoc user. We're all ad-hoc users in the business today. I need to buy things, but I don’t want to read the policy, I don’t want to open the PDF on some corporate portal on some threshold limit that, quite honestly, I really need to know about once or twice a year.

So our Guided Buying has a beautiful consumer-based look and feel, but with embedded compliance. We hide the complexity. We just show the user what they need to know at the time, and the flow is very powerful.

Gardner: Well, it certainly sounds like an area where intelligence would have a very marked improvement, and we'll look for some interesting news there as well.

I'm afraid we'll have to leave it there. You've been listening to a BriefingsDirect thought leadership podcast discussion on how rapid advances in AI and machine learning are poised to reshape procurement.

We've heard how, as we enter 2017, applied intelligence, derived from entirely new data analysis, benefits redefines productivity. Lastly, we've been presented with SAP Ariba’s view on where we can take business intelligence aspects into more types of process and more refinement of the procurement function.

With that, please join me in thanking our guest, Chris Haydon, Chief Strategy Officer at SAP Ariba. Thank you, sir.

Haydon: Thank you.

Gardner: And a big thank you as well to our audience for joining this SAP Ariba-sponsored business innovation thought leadership discussion. I'm Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host and moderator. Thanks again for listening, and do come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Download the transcript. Sponsor: SAP Ariba

Transcript of a discussion on how rapid advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning are poised to reshape procurement. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2016. All rights reserved.

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A Hit with Consumers, Digital Payments Now Catching On Across the Business World Too

Transcript of a discussion on how the popularity of digital payments in the consumer world is now spreading to the B2B payments world as well, and for good reason.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Download the transcript.
Dana Gardner: Hi, this is Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, and you’re listening to BriefingsDirect.

Gardner

Our next technology innovation thought leadership discussion focuses on how digital payments are catching on for many more companies in the business world following the popularity of services like Apple Pay in the consumer world.

We'll now explore how digital payment solutions are changing the game for small companies like 487 Consulting Services, which is seeing faster and simpler payments using AribaPay. And we will hear more about how AribaPay is expanding around the globe.

With that, please join me in welcoming our guests, Drew Hofler, Senior Director of Marketing at SAP Ariba. Welcome, Drew.

Drew Hofler: Thank you, Dana, great to be here.

Gardner: We're also here with Ken Crouse, Principal Consultant and Owner at 487 Consulting Services in Folsom, California. Welcome, Ken.

Ken Crouse: Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Gardner: And we are also here with Bill Dulin, Vice President of Commercial Payments at Discover in Chicago. Welcome, Bill.

Bill Dulin: Hey, thank you.

Gardner: Drew, for almost anything that consumers want to buy these days there's a swipe or a card chip, and we are now into wireless connectivity for payments. And yet, with business-to-business (B2B), we're still many times faxing and writing paper checks -- and it's largely still a manual process.

So why such a dichotomy between what people can do as a consumer buying gasoline, for example, and a company buying critical goods and services?

Hofler: It's fundamentally the difference between payments in B2B and the consumer world. For consumers, it's relatively simple.

Everything that you're going to buy is in a single cart at the time of payment, and it all takes place in one spot. The information and the payment itself happen together.

In the B2B world, that is just simply not the case. In the B2B world, you have an invoice that comes in for a good delivered or service rendered, and then payment may happen 30, 45, 60, 90 days later, and that payment may include more than one invoice.

Oftentimes in the B2B context, it includes hundreds of invoices on a single credit of funds into an account. So there's a huge gap between the payment and the information, and that’s what we're trying to solve. That's where the innovation needs to come, bringing that information that’s necessary for all parties to know what's being paid for, when, and why, bringing that together with the settlement of funds in a very secure environment.

Closing the gap

Gardner: But we are closing the gap. Tell us a little bit about AribaPay. How long has it been around and why is it now in a position to begin closing that gap even more rapidly than ever?

Hofler: We launched general availability of AribaPay a little over year ago, and we started here in North America. We've seen rapid growth and we just announced that we're expanding into Canada with our partner, Discover. We are also expanding, later in the year, into Europe and Latin America.

 Hofler

Even though the payment systems are different, the fundamental issue with B2B payments -- the disconnect between information and the settlement of funds -- is the same no matter where you go geographically.

So that's why we're taking it global, and why we're in a position to really change the game and innovate in B2B payments. We sit at the nexus of the digital network age, which is a very different age from where payments began.

You have electronic payments like ACH in the US (or SEPA in Europe) and these types of electronic payment schemes were created back in the '70s, based on a paradigm of that time, which was COBOL-based mainframes behind brick walls, and there was no way to connect a buyer's systems with the supplier's systems.

But now, we live in the digital age, where the Ariba network connects millions of buyers and suppliers together to transact and move terabytes of data in real time between back-end systems.

Instead of doing what B2B payments and electronic payments have done in the past, which is try to take a small subset of that information out and attach it to the payment, (using the ACH or to the SEPA formats, 140 characters in Europe, which is the same as a tweet, or 80 usable characters in the US) we're taking the payment and attaching it to all of this information that’s already on the Ariba Network, the purchase order (PO), the invoice, the reason why the invoice maybe paid a little less than was expected. All of that information is fully available on the network.

We make it visible with the payment, so that both buyers and suppliers know exactly what's being paid, why it's being paid, what this million-dollar deposit is, even if it's a thousand invoices, and why it may be a little different than the supplier was expecting. All of that is fully visible and available on the Ariba Network.

Gardner: Bill, tell us a bit about the role that Discover plays in all this. And how do you feel about the gap closing between what happens in the consumer space and what can now happen in the business space?

Facilitating payments

Dulin: I think I would like to start off with what AribaPay is not, and it's not a card offering. Usually, when people see the Discover logo, they're thinking of a credit-card offering, but this is not that. We're using our infrastructure to facilitate commercial payments.

Dulin

In that case, we’re making sure that we're gathering the bank account information, we're acting as the financial institute of record, we're boarding the suppliers, so all of that information is now in our trusted network. That's how we show up as the financial institution, as the bank. We then move the money and, as Drew talked about a little bit earlier, along with that data as well. That's really where the gap is closing. We're bringing the data and the financial transaction together.

Gardner: Drew, this is not just for large companies. It should be for any company. The long tail, if you will, the larger number of people involved, will be those small-to-medium size businesses (SMBs). Is there something in it that's different or special for them other than your Global 2000 corporations?

Hofler: It’s particularly different for the receivers of payments on that long tail. The large companies have the IT resources they need to manage the complex electronic payments that are available today. That's based on EDI and things like that, and that's great.

The midsize to the smaller suppliers simply don't have the technical resources to consume the information in those formats. They just can't do it. What AribaPay really does is it makes it as simple as possible.

But then the midsize to the smaller suppliers simply don't have the technical resources to consume the information in those formats. They just can't do it. What AribaPay really does is it makes it as simple as possible.

It is as simple as an email with the information about the payment and a link into their account in the Ariba Network that they can visibly see all the information around their payment in a very nice UI. For example, if they were expecting a $1,000 payment and they got $900, the big question is why. There may be 10 invoices on that payment.

They come in, click that link, and come right into their account on the network. They see the payment ID for that $900 that they have, and we show them exactly what was invoiced, the $1,000. You expected $1,000, but you received $900, and here exactly is where the difference is from.

They have hyperlinks to go into the invoice. They can see the comments that may have been made on how maybe something was broken on the pallet, and so they only paid for 9 items instead of 10.

