Cognitive Sourcing 21.08 Release Notes

August 30, 2021

 

Introduction

This document describes the final scope for Cognitive Sourcing Release 21.08. It is intended as a reference for LevaData Customers.

This document is not a comprehensive list of every addition, change, or deletion in this release. No legal commitment, either expressed or implied should be construed from this document.

Customers that would like additional information on any of the items in this document can contact support@levadatasupport.zendesk.com or their Customer Success Manager.

 

Table of Contents

Release Highlights

1. Enhancements to Cost Optimizer
   • Preview of Auto Created Review Opportunity Rules
2. Enhancements to Supply Risk Navigator
   • Vendor Sites Displayed to Customer
   • Events Beta
   • Enhanced News Features
3. Enhancements to Supplier Portal
   • Vendor Sites Management
4. Enhancements to the Platform
   • Parts Data Management
5. Enhancements to Smart RFX
   • GCM Managed RFX - Upload Responses on Behalf of the Supplier
   • RFX Share – Share RFX with Others
6. Known Issues
   • Parts Data Management - CMODM=ALL edit case
   • Parts Data Management - Show Errors
   • Parts Data Management - Save failing (for one case)

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Release Highlights

Enhancements to Cost Optimizer

Preview of Auto Created Review Opportunity Rules

You can configure rules to automatically accept or reject offered opportunities. As you accept, reject or hold one or more opportunities you can now see the preview of the applied action and you will have an option to create this as an auto action using your active filter conditions. This rule will then be applied to automatically review opportunities with future data refreshes.

Any user can see the list of created rules by clicking on the settings icon:

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Enhancements to Supply Risk Navigator

Vendor Sites Displayed to Customer

Supply Risk Navigator collects and manages vendor site data for use in Part-Site and sub-tier mapping. Data may be collected from various public sources, the vendors themselves, or by a customer for their own use. Additionally, customers can add their own site information.

LevaData-managed vendor sites are now made visible to you. Information includes:

• Site Name
• Site Location
• Site Contacts
• and a URL, as shown in the figure below.

There are two tabs:

1. My Vendor Sites displays Vendor Site information owned by the customer if they added their own sites.
2. Community Vendor Sites displays community owned vendor sites.

 

Events Beta

Supply Risk Navigator Events Tracking is a Beta feature and the Machine Learning Models which scan global media and create events are being continuously improved. Please contact your Customer Success Director if you would like to discuss participation in the feedback collection process to help us train our models.

Create (customer-owned) events enhancement

Users can create, view and deactivate their own company-wide events through the Customer Events feature. Customer-created events will be visible only to the users in the company.

 

When Users Add or Edit Events, Expansion of the Site Location Details or Associated News panel allows users to add impacted sites or select relevant news to tag to the event.

 

 

UX Enhancements to Events Beta

The Event Details page has been revamped for enhanced usability.

Users can now Select All parts when creating an RFI from the Explore Alternates Table.

 

Enhanced News Features

Supply Risk Navigator incorporates an AI-based News Clustering engine in the News Pipeline. Similar news articles are now clustered and the user is presented with one view of the related items. Users can view the entire cluster by expanding the item using the expand item. Additionally, the News is tagged with an AI-derived severity indicator (Red and Yellow flags) to assist users in prioritizing their review. A filter for severity is added. Users can bookmark articles, which will essentially pin them to the top of the list.

Note: SRN News Clustering is a LevaData Beta Feature and the Machine Learning Models to cluster and determine severity are being continuously improved. Please contact your Customer Success Director if you would like to discuss participation in the feedback collection process to help us train our models.

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Enhancements to Supplier Portal

Vendor Sites Management

The ability for Vendors to add and maintain their sites in the vendor portal has been added. This will facilitate the collection of Part-Site and sub-tier mapping for Supply Risk Assessment and Event Impact estimation.

Note: LevaData will soon be kicking off a pilot Part-Site Collection Program for any users of SRFX. If you would like to participate in this important pilot, please contact your Customer Success Representative so that we can coordinate training with your pilot suppliers.

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Enhancements to the Platform

Parts Data Management

Parts Data Management provides a 360 degree view of all Customer Parts under one location, giving users end-to-end visibility of the part performance, from both Production and Pre-production perspectives.

Note: Parts Data Management is a LevaData Early Adopter Product. Please contact your Customer Success Director if you would like to discuss participation in the program.

Scoreboard

Users have access to a scoreboard, which tracks certain metrics such as Cost, Target Cost, etc. These metrics can be pre-configured based on request.

When expanded, the scoreboard provides the following insights:

• Data Health

• Opportunities

• Risks

Note: Risk thresholds that classify Very High, High, Medium, Low and Very Low can be set in the backend. These thresholds will be made user-configurable in the future.

