Author Archives: Sheena Moore
MetalMiner Seeks Senior Sales Position
While Spend Matters brings you your daily fix of procurement content, the MetalMiner side of the house is busy not only providing global pricing trends through their monthly MetalMiner IndX (MMI) series, but also digging into the global issues and considerations behind the sourcing and trading of all metals. The site that started at 100 views per day is now the number one North American metals trade publication by traffic. They’re looking for their very first full-time hire for the MetalMiner sales team. See an excerpt from the full job description below: “Our Sales Director will serve business-to-business advertisers with [...]
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Chicago Flooding, Texas Fertilizer Plant Explosion, H7N9 Affects Tourism
Be careful out there, Chicagoans: A huge swath of overnight storms brought massive sink holes and flooding to the Chicagoland area. Parts of the Edens, Eisenhower, and Kennedy are closed. There’s no word yet on the cause of a fire that caused a West Texas fertilizer plant to explode, killing between 5-15 and injuring more than 100 people. The spread of H7N9 will likely affect the business at some of eastern China’s hotels and vacation hot spots for the upcoming May Day holiday. MetalMiner takes a look at the US strategic minerals and metals supply chain for the US Military [...]
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H7N9 Update, Safe Baby Formula, HP Releases Smelter List, Horsemeat Test Results
63 humans are now known to be infected with H7N9 and 14 have died – flu experts are headed to China for a fact-finding mission focused on the poultry market. Chinese families are being penalized for buying foreign baby formula, despite Chinese product containing dangerous levels of mercury and aflatoxin. HP is the first IT company to publish their smelter list for independent review, in the hopes of achieving a conflict-free supply chain. (What are you doing to prepare for Conflict Minerals compliance??) The European Commission is publishing horsemeat test results today.
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China’s Avian Flu, Gender Pay Gaps, Massive Japanese Auto Recall, Musings on Ham
Why did the Chinese government take so long to report the first outbreak of avian flu? Their handling of the situation is drawing heavy criticism…but perhaps it’s just an American plot against China. Good thing I moved to Chicago…Seattle has the worst gender pay gap in the US, at 73 cents (women) to a man’s dollar. Honda, Toyota, Mazda, and Nissan are recalling over 3.4 million vehicles globally, due to air bag issues. Is what you know as prosciutto really prosciutto? Amongst news stories of fake Kobe beef and the fish you ordered not really being the fish you get…it’s [...]
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Zara’s Instinctual Supply Chain, Rio Tinto’s Supply Strategy, 97-Month Car Loan
Operating an “instinctual” retail supply chain based on psychology: Zara has built a supply chain model where being out of stock is a good thing. Does Rio Tinto have anything to gain by holding back supply and cutting investment in new capacity? What’s up with the 97-month car loan? Negative equity, that’s what. Planning your summer vacation? Airfare’s up, hotels are down in Europe.
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Wedding Planning: Venue, Menu, Hotel Blocks, Stationary, Oh My!
This post is part of an ongoing series about “procuring” a wedding, Spend Matters-style. See the first part here, second here, and thank you so much for all of your advice and congratulations so far! The date is set: November 2, 2013! Last night, I dropped off a signed contract and a sizable chunk of money for a deposit on the perfect venue. After looking at (and hating) more than ten possible places, a desperate late-night Google search brought us to…a cooking school that happens to have a gorgeous loft space and on-site (locally sourced and organic) catering. It has everything we were [...]
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International Food Aid, Unilever’s Sustainability Success, Facebook Phone?
The White House seeks new distribution strategies for international food aid – rather than buying from American farmers and shipping abroad, they want to buy local – saving millions in shipping costs. Unilever can now boast that over one-third of its supply chain is sourced sustainably, following the launch of their 2010 Sustainable Living Plan. Walmart can’t keep its fresh food shelves stocked because they’ve laid off so many employees. Facebook is expected to introduce its moderately priced HTC phone today.
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Spend Matters UK in Dubai, Weight-based Airfare, Shakespeare and the Free Market
Peter Smith (Spend Matters UK) and Guy Allen (owner of Real World Sourcing) are on their way to a BravoSolution Real World Sourcing event in Dubai. From Peter: “Guy is leading off with his session on Spend Analytics, then I’m going to be talking about ‘taking on a new category’ (in a category management context). We will start by looking at whether it’s easier to take on a category that is new territory for procurement, or one that has been managed by someone else?” Pounds are dollars: Samoa Air defends their decision to charge passengers based on how much they weigh. [...]
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Crowded Planes, Cheese Thieves, Vote for Visibility!
Catch the replay of yesterday’s webinar with Iasta: Vote For Visibility: Yes, Procurement and Data Can Dance Moving 21 tons of Muenster… An Illinois man fakes documents to move $200K worth of cheese from Wisconsin to sell for under market value on the East Coast. Come fly with me… US airplanes are most crowded these days since the WWII era: “U.S. airlines carried 0.8 percent more…passengers during the full year 2012 (736.6 million) than during 2011.” The other EU dog pile… Three students in Paris turn to technology to let users “flag” unwanted dog messes throughout the city.