All of that is a very simple online experience.

Gardner: Ken, tell me a bit about 487 Consulting Services, what you do, and then we'll ask about how you like to get paid?

One-man shop

Crouse: 487 Consulting Services is my personal business. It's a one-man shop. I literally get up in the morning, walk over and turn on the coffee pot and walk over to my desk. That's probably the best part of being an independent.

Crouse

The other side of being an independent, though, is that I'm responsible for every single aspect of the business from submitting the financial filings that we did with Discover and getting on board with everybody and actually doing the work for which I'm getting paid. It's all done by me and is controlled by me.

There is no IT department. There is no human resources department. There is no large infrastructure behind me -- it's just me. I came to SAP Ariba via a customer that said they wanted to pay me that way.

Initially, I was a little apprehensive because I was expecting that I'd have to learn a new program. I could just flash back to COBOL in college back in the '80s, and that was petrifying, but the simplicity and the transparency of SAP Ariba was just refreshing.

The first webinar I attended, although scheduled for one hour, only lasted about 30 minutes because of the simplicity and then, within a couple of days, I was able to get all my paperwork together for Discover, and I was live on Ariba within less than a week.

Now, with the Ariba Network, when it comes time to do my invoice and do it about twice a month, I open my Ariba account, identify the purchase order to be billed, click the service that's to be billed and click the submit button.

Two weeks later, I received my first series of payments through Ariba and have been now receiving payments since the first of January 2015. Ariba has processed something north of 300 invoices for me amounting to probably 500 to 600 individual tasks.

Gardner: I think there are going to be more and more folks like you, smaller businesses, independents working to provide discrete services throughout our economy, around the world, many of them working off just the smart phone.

So this is an important part of our growing economy, but also it’s important for an organization like yours to have great visibility to know when the money is coming and when to expect it. Cash flow is pretty important.

So tell me a little bit about that visibility and expectation, and how this system worked better than paper, faxes, and checks?

Previous system

Crouse: It's probably best that I just take a step back from that and review where I was before Ariba, and like you mentioned, it was a paper invoicing system. My customer required that each purchase order be on a separate piece of paper for the purposes of invoicing.

So I might create 15 or 20 invoices, put them all in the same envelope with a nice little transmittal sheet, mail them off. Then, 75 days later, when I'm not getting paid for some invoice, I would then get hold of them, and they would say "Oops, your invoice isn't in our system. And I'd start all over again. That would be a time out from work. I had to stop what I was doing, resubmit the invoice, and then start the clock all over again.

Now, with the Ariba Network, when it comes time to do my invoice and do it about twice a month, I open my Ariba account, identify the purchase order to be billed, click the service that's to be billed and click the submit button. Quite literally, the invoicing is just that simple.

Within a matter of minutes, I receive recognition that the invoice is in the system, as opposed to waiting 75 days for confirmation that it's not there. I receive a positive affirmation within just a matter of minutes.

And then, within 48 to 72 hours, I have a customer who has acknowledged and has approved that invoice for payment. At that point, I know with certainty that that payment is going to come in and on a date certain. I can forecast my cash accordingly and then go on vacation. I don't have to worry about it.

When I get the notifications of the payment being in there, it's broken down line item by line item that corresponds to the exact tasks that I have done for that particular payment. I enjoy the fact that it is all in one payment and broken out that way.

Gardner: Also, Drew mentioned this opportunity for more rich information to be associated with the transaction, remittance information for example. Have you been able to avail yourself of that and is that an important part of what you're doing, being able to see all the information associated with an invoice or a payment process?

Crouse: When I get the notifications of the payment being in there, it's broken down line item by line item that corresponds to the exact tasks that I have done for that particular payment. I enjoy the fact that it is all in one payment and broken out that way.

In the past, a year and a half ago, I might receive individual payments for all of those invoices. I'd get an envelope in the mail that might have a dozen checks in it and then, I'd have to go back and reconcile one check against one invoice. It was just a very time consuming and very clumsy effort.

The other part is that I wouldn’t necessarily get paid for all of my invoices submitted on a given date at the same time. I'd get paid for 10 of the 12 invoices and then would have to start this tail-wagging-the-dog episode of chasing around payments on the other invoices and payments. Although the majority of them might be paid in 60 days, it wasn't uncommon that they would stretch out to 120 or 150 days.

Digitizing processes

Gardner: Bill, any thoughts from the Discover perspective on the ability to not just repave cow paths, but actually do things in business that could not have been done before, given that we are digitizing these processes?

Dulin: A key for us in this, and what we haven’t talked about too much, is the compliance that’s around it. So as we are moving these payments, knowing who the customer is, anti-money laundering, all the regulatory compliance that goes around it. That makes it a more robust payment.

We become more sophisticated as the technology wraps around that payment, to know where it's going, where it should be going. If something has happened that triggers it -- it makes us stop and take a look, to make sure. Sometimes, we talk about purposeful friction. Something triggered an event that made us stop the payment and take a look around and make sure that we have it.

From our perspective in this case, it's not so much of the technology; it’s pulling that sensitive information out of enterprise resource planning (ERP) programs or other places that it shouldn't be and then putting it in a financial institution, again, using that technology around it to help secure that.

Gardner: Now, we heard a lot at the recent Ariba Live 2016 Conference about risk reduction and visibility in the supply chain, that it's really about managing your supply chain. Is there something about using AribaPay, when you have all that data associated that gives people more insight into their supply chain than they may have had, auditability, the ability to further define what it is that they want in terms of best practices, Drew?

More data is better than less data, as long as you can consume it and put it in a usable format, and that's really what we are doing.

Hofler: More data is better than less data, as long as you can consume it and put it in a usable format, and that's really what we are doing.

Knowing exactly who is being paid and removing the opportunities for fraud in the payment process is huge, and AribaPay really removes those opportunities for fraud or a vast majority of them.

We have this whole platform of information and data about the interactions between a buyer and their supplier, from the moment that they source, to when they procure, to the PO, to the invoice, to the payment going through. They can see the on-time performance and they can see how often that supplier requests early payment, if they're using Dynamic Discounting on the Ariba Network, and they can feed that back into the procurement side and start to define payment terms as a result of that at the very beginning.

Gardner: I am afraid we will have to leave it there. You've been listening to a BriefingsDirect thought leadership podcast discussion on how digital payments are catching on for many more companies in the business world. And we've seen how the popularity of digital payments in the consumer world is now spreading to the B2B payments world as well, and for good reason.

So please join me now in thanking our guests, Drew Hofler, the Senior Director of Marketing at SAP Ariba; Ken Crouse, Principal Consultant and Owner at 487 Consulting Services, and Bill Dulin, Vice President of Commercial Payments at Discover.

And a big thank you, too, to our audience for joining this SAP Ariba-sponsored business innovation thought leadership discussion. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host and moderator. Thanks again for listening, and do come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Download the transcript. Sponsor: SAP Ariba.

Transcript of a discussion on how the popularity of digital payments in the consumer world is now spreading to the B2B payments world as well, and for good reason. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2016. All rights reserved.

