Industry news

Sri Lanka’s growth is forecast to accelerate to a 4.7 percent rate in 2017 and 5 percent in 2018, a new World Bank report says. According to the World Bank’s June 2017 Global Economic Prospects growth will happen as international financial institution programs support economic reforms and boost private sector competitiveness. Growth in the South Asia region is forecast to advance to a 6.8 percent pace in 2017 and accelerate to 7.1 percent in 2018, reflecting a solid expansion of domestic demand and exports.

The report says excluding India, regional growth is anticipated to hold steady at 5.7 percent this year, rising to 5.8 percent in the next, with growth accelerating in Bhutan, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, but easing in Bangladesh and Nepal.

Related news: Sri Lanka and South Korea Strengthen Ties

Wavestone recently attended the Global Sourcing Association’s Public Sector Day 2017 that focused on the latest developments in public sector digital transformation. It also emphasised the importance of strategic sourcing at a time when public services face great pressure to deliver affordable services that satisfy an increasingly digitally connected audience.

The varied and enthusiastically delivered agenda brought together representatives from central government departments, senior public sector procurement analysts and SMEs in disruptive technologies such as RPA (Robotics Process Automation).

Capturing the curiosity of the room due its disruptive capability and mysteriousness was Blockchain – a potent platform which has the potential to significantly influence the development of digital public services.

You can read the full article from Wavestone here and learn more about upcoming GSA events here.

David Rickard, Director of Microsoft Procurement discusses with us the fundamentals of sourcing before speaking at the GSA Symposium this June.

How have buyers of sourcing services adapted to the underlying changes of the industry? Are they driving the change or is technology and innovation?

I think buyers are being compelled to change because the expectations of our internal stakeholders are changing driven by the technology and innovation available to them in the wider marketplace. Buying “stuff” is easier than ever for a consumer who can make a purchase 24x7 with a couple of clicks and have it delivered the very next day. They cannot understand why when they come to work it takes a lot more effort and a lot more time. The smart procurement orgs are the ones trying to simplify the experience as much as possible whilst gather as much BI about the purchases and suppliers as they possibly can to maximise the business benefits of every £ spent in the future. Technology should be an enabler to a world class procurement organisation, not a threat.

How important is it to have a universal standard for sourcing, such as the global sourcing standard in an increasingly globalised and disruptive industry?

Very important. Without a comprehensive and universal standard for an org to follow each department or location within a company’s buying org could be doing totally different things, some adding value but some not. A well thought out and implemented standard can set the direction and guiding principles for the entire company and can be used as a guide for implementing rapid change as the group adjust to the ever changing internal and external landscape. However it is key that any standard implemented is built with the business as it’s priority and not built for the sake of having a standard. Areas where things have to be done because the “standard says so” should be eradicated and only requirements that offer true value should be included and monitored.

How would you describe the importance of having strong fundamentals in sourcing in an increasingly digital age?

Strong fundamentals are vital for the success of any sourcing organisation but especially in an increasingly digital age. Without a strong foundation of good processes, capable staff, timely BI and a clear strategy any of the additional initiatives to leverage the digital age will fail. Digital should be the enabler to the sourcing organisation who should be looking to leverage new capabilities to offer additional value and impact to the company.

How do you build a successful sourcing contract in the age of the digital economy?

I am not sure if there is a perfect answer for this right now as many of us in Procurement are still working through what a true digital economy is and the impact it could have on sourcing. However the fundamentals of sourcing contracts, such as having clear deliverables and expectations of the supplier, will continue to be key in any age.

David will be speaking at the GSA Symposium this June, click here to learn more and book your place at the must attend event of the year for the sourcing industry.

According to statements given to various media outlets, the IT problems were caused by a power surge on Saturday morning at around 9.30am. Cruz claimed the surge had a “catastrophic effect” on some communication hardware which affected messaging across the airline’s system. He said tens of millions of messages every day are shared across the BA network's 200 systems and all systems were affected.

The BA chief then said the airline was then “unable to restore and use some of those backup systems because they themselves could not trust the messaging that had to take place amongst them”.

He went on to say neither an outsourcing of jobs or a cyber-attack were the source of the problem and everyone working with this particular hardware were "locally hired". Mr Cruz has not said who he believes was responsible for the failure or whether BA employees were involved, however, some reported ‘experts’ have questioned the statement about the power surge with some electricity companies reporting to such issues on their networks.

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Related: “British Airways boss Alex Cruz explains what went wrong in catastrophic IT meltdown”

According to statements given to various media outlets, the IT problems were caused by a power surge on Saturday morning at around 9.30am. Cruz claimed the surge had a “catastrophic effect” on some communication hardware which affected messaging across the airline’s system. He said tens of millions of messages every day are shared across the BA network's 200 systems and all systems were affected.

The BA chief then said the airline was then “unable to restore and use some of those backup systems because they themselves could not trust the messaging that had to take place amongst them”.

