Tag Archives: Guest Posts

The Public Sector and the Cost of Resisting Change

Guest Post - May 16, 2013 1:33 PM | Categories: Industry News

Spend Matters welcomes a guest post from Mark Digman, VP of product marketing and strategy at SciQuest. Be sure to join Spend Matters and SciQuest for a webinar on May 30 from 10-11am CDT:  Good Data: Spend Analysis Tactics to Attack Supplier Performance Management. One of the things I like about the Spend Matters community is that it’s filled with procurement professionals who embrace change – people who understand that change is not only beneficial, but also necessary to any organization’s survival. Because we tend to work with – and therefore surround ourselves with – forward-thinking, solution-oriented customers, it can [...]

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6 Insider Tips for Getting a Purchasing System off the Ground

Guest Post - April 18, 2013 1:24 PM | Categories: Commentary

Spend Matters welcomes a guest post from Shannon Lowe, Marketing Communications Manager, and Mark Schaffner, VP of Marketing, Verian. What’s the difference between organizations that achieve visibility, control, and savings by successfully implementing purchasing automation and those that struggle to get their systems off the ground? Here are six insider tips gleaned from a recent interview with a best-in-class company that implemented a purchasing system three years ago. It’s helping them profitably manage over $100 million in indirect spending, up from $8 million when the project began. 1. Begin with the end in mind. Before starting anything, develop a vision. [...]

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The Challenges of Moving Upstream

Guest Post - April 12, 2013 1:41 PM | Categories: Commentary

Spend Matters welcomes a guest post from Tony Fross, of LogicSource. We see several industries where clients are migrating up the value chain to focus on branding, product development, and marketing, where in the past they had done their own manufacturing and sourced secondary goods. Now they are focused on the highest value activities, but it’s hard to manage the value chain that actually produces their products. This sort of movement was particularly noticeable in the 90’s in the apparel industry. Designers lived onshore in the garment district and merchandisers initially sourced their core materials overseas. Gradually, manufacturing moved offshore [...]

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Continuous Improvement: The Key to Sustained Savings (Part 2)

Guest Post - April 11, 2013 1:19 PM | Categories: Commentary

See Part 1 of this post here. 3. How to incorporate Continuous Improvement within the Sourcing process In order to adopt Continuous Improvement for a specific category, the following additional steps need to be carried out during the respective stages of strategic sourcing: I. Data Collection In addition to collecting spend information, the sourcing team must execute surveys and interviews of personnel who are most involved with the specific product or service and interact with the supplier. Questions must be asked to elicit processes that could improve service levels, productivity, shorten the process cycle and reduce wastage. Pain points and [...]

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Digital Advertising Demands Savvy Buyers

Guest Post - April 9, 2013 3:25 PM | Categories: Commentary

Tyler Adams, GEP Digital advertising exceeded $35 billion in the USA and $90 billion globally in 2012. With expected growth of over 15% in 2013, an integrated approach to marketing procurement is essential to maximizing the efficiency of this budget. Digital advertising is seeing a seismic shift as advertisers begin to reduce their reliance on traditional buying behaviors and integrate automated purchasing technologies. Known as programmatic buying, the niche technologies and suppliers that participate in this space have developed the ability to use data, algorithms, and real-time systems to help advertisers deliver specific ads to target consumers. Similar to stock [...]

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GPOs and Private Equity Organizations: An Industry Response

Guest Post - April 8, 2013 8:14 AM | Categories: Commentary

Spend Matters welcomes a guest post from David Clevenger, Vice President of Corporate United. In reading Mr. Woodcock’s piece on GPOs (What Group Purchasing Organizations Can Do For Private Equity Firms), I couldn’t help but feel that I was being lured into a trap. Despite my wariness, I find myself compelled to respond, if for no other reason than to offer a different perspective on the original post. The article begins by demonstrating some confusion regarding private equity firms; “alleging” that these firms make money by buying companies, gutting them, and re-selling them at a profit. Separate to whether or [...]

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A Value-Based Approach to Sourcing Legal Services

Guest Post - April 2, 2013 1:41 PM | Categories: Commentary

Across corporations, legal services remain one of the most elusive procurement categories. This challenge is often rooted in a perception that typical procurement strategies do not apply to a category where long-term partnerships are of the utmost importance. A value-based approach with an emphasis on results as well as rates can help mitigate these concerns and gain the advocacy of corporate legal departments. Although alternative fee arrangement only accounted for less than 25% of big firms’ revenues in 2012, there is definitive transition in the direction of these agreements, particularly as law firms come under increased cost pressure in a [...]

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Taming the Healthcare Cost Beast

Guest Post - March 28, 2013 1:44 PM | Categories: Commentary

Spend Matters welcomes a guest post from Jim Kiser, of GEP. The cost impact of employee health care benefits has now escalated to a tipping point for employers, both public and private, across the US. For numbers sake, the average annual premiums in 2012 are $5,615 for single coverage and $15,745 for family coverage. Average premiums increased 3% for single coverage and 4% for family coverage in the last year. Consistent with recent years, average family premiums for small firms (3-199 workers) ($15,253) are significantly lower than average family premiums for larger firms (200 or more workers) ($15,980).* What are [...]

