Tag Archives: Procurement

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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GEP: Procurement Services, Software, and BPO Under One Roof

Jason Busch - May 15, 2013 3:02 PM | Categories: Commentary

Background and Direction Earlier this spring, Pierre Mitchell and I had the chance to sit down with GEP at their global headquarters in New Jersey. During the discussion, we learned quite a bit about this unique firm’s offerings, market positioning, and strategic direction. Because GEP is attempting to go where few have successfully gone before – combining significant proprietary software assets in an end-to-end procurement suite with both BPO and consulting services – it is worth stepping back to understand a bit about the provider’s offerings, history, and current go-to-market approach. Later we’ll offer our analysis about how GEP stacks [...]

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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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Is Indirect Category Sourcing Savings Fact or Fiction?

Sydney Lazarus - May 15, 2013 6:02 AM | Categories: Procurement Research

Last week we told you about a new research paper authored by Spend Matters UK/Europe’s Peter Smith, titled Indirect Category Sourcing Savings : Fact or Fiction? Delivering Credible Benefits from Sourcing and Category Management Programmes. You can download it for free by clicking the link above. Getting down to the question of fact or fiction, Peter says: “The final section of the Paper looks at how Xchanging themselves are addressing the issue of benefits tracking and measurement. Of course, this is particularly important for them as an outsourced service provider, as their success – and in some cases, their direct income – depends [...]

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Scenarios for ISM/Member Organizations in 2020: 5 Paths and 5 Value Propositions

Jason Busch - May 14, 2013 3:25 PM | Categories: Commentary

In the first installment of this series, Scenarios for ISM/Member Organizations in 2020: Introduction and Context, we introduced five scenarios for member organizations such as ISM in 2020: Scenario A: Trusted Point of Reference and Industry Standards Scenario B: Embedded Organizational Extensions Scenario C: Custodians of Data and Knowledge Scenario D: Activism and Influence Scenario E:  Social Connectivity, Coaching and Networking Today we’ll work with the first two of these scenarios in more detail. Scenario A: Trusted Point of Reference and Industry Standards Overview: Member organizations set the “gold standard” not only for certifications and credentialing but also serve as trusted references [...]

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Three Lessons from LeBron James for Procurement Organizations

Guest Post - May 14, 2013 1:44 PM | Categories: Commentary

Spend Matters welcomes another post from Santosh Nair of GEP. Love them or hate them, it is hard to ignore the Miami Heat. And the same applies to LeBron James and his current winning streak. He was recently selected as the most valuable player in the NBA for the fourth time in five years. In the current NBA season, we saw a 27-game win streak for the Heat and LeBron James averaged 26.8 points, 7.3 assists and 8 rebounds per game. Such performance is worth studying, and several lessons can be drawn for the profession of procurement. Here are the [...]

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Bangladesh Global Sourcing Blowback

Jason Busch - May 14, 2013 8:02 AM | Categories: Commentary

Following the building collapse accident that is now estimated to have claimed over a thousand lives, the Bangladesh government shut down eighteen factories last week. According to a story in the Wall Street Journal, “the government said…it was temporarily closing 18 factories until safety improvements were made, without providing details. A Labor Ministry document…showed that three of the factories belong to the Nassa Group, while the other 15 are owned by smaller companies.” The article also suggests that Nassa Group has been an historic supplier to Wal-Mart, Kmart and Sears, among others. In the past, the company was even named [...]

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Teaching Salespeople to Better Serve Procurement Organizations (Part 1)

Jason Busch - May 9, 2013 10:09 AM | Categories: Commentary

Earlier this week, my colleague Pierre Mitchell presented to a group of suppliers within the Corporate United Group Purchasing Umbrella. The topic of his presentation centered on helping sales and commercial organizations of suppliers better service and manage the expectations and requirements of procurement teams in the future. Much of the talk centered on providing a set of broader set of KPI and related information to help the suppliers in attendance understand the current state on which procurement organizations are measured, as well as where they’re focusing efforts. However, Pierre also offered advice to the supplier organizations on overcoming the [...]