He went on to say neither an outsourcing of jobs or a cyber-attack were the source of the problem and everyone working with this particular hardware were "locally hired". Mr Cruz has not said who he believes was responsible for the failure or whether BA employees were involved, however, some reported ‘experts’ have questioned the statement about the power surge with some electricity companies reporting to such issues on their networks.

For weekly news updates, subscribe to our email newsletter.

Related: "http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/british-airways-boss-alex-cruz-explains-what-went-wrong-in-catastrophic-it-meltdown-a3552906.html

According to statements given to various media outlets, the IT problems were caused by a power surge on Saturday morning at around 9.30am. Cruz claimed the surge had a “catastrophic effect” on some communication hardware which affected messaging across the airline’s system. He said tens of millions of messages every day are shared across the BA network's 200 systems and all systems were affected.

The BA chief then said the airline was then “unable to restore and use some of those backup systems because they themselves could not trust the messaging that had to take place amongst them”.

He went on to say neither an outsourcing of jobs or a cyber-attack were the source of the problem and everyone working with this particular hardware were "locally hired". Mr Cruz has not said who he believes was responsible for the failure or whether BA employees were involved, however, some reported ‘experts’ have questioned the statement about the power surge with some electricity companies reporting to such issues on their networks.

For weekly news updates, subscribe to our email newsletter.

Related: "BA Boss explains what went wrong in catastrophic IT meltdown"

According to statements given to various media outlets, the IT problems were caused by a power surge on Saturday morning at around 9.30am. Cruz claimed the surge had a “catastrophic effect” on some communication hardware which affected messaging across the airline’s system. He said tens of millions of messages every day are shared across the BA network's 200 systems and all systems were affected.

The BA chief then said the airline was then “unable to restore and use some of those backup systems because they themselves could not trust the messaging that had to take place amongst them”.

He went on to say neither an outsourcing of jobs or a cyber-attack were the source of the problem and everyone working with this particular hardware were "locally hired". Mr Cruz has not said who he believes was responsible for the failure or whether BA employees were involved, however, some reported ‘experts’ have questioned the statement about the power surge with some electricity companies reporting to such issues on their networks.

For weekly news updates, subscribe to our email newsletter.

Related: British Airways boss Alex Cruz explains what went wrong in catastrophic IT meltdown

KPMG International has recently announced the acquisition of Matchi, a leading matchmaking platform that connects financial institutions with carefully vetted fintech companies worldwide.

The acquisition cements a two year relationship in anticipation of increased client demand for fintech alliances.

Warren Mead, Global co-lead fintech, KPMG said, “Through 2015 and 2016, a total of $71bn was invested in fintechs globally as traditional financial services companies increasingly recognised tech innovation as the best way to remain relevant, manage compliance and cut costs. As we enter the new world of open banking and PSD2, innovation will become even more relevant so we are investing today to make building partnerships as easy as possible for clients and stakeholders. Firms can’t possibly filter the thousands of fintechs on the market so KPMG’s Matchi platform will help them block out the noise and focus on what will work.”

Matchi includes more than 2,500 fintech companies offering innovative solutions to legacy problems or launching ventures into new markets. The platform allows financial institutions to search for a specific company or product, or to use the proprietary “Innovation Challenge” to present specific problems to the fintech community and receive recommendations on solutions. In this way, firms can access the brightest and best thinking to address their challenges.

David Milligan, Matchi CEO commented “Together, we are positioned to help clients find and deploy the fintech solutions that are most relevant to their business needs. We are fulfilling the promise of collaboration between financial institutions and fintech firms, which can ultimately benefit all consumers and businesses.”

For weekly news updates, subscribe to our email newsletter.

Related: KPMG acquires FinTech matching platform

Lyubomira Mihaylova of ScaleFocus UK talks to Sourcingfocus about the fundamentals of sourcing and adapting to the digital age.

How have buyers of sourcing services adapted to the underlying changes of the industry? Are they driving the change or is technology and innovation?

Very few companies have the true willpower and readiness to change. No matter the business imperatives, regulations, competition, threat of staying-in/going-out of business, etc., a broad range of industries and industry representatives are more talking about than acting upon, adopting and adapting to the impact of disruption. A typical situation is of a heavy organization where agility is a buzz word, though few truly care to move beyond the comfort zone leaving critical business decisions on the back burner. Furthermore, all are getting into the could of, would of, should of situation… when the “unexpected” difficulties could have been easily prevented a long time ago with timely decisions, vigorous actions and transparent responsibilities. So, there is still a long way to go when it comes to changes and committing to the digital, cloud and data analytics disruptions.

How important is it to have a universal standard for sourcing, such as the global sourcing standard in an increasingly globalised and disruptive industry?

As with everything in life – walking the walk is the one critical detail that makes all the difference. Same with applying knowledge – when not used, it is wasted.

Let us say a company is implementing a CRM system – unless data is uploaded correctly and strictly, and processes are followed, with the aim of ensuring traceability, transparency,an ability to make business decisions in real time, knowing the customers and caring in a personalized manner, etc., it is just a tool not an enabler and facilitator.