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SciQuest Upgrade, CTA’s Ventra Disaster, MetalMiner Interviews HP on Conflict Minerals
Some upgrades from SciQuest: New Version of SciQuest Business Automation Suite Features Consumer-like User Experience to Turn Spending Into Savings Ventra, Chicago Transit Authority’s newest payment system, is turning out to be a public relations (and consumer) nightmare. MetalMiner’s Lisa Reisman recently spoke to HP about conflict mineral supply chain challenges. The interwebs is starting to charge for online browsing: “A specialty food store in Brisbane, Australia posted this sign, demanding a $5 deposit from people who enter the shop, refundable with your purchase. They are trying to curb “showrooming” — when customers of online businesses use brick-and-mortar competitors as [...]
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Nike Just Does Green, Bears and Jet Fuel, Webinar Wednesday
Vote For Visibility: Yes, Procurement and Data Can Dance is happening this Wednesday. Learn what it takes to truly make your procurement data sing (and dance), starting with spend visibility/analytics and progressing to more advanced data-set combinations. Click here to register. Just doing it: faster. Nike moves faster to green up its supply chain through easier access to sustainable materials and chemicals. First pigs, now ducks. Chinese rivers seem to be acquiring a morbid version of Ol’ Macdonald’s farm… This is nowhere close to my favorite bear story of all time, but bears in Russia are sniffing fumes from discarded [...]
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Walgreens Leverages Purchasing Power, Fake French Pilots, More on See-Through Yoga Pants
What’s next in spend analysis? Walgreens partners with two other pharmacy giants to leverage massive purchasing power – and potentially disrupting the pharmacy supply chain. A French man was found impersonating a pilot at the Philadelphia airport - and made it all the way to the cockpit of an outbound flight. So much for the Department of Homeland Security. Just a great Friday read: Who’s to blame for see-through yoga pants and horse-meatballs? The independent republic of the supply chain
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Taulia’s Million Dollar Guarantee, Tradeshift Interviews Jason, Hubwoo and Microsoft
Jason talks to Pete Loughlin about Tradeshift & Intuit Hubwoo has teamed up with Microsoft to enable B2B cloud collaboration: “Hubwoo (Euronext: HBW.NX), a leader in collaborative business networks, today announced that it has teamed up with Microsoft Corp (Nasdaq: MSFT) to help tens of thousands of Microsoft ERP customers with a step change in spend compliance and accounts payable automation.” Taulia announces a Million Dollar Guarantee – “that promises savings of at least one million dollars from discounts captured within the first year.” As flatscreen technology has made cathode ray tubes obsolete, thousands of old monitors and television sets [...]
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China’s Dumping Methods, Megacommuters, Boeing Chooses GE for 777 Engines
The long-term impacts of China’s “just dump it in the water” waste removal system. The cost of “megacommuting” (driving between 50-90 minutes to get to work every day) goes waaaaaay beyond gas money. Boeing goes with GE as its sole supplier for new 777 engines. India is slowly switching from tea to coffee – which could have an effect on bean prices.
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Dreamliner Fix (Finally!), Vitamin C and Price Fixing, No More Google Reader
Dreamliner flights will resume in a few weeks, after “more than 500 engineers had worked with outside experts to put in more than 200,000 hours of analysis, engineering work and tests to understand what may have caused the batteries to overheat in two aircraft in January.” Vitamin C suppliers in China have been price fixing - and were forced to pay $162 million in damages to US buyers. Noooooooooooooooo! Google is powering down Google Reader and I am sad. Dead pigs in China surprisingly led to a major clean-up in the public health sector (and supposedly, the pork supply and drinking [...]
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High Gas Prices, Lithium Ion Batteries, Euro-Zone Factory Output Falls
Curious to know exactly why your gas is so expensive? “Crude oil prices have fallen by 1% since the end of February even as gas prices are up 12%, according to an analysis by Reuters.” MetalMiner takes a look at lithium ion batteries in Boeing’s Dreamliner – and beyond. Industrial production in the Euro-Zone is falling fast. ”Falling demand within the euro zone was the key drag on production at the end of last year and will remain so at least in the opening months of 2013,” said Anna Zabrodzka, an economist at Moody’s Analytics. In the market for a 101.73 [...]
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- The Start of Summer: Soldier Field 10, G&Ts and Reverse Auctions : Jason Busch said: Thanks, Kim! I can't believe how many people reached out today about this -- including a b... more
- The Start of Summer: Soldier Field 10, G&Ts and Reverse Auctions : Kim L said: Good luck tomorrow!... more
- Supplier Network Fee Modeler: A Q-and-A With the Inventor (Part 1) : Daniel Perry said: "Suppliers hate fees..." may be true for some suppliers who use Ariba, but I don't believe... more
- What’s The Language of Your Business? : Where's Finance and Accounting in Product Cost Management? (Part 1 of Pete Schmitz at Harley-Davidson) Hiller Associates Product Cost Management | Hiller Associates Product Cost Management said: [...] blog posts in 2007 about this concept for Jason Busch at SpendMatters. The article... more
Spend Matters Compass research is based on a year-long editorial calendar, exploring bigger picture areas and issues
Next Level Sourcing and Commodity Management
New Paper P2P and Working Capital
Services Procurement Innovation
ERP Procurement and Spend Management Applications
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