You may also be interested in:

• How new technology trends disrupt the very nature of business
• SAP Ariba Chief Strategy Officer on the Digitization of Business and the Future of Technology
• How New Technology Trends Disrupt the Very Nature of Business
• Procurement in 2016 -- The Supply Chain Goes Global
• Is 2016 the Year that Accounts Payable Becomes Strategic?
• Winning the B2B Commerce Game: What Sales Organizations Should Do Differently
• Can Great Design Really Impact Global Commerce?
• Ariba’s digital handshake helps Caesars up the ante on supply chain diversity
• Detecting and Eradicating Slavery and Other Labor Risks Across Global Supply Chains through Business Networks
• Ariba elevates business user experience with improved mobile apps and interfaces
• Ariba's product roadmap for 2015 leads to improved business cloud services
• Networks: The new model for B2B business, a panel discussion

Building a Modern Marketing Organization in a Multi-Channel World

Transcript of a discussion on how social media and business networks have taken the lead in shaping perceptions about brands, products, and companies.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Download the transcript. Sponsor: SAP Ariba.

Dana Gardner: Hi, this is Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, and you’re listening to BriefingsDirect.

Gardner

Our next innovation thought leadership discussion focuses on building a modern marketing organization. Marketing today is a different game. Today’s buyers are more connected and informed than ever, and that’s creating major upheaval in the way companies promote their brands.

Social media and business networks have taken the lead in shaping perceptions about brands, products, and companies -- and savvy businesses are embracing these new channels and technologies both to increase their brand awareness and to drive sales.

We’re here with two experts to talk about these changes and how they are shaping the future of marketing. To learn more, please join me in welcoming Alicia Tillman, Chief Marketing Officer at SAP Ariba. Welcome, Alicia.

Alicia Tillman: Thank you so much, Dana, very happy to be here.

Gardner: We are also here with Pete Krainik, Founder and CEO of The CMO Club. Welcome, Pete.

Pete Krainik: Thanks, Dana and Alicia, good to reconnect again.

Tillman: Yes, of course, you, too.

Gardner: Let’s begin our conversation at a fairly high level. What are the trends, the competitive pressures, and the technology changes that are prompting companies to have to seek new and better ways to market themselves, Alicia?

Tillman: There are two things, Dana. First, when we think about trends or even new ways to market in particular, we're faced with the fact that social media, and networks have taken the lead in shaping perceptions about brands, products, and companies.

Tillman

On one hand, there’s no shortage of information, and that’s a good thing. But on the other hand, it’s really causing companies to get out ahead of that as quickly as possible, because the reality is that today’s buyers aren't struggling to find information. And so many buying decisions are made about companies and products before any interaction with a member of the sales team.

Companies are recognizing that all of the channels in the social media space that companies are going after to find information is key. Making sure that marketers are driving information in a consistent manner across these channels will aid in feeling as though your company’s value proposition and brand are being embraced and accepted in the ways that you want them to.

My second point is in terms of the competitive pressure. All companies are mostly trying to compete on a product, a piece of technology, in a lot of ways, and oftentimes your competitors are saying they already have or are about to innovate on the same thing. So companies need to force themselves to innovate beyond products. There are a lot of opportunities, in particular, thinking about how you differentiate on things such as thought leadership or standing for a particular cause.

How do you take a product and how do you use it to benefit the world in terms of driving higher good in some way? So between social media and networks, embracing those channels and then separately thinking about how you differentiate beyond just the basics of products are certainly the opportunities that companies are faced with today.

Social media

Gardner: Pete, with social media, we're more exposed than ever. People can point at whatever they see about brands or companies. How is this trend shaping the new marketing and competition?

Krainik: I think Alicia is spot-on. I host dinners with chief marketing officers (CMOs), and I'm chatting behind doors on these issues around the new competitive landscape. If you look at the pressures faced by CMOs, you still have the same process or the same thought -- I need to sell more products, I need to differentiate myself, I need to get leads, I need to close, I need to build the brand. Those things and concepts haven’t changed, but you have a whole new wave of extremely agile competitors now, like Uber, like Airbnb.

Krainik

How is the cloud impacting that? You have the new players that you never had to deal with before. You have new media channels, new influencers. In the past, media mostly meant working on press releases. But the whole world has changed. You talked about it, and Alicia again talked about social.

And then, this whole issue of speed of change and how to keep up with it is interesting. How do I, as an organization, keep up with all the changes?

Marketing is completely different than it was five or 10 years ago. There are just too many choices, too much noise, too much outbound. CMOs are getting hundreds of emails a day from someone selling some product and they're not even looking at it. Those kinds of pressures are building, as Alicia said, and taking the competition to the next level. Those things are top of mind right now for CMOs.

Gardner: Alicia, in this environment of disruption, of fast-paced change, of so much noise and information, you recently completed a significant update of the Ariba brand, and you’ve launched a new name and logo. Why did you do that at this time and how did you go about that differently than you would have done 5 or 10 years ago?

Tillman: Ariba was founded some 18 years ago, and at the time, the company had set out on a mission to build a single solution to help companies manage their spend. If we reflect on the past 18 years, you see all the ways in which our business has evolved, in which buyer needs and the economies have evolved, and how our business has worked to evolve and be ahead of that. Today, Ariba is the world’s largest marketplace for all business-to-business (B2B) transactions.

We have two million companies and $1 trillion in commerce that run through the Ariba Network. When we think about some of the significant change that has happened notably in the past four years, number one, we were acquired by SAP. SAP is a global leader in enterprise application software. It has an incredible brand, and is an incredibly sound and operationally and financially stable company known throughout the world. It’s really important to us to take that brand reputation into our identities.

First, we've added the SAP name to our brands, now calling ourselves SAP Ariba. And secondly, the logo, the mark, or the bug as some people like to call it, that fits alongside the company name is equally important. The visual representation of our brand needs to well support the business we're in and the value proposition we offer.

Pete said it really well. When we think about the marketplace that we're in today, there are new competitors, new influencers, and so many choices that we have an obligation as marketers to help buyers clear through the clutter, understand where the differentiation exists within companies, and associate themselves with a company that is most relevant to their needs.

Showcasing customers

So, we evolved our logo and made it into a mark that really showcases our customers, which are both buyers and sellers. Within our logo there's a connection there that’s reflected to support how Ariba brings those two buying populations together.

In addition to that, we've worked to adapt a new tone in our messaging. Messaging got simple and clear to piece point about all the choices that exist. You’ve got to focus on a simple and clear message, and one that is very understood and very relevant for your customers.

Gardner: Pete touched on this issue of so much information available, and research confirms that consumers are looking at multiple channels when they make a purchase. They have much more of an ability to do research and to get social commentary. I myself find, in my own buying, that I'm ready to push the button to buy something, but then I'll glance at the comments or some of the recommendations, and actually back away. So this is really a big deal.

So how do we, as marketers, think about different ways to accommodate these new behaviors by buyers, and how do we then provide information to them as sellers to help them along the way?

Krainik: One thing some of the top CMOs or top brands are doing is moving away from a campaign-focus to 360-degree coverage. I was a CMO before I started The CMO Club, and the profession has moved beyond kind of the "blah, blah, blah" to true focus. There’s the ability to make sure that the content is relevant, that the stories are there, that you’ve identified the advocates, and people underestimate the value of that.

Everybody is driven by mobile now. It's truly a mobile workforce. We're always doing everything on mobile.

You talked a minute ago about how you check on social media or with people you know or respect, and they say, "This product is good, this product isn’t, or I had a great experience here." How do you spend the time making sure you know who those advocates are, who the influencers are, how to engage employees, and really focusing on getting to that. It’s such an important thing that I think people don’t think about as much.

