Category Archives: Spend Matters UK/Europe
CPO Agenda Magazine to Close (Part 2)
Please click here for Part 1. It’s undeniable that others will try to read into the closure of CPO Agenda as an indictment about the death of traditional media. In a comment on Peter Smith’s post Pete Loughlin opines that “it’s the 21st century and ‘push’ media – paper publications, TV and radio – are giving way to ‘pull’ media – online content largely created by those who sponsor community behavior. Old world publications talked at their target audience. The new world success stories are created by the target audience.” A thoughtful perspective, but not one I completely agree with. [...]
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CPO Agenda Magazine to Close (Part 1)
My colleague Peter Smith of Spend Matters UK/Europe has the news that CPO Agenda is shutting down. While CIPS has tried to spin the death of CPO Agenda by suggesting it will be launching a new publication titled Supply Business (supposedly aimed at finance and other business stakeholders outside of procurement), we see it in a different light. But first the news and some context. In the above-linked post, Peter observes: CPO Agenda was launched back in Spring 2005 by CIPS (the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply) in partnership with Redactive Publishing, under editor Geraint John. It was intended [...]
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Contract Visibility Matters: Join Us For a Spend Matters Webinar on Contract Management
Join us on Tuesday, September 25, 2012 from 11:30 AM-12:30 PM CDT for a Spend Matters webinar tackling the subject of contract visibility — a key ingredient to building better contract management that is missing in many contract lifecycle management (CLM) implementations today. We’ve titled this virtual talk: Getting to Grips with Contract Management — Managing Contract Visibility, Risk and Opportunity as a CPO. During this webinar, Peter Smith (Spend Matters UK/Europe) and I will be presenting our thoughts on building contract visibility. As part of our talk, we’ll explore three areas that make contract visibility so important today. First, [...]
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Spend Matters UK/Europe: CIPS Awards Dinner, BravoSolution’s Real World Sourcing Session, and More
I look forward to Peter’s coverage of this event every year. CIPS SM Awards Tonight! — Tonight is the most glittering evening in the procurement calendar, as movie stars, Olympic medallists, and the assistant buyer from Scunthorpe Castings Ltd. assemble in the Grosvenor House Hotel for the CIPS Supply Management Awards. CIPS Supply Management Awards – the Morning After the Night Before — In the interests of journalistic professionalism, I made a promise to myself with regard to the CIPS Awards event last night – I absolutely would not drink more than the doctors recommended number of units alcohol intake. [...]
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What’s Happened to TradingPartners?
Earlier this morning, Peter Smith posted the following on Spend Matters UK/Europe: What’s Happened to Trading Partners?. He received a tip yesterday that Trading Partners has disappeared from their London offices, and attempted to reach out: I’ve tried to get hold of Richard Adams, the London based CEO of the firm, last night and today, with no success — which can happen, of course. Yet their office telephone lines in London and Chicago appear to be out of action — not a good sign (but potentially just an IT failure). I’m also now hearing rumours from other sources that there [...]
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Django Django, alt-J, King Charles, and What Procurement People Can Learn From Musicians
I spent three days last long weekend at the Reading (rhymes with bedding) Music Festival, 30 miles west of London, probably the biggest and most full-on rock music festival in the world. And Reading’s definition of “rock” spans everything from the dance electronica of Canada’s Grimes, to the Foo Fighters: from (currently) fairly unknown sweet Scottish folk singer Rachel Sermanni, to veteran US punk band Social Distortion; from Scottish-Irish surf-pop dance kids Django Django to the Caribbean tinged indie-glam of classically trained King Charles, and from new English dubstep/plainsong/indie band alt-J to Icelandic folk/rock sensations Of Monsters and Men. But [...]
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Best of Spend Matters: Spend Matters UK/Europe
Where would we be without our procurement voice of the UK and Europe, Peter Smith? Spend Matters UK/Europe has almost hit its two-year anniversary and will undoubtedly take the terrible twos by storm (in a good way). Here are the top five most-read posts from the site: Thailand Hard Disk Drive production – cost and supply implications — As Thailand starts the recovery process and takes stock of the worst flooding on record, the supply of Hard Disk Drives (HDD) is forecast to become difficult and expensive. And the global impact is forecast to be significant shortages of this vital [...]
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Spend Matters UK Friday: What’s Peter Been Up To?
We featured Peter Smith in a post earlier this week, and it’s high time that we highlighted some of the other great content over on Spend Matters UK/Europe to end up the week (I found this post especially amusing). The calm after the Spice Girls… The Olympic Hangover — This morning, Great Britain and Northern Ireland is waking up with a massive metaphorical hangover – and in many cases, an all too physical one as well. The last two weeks, even for someone like me who was moderately cynical about the Olympics, has been a very strange, and at times [...]
