Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: If you've ever wondered what's actually hiding in your shared drives, Trailblazer Insight scans your files locally for PI, hipaa, PCI, and other compliance risks. No cloud, no IT ticket, just answers. Search Trailblazer Insight in the Microsoft Store.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: This is Lee and in this episode, Moore and I will talk about how to stop the proliferation of counterparty data from happening.
[00:00:28] Speaker A: So if you've been with us the last few episodes, we've been talking about contract data, contract management and counterparty data and the complications that can arise over time as people try to get work done, especially with counterparty data.
And so what we wanted to talk about today is once you've solved a problem, once you've taken control of your counterparties and you've resolved your multiple sources into Here are the set of counterparties that we have proven are real. We have all the data about them that we need. We know their tax id, we know their addresses, including mailing and shipping and whatever, all the different addresses. We know what contracts they are related to and we know where they need to appear in our systems in order to support ongoing transactions and other functions kind of follow on to having a contract.
We've done that. And it took months.
Undoubtedly it took months.
So now you've done all that work. How do you stop it from happening again?
Because the same issues that got you here still exist. There are multiple people across your company, multiple organizations across your company interacting with these counterparties for different reasons, all good reasons.
You have to keep working. People have to move quickly. They have to have direct access to the counterparty and make sure that they get the data that they need. Because you need different data to procure goods or services than you do to implement a transport or storage or other kind of transaction to do purchase and sales of your commodity, your product, whatever is inherent to your business, or to do land lease or real estate or some other transaction, you need different data about the counterparty in all those cases, and the counterparties are different, they might be people, they might be companies, they might be nonprofits, they might be domestic US organizations, they might be global organizations, there's a lot of variables. None of that is going to change.
How are you going to keep this from happening again,
[00:02:48] Speaker B: that open ended question?
Well, I would try to figure out all of the metadata fields that are necessary and then see which system had most of them designate it as the system of record.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: Okay, I like that answer.
I have a refinement to that answer.
The metadata is important.
Which systems need which metadata fields is important.
And having One system that is the center of it is, I think, a good idea, but I don't know that you necessarily need to have your system of record contain all of the data about every counterparty.
[00:03:33] Speaker B: What's critical, that's where asset data management comes in.
[00:03:36] Speaker A: It is.
What's critical is that you have identified data, that you have developed a way to assign a unique and persistent ID to every counterparty from the time you get introduced to it in your organization to the time you're done, no matter where it appears in any systems, as if you have that unique id, then you can have specialized data in different systems and core data in your sort of central system.
So that the first critical step is that how are you going to get that ID assigned to each counterparty?
[00:04:14] Speaker B: Oh, that's good. Yep.
[00:04:16] Speaker A: And the how you're going to do that is process.
So you have, you designate the system that is going to be the system that is allowed to assign a new id.
If a counterparty gets introduced through some other system, it can't get an ID on its own. It has to go get one from the central system.
And that's a process question.
So this is where you get some variation because you look at, across your departments, your organizational structure, and you say, all right, who is initiating relationships with counterparties?
Well, the commercial team is, because they're doing deals. So they're out looking for people. Could be sales, could be marketing, you know, in your organization, who it is that's doing commercial kind of deals, you have somebody who might be looking at strategic business development activities, joint ventures or mergers or licensing agreement, some kind of big, huge, you know, some kind of big deal like that that is about not just a transaction or a sale, but really about a partnership. Who's allowed to do that and how do they do that on the land side, who is initiating land leases or purchases or sales or requests for right of way or other access, and who's doing the commercial part.
So you've got. And who's doing the basic procurement? We have to go buy Staples, we have to go buy pencils.
We might need consultants.
How do we get those done?
So you map those out first. You just list them.
Everybody in the company who is allowed to do one of those things that is initiating a counterparty relationship. And you figure out, okay, how are they doing that today?
When in the process of creating that relationship, do they need something from some other part of the organization? When do they need a contract?
When do they need a payment? When do they need permission to make a payment? Something like that, or receive a payment at that point where they need something is the best time to grab them.
So you want to map your processes so you understand what's happening before they need something hostage.
Well, we're trying to make it easy.
So can we make the process easy for them as they are starting to collect information?