Another piece that there’s not enough focus on: Everybody is driven by mobile now. It's truly a mobile workforce. We're always doing everything on mobile. So making sure when we talk about multichannel and we talk about going where the customers are, we need to be sure it’s in the format they want as well. We want them saying that we have this great website, this great digital space. If you’re not going to mobile, then you’re missing the boat.

Gardner: Alicia, anything to offer on ways marketers need to do things differently to accommodate these new buyer behaviors?

Tillman: I think a lot about the power of consistency and how marketers need to have their finger on the pulse of the channels that their customers are getting information from. Pete’s organization, The CMO Club, hosted a fantastic CMO roundtable a couple of weeks ago where the topic was how to stay ahead of the digital transformation, and how marketers are embracing digital transformation.

One of the questions was how much of our budget is dedicated to a digital platform to support our marketing? Certainly, the percentages were quite high, but we also found that there is still budget being invested in your more traditional channels, including things like print and events. Events in particular, because of the face-to-face communication that occurs and how business is still done over a handshake, and we can’t underestimate that.

Strong balance

Striking a strong balance between your digital marketing channels as well as your traditional marketing channels is key. Keeping the message consistent in how we market between those channels is also quite key, and then understanding the various buyer personas that you speak with. If you’re creating a digital campaign for the CIO audience, the messages are going to be different from how you would market to a chief financial officer (CFO) audience.

As an example, and it’s really important, back to an earlier point I made around relevancy, you’ve got to stay consistent, but you also have to make sure you’re being relevant, and then taking into account a strong balance between the new digital channels that exists, but also not underestimating the power that still remains with some of our more traditional channels.

Krainik: Alicia, I think you're spot-on. I loved the comment about staying true and consistency, and you’ve demonstrated that with what you’ve done. I know you talked about what we actually see in the market. It’s the importance of creating the brand story and being consistent to that story.

It’s more important now than ever, because then you can get your employees, your advocates, and all your stakeholders supporting that brand story, regardless of the channel. Brand consistency is more important now than the actual advertising campaigns. You’ve done a great job and I think you're spot-on with that. It makes the multichannel execution easier, if you’ve got that nailed, as opposed to chasing it campaign to campaign.

Brand consistency is more important now than the actual advertising campaigns.

Tillman: Yeah, absolutely.

Gardner: Well, Alicia, at this point, where we have these challenges, we're also facing some great new tools in the marketplace, ways to get more information, get customization, use big data, and leverage cloud models to extend our reach, but also to gather more information in better ways. Tell me what you think some of the strong tools are, and I am going to imagine that the SAP Hybris marketing suite is among them.

Tillman: I'd start by ensuring that you have a strong marketing automation platform. It's becoming commonplace in most marketing organizations, large or small, for the past five years or so and it’s certainly growing in size in terms of marketing organizations that are raising the technology.

Essentially, this technology allows you to automate the lead generation process to help you manage campaigns in an automated way, help you nurture the leads that are coming through your demand waterfall in an automated way. The leads that you’re handing off to sales are more qualified than they ever had been before.

You have such an extreme ability to nurture these leads using digital campaigns in these automated ways. That’s my first recommendation: you need to pursue marketing automation technology.

The other thing that exists within these technologies is not just an ability to help you manage your campaigns and manage the nurture strategies within them, but it’s also the data that these technologies provide.

As you integrate them with your company's sales customer-relationship-management (CRM) system, it gives you really unprecedented abilities to show where the demand is being created, and how you can most effectively demonstrate the support of marketing to the ultimate growth of the pipeline, and then of course, to the growth of the business.

Focus on measurement

So it is a must-have that you focus on that in particular. That’s the leading place that I would start. Then, there's all of that getting into the analytics. Every marketer should always be focused on measurement. Measurement is the sole thing that has enabled me to grow my team, whether that be headcount or investment.

When you're not sitting across the table from your CEO or my president talking in terms of numbers and data that are showing the true impact as marketing’s existence on the companies thought of mind, you’re essentially not having a conversation, and you will not have an ability to grow your team. So I highly advise that you look at strong marketing automation and data and analytical structure to enable you to help support your programs.

Gardner: What’s super powerful these days about the data is that we're not only gaining a 360-degree view of customers, but we're able to react in near real time, and then target them with precise customization. How are those tools being used, from your vantage point, that sort of feedback loop and an instant ability to know what a customer is doing, learn inference, compare that to other datasets and then offer something back to them, which really should engage them?

Data is what needs to be at the backbone of your operations within the marketing organization, because it really informs everything.

Tillman: Obviously, being part of SAP, I could spend all day talking about the advanced analytical tools that exist, and having the sort of in-memory computing technologies like S/4HANA, which is the backbone of SAP. These tools have the power to look at large datasets quickly. There are many cloud sales applications that work to provide customer information that marketers need in a central location, it’s available at a glance, and it’s delivered in context that’s truly most important for marketers.

There’s so much flexibility in the cloud. Companies can pull together information in real time or live, as we like to say here at SAP, pulling from so many sources. Data is what needs to be at the backbone of your operations within the marketing organization, because it really informs everything from where you can innovate and where campaigns are having the most success, to what that next big thing is going to be to help propel the company forward. And that’s a big part of what’s the core of a marketing organization.

Gardner: Pete, any additional thoughts about what you’re hearing from your CMO audience about use of these data tools?

Krainik: I’ve seen a shift among CMOs in the last year to two years on how they approach data tools. They used to approach it by looking at the tools currently available and choosing one that catches their eye. Now, there are a number of really bright CMOs out there who are actually taking the approach of assuming that they have total visibility, total velocity, and can get total value at their fingertips from a design perspective, whether it’s for demand and lead generation or a campaign. So they start with that assumption, then they design what that ideal tool would be. And then they evaluate the tools’ capabilities and processes.

By the way, what’s equally is important, I found out talking to CMOs is that you can have the great tools, but if you don’t have the right team and expertise to run it, post implementation, it can cause a problem. That’s an interesting approach. If you could have any piece of information what would like to begin with, what would you like to have to know about your customers? It just opens up some interesting ideas to really stretch the envelope versus force fitting, and I am sure, Alicia, you are seeing that too with some of your customers.

Tillman: Absolutely.

Gardner: Alicia, looking to the future, what do you see as some of the greatest challenges that marketers are facing? I'm thinking the perhaps the user experience is going to become more important over time, but how do you see that?

New opportunities

Tillman: There are a couple of things. The war to differentiate and to bring new opportunities, new leads, into the business is always going to be a reality for marketers. They're always going to need to have a very clear brand, a very simple message, and one that’s differentiated and relevant.

So focusing on your brand story and ensuring that that brand story is consistent across all of the buying and marketing channels, and is relevant and is compelling is always going to be a reality for marketers, because your brand drives the growth of your business’s bottom line. It’s what fuels your pipeline; it’s what fuels the sale of your product; it's what enables you to tell your story around differentiation. So, there always needs to be a clear focus there.

The other thing too, and I had mentioned this in one of my opening comments, is around this notion of differentiation and thinking beyond products in ways in which you can differentiate yourself. As an example, I work in a B2B space, but think about some of the best consumer brands in the world, and those that we support in our personal lives.

Often, I like to reflect on the brands that I support in my personal life, and when I think about what the similarities are between those brands and why I am so loyal to them, not only are their products best in class, but they’ve actually put their products to use beyond what the day-to-day objective is.