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Outsourcing is Here to Stay: How Can We Make it More Successful?
Our own Peter Smith of Spend Matters UK/Europe was recently interviewed by Channel 4 News for an article titled Do you know who runs your world? The main gist: with the need to cut costs, UK public entities are increasingly outsourcing aspects of their work to private firms. The article questions whether saving money this way means losing transparency. See an excerpt (and video!) below: When public contracts move into the private domain, the ability of members of the public to scrutinise them vanishes. Former senior civil servant Peter Smith edits the procurement website Spend Matters and advises companies on [...]
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A Critical Weekend for the Future of Europe
This post has been cross posted from Spend Matters UK/Europe. You can read the original post, authored by Peter Smith, here. At some stage in the future, we may look back on this weekend as a turning point for the Euro, or even the whole direction of Europe and the integrated Europe ideal. The Presidential election in France is the biggest event, but there is also the vital general election in Greece, local elections in Italy which will test the climate faced by the caretaker Prime Minster, Mario Monti, and a key regional election in Schleswig-Holstein which could weaken Angela [...]
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Spend Matters Sites Round-Up
It’s been awhile since we’ve posted what’s going on with Spend Matters UK, Healthcare Matters, and MetalMiner. See below for what Peter, Tom, and Lisa/Taras/Stuart are up to. From Spend Matters UK/Europe PRGX and more on Spend Analytics – essential tools for procurement — We introduced PRGX and their SpendTrax spend visibility platform here recently – we were impressed at our demo by its speed and usability. In part 2 today, we’ll look at what you can do in terms of more detailed supplier analysis using this platform. The supplier management tool enables the user to dig into a specific [...]
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New Research: What to Staff vs. Outsource — Internal and External Procurement Service Provision
My colleague Peter Smith has been beating hard on the research drum of late. His latest paper is available for download here: Balancing Internal and External Service Provision — Key Decisions for Procurement Professionals. This is one of the more generalized and observant papers Spend Matters has published over the years that accomplishes far more in scope than we usually set out to achieve in narrow studies and briefs. As Peter notes, this paper contains important and broader messages, including the challenge and opportunity of optimizing the use of resources from both inside and outside the organization, blending them successfully [...]
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New Research: Supplier Lifecycle Management (Courtesy of Spend Matters UK/Europe)
By Jason Busch and Peter Smith My colleague Peter Smith recently penned a primer in the area of supplier management, which will be especially useful for those just coming up to speed on the topic and seeking to implement programs to address supply chain risk management and supplier performance management, among other areas. The paper can be downloaded from our research library: Supplier Lifecycle Management: Reduce risk, Improve Performance and drive Supplier Value. Peter frames his analysis by suggesting that the performance of a supplier has a huge impact on an organization’s success and will ultimately determine how the procurement [...]
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Spend Matters UK/Europe Round-Up
Peter tackles the impending Olympics, supplier lifecycle management, the new CIPS website, and this intriguing-looking band: The Olympics “Delivery Partner” model – a precedent worth following? (Part 1) — The ODA – Olympic Delivery Authority – have had a lot of praise for their work on the Olympics, much of it justified, particularly the venue construction work coming in ahead of schedule and to budget. However, the ticketing process hasn’t been plain sailing (it’s been pointed out that this is LOCOG responsibility – apologies to ODA) and we still have to see how some of their other areas of responsibility [...]
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Spend Matters UK/Europe Round-Up
Duncan Jones (Forrester) on why Strategic Relationships Go Bad – part 1 — Duncan Jones of Forrester has published an excellent and very interesting research paper, titled “Transform Your Strategic Supplier Relationships From Duels Into Duets”. You can get it here if you’re a Forrester subscriber – I think you have to pay if you’re not. Who owns your supplier? And does it matter? — Wetherspoons, one of the UK’s largest pub chains, reported their results last week. What was interesting was the comment of Tim Martin, chairman and founder, that although their cost pressures were increasing, he didn’t think [...]
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Procurement on the Other Side of the Pond: Spend Matters UK Round-Up
I realized I hadn’t done a UK round-up in quite some time, and if you’re not reading the UK site regularly, you should be! Here’s what Peter’s been up to of late: Our readers speak on outsourcing – an evil menace, or a force for good? — A couple of readers came at it from the “all outsourcing is rubbish” angle. Well, it is simply too much of a fact of business life to reject the entire process completely. No organisation can do everything itself – the days of Henry Ford buying his own steel mills are long gone, and [...]
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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
Spend Matters Perspectives research is focused on targeted topics that impact specific areas in procurement