Users can access specific data by clicking on the relevant portions of the charts. For example, if users need to know the parts with an EOL risk, clicking on the End of Life section of the Risks chart, filters the grid below:

Note: The scoreboard metrics are dynamic - i.e. they are updated based on filtered data.

Data Filtering - Quick Filters

The Quick Filters section allows users to create and manage filters.

For example, if users wanted to access all parts provided by Flextronics, then they could create a quick filter for the same to access the data more efficiently.

Quick Filters can be managed based on necessity as well.

Data Updates

Today, users need to wait for weekly-to-monthly data loads (depending on the agreement) in order to update their data on the LevaData platform. With the Parts Data Management, users can edit data directly on the platform (through the UI or Excel download/upload). The changes are synced to LevaData's backend and reflected in other parts of the Platform within a couple of hours.

Updating part attribute(s) involves a Check Out-update-Check In process to maintain integrity, i.e. prevent multiple users from updating the same part at the same time.

Users can select multiple parts, check them out, update the attributes and check them back in. Once checked out, the part(s) will be visible as part of the user's Check Out tab and unavailable for other users to update.

In the Check Out section, users would be able to update attributes such as:

• Cost
• Commodity Manager
• CMODM
• Splits
• Supplier
• Manufacturer
• etc.

Once updated, validations are run on click of Save button

Once the changes are saved, the records can be checked back in.

The Check In action triggers a sync between the Parts Data Management and other parts of the platform such as NPI and Spend Intelligence. Only after the sync process is completed would the part be available for check out again.

Insights

The Opportunities and Risks sections provide insights into Cost/Risk reduction respectively.

 

Example 1

Internal MPN opportunity helps users identify MPN cost delta between current Product price versus other Products within the Enterprise.

Example 2

Single-source Risk identifies all parts which are currently procured from a single supplier/manufacturer, but have the option to add more sources.

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Enhancements to Smart RFX

GCM Managed RFX - Upload Responses on Behalf of the Supplier

Ideally, all RFQs are expected to be conducted with the Suppliers/CMODMs, through the LevaData application; however, there may be instances where the supplier/CMODM is unable to log in into the LevaData platform. In such cases, the responses from the vendor(s) would not be captured into the LevaData application, which impacts the user savings calculation.

From this release, vendors/proxy GCMs will be able to upload their RFX responses on to the LevaData platform to overcome this challenge - i.e. if a Commodity Manager receives the vendor response offline, they can upload the RFX response on behalf of the vendor.

A dropdown is provided on the Manage Vendors page against the vendors who do not have active users. Customers who wish to upload RFX responses on behalf of the supplier can assign a proxy Commodity Manager to complete this process. This ensures that the RFQ data loop is tracked on the platform, ensuring spend/savings data integrity.

After assigning the proxy users, the customer can click on the Save Proxy Users button to save the configuration.

Once an RFQ is sent to the vendor, the proxy GCM(s) navigate to the respective RFX page, where they can find an option to upload supplier responses.

After clicking on the Upload option, a dialog appears with RFX preview and a button to
upload the response file.

After successfully uploading the file, the supplier response is updated on the RFX page.

The customer can now go ahead and accept the supplier response similar to a normal RFX.

 

RFX Share – Share RFX with Others

Currently, RFXs created by one user cannot be shared with other users within the organization. As a result, users may not have the visibility of the RFXs created at an organizational level.

RFX share is a long-awaited feature, and with this release, commodity managers can grant view or edit access to other GCM in their organization. This enables the cross-organizational visibility and management of RFXs, based on specific permissions. In addition to the RFX creator, users with relevant permissions can also respond to the RFX.

Sharing an RFX

Quick Share: On the RFX dashboard, users can find the share icon on every RFX card. A list of users in the organization appears in the dropdown menu when the share icon is clicked.

Upon selecting the user, the Owner can grant view or edit permissions.

Bulk Share

To share RFXs in bulk, the RFX Owner can navigate to the Grid view in the RFX dashboard. After selecting multiple RFXs from the list, the Owner can grant relevant permissions to other users.

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Known Issues

Parts Data Management - CMODM=ALL edit case

When the Global Price Indicator is changed from N to Y, individual CMODMs will be hidden and only 'ALL' CMODM will be visible. When the user tries to right click and enter sourcing information, the right click does not work. This means that the user will not be able to enter sourcing information for the 'ALL' sourcing group.

Parts Data Management - Show Errors

When the user clicks on the Show Errors button, the UI does not show the errors flagged in red. Ideally, this will identify the specific cells with a data error.

Parts Data Management - Save failing (for one case)

When the user checks out a part, modifies the Component Control and clicks on Save. Sometimes the save functionality is failing.