If you think of a brand like Tom’s or Starbucks, they have filled brand promises around where they source their materials, where they donate portions of their revenue. And when we think about the millennial population as one, but any buyer, there is a much greater desire for them to partner with organizations that stand for something versus ones that don’t. B2B organizations, in particular, have a tremendous opportunity to think beyond the level in which they’re competing with day after day, and think about what is that higher good.

It’s really how we're taking our value proposition and using it to create higher good in the world around things that people care about and really mater at the end of the day. That’s the real opportunity for marketers.

When we talk about visions, vision statements should be operational, and it’s really how we're taking our value proposition and using it to create higher good in the world around things that people care about and really mater at the end of the day. That’s the real opportunity for marketers.

Gardner: Pete, what advice would you offer the CMOs as they think to overcome these challenges in order to reach this vision of a brand-driven and customer-centric world?

Krainik: The two most important things are, first, that I would put my energies around making sure that I have a marketing organization that has the new marketing skills and new technical skills needed for success. Number one, get the best and the brightest.

The other thing, in addition to the differentiation that was discussed, is this whole issue of ecosystem of innovation: creating an ecosystem, understanding how I am going to look to the outside to bring in new ideas, new startup capabilities, new energy. Those are the two essentials for success. If you don’t do those, I think people are going to be in trouble long term.

Gardner: I'm afraid we will have to leave it there. You’ve been listening to a BriefingsDirect podcast discussion focused on how to build a modern marketing organization. We’ve heard how social media and business networks have taken the lead in shaping perceptions about brands, products, and companies. And we have learned how savvy companies are embracing these new channels and technologies to increase their brand awareness and drive sales.

So, please join me now in thanking our guests, Alicia Tillman, Chief Marketing Officer at SAP Ariba, and Pete Krainik, Founder and CEO of The CMO Club.

And a big thank you too to our audience as well for joining this SAP Ariba-sponsored business innovation and thought leadership discussion. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host and moderator. Thanks again for listening, and do come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Download the transcript. Sponsor: SAP Ariba

Transcript of a discussion on how social media and business networks have taken the lead in shaping perceptions about brands, products, and companies. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2016. All rights reserved.

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Cloud, Competition and the Rise of Business Networks

Transcript of a discussion on the emergence of business networks and how that requires new models of competition and cooperation.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Download the transcript. Sponsor: SAP Ariba.

Dana Gardner: Hi, this is Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, and you’re listening to BriefingsDirect.

Gardner

Our next innovation thought leadership discussion focuses on the rise of business networks and how that requires new models of doing business and new ways of relating to customers and partners.

Quite rapidly, we've entered a business world where unprecedented connectedness leads to instant analysis. These insights across entire industries provide powerful new ways for businesses to innovate and to adapt to markets, supply chains, and customer demands.

All things being equal, the companies that best leverage this data-driven innovation and these business network effects will surely win in their markets. We’re here today with two experts to discuss the future of enterprise software and the role that business networks will play in creating new models for sustained success.

To learn more about doing business best in our digital and connected world, please join me in welcoming Alex Atzberger, President of SAP Ariba. Welcome, Alex.

Alex Atzberger: Thank you, Dana. Thank you for having me.

Gardner: And we are also here with Christian Lanng, CEO and Co-Founder of Tradeshift. Welcome, Christian.

Christian Lanng: Welcome, Dana, it’s great to be here, and also with Alex.

Gardner: We've had this ongoing confluence of cloud, mobile, big data and we’re seeing streamlined business processes happen as a result of these -- and it seems to be accelerating and empowering business-network effects. So, my first question to you, Christian, is how is this disrupting businesses and how do they turn that disruption into a benefit and business agility?

Lanng: As you mentioned initially, the confluence of cloud, mobile -- all of these things -- is happening and it’s a massive disruption for the Fortune 500. We’ve never really seen anything on this scale, but I want to point out two key areas. If you go back 10 or 15 years, what you were doing with your supply chain was very batch-driven. It was very large-scale business, and was all about reducing the cost of transactions. We saw the rise of business BPOs where you did a lot of outsourcing of your processes, a lot of outsourcing of transactions.

And it was all about a cost-steady supply chain. If you look at today, the main paradigm has switched completely. What you will see is that it’s all about agility. It’s all about the speed of data. We find that a lot of the solutions we implemented in the '90s and the early 2000s tended to focus on reducing cost, and that very often came with the flip side of increasing the cost of change, because we put everything into very rigid process and very rigid structures.

Full supply chain

One of the things that business networks are transforming right now -- both on Alex’s side of the table and our side of the table -- is that we're now wiring the full supply chain. We're connecting all of the processes and bringing in all of the data in real time. That’s an extremely fundamental switch from a world where everything used to be faxed via paper, up until, actually, quite recently.

It’s a tremendous disruption, probably the biggest we’ve see in business software in the last 30 years, and it’s very exciting to be here, because we're just at the very tip of the iceberg for this whole revolution.

Gardner: Alex, disruption can be a negative, but disruption could also be something that creates opportunity. How are you seeing the current market as an opportunity rather than destruction?

Atzberger: All customers are realizing that digitization, the confluence of the different trends that were spoken about, present absolute opportunities to change the business model of companies. And that if they don’t do it, they will die.

Atzberger

If you look at the Fortune 500, versus what it was 20 years ago, you see such an enormous change. It doesn’t matter which of the industries you're in -- retail, financial services, consumer products. You need to adopt a strategy of thinking about how can you use digital technologies for your benefit, because if you don’t, you will fall behind.

But the other fundamental thing that has changed, and it’s actually an opportunity for companies, is that the user has moved to the center of the conversation. So the aspects of the consumer technology that we are bringing into the business context have fundamentally changed people’s requirements on technology.

But it's also people’s adoption rates of technology. The reason why companies like SAP Ariba or Tradeshift are growing and seeing a lot of demand for our solutions is because we see that companies are embracing the change. They know embracing is the only way forward.

Gardner: And of course, we've seen the disruption on the business-to-consumer (B2C) side of things with eBay years ago, Uber now, and Airbnb changing industries rapidly. How does this affect the business-to-business (B2B) interactions of commerce? Is it the same, or do we just extend what we've seen in B2C, to B2B? Why would B2B commerce be different or more challenging?

Lanng: It’s absolutely impacting. I'll start with a point that Alex made that the consumer, the user, has moved to the center of the conversation. It’s about usability, ease of use. If you take something like Tradeshift, we focused very early on making everything mobile first because we realized that the future of B2B processes were all mobile.

If you take a country like China, there’s 97 percent smartphone penetration and 60 percent PC penetration. If you want to run your supply chain there, you want to be mobile-enabled, you want to be mobile-centric, and you want to create whole new user experiences. The other area where the consumerization of B2B is happening and increasing is what I call apps.

Easy to add apps

In the past, big enterprise systems used the concept of modules. You could load new functionality, but it was very hard to do. It required your IT department. It was very complex and challenging. Today (and Salesforce was really the pioneer), we have platforms like Tradeshift that make it very easy to add a new app to get a new set of functionality going really, really quickly. And it’s easy for the customers to change very quickly and adapt to the business environment.

Lanng

The last area of active consumerization hitting the enterprise is on insights. When I use Twitter or Airbnb, I get real-time feedback. If I send a tweet, I will immediately know the reach, how many users saw the tweet. I can go in and see that limits of the tweet, and I can make a decision, as a consumer, based on that feedback loop.

