Zycus Horizon 2019 event could be summed up in these three themes. One of the last Procurement events to take place before the year ends, it offered a refreshing approach, discussion, and networking opportunities for participants. Before we go deeper, let’s cover what you shouldn’t expect at a Zycus Horizon event
Do not expect a trade show experience of exchanging several hundred cards, instead expect opportunities to make few, yet, more meaningful, and focused discussions.
Do not expect to go from booth to booth of service providers, bringing home many conference giveaways, instead, expect to see fewer service providers keeping you focused on attending the customer sessions.
Do not expect a 3:1 ratio of Zycus salespeople to participants.
Sales
teams will not court you
continuously; instead, you will have the opportunity to do more technical demos, trials on the spot.
So, moving over to the core themes, these are not how Zycus describes it but our independent assessment
Zycus has the credit of bringing the industry's first AI-based procurement
solution
as early as 2000 when AI was not so much talked about or understood. Over the years, Aatish, the
founder CEO – had maintained and held close his vision of creating the first real global
software product company out of India – when everyone saw the pot of gold in IT services. To say
he has been successful is an understatement. With an overwhelming number of examples of
companies following the Silicon Valley template of – get funded, get few customers, get more
funding, increase valuation. Then exit, Zycus has maintained its financial prudence and focus on
remaining independent and profitable.When asked about investment in R&D, Aatish, cited this
ability – “It is very important for us to continuously grow as a procurement player in the
industry. In order to achieve business excellence our plan is to outinvest everyone on
products.”
– Aatish Dedhia, Founder and CEO, Zycus
When the Zycus Product management team got on stage,and instead of using
PowerPoint
slides decided to do a live demo of their flagship Merlin AI platform, we were pleasantly
surprised. AI suite, Merlin, is the primary industry or solution agnostic AI middle ware to work
with not just the Zycus applications but any other ERP or back end system. They took it one step
further by asking participants in attendance to give Merlin a spin using any of their contracts,
POs, or invoices.”
When the Zycus Product management team got on stage,and instead of using
PowerPoint
slides decided to do a live demo of their flagship Merlin AI platform, we were pleasantly
surprised. AI suite, Merlin, is the primary industry or solution agnostic AI middle ware to work
with not just the Zycus applications but any other ERP or back end system. They took it one step
further by asking participants in attendance to give Merlin a spin using any of their contracts,
POs, or invoices.”
The internet chatter about ‘digital procurement’ is at an all-time high. Withterms used, often interchangeably between RPA, AI, Deep learning, Blockchain, etc., Zycus's track record of being the first company to offer AI-based spend analysis solution several years ago lends credibility to its claimof providing the industry's first dependable AI middleware for Procurementapplications of any kind – Merlin! With 400+ engineers focused on refining the technology as complex as deeplearning, NLP, AI Zycus do the R&D work raises the bar of confidence inDigital procurement as a whole and the promise that yes, DigitalProcurement is for real!We were delighted to meet Zycus customers various stages of theirprocurement transformation journey –
“When you have more automation and more digital transformation happening, people will automatically pay attention to ensure we have clean data. Therefore, I envision that the more automated we become, the more effective we become”
– Brian Roche, Chief Procurement Officer, Westfield Insurance
Brian
Roche
“In late 2017, we decided that we had to make use of the best of the latesttechnology. Any technology should be a business accelerator, it should beable to reduce manual and operational efforts. It was a challenging and adaunting task because we had to change our entire suite within one year. Inmid-2018, we had a go-live of a few Zycus tools and now we are slowlyincreasing our pool of Zycus tools.”
– Mark Van Den Berg, Procurement Development Manager, Heineken
Mark Van Den Berg
“AI is speeding up decision making within the Procurement function. - It is helping identify the "source of truth" in our procurement data - If you are not using some type of AI in your procurement process, you are light years behind... Hope this helps. Please let me know if you need anything else from me. Thanks and Happy Holidays. Matt”
– Matt Mahelick, Senior Director & Head of Corporate Procurement at Immunomedics
Matt Mahelick
We met with many users, attended several customer sessions, and learned from the experiences of
several customers. Most conversations we attended are current and applicable to any P2P
implementation. One recurring theme was around change management - Change Management
Here it is worth quoting what we heard directly from some customers about their experience and
learning of change management.
“IKNOW, I CARE, I CAN, I DO. It's a simple way to address theelements of change 360 degrees. Starting with, I know what is changing. Icare and am concerned about it. I have the tools and the training and know-how to do it. Finally, I do it and implement the change!”
– Q Noor-Crockett, MBA, PMP, Senior Manager Strategic Sourcing, Belk
Q
Noor-Crockett
“Successful change management begins with the involvementof your stakeholders. By having representatives from all departmentsthrough the requirements gathering, supplier selection, scoring and finalselection we are able to achieve better and faster adoption of change. Whenit comes to selecting a implementation partner you must ensure that you aregetting the "A" team from that partner. After securing the "A" team,continue to negotiate the pricing, project details and requirements”
– Phil McDonald, MBA, CCWP Global Procurement Manager IT, Diversey
Phil M.
Everything at Zycus's event was planned meticulously with the attendee in mind. A large percentage of attendees were either the users or stakeholders and Zycus customers. The event provided a vibe of practitioners interacting with each other in more intimate settings discussing their day to day challenges, approaches, and solutions. Zycus Horizon event always has an unpredictable new location at a very affordable price, one of the lowest costs of all the procurement events out there. The food is not your typical trade show type fare but exquisitely created menus with a right mix covering a large variety of preferences. The hospitality is just AMAZING!
A small take away gift of Carolina spices and olive oil delivered into your room on the day of leaving was a sweet, personal touch to top off a fantastic event.
Congratulations and massive applause to the Zycus' Mktg team, which was always present to lend a personal hand of help for any challenge. A job done exceptionally well and very well executed Kasturi, Molly, we are excited about the next Horizon? Where is it going to be?