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28 Aug

Posted at 16:52h in Social Media by
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A year ago the conversation was all about whether or not social media and social technologies were relevant in the B2B space. It wasn’t entirely clear whether the enormous impact of Facebook and Twitter would be mirrored by some industrial strength B2B equivalent. A year on and it’s no longer OK to be seen scratching your head quizzically when someone mentions social – if you don’t get it – you’ve had it!

27 Aug

Posted at 16:02h in Financial Supply Chain Management, Supply Chain Finance by
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In a comment on an earlier article about the cost of DPO, Richard Fitzwilliam commented: “DPO is a key indicator of a company’s health and is one of the levers which drives a company’s share price and therefore its valuation. Discounting does reduce DPO and therefore has a negative impact on share price.” I would not normally respond to a comment if I disagree with it but Richard's point is  an interesting one and it goes to illustrate very well how DPO, discounting and supply chain finance can be seen in entirely different ways depending on the lens you view them through.

26 Aug

Posted at 15:50h in News by
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I remember as a little kid being captivated by the imagery in the Tin Tin comic album “Destination Moon”. It’s an outlandish adventure that involves travelling through space in a red and white rocket ship all the way to the moon. And in parallel, the outlandish adventure was being played out for real in the Apollo missions. When Neil Armstrong became the first human being to step on another world, fantasy became reality. Science fiction became science fact and we could dare to dream that anything was possible. The sad news that Neil Armstrong died this weekend serves more than to remind us of that great event in history. It’s also a reminder of that age of adventure when it wasn’t all about money.

24 Aug

Posted at 12:21h in e-Procurement, e-Procurement Software by
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For some reason, social media gives credibility to even the most suspect stories. Take a read of this article: How We Screwed Almost the Whole Apple Community. The authors drew a screw with a non-standard head. They emailed the drawing to themselves with a text suggesting (but providing no evidence) that it might be a leak from Apple and then posted a photo of the email and drawing on Reddit. They then waited to see what would happen. It took 12 hours for things to liven up. First, the Apple blog Cult of Mac reported ”Apple May Be Working On A Top Secret Asymmetric Screw To Lock You Out Of Your Devices Forever” and thereafter it went viral. The interesting thing for me was their analysis of the credulity of each successive wave of commentators as the story moved from Reddit to the IT press to bloggers to social media.

23 Aug

Posted at 18:00h in e-invoicing, Electronic Invoicing by
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The problem with start-ups is they’re start-ups. For large organizations, it’s a difficult choice to go with a relatively new business even if their business model stacks up, which makes securing new business doubly difficult. And it makes the early years of a start-up the most challenging. Investors and industry observers know this and slow growth and moderate sales figures are expected but even with a great proposition, world class marketing and favourable write-ups from bloggers and analysts, there comes a point when the business model needs proving. We need to taste the pudding. Which is why we’re delighted to see the latest announcement from Tradeshift.