Back to sourcing – a universal standard is paramount for stable and complications-free engagements. How many companies can pride themselves with that?

It will always be the case of talking, rather than acting until standards are not just enforced in an organization but all employees understand them and apply them as something they stand for.

How would you describe the importance of having strong fundamentals in sourcing in an increasingly digital age?

No matter how much we talk about digitalization we will inevitably get back to talking about the basics. Before you can think of getting to the next level you should ensure you have everything that is needed to grow, innovate and thrive. Say a company has issues with redundant processes, data warehousing performance bottlenecks or any fundamental technology, infrastructure or business issue – would the digital journey be efficient if you skip addressing the fundamental flaws?

Another example – if 2 employees had to print, sign, scan and upload 2 documents for a process or part of a process and the company invests in replacing that with 2 simple clicks per employee – what will be the ROI of company’s investment if these employees care little to click and play the ‘I am busy’ game? Having a culture of true caring, process transparency and strong business fundamentals is what enables companies to fly when they embrace the digitalization accelerator.

How do you build a successful sourcing contract in the age of the digital economy?

The perfect contract is the one that eliminates excuses to procrastinate and gives clear responsibilities, sets standards, reaction times and communication channels. A contract where commitments, deliverables and outcomes are clear. It ensures that parties will not deviate from the ‘right track’ and interpret vague formulations. The perfect contract is when both parties are putting something in the game. Especially when the relationship is facilitated and accelerated by the digital economy. Sourcing contracts are becoming more transparent and demanding. Once basics like ‘paying your dues on time’, ‘chasing quality and deliveries’, ‘responding timely’ and ‘keeping your promises’ are no-brainers and just in place, precious time and energy is not wasted. Then and only then the relationship focuses on true innovation, R&D, experimenting with business models, joint go-to-market strategies and profit sharing, etc. etc.

Lyubomira will be speaking at the GSA Symposium this June, click here to learn more and book your place at the must attend event of the year for the sourcing industry.

Avinash Vashistha of Tholons has been talking to Sourcingfocus about the trends affecting the sourcing industry.

1. We went through the process of offshoring and near-shoring, is Automation bringing this to a close as efficiency is increased and costs reduced in domestic markets?

Automation is a game changer and brings with it, the threat of obsolescence for the traditional offshore and near-shore model. Increase in the use of smart and cognitive technologies and artificial intelligence will give competitive ability to do things domestically. Highly skilled and innovative smaller countries like Chile, Singapore, Canada and Israel stand to gain significantly. Automation and Artificial Intelligence is replacing repeatable processes and decision making. Significant work has been done in developing customer service robotic agents like Amelia, that probably will pass the Turing Test in couple of years and replace agents. Key is to deploy people with domain and process knowledge to learn how to configure and program these software bots.

2. Will the digital economy drastically change the structure and architecture of organisations and presage serious change in the way we work?

Digital economy is changing the way consumers consume products and services. The future will be defined by consumer experiences like travelling, living healthy, shopping, paying and producing. Enterprises are becoming smarter, liquid and intelligent. The future of work will be Co-work, the future of innovation is Co-innovate and the future of investment is Co-invest, where venture capitalist will invest alongside clients and technology partners.

3. Is the digital age rendering location a lesser priority?

Locations were important and measured by scale, quality and cost of talent. However, digital has changed the equation. Innovation is more important than scale. Design thinking is higher priority than quality. Outcome and experience is more important than cost. Even smaller countries can innovate, have the domain knowledge and bring about the value through collaboration and emerge as leaders. Boundaries of locations are crumbling. Tholons Top 50 “Digital Nations” ranking is already trending in that direction and we expect 2018 rankings to declare the emergence of digital enterprise nations without boundaries.

4. With Brexit and President Trump are we seeing a turn away from globalisation and therefore a more difficult environment for global sourcing?

Politicians and their decisions are made in support of their campaign promises. They are under pressure to demonstrate implementation of their agenda in the first year. Focus is short term instead of a longer-term approach and plan. Businesses are struggling to transform in this age of disruption by digital. This provides an opportunity and ability to even smaller countries to be a larger player in enterprise innovation and globalisation. Overall, we believe this will result in increased globalisation to a broader set of countries and companies, but not necessarily only to legacy countries like India, Philippine and China.

5. Are we looking at a new age of sourcing which requires a completely different set of rules for successful strategic sourcing?

Traditional sourcing has been in application development, support and maintenance; business process and infrastructure management. Platform based solutions and intelligent liquid applications has transformed Applications sourcing. Business process management has been significantly impregnated by cognitive computing, artificial intelligence and automation. Cloud has consumed traditional infrastructure management. Players and rules of sourcing have changed! Strategic sourcing needs to work within the digital innovation ecosystem where clients, network of start-ups, mentors, strategic partners / platform integrators and funding have to Co-work and Co-innovate.

Avinash will be speaking at the GSA Symposium this June, click here to learn more and book your place at the must attend event of the year for the sourcing industry.