Best of Spend Matters Network – Week of May 18

Happy Friday! Welcome to another edition of our best of roundup, which gives you our top articles published over our network throughout the week. Spend Matters has M&A coverage, while our partners across the pond (Spend Matters UK) offer tips on when it may be a good idea for procurement to spend more, not less. MetalMiner provides an update on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and Trade Financing Matters discusses the conundrum of sending early payment to suppliers.

Best of Spend Matters

Field Nation Acquires Field Solutions: Background, Analysis and Commentary
Check out our coverage of the recent M&A news. To us, this deal points to a couple things: a consolidation of the IT field service contractor platform space as well as continued growth in the freelance management systems market.

Exploring Work Market: Market Context, Customer Experience and Recommendations
Jason Busch, Spend Matters founder and managing director, wrapped up his multi-part analysis on Work Market this week, offering insight on the customer experience of the solution and providing some key recommendations for those considering freelance management systems.

Best of Spend Matters UK/Europe

When Procurement Should Spend More – Marketing Services is a Good Example
Activities that help with brand awareness, increase reputation and untimely drive sales and profit margins may also mean being prepared to spend more rather than less. We discuss in our recent research paper and in our Hot Topic for this month, Buying Marketing Services.

Jules Goddard and The Fatal Bias – Essential Reading for Procurement
In The Fatal Bias, which won the “Management Article of the Year Award,” Jules Goddard, London Business School, discusses a study from 2 Deloitte consultants looking at the performance of firms over a 40-year period. The results of their analysis led them to challenge the view that cost leadership is a generically viable competitive strategy

Best of Public Spend Matters Europe

Albert Sánchez Graells Asks – Will Public Collaborative Procurement Bodies Survive?
Albert Sánchez Graells of Leicester University participated in a brainstorming session on cooperative public procurement, public procurement aggregation and Central Purchasing Bodies at a meeting of the European Commission. He asks: Is collaboration a good thing? And what benefits, challenges and opportunities might it bring?

Public e-Procurement Conference – an Overview from Porto
Peter Smith attended the third European e-public procurement conference in Porto earlier this week; he reports on some of the overall observations on the topics discussed, such as the level of understanding of e-procurement in the public sector and implementing the EU Directives.

Best of MetalMiner

Understanding TPP and TTIP: The Wheels of Trade Grind Slowly for Lawmakers
Stuart Burns gives us an update on what the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) could mean for manufacturers.

Here’s a Good One: the US is ‘Dumping Steel’ in Europe… Seriously
Dumping and duties seem to be flying all over the place, as US grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES) producers are getting slapped with more tariffs from the European Union. Stuart shines a light on the double whammy that will be hitting these GOES producers.

Best of Trade Financing Matters

Accelerating Early Payment to Suppliers – No Supplier Left Behind or an Afterthought?
Is no supplier left behind all hat and no cattle? Many large corporates are defining the role and remit of their global process-to-pay space, and attempting to align A/P automation, e-procurement, e-invoicing, dynamic discounting, compliance, p-cards, vendor management, onboarding, etc. It is no simple endeavor.

Global SCF Forum Update on Defining Supply Chain Finance
Right now there are a lot of member organizations arguing what does pre-shipment trade loans mean versus factoring, asset-based lending and warehouse finance receipts. Does this matter?