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Procurement as Architect: Think Mies, Not Some IT Geek (Part 1)

Jason Busch - May 9, 2013 8:04 AM | Categories: Commentary

Earlier this week, I gave a presentation at Corporate United’s Synergy event in Chicago titled: How Technology Drives Spend Under Management. The topic, refrain and storyline from the talk are ones that Spend Matters readers are likely already familiar with. To wit, I focused on technology’s important role in procurement and compliance and how other functions beyond procurement, including accounts payable, treasury and internal audit/risk management, can help capture benefits from investments as well. I took a thin slice of our overall technology coverage to focus on a range of new eProcurement, e-invoicing/invoice automation, contract management, spend analytics/budgeting/planning, sourcing and [...]

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CEB Procurement Transformation Leadership Metrics (Part 2)

Jason Busch - May 9, 2013 6:47 AM | Categories: Commentary

chess Continuing with lessons from CEB’s Ben Federlein on procurement transformation success – comparing top and bottom performers – let’s turn our attention to the types of investments that have maximum impact on a procurement organization’s ability to find new sources of value and drive transformation towards higher-value opportunities (and what areas don’t).  Beginning with those that don’t, while reverse auctions, eRFX, P-card, and outsources procurement can certainly create efficiencies and savings, they are not associated with driving transformation of procurement’s project portfolio (they came in at 0% in the CEB study). In contrast, areas such as SRM skills, internal relationship [...]

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Ingredient/Materials Centric Supplier Management: Solution Priorities

Jason Busch - May 8, 2013 8:05 AM | Categories: Commentary

When it comes to supply chain compliance and risk management at the material/ingredient/substance level, companies have diverse sets of priorities in choosing software-centric solutions. In a previous survey on the subject, respondents suggested the highest priority item was making sure that these approaches were not done in a silo, with 70% stating that “integration with existing systems” was important. Supplier self-service (i.e., “the ability for suppliers to provide data themselves”) also saw a majority of respondents (64%) suggesting the need for solutions that enabled capability in this area. 61% suggested the need to effectively balance transparency with confidentiality. Lower on the list [...]

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CEB Procurement Transformation Leadership Metrics (Part 1)

Jason Busch - May 8, 2013 5:38 AM | Categories: Commentary

butterfly Ben Federlein, Senior Director at the CEB’s Procurement Leadership Council, gave a metrics-packed presentation at Corporate United’s Synergy event in Chicago yesterday. In a two-part series examining his presentation and some takeaways from it, I’ll share some of the more insightful metrics and observations. If you haven’t seen Ben speak before, he brings a keen sense of procurement empathy and humor, and is equally at home trading up numbers and anecdotes – in other words, we highly recommend him. One of the first sets of metrics that Ben shared focused on overall measurement of procurement organizations. CEB suggests that the bottom [...]

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Google Glass: What it Means for Our Brains and for Procurement

Guest Post - May 7, 2013 6:25 AM | Categories: Commentary

Working head Spend Matters welcomes another guest post from Alex Burns. In 2011, an interesting study found that our brains have been very specifically altered by the Internet. In this day and age, we readily have access to the Internet via smartphones, tablets, laptops and free Wi-Fi in coffee shops, and thus we have access to the vast database of information stored there. Even when we’re visiting suppliers or talking to our colleagues about supply chain activity, we can pull up information over a network on one of many electronic screens in a manner that makes information access a standard course of [...]

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ISM: Righting the Ship (and the Upcoming Membership Organization Tidal Wave)

Jason Busch - May 3, 2013 6:54 AM | Categories: Commentary

waves Thomas Kase, Pierre Mitchell and I collectively descended on Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) annual event this week, formally known as the 98th Annual International Supply Management Conference & Educational Exhibit. In evolving its platform and mission under the new leadership of Tom Derry, ISM feels like it’s making early progress based on Pierre’s observations. The opportunity that Tom Derry faces in evolving the vision and services for ISM may seem common to any national mission-driven organization. It goes without saying that an organization like ISM must strive to not only set educational, learning and credentialing standards for an industry, [...]

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Procurement Inertia: When Did You Last Run Through the Seven Steps?

Thomas Kase - May 3, 2013 5:04 AM | Categories: Commentary

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Don’t wait for the consultants to come in and kick you past your inertia. If you stay vigilant by revisiting your spend on a regular basis and looking at what you can source more competitively, you might even be able to find line items you no longer need. No point in buying spare parts for a production line that is being phased out, right? You also need to understand the revenue model and customer base of your key suppliers. Looking forward is a challenge in all organizations, and it is tempting to come up with ways to address challenges from [...]

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