Tag Archives: L2

Australian Wool Prices Decline Due to Weak Demand

Guest Post - May 20, 2013 1:27 PM | Categories: Commentary

Spend Matters welcomes another guest post from Nick Smith of Mintec. Australian wool prices have fallen in recent months, weighed down by weak demand. Prices have dropped off by 15% since the start of the year. Australia and China are the world’s largest producers of wool, each accounting for around 20% of global production. However, Australia is by far the largest exporter of unprocessed wool, accounting for around half of world exports. Despite being one of the largest producers, China is also the largest importer of wool fiber as low labor costs have led the country to become the world’s [...]

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H&M to Diversify Supply Chain, Yahoo Acquires Tumblr, Google Glass Privacy Concerns, Dreamliner Resumes Flight

Sydney Lazarus - May 20, 2013 11:22 AM | Categories: Industry News

Following the Bangladesh factory collapse that killed more than 1,200 people, H&M is looking into sourcing from Latin America and Africa. What was rumor is now official: Yahoo purchases Tumblr for $1.1 billion. The social media site has over 100 million users, most of whom are under 35. Eight Congress members are formally demanding Google to address privacy concerns related to Google Glass, which allows wearers to watch or record video and take photographs. United Airlines resumes Dreamliner flights today.

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Tackling Tail Spend and Spot Buys (Part 3)

Jason Busch - May 20, 2013 10:07 AM | Categories: Commentary

In an analysis of technology for supporting tactical buying requirements, Hackett suggests the following elements to include: tools that review and analyze request patterns, user-friendly interfaces, supplier discovery capabilities and integration of RFX, supplier discovery, and contract creation solutions. While this is a near-complete list, it is our experience that sourcing technology itself matters less than technology integration when it comes to enabling spot-buying success. For example, our research confirms the importance of integrating spot buying activities with req-to-pay technology that can flag potential requisitions (based on a combination of categories, dollar amounts, G/L coding, contract requirements, etc.) and route [...]

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A Manufacturing Travesty: The Procurement Blind Leading the Blind

Jason Busch - May 20, 2013 8:04 AM | Categories: Commentary

KPMG’s 2013 Global Manufacturing Outlook, a fine piece of work conducted in partnership with a survey by the Economist, exposed a dirty secret that all of us with at least one foot in the manufacturing supply chain know to be true: we’re generally flying blind when it comes to activity lower down in our supply chain. In their survey of over 300 companies, KPMG found that 4% of companies have “little to no tier 1 supplier visibility” when it comes to “supply and capacity information” across “suppliers and logistics partners.” In other words, that’s 4 out of every 100 companies [...]

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Quirky SIG Delights: Politics and Pub Crawls

Jason Busch - May 17, 2013 2:13 PM | Categories: Commentary

I spent a day this week at the Sourcing Interests Group (SIG) spring summit in Amelia Island, Florida. It’s been at least a year since I’d been to a SIG event, and the organization has evolved significantly in that time. They have a significantly larger team and a greater focus on regional (city) efforts, plus their twice-a-year summit festivities. SIG is still “clique-y” in that it’s the conference group that feels closest knit, where active members genuinely look forward to seeing each other. But I found the group quite open and friendly to interact with. Above all, SIG is quirky. [...]

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Supplier Network Debate, SPM Optimization, Suppliers at the Heart of Procurement

Sheena Moore - May 17, 2013 1:28 PM | Categories: Commentary

It’s the time of year at Spend Matters where if we’re not furiously writing or attending or speaking at any number of procurement events, we’re putting together free webinars just for you, our readers, to attend. Here are three that will be coming your way in the next few weeks: Tuesday, May 21, 2013 9-10am CDT The Great Debate: Will Supplier Networks Thrive, Implode, or Evolve? This is what AP, treasury, procurement, and supply chain managers need to know about the future of eProcurement, e-invoicing and business connectivity – featuring a live panel discussion that incorporates audience questions and commentary [...]

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Spas Rolling Out Private Suites, Yahoo May Acquire Tumblr for $1B, Most Expensive US Hospital

Sydney Lazarus - May 17, 2013 11:33 AM | Categories: Industry News

Private suites at the spa are becoming increasingly popular with those disinclined to deal with the immemorial “towel or no towel” dilemma. Yahoo may be acquiring social media platform Tumblr at a price of up to $1 billion. The most expensive hospital in the U.S. bills at a rate more than four times the national average. Ousted Groupon CEO Andrew Mason is a busy man, between plans of a new company in San Francisco and releasing a seven-song album of motivational music.

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Back to the Future: Spend Matters [Un]-Plugged

Jason Busch - May 17, 2013 9:09 AM | Categories: Commentary

Someone on our team recently invited some tartare feedback from a long-time reader. It gave me pause, and caused me to think about what Spend Matters has become versus what it used to be. The short, and accurate, feedback was that we’ve become too sanitized. That in attempting to disrupt the old media and industry analyst models, we ended up being a bit sterile (and less entertaining) in covering the news. Simply put: as we became the standard, we adopted the stodgy old industry standard. In doing so, we lost much of the original unvarnished and edgy Spend Matters voice. [...]