In the enterprise, in the past, a lot of the business intelligence and analytics we built, were more like centralized reports going to the top and not benefiting the people who were sitting in the front line doing the work of the business.

Where we're going today is rebuilding using network data, using the real-time data, and going to a real-time level with these people. That’s the last huge disruption you'll see in the enterprise: real-time insights, the use of the apps as a driver and a method for delivering new folks. Now, you'll see another whole new paradigm for user experience and user friendliness.

Gardner: And, Alex, for companies that have a hard time adapting rapidly -- that are still using legacy software, that prefer on-premises deployments, that are just now moving past paper-based processes -- how do we encourage them to recognize the change and adapt?

Atzberger: One expression I tend to use with companies is to say that solutions need to be consumer-simple, as well as strong. What I mean by that is that when you're in the B2B space, you need to obviously recognize that the requirements for security, the requirements for integration, the requirements between data and other pieces have a different level of complexity than when you use eBay or Twitter.

The role of technology companies today is to remove friction as much as possible for companies so that they can enjoy the same benefits as a user in the consumer would. At the same time, providers have to obviously ensure that there is a business strength to the solutions that gives companies the comfort to move to a cloud environment.

The role of technology companies today is to remove friction as much as possible for companies so that they can enjoy the same benefits as a user in the consumer would.

So if you're a financial services institution and you've worked on on-premise software all the time, you obviously had full control of making changes to the software. You knew the way it was running, etc. As you're moving this to the cloud, you're gaining the benefits of fast innovation, but you can’t give up on the necessity for security, for instance, and for sound information.

That’s often where we see customers choosing companies like SAP to go with because of the experience we have managing data, ensuring the integrity of the information, and ensuring that security. But a lot of conversations that we have with companies are about how you, on one hand, deliver that wonderful consumer simplicity, but at the same time deliver on the business strength.

This is especially relevant in procurement, because you can make it so easy, through an app, to order products. But if you're in procurement, you don’t want your employees to just buy things randomly -- just because it’s now easy to do it. You want to have the controls and compliance in place to manage your spend, have visibility on the spend, and manage your company.

That’s where the crux of the matter is, and if we solve this, I think customers are ready to move to the cloud.

The right balance

Gardner: Christian, it sounds as if Alex is calling for a balance between the governance and benefits of traditional software and business applications, while also exploiting the newer agility from mobile, from feedback loops, from the consumer-centricity. It’s almost as if we have two companies within one now. How are you seeing that balance and how do you help companies achieve the right balance?

Lanng: It’s quite natural, and Alex and I also can probably recognize that we come from both sides of the equation here. Alex is trying to transform what traditionally has been an on-premise company and going toward the cloud. I come from a cloud-first company, and I'm trying to break into some of these complex use cases. Alex is spot on; security is still a massive issue especially with the data we deal with here.

So, it's about finding that balance. It’s also why we can’t use the consumer apps, since consumer apps need to have security models, and we need to have a lot of things. But this stuff is also getting very robust. You saw some recent breaches last year. There was the Sony story with all of the emails that were leaked. That was an on-premise system that was penetrated. I'm quite sure if that has been a cloud-based provider like Google or Microsoft, that penetration would have never happened.

We have to question ourselves that, in a trade environment like today, can each individual enterprise actually uphold the security that’s required? Are we seeing that cloud companies like mine or Alex’s, in a way, become specialists in securing all domains and securing the data within that domain?

Alex is trying to transform what traditionally has been an on-premise company and going towards the cloud. I come from a cloud-first company and I'm trying to break into some of these complex use cases.

Also, when we talk about this balance, when we talk about compliance for instance, there are two paradigms. You can have control and compliance upfront, but obviously you limit adoption and thereby limit impact on the business-case side.

Another thing, as Alex says, is that we can’t just have people going in and randomly buying everything. Can we guide them better? Can we give them real-time data to show them the consequences of what they could do instead, rather than put up a wall as the first step? That’s where there’s a lot of innovation happening right now, and a lot of thinking.

Gardner: Let’s revisit this notion of business networks. It seems to me also that, as we move toward cloud models, as we look to systems of record as services, the data becomes more transferable, shareable, and manageable, not siloed or isolated.

It seems to me that the more data and access to process information you have, the more of an advantage we have by being able to actually analyze these things in context and in total, rather than isolated as in the past.

So, how do we as suppliers to enterprises help them recognize the benefit of combined network efficiencies -- of looking to a provider to actually help them integrate and understand all of the data that’s at their disposal? Let’s start with Alex. How do we help make business networks palatable to organizations and trust the vendor to do more when it comes to bringing these sources of information together?

Exciting topics

Atzberger: This is an exciting topic, because if you look at it, obviously networks have a network effect. This means that, as more people are connected to a network, the more valuable the network overall becomes to its participants That’s something that we see very much in the Ariba business model.

Today, we have 2 million companies connected to the Ariba Network. When I go into certain markets, and we talk to certain customers about their supplier base, it makes a difference when 50 percent, 70 percent, 80 percent of those suppliers are already connected to the platform.

If you step back and think about point-to-point connections like EDI that existed in the past to create connections between companies, now you suddenly have a network where you have the baseline to add additional services to a network to actually enrich the experience for everyone who actually participates in the network.

At the same time, the data needs to be secure and companies need to feel they actually do business with other trusted entities.

It’s very, very important to understand that from our perspective. When we talk about procurement, I also look at the supplier as a customer. So there’s value on both sides. When we talk, for instance, about mobile apps, the mobile apps don’t just exist on the buyer side; they also exist on the supplier side -- and that’s a very, very important part of this.

As you bring in new services, payments, supply chain information, and forecast information into the network, these are some of the most rapidly adopted solutions that we see, because people already have the network in place and can now do more with it. It’s very similar to social networks that started pretty much with the status update, and today, you can share more and more of your lives and do more and more things on a network. That’s the power of it.

At the same time, the data needs to be secure and companies need to feel they actually do business with other trusted entities. This brings in the whole topic of supplier risk, of having transparency, into who the suppliers actually are that you do business with, but also identifying new sources of supply. That becomes very powerful, and then underneath, everything is the actual data that sits there. Opening up that information in the platform for companies to analyze and benchmark themselves is extremely powerful.

I often talk about the application, the network, and then the data-play as the three dimensions that company should be thinking about as they embrace business networks strategy.

Gardner: A whole greater than the sum of the parts. How do you see organizations take advantage of it?

Multi-Enterprise Grid

Lanng: First off, this is one of the areas where Alex and I wholeheartedly agree. When Gartner came out with the new hot topic for Procure-to-Payment, one area that they pointed out was a whole new category called Multi-Enterprise Grid, and that’s of course, a mouthful to swallow, but what they really said was that the future for enterprise connectivity is something brand new.

It’s not the business networks in the sense that we know them today, it’s not the EDI networks, but it’s something where information can flow in all directions. It’s a full stack of information, not just transactional data, but also, as Alex talked about, real-time insights, analytics data, logistics data, collaboration, and so on.

There were only two providers mentioned in that category, which is rated by Gartner to be one of the most impactful over the next five to 10 years. And the two providers were Tradeshift and SAP Ariba. As a company a third of the age of Ariba, we were proud to be in that category. But I think it shows the focus that both of these companies have in this area.

The long tail of the supply chain will become increasingly important for networks as we move forward.

