Spend Matters » L2

P2P Channel Strategy Spaghetti: Pasta that Will Keep Your Company Lean!

Guest Post — Thu, 23 May 2013 19:26:07 +0000

Spend Matters welcomes a guest post from Michael Eckstut and Len Prokopets of Archstone Consulting. A commonly held view by most top managers today is that simplifying processes and taking a “lean” approach to all business operations is the golden path to business success. We have seen over and over again companies successfully re-engineering their business processes to take out complexity and become more effective and efficient, better able to compete in the marketplace by meeting customer service and quality goals while driving down costs. However, there are times when simplifying processes can go too far and little “messiness” is [...]

Gartner’s Supply Chain Top 25, Big Gas Savings, Pet Spending

Sheena Moore — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:36:45 +0000

US retailers are reluctant to join in on international plans to improve safety and working conditions in factories abroad due to legal liability concerns. Draft FCB does it again with a great K-Mart ad. Today in perspectives: the average U.S. household spends more on pets than the poverty line for humans in the developing world. Gartner has released its ninth annual Supply Chain Top 25.

BravoSolution’s Customer Event – Learning To Drive Fast

Jason Busch — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:01:34 +0000

When people purchase anything but a boring econobox of a car – or the Prius, which is really just Toyota’s excuse to find a way to charge close to $30K for something that without the eco-weenie component should cost half, judged on performance – it’s unlikely that they’ll ever drive the thing near the limits. Yet even my trusty Honda Odyssey is capable of doing some pretty spectacular things if you know how to push it. This is true of so many procurement tools as well, especially on the sourcing side. One common theme at Bravo’s customer event so far is that a number of the [...]

Analyze This! – Supplier Performance Management Based on Real Data

Thomas Kase — Thu, 23 May 2013 14:01:43 +0000

To drive change and improvements, it is critical that internal stakeholders and suppliers rally around good data based on a uniform set of definitions. The challenge for most organizations, especially those with a global footprint, is the consistently drive processes and definitions across the whole organizations. Making the analysis timely, effective and efficient sets up another challenge in the form of minimizing the touching of data – no rekeying – and as little manual entry as possible. Only then can the right solution consolidate and present users with a dashboard and data that is still actionable. Nobody wants to read [...]

Sourcing Validation as a Best Practice

Guest Post — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:14:29 +0000

Spend Matters welcomes another guest post from Jeff Muscarella of NPI, a spend management consultancy focused on eliminating overspending on IT, telecom and shipping. In the last decade, enterprises have been subjected to a long list of financial regulations and compliance mandates that aim to create transparency and eliminate corruptive business practices (e.g. Sarbanes-Oxley). Along the way, these mandates have had an impact on public companies’ sourcing practices. As part of organizations’ path to compliance, they must maintain visibility into significant areas of spend in order to make verifiable determinations about future financial commitments. This requires having visibility into supplier/vendor [...]

H7N9 Under Control, Apple to Build Factory in Texas, Best Buy Cuts Costs, Google’s Conversational Search

Sydney Lazarus — Wed, 22 May 2013 17:23:06 +0000

The H7N9 virus appears to be under control, according to UN experts. The epidemic has led to roughly $6.5 billion in losses. Apple, Inc. plans to invest $100 million in building a factory in Texas, where a line of Mac computers will be built. As part of its turnaround plan, Best Buy is pursuing more aggressive cost-cutting strategies, aiming to slash $400 million of overhead by the end of the fiscal year. Google’s new version of Chrome incorporates “conversational search.”

Transactional Data Interchange: The Large/Small Company Disconnect

Jason Busch — Wed, 22 May 2013 16:01:46 +0000

KPMG’s 2013 Global Manufacturing Outlook features a diagram that immediately caught my attention when I saw it. It shows the variance of how large (companies over $5B in revenue) and smaller companies (companies under $5B in revenue) transact and share information with supply chain partners. Note: the data contained in the study is based on a survey conducted with The Economist with a decent sample size (300+ companies). KPMG’s findings suggest that the dominant form of data-sharing for large companies are web-based partner portals (coming in at 40%) when it comes to transmitting information across the supply chain. 39% of [...]

Supplier Network Fee Modeler: A Q-and-A With the Inventor (Part 2)

Jason Busch — Wed, 22 May 2013 14:09:21 +0000

Please click here for the first part of this interview. Spend Matters: Ariba’s fees look inexpensive compared with p-cards. What’s the difference for suppliers? Purchasing Insight: This is a good point. Anyone who wants to criticize Ariba should look at merchant fees. But it is fair to say that merchant fees are based on a percentage of the value of a sale where there’s a margin that is also proportionate to value of the sale. This logic doesn’t apply with invoicing. Spend Matters: How do supplier network fees compare to the process improvements savings companies realize through A/P automation and [...]

Supercharging Procurement’s Buying Leverage

Guest Post — Tue, 21 May 2013 19:09:49 +0000

Spend Matters welcomes a guest post from Jim Kiser of GEP. In today’s competitive business environment, companies are under pressure to increase their profit to achieve higher shareholder value. Companies can raise prices and risk losing market share or cut costs and become more competitive. It is imperative to find ways of increasing buying power to leverage greater value and reduced costs from suppliers. Organizations can develop internal negotiation power by having various departments collaborate on key supplier spend projects that benefit the whole company. Sharing employees and best practices of various departments allows a company to potentially reap benefits [...]

Apple the “Tax Dodger,” Your Donated Clothes, Global Brand Supply Chain Woes

Sheena Moore — Tue, 21 May 2013 17:44:05 +0000

Tim Cook was questioned by a US Senate subcommittee about Apple’s offshore cash, after being accused of “dodging” paying taxes in the US. What really happens to your clothes after you donate them? NPR takes a look. Global brands are still under fire: H&M says orders for clothing made in the Cambodian factory where 23 workers were injured on Monday were placed without its knowledge. Steelwedge announces their latest offering: “The world’s leading manufacturers are recognizing that increasingly complex, interdependent businesses—and the plans built to manage them—will only survive with better agility and resilience built into them,” their CEO says.