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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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Upcoming Webinars, Google Wallet, 101 Carat Perfect Diamond

Sheena Moore - May 16, 2013 11:44 AM | Categories: Industry News

Here are some upcoming (free!) webinars that you might find interesting: 5/21/13: The Great Debate: Will Supplier Networks Thrive, Implode, or Evolve? 5/30/13: Good Data: Spend Analysis Tactics to Attack Supplier Performance Management 6/5/13: Putting the Supplier at the Heart of Procurement Ever wanted to send money through Gmail? Google Wallet allows you to “attach” money to an email, just as you would a photo or document. Harry Winston has bought a 101 carat “perfect diamond” at Christie’s Magnificent Jewels auction. The alarming issue of factory safety is escalated as a roof collapses at a shoe factory in Cambodia, killing [...]

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Webinar: A Business and Supplier Network Smack Down

Jason Busch - May 16, 2013 9:04 AM | Categories: Commentary

Join us for The Great Debate: Will Supplier Networks Thrive, Implode, or Evolve? On Tuesday, May 21 from 9-10am CDT. The future of supplier networks and platforms is clearly open for debate. Ariba, TradeShift, Hubwoo, GXS, IBM, IBX, Perfect, OB10, InvoiceWare, Basware and many others are competing in a daily changing world. Moreover, the value proposition and capabilities of providers are often quite different, with overlapping and substitute capability being the norm versus true apples-to-apples functional similarity (this can create great confusion among procurement and A/P organizations). Users of various solutions also need to contend with “lock-in”, potentially, based on [...]

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Tackling Tail Spend and Spot Buys (Part 2)

Jason Busch - May 16, 2013 8:10 AM | Categories: Commentary

Hackett suggests that the largest opportunities for improving process effectiveness for spot, tactical and tail spend buying focus on four areas: complexity and compliance, supplier participation, technology, and contracting. In the area of complexity and compliance, opportunities include simplifying the bidding process, standardizing the template for collecting bids from suppliers, identifying and tracking cycle time delays and establishing “clear targets for each phase of the bidding process.” From a supplier participation perspective, Hackett suggests that both “identification of suppliers that are going to comply with policy and process” and “establishment of clear objectives and expectations” with suppliers are opportunities for [...]

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Will SAP Scale the Customer Side of the Network Effect With Business One + Ariba Integration?

Jason Busch - May 15, 2013 1:12 PM | Categories: Commentary

“If you build it, they will come” has been a frequent refrain since the early days of supplier (and business) networks, going back to Commerce One MarketSite. Unfortunately, it’s simply not true. Getting suppliers to register and transact through a network is all but impossible unless there is a critical mass of buyers or one customer in particular requires their participation. However, Intuit, Microsoft (and now SAP) are hoping to change this. In the case of the former two, it involves partnerships to wire-in suppliers directly into a network ecosystem through tight general ledger/financials integration with Tradeshift and Hubwoo, respectively [...]

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Tradeshift Webinar, Wal-Mart Not Signing Safety Agreement, Record Airline Fees, Coca-Cola Recipe for Sale?

Sydney Lazarus - May 15, 2013 11:27 AM | Categories: Industry News

Will supplier networks thrive, implode, or evolve? Join Spend Matters and Tradeshift next Tuesday at 9am CDT for a free webinar as four experts debate the future of eProcurement, e-invoicing and business connectivity. Wal-Mart has declined to sign on to a broad safety plan that a number of European companies have joined in response to the recent Bangladesh factory fire. U.S. airlines collected a record $6 billion in baggage and reservation change fees last year. If you have $15 million and a desire to own what is purported to be a 70-year-old secret recipe for Coca-Cola, Cliff Kluge from Ringgold, [...]

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SIG Dispatch 1: Initial Impressions and Exploring the Procurement / Tax Equation

Thomas Kase - May 15, 2013 10:31 AM | Categories: Commentary

Today’s the second day of my very first SIG Summit on Amelia Island (near Jacksonville in northeastern Florida). And I’m even wearing the prescribed newbie palm tree on my name badge. However, this is far from the first SIG Summit. To be exact, this one is the 43rd, and there are around 375 attendees in all. As context, SIG got started back in 1991 when its founder Barry Wiegler put together a group of procurement folks primarily tasked with exploring the outsourcing function. Since then, SIG has been transformed into a broader membership organization that tackles a much broader range [...]

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Tackling Tail Spend and Spot Buys (Part 1)

Jason Busch - May 15, 2013 8:06 AM | Categories: Commentary

Spot buys and tail spend represent a large and potentially untapped opportunity for savings for moderately mature procurement organizations that have already invested in other areas of sourcing, compliance and supplier/risk management. At Ariba LIVE last week, The Hackett Group’s Kurt Albertson presented during a panel discussion session exploring, among other areas, factors that are correlated with purchased cost reduction savings for tactical buying. The fundamental challenge with tactical spend, as Kurt points out, is that it is “not transactional, but is often managed through transactional buying channels – if at all.” In other words, it is the type of [...]

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