And, and can we make it easy for them to give that data over to the group that's kind of holding the next step? They're holding it hostage. If you don't get to this step, you can't have a contract or you can't make a payment, or you can't get paid.
The quicker and easier that you can make it for somebody in one of these organizations to provide the data about the new counterparty to that central gate gate, the more likely they are to do it.
So you have to have good process that supports how flexible they need to be. Salespeople notoriously need to be flexible. Deal guys need to be flexible.
Big, you know, business development, joint venture kind of people. They not only need flexibility, they also need secrecy, confidentiality. They don't want a lot of people to know that they're looking at an M and A or a merger, an acquisition, or even a divestiture. They don't want very many people in the company to know that. So you need to have a process that protects them, that protects that, that transaction up until the point you're ready to make it known to other people.
So map the process and then use the systems to make the workflow, to make the data flow so that you can capture the data but continue to make it available to everybody.
You also need, when you're looking at that, everything that goes into that central system that assigns an id, is it automatically made active? No, shouldn't be. There's. There's a lot to do before then, but that, but the unique ID gets assigned right away and it gets pushed back to whatever peripheral systems have, have started the process, have asked for this new counterparty to be recognized.
So then you work with each group. What do you want to call your status when it comes in? Do you want to call it prospect? This is a prospect. Do you want to call it pending or draft or awaiting approval? And that's going to be different company by company. It may be different group by group in your company.
So and with each one of those statuses, there's probably workflow. The workflow might include ask the counterparty for some information.
So a prospect, a bid prospect. You've got an operations team or a construction team. That's collecting a lot of counterparties so that they have a selection to say, hey, we need something done and we need it done quickly. We want to have a group of contractors that we've already vetted, we already have their information, we know their prices. So they're still a prospect. They don't have a contract.
But you want that record to include insurance information and qualifications or availability, maybe resumes for key people, certainly rate cards for them.
And so you can do that work. You can have the central system working with the peripheral system and working with the counterparty to collect and manage that data and have it ready. It's not official, it's still a prospect. It hasn't moved on in the process. They don't have to have a contract, they don't have to have a supplier ID to be put into the ERP to be paid, but you've done the hard work of collecting the data. So when they're ready to give them a contract, they don't have to start, then they can just move forward with negotiating the contract and then send it forward into the erp.
So understanding how counterparties get introduced, I think it's a safe assumption to say that is not one way in every company. It's going to be multiple ways in every company. And the bigger, more diverse you are as a company, the more ways you're going to have that are acceptable. But understand them, understand what other systems are involved and then make map the process, make the upfront piece as easy as possible to get you to the point where you get that unique persistent id.
And then the other groups keep doing their work, they're doing negotiation or they're doing other things.
And when they're ready to take the next step, all the data is in your system ready to go to move through negotiating a contract, executing a contract, setting up a supplier ID or a customer ID or getting ready, putting information to a trading system so you're ready to trade or whatever other activities are happening downstream of that step.
But that's the key is flexibility, process, but also the choke point. You've got to have the ID in order to move on when you need to do anything.
And your systems can help you enforce that.
[00:11:50] Speaker B: That's million dollar advice right there.
Yeah.
[00:11:55] Speaker A: Well, there you go.
[00:11:56] Speaker B: Excellent.
[00:12:00] Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in. To find out how to keep control, how to keep control of your counterparties once you take control from the earlier lessons.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: Yes.
If you have any questions, please send us an email atinfo trailblazer us.com Happy to help. Or look us up on the web at www.trailblazer.us.com. check us out at the Learning Center Learning Academy that is at Trailblazer learningacademy.com Thank you for listening. Please tune into our next episode. If you like this episode, please share it with people in your social media network. Like or subscribe. Also helps to this podcast. As always, we appreciate you the listeners. Special thanks goes to Jason Blake created our music.
[00:12:48] Speaker A: Thanks to Jason. And also, you had had me scared there for a second, Lee, that you had started something new in the last week. The Trailblazer Learning Center. Yeah, not yet. Trailblazer Learning Academy.
[00:13:02] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:13:03] Speaker A: All right. Thanks everyone.
[00:13:06] Speaker B: Great job.