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Rethink Revenue Management: 3 Ways to Avoid Common Pitfalls

Guest Post - March 26, 2013 1:33 PM | Categories: Commentary

Spend Matters welcomes a guest post from Michael Kerman, the Director of Industry Development at Revitas. The financial and legal perils of using outdated, manual, and silo-based revenue management practices can be so severe that your company could be losing millions – or billions – of dollars each year. While this should be a wake-up call for finance, sales, and supply chain executives, many still rely on antiquated systems and struggle with how to drive greater revenue, streamline operations and optimize spending. So I ask, “what would you do to reduce revenue leakage in your organization?” The complex, tiered incentives [...]

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Too Much Sun in the Sunshine State: Orange Juice Concentrate

Guest Post - March 25, 2013 1:45 PM | Categories: Commentary

Spend Matters welcomes a guest post from Abigail Green, at Mintec. Whenever orange juice is mentioned, you may think of Florida. We are reminded about this on Florida license plates, and even a major league baseball stadium in Florida is named after a particularly famous brand. When it comes down to it, if you are American and drink OJ: it probably comes from Florida. World trade in frozen concentrated orange juice (FCOJ) is dominated by Brazil, which accounts for as much as 80% of the world’s exports. The US (Florida) is the main producer of not from concentrate (NFC) juice. [...]

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Rice: Tiger Cub Roars, US Buys More

Guest Post - March 18, 2013 1:41 PM | Categories: Commentary

Spend Matters welcomes a guest post from Jade Savage, of Mintec. Over the past year, the price of rice has risen considerably in the tiger cub economies of the world.  Thailand, India, and Pakistan account for 30% of world rice production and 60% of world exports. But how much will their rice prices impact import demand in the US, which grows over 60% more rice than it consumes? The US typically produces around 6-7m tonnes of rice each year. Half of this is exported, mainly to Mexico and Central America, while the remainder is consumed domestically. The US only imports [...]

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IT Sourcing: Enterprise Innovation Ally?

Guest Post - March 13, 2013 2:13 PM | Categories: Commentary

Spend Matters welcomes another guest post from NPI, a spend management consultancy, focused on eliminating overspending on IT, telecom and shipping. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of sitting down with CIO magazine to discuss the findings of the publication’s “2013 State of the CIO Survey.” This annual survey provides insights into not only which IT initiatives are at the forefront of enterprise minds, but also how CIOs view their role and interactions with other company stakeholders. Throughout our conversation, there were three findings that piqued my interest because of the potential impact they may have on IT sourcing: CIO’s aspire [...]

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Lack of Clarity in Business Strategy Reveals Itself in Sourcing

Guest Post - March 5, 2013 3:38 PM | Categories: Commentary

Spend Matters welcomes a guest post from Tony Fross, from LogicSource. Most people agree that operational activities have some connection to corporate strategy. But most people probably feel that the two things are pretty distant. And in some senses they are. Boardroom strategy sessions have little direct effect in the selection of an individual supplier, the negotiation of a particular rate card, or the granular specifications of a particular good that is sourced. Much like the proverbial butterfly causing a hurricane in a distant location, however, what’s quite easily visible in the world of sourcing and supply chains is a [...]

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Do We Really Need Another Category Scorecard?

Guest Post - March 4, 2013 9:30 AM | Categories: Commentary

Spend Matters welcomes a guest post from Andrew Bartolini, Chief Research Officer at Ardent Partners and publisher of CPO Rising. 1) Do we really need another scorecard? How can this help to get folks on the same page? Ardent Partners’ latest research report entitled CPO Rising 2012: Keeping Score, which was based responses from more than 260 procurement professionals, showed that: More than 40% of all enterprises lack an active sourcing program and/or sourcing pipeline Roughly 60% of CPOs feel their staffs are undersized Almost one-third of all enterprises only do manual sourcing This tells me that there are many [...]

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Evaluating Supply Chain Risks with Single vs. Multiple Vendor Sourcing Strategies

Guest Post - February 28, 2013 2:42 PM | Categories: Commentary

Spend Matters welcomes a guest post from Joshua Nelson, Director in the Strategy and Operations Practice at the Hackett Group. During the past two decades, companies have adopted strategies to rationalize and consolidate their supplier base. In many cases, the supplier rationalization programs have created a single sourcing strategy for many commodities. This strategy has enabled companies to build stronger and more collaborative relationships that deliver a range of benefits, including: Improved bargaining power to reduce costs Decreased effort to track supplier performance and manage relationships Improved innovation and design collaboration Improved plan synchronization and information exchange Improved supplier responsiveness [...]

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E-Sourcing for Restaurants: How to Challenge Suppliers and Lower Costs

Guest Post - February 26, 2013 2:59 PM | Categories: Commentary

Spend Matters welcomes a guest post from Brian Miller, VP of Services at Intesource. The pressure is on for the restaurant industry. Food, energy, and healthcare costs are rising and the unstable economy is keeping consumers at home – making cost containment as important as ever. So how can restaurants alleviate the overwhelming pressure to cut costs? By examining their spend – both direct and indirect – and challenging suppliers to provide the lowest possible costs. Many procurement pros are confident that they’re already receiving the best payment terms possible – but an e-sourcing strategy almost always provides surprising results. [...]

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