One thing we did well, and I also think it points to the future of this, is that we started out as a supplier network. Before we built any buyer functionality, we actually designed a completely functional supplier network, and we helped suppliers join for free, get access, and run all of these services. Then, we slowly built out our enterprise portfolio. And that meant that from the beginning, Tradeshift has always been network-first.

Every single feature we built on the enterprise, every single aspect of our platform, we designed with this idea of how we would utilize the network, how we would bring collaboration into it, how our partners and app partners would use these things. To the point of the openness, Tradeshift was born with a completely open set of APIs so that anybody can develop on the platform and put out applications.

The long tail of the supply chain will become increasingly important for networks as we move forward, because as we're moving into much more complex transactions and move into much more complex data, we will need to connect every single supplier. If you take something like risk – as one of the examples that Alex mentioned – you are as exposed to the tiny, tiny supplier as you are to the big North American supplier you’ve been doing business with for 10 years, maybe even more.

If you ask me what the future of networks, I think it will be three things. It will be connect everyone, rather than to connect the top 10 percent. It will be a Multi-Enterprise Grid, which means it’s moving in all directions and data are connected in all directions both from the supplier side and from the buyer side. Finally, it will be open, but to echo Alex, open but secure. People will be able to build and innovate on top of these platforms, but within a secured framework and secured context.

Gardner: Alex, SAP has been around for quite some time, and conventional wisdom nowadays is that if you're a legacy provider you're somehow at a disadvantage in the cloud environment. Yet SAP recently reported very strong growth, and I think this validates a somewhat different approach or a different perception of a legacy vendor. Tell us why you think SAP is growing while other vendors are struggling?

Technology cycles

Atzberger: Dana, if you look at it as a company that has been in business for 42 years, we know one or two things about going through different technology cycles. Each technology cycle requires you to transform your company. What SAP did right in this transformation is that it acquired businesses to move the business forward, and a significant investment in outside R and D basically by bringing in capabilities into SAP.

But then, when the companies got acquired, each company is actually managed as an entrepreneurial entity inside the business. For me, that’s a very important. I belong to a family where my father had his own business. I believe that it’s really important that companies focus on innovation and actually have a capability to have an entrepreneurial mindset, and a commerce mindset inside a business.

I respect companies like Tradeshift and other companies that are emerging very much because of that commerce mindset of those businesses. The power is the scale at which you can impact change at a company like SAP, and that’s where actually so much of the transformational capabilities are coming from.

With 250,000 customers on the SAP side touching 70 percent of the world’s transactions, imagine what type of base this gives to Ariba, which today now facilities $1 trillion worth of commerce, to expand and build on it, and all the technical capabilities that come with it.

As a company that has been in business for 42 years, we know one or two things about going through different technology cycles. Each technology cycle requires you to transform your company.

I always like to say that I want SAP Ariba to be the fastest growing startup inside a large company. And how do we do this? It’s by both focusing on that innovative mindset of a startup company and combining it with all the assets that come from a larger company. That’s a very valuable proposition both for the customer as well as for having passionate employees to actually deliver the best results.

Gardner: Christian, there’s also conventional wisdom that says if you're an agile newcomer that you can run circles around the incumbent companies. How does that work for you, and how do you see that playing out?

Lanng: I want to start by saying that we're the challenger to SAP Ariba in this market. It obviously has its advantages. But I also want to say that Ariba is obviously one of the competitors that we respect the most. Alex has been doing an excellent job also of really integrating a company like Ariba, which is 20 years old.

You have to remember, moving from a whole new stack and a whole new sort of solution also has its advantages. Sure, we're a challenger, but we're not that new anymore. We actually have 500,000 companies on our network. We have total global coverage. We have some of the largest companies in the world also on our customer list, but obviously not as big as SAP.

But it’s true that we can probably move a little faster and innovate a little faster, and maybe also sometimes tease Alex and friends on social media a little faster. But I think we’ve done it with a lot of respect, and I definitely see that’s the place for us as a competitor and challenger in this market. It’s a very healthy competition, because we're both striving to really do better for our customers.

Attracting innovators

One thing as a challenger is that we've also been attracting a lot of innovators within this industry. Other players have focused much more on companies where Ariba was today and not really innovating. I think that’s the wrong way to think about what you want to do.

We always came with being-first principles. We wanted to build something different. We've done that within procurement. We've done that within our risk offering, within our network. It’s very, very different. Also, there is a choice in the market and that’s actually really healthy. We're also tracking customers that like that innovation, and are thinking of new ways for supply chains.

At the end of the day, my biggest integration partner is still SAP. I don’t know if you want to talk about friendly competition here, but it’s certainly a market that has multiple angles.

Atzberger: If I can make one more comment on that, it’s also important to understand that often times for customers, it’s important to see that a trend, a movement gets validated by multiple companies. When the cloud came about some of the innovators, Salesforce for instance, had become absolutely mainstream. All companies have different sorts of cloud offerings, and that's good to hear.

It’s also important to understand that often times for customers, it’s important to see that a trend, a movement gets validated by multiple companies.

That’s actually important because companies know that when they invest in something, it’s actually a concept. That’s why you're talking to two innovators in this space and that gives more companies confidence to invest in something new and to say, "We want to go on this journey. I think this is good that you're taking this topic on this call today, because I do think it’s a massive trend of going forward."

Gardner: I am a big fan of showing and not just telling and doing that through a use-case or a customer example. So, Christian, I wonder if you could relate to us, maybe by name or maybe just by generic description, a customer scenario that demonstrates Tradeshift’s approach and value?

Lanng: I absolutely can, and I'll take a very recent example. We just announced, about a month ago, a big international customer, Zurich Insurance Group. It's a huge global company, very conservative industry. It's been around for 150 years and, of course, has very sensitive customer data. They were having a lot of struggles with this whole process, and they got the people inside the company engaged around actually driving impact and value in these processes.

We showed them at the time our brand new procurement platform called Tradeshift Buy combined with the Tradeshift network. There were three things that stood out for them. The first thing we addressed were rogue buyers; people who are going outside procurement rules, and we said, “Hey, these are actually people who are passionate about their company, who are trying to drive value and even willing to take enough risk that they are not always following the rules. Let’s try to give them some tools so they at least participate, and we can get the spend under control.”

The second thing we did was we showed collaboration aspects with the supply chain and showed how, in real time, you can collaborate with your suppliers around categories and also the procurement department, because in a lot of companies procurement departments get a little alienated; they become the enemy. If I'm trying to do something, they're the bottleneck. One person said, "We are the Department of Cheap."

Strategic part

I don’t think that’s the case. They are actually a strategic part of driving value in your business. So we really try to build a procurement platform where suppliers become equal citizens and became helpers, so that if you are trying to buy something to try to solve the problem, you can engage with them in the solution phase, not just when it’s the last step and you got us in the purchase order (PO).

The last step was the ability to roll out locally for their supply chain. They are a huge global company and needed confidence they could get the onboarding rates. They looked at a lot of solutions and what it comes to down to today is that there is only reach through two network solutions in the world. Those are Ariba and Tradeshift. The rest don't have all of these platform capabilities and this broad scope.

Gardner: Alex, the same question to you. Do you have a use case example, by name or generically, that illustrates the power of the composition of SAP Ariba? 

