Author: Pete Loughlin

01 Dec

Posted at 07:00h in Supply Chain by
1 Like
Startups and young businesses thrive when their people do their jobs because they want to change the world, they want to get rich or they want to do what they love to do. But as they grow, founders execute their exit plans, hopefully happily, and the accountants move in. The business drivers change. The raison d’etre becomes about numbers and regulation. They’re either fixated on quarterly earnings figures or obsessed with compliance. They get third parties in far flung places to run their back office, even core business activities get outsourced and offshored. The business stops being about the hopes, dreams and ambitions of its people. They even outsource them.

28 Nov

Posted at 21:29h in e-invoicing, Financial Supply Chain Management, Social Media, Supply Chain Finance by
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[caption id="attachment_6736" align="aligncenter" width="480"] Bertram Meyer - CEO Taulia[/caption]

The British can make strong claims to the invention of the computer (Babbage) and the World Wide Web (Tim Berners-Lee) but examine the DNA of the modern world of technology and it's mainly American with a strong Northern Californian flavor. Ariba, Oracle, Google, Twitter - Silicon Valley born and bred.

But it's not just Americans that are behind this innovation. This phenomenon has more to do with geography. Two of the most interesting innovators in the P2P space, Taulia and Tradeshift, although San Francisco based, are European - well their founders are. Why is it so important, indeed, is it important, for tech start-ups to have a Bay Area address? I was in San Francisco a few weeks ago and took the opportunity to speak to Christian Hjorth, Head of Sales at Tradeshift and Bertram Meyer, CEO of Taulia to understand why Silicon Valley is still important.

28 Nov

Posted at 15:36h in Financial Supply Chain Management, Supply Chain Finance by
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The cost of credit to many businesses is so high that it threatens their continued existence – that’s if they can get credit at all. And it’s not just a problem for them – it affects their customers and their suppliers. The full extent of the supply chains within their industry is affected. But it need not be like this. By taking a fresh view of risk, that cost of credit can be reduced significantly. We’ve taken a detailed look at OB10’s Express Payment offering to understand how this new way of trading can work in practice.

19 Nov

Posted at 16:00h in Social Media by
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The growth of social networks is allowing a silent minority to become heard with a crystal clarity. People with the ambition and enthusiasm to make a name for themselves in their specialist field are building the infrastructure of a new type of community of special interests that is effectively competing with industry analysts. A community of experts who aren’t saying what they say because they’ve been paid to say it but instead are saying it because it’s a well-informed belief. Whether your field is literature or linguistics, opera or soap opera, politics or purchasing, you can make a name for yourself by creating content on-line.  Content is increasingly consumed on the internet, on the desktop in the office or via mobile devices anywhere. Blogs syndicated through social networks reach their audience far quicker and in a manner much more convenient than the traditional channels of printed media, TV and radio. But should the traditional media be that worried about bloggers?

13 Nov

Posted at 09:10h in Financial Supply Chain Management, Supply Chain Finance by
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Despite their apparent compelling appeal, some great ideas just never take off the way you might have expected: 3D cinema; internet refrigerators; the umbrella hat. It’s not just the frivolous inventions that don’t make it and in the business to business technology space there are as many examples. EDI is one. In some industries, such as retail, it’s well embedded as a core tool but is never really took off and the overlapping emergence of the internet in the 1990s saw growth in VAN based EDI plateau permanently. Purchasing cards is another technology that promised more than it delivered. The benefits are compelling. To consolidate all of you supplier invoices into a single electronic statement that can be uploaded into your accounting system should be the default way we do business – but it never worked, apart from in a few niche areas. And there’s a third – supply chain finance. The concept is far from new but despite years of marketing and product development, there are few examples of commercial organisations that have been able to prove its full potential. But that might just be about to change.

02 Nov

Posted at 13:05h in AP Automation, Financial Supply Chain Management, Supply Chain Finance by
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OB10’s new Express Payments model is going to change fundamentally the way some businesses operate. It’s not just because it offers a means of extracting greater value from business transactions – Express Payments is not actually unique in that respect. It’s because it is amongst the first enterprise applications that can truly claim cloud credentials.

01 Nov

Posted at 11:42h in AP Automation, e-invoicing, e-Procurement, e-Procurement Software, Electronic Invoicing, Financial Supply Chain Management, Supply Chain Finance by
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It’s funny when you read some vendors’ marketing material claiming to be at the bleeding edge of technology when the audience knows full well that what they’re talking about is well established, "business as usual" stuff. Take this example explaining how business is just beginning to discover the internet:  “It wasn’t so long ago that the Internet was viewed as just a playground for consumers with little-to-no-value for businesses. But it’s a completely different story today. The Internet has come a long way, baby” Guess when that was written? 1998? 2003? No. Actually, it was written a few weeks ago by Ariba’s Rob Mihalko aka Rip Van Winkle. The internet isn’t new. E-Procurement isn’t new. Supplier networks aren’t new. Neither is e-invoicing or supply chain finance. They’re all old, well established business tools. So what happened to innovation in P2P?