The Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS) hosted its 20th annual Excellence in Procurement Awards event last week to celebrate the innovative solutions and providers in the global procurement space, naming Johnson Matthey as its overall winner.
It’s shaping up to not only be a year of global historical significance, but also a pivotal moment in the record books for each of