Atzberger: Absolutely. I'll give you couple of different examples. If you take a company like AIG, the insurance company, I urge you to look at the YouTube video talking about how they saved about $300 million through the Ariba platform. That was driven through -- taking all categories of spend actually on to the Ariba platform including, by the way, legal services, which is something where a lot of companies say, you can’t actually bring this into an e-sourcing environment. So that’s an exciting case.

In the last quarter alone, we enabled another 80,000-plus suppliers on the network. That’s where a lot of the power of the community and the network comes from.

Another one, for instance is, Auchan the French Company that actually went to suppliers and said, if there's no Ariba, there's no business. Basically, you need to be on Ariba in order to do business with them. It's a strong business-driven case of what actually it means if you have a strong procurement department to lead the change and do this not just in France, but across Russia, China, and markets where they operate.

Take companies like BHP Billiton in Australia and Singapore. They drive more than 90 percent of their spend over the SAP Ariba platform and connect their suppliers to it. It's one of the best-in-class examples of a sourcing and procurement organization. Also, they're going into China to identify new sources of supply and that’s something where we're working with them and really extending their reach, which is becoming so important to global sourcing strategies.

Then, I'd point out new customers that we're excited to have as part of the SAP Ariba community, like First Data. First Data has the largest IPO last year in the US. It’s a payment company, but really a technology company as well. If I look at what they want to do with the platform and also what we are doing in partnership with them around B2B payments, it's a very exciting uses case as well.

When you look at the some of the names I just gave you, at the size of those companies and the suppliers, we're talking about tens of thousands of suppliers that those companies have. In the last quarter alone, we enabled another 80,000-plus suppliers on the network. That’s where a lot of the power of the community and the network comes from.

Lanng: I just wanted to add one thing to what Alex said, because I think what he's also showing with his cases is the breadth of industries and global reach of this customer base and who can use networks. We see exactly the same within airlines, such as Air France, and companies in retail, fashion, manufacturing. I don’t think there is a single industry we don’t have on the platform, also new companies like LinkedIn within services and so on.

I just want to echo what Alex said. It's a really broad set of industries and customers who are trying to use live business networks. I don’t think there's anyone who won’t use this or, in the future, won’t have this. It will be a default, as having an ERP system as today.

Data feedback

Gardner: I think we've only begun to explore the depths of the data feedback and analysis capabilities within digital commerce, and within retail, for example, of the user experience and real-time interactions and customization impacts.

So before we close out, let's think about companies that might be resisting this notion of taking advantage of the network, and of starting to do the groundwork in order to be able to realize those feedback loops and analysis benefits.

Starting with you, Christian, what would you say to a company that is still somehow not interested in taking advantage of business networks, and what potentially could they miss out on if they don't start doing the groundwork now in order to be able to be a digital business with deep data-driven analysis capabilities becoming pervasive?

Lanng: We have to go all the way back to the beginning of this discussion, which is what also Alex pointed out, that companies that don’t change and innovate will be gone. We've seen more companies disappear out of the Fortune 500 in the last 20 years than we have in the history of business, and it’s accelerating.

If your supply chain is in such a way that you cannot react to that kind of disruption quickly, and if you can't acquire new suppliers that can help you find all of these threats, you are done.

There are three key things you miss out on if you don’t invest in networks. First is the ability to know and know fast. Today, knowing is way more important than just the cost of things or the cost of transactions. We see huge Fortune 500 companies shocking us with reporting their most basic numbers to their shareholders. You see the shareholders being more and more aggressive on having insights on how these companies are run.

The second thing is agility. Agility is probably the single most important strategic capability in 2016 and onward. And I think if you look at companies we are taking about they have new competitors coming up. You can take a company like P&G who recently got disrupted by the Dollar Shave Club, a company that spent less than a million dollars on marketing to take a shot at $13 billion market.

If your supply chain is in such a way that you cannot react to that kind of disruption quickly, and if you can't acquire new suppliers that can help you find all of these threats, you are done. Lastly is, if you don’t have a connected supply chain, you miss out on the advantage of getting new processes rolled out.

Social networks typically have a status feed. In our case, once you're connected on Tradeshift, once you have a supplier up and running, if you want to roll out any new business process, any kind of new connectivity, it is as easy as pushing a new app. Whereas somebody who doesn't have this technology and is rolling out a new business process, we're talking about a three- to five-year lifespan to get to the old supply chain. So agility, speed, and just not being disrupted are the three key reasons I will point to.

Gardner: Alex, Christian paints the picture of business networks as existential. You really don’t have a choice, but a lot of companies are still struggling with how to go about this. Is there an order to it? How should I begin rationally without getting caught up in complexity and losing control of my company? What advice, Alex, would you give companies on how to start the process of becoming a digital business, and to retain governance, but still get the agility benefits?

Back to basics

Atzberger: If your company is conservative or wondering about how best to take advantage of this, you know, you would have to go back to some of the basics. Of course there has to be a business case. Start with a business case around the benefits and the cost. What does the infrastructure currently cost you, the paper based processes cost you, to do business with your suppliers? What are the benefits that you would have, as Christian pointed out, if you could actually extend more and more capabilities over the network, and that itself is very good.

Then the second piece is to engage some things like Design Thinking, about envisioning what the future could be like. Bring together different people out of your companies cross-functionally to think about how you could envision doing more with the assets you have in actually creating new capabilities.

And that’s where things get really exciting, when you think about maybe we shouldn’t be thinking about the network just as something where we have a buying from, but maybe it is something that we become a supplier into. We have many customers, by the way, who do both, who are both buyers and suppliers on the network, and they are valuing that as well.

Anything that you digitize doesn’t mean that your business becomes somehow less involved, somehow detached from your suppliers. It’s actually the opposite.

Finally, it’s about understanding. Anything that you digitize doesn’t mean that your business becomes somehow less involved, somehow detached from your suppliers. It’s actually the opposite. You become more relevant. You, as a buyer, become a customer of choice to your supplier.

That’s very powerful, because at the end of the day, you can argue that, as a consumer, you start to prefer those companies that have a digital relationship with you. That’s what networks have built and allow you to do -- build a digital relationship between your suppliers and the buyers.

As far as conservative companies, I'm happy to talk to them, Dana. If you have any names, send them my way. We love to engage and we love to have that conversation, but it comes back to the fact that there is a real value in this, and it gives all the things that Christian talks about with the agility and other benefits as well. It both makes sense strategically, as well as from the business case, and if those things come together, companies have a great future.

Gardner: I’m afraid we will have to leave it there. You have been listening to a BriefingsDirect discussion focused on the emergence of business networks and how that now requires new buy and sell models. We have heard how companies that best leverage this data-driven innovation and these business network effects will gain significant advantages in their markets.

And lastly we have learned that the use of business networks creates new models to sustain success. So please join me now in thanking Alex Atzberger, President of SAP Ariba. Thank you, Alex.

Atzberger: Thank you so much, Dana, I enjoyed this thoroughly and thank you, Christian.

Gardner: Yes, and thank you Christian Lanng, CEO and Co-Founder of Tradeshift.

Lanng: Thank you so much, Dana, and thank you, Alex.

Atzberger: Absolutely.

Gardner: And also a big thank you to our audience for joining us for this SAP Ariba-sponsored business innovation thought leadership discussion. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host and moderator. Thanks again for listening, and do come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Download the transcript. Sponsor: SAP Ariba.

Transcript of a discussion on the emergence of business networks and how that requires new models of competition and cooperation. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2016. All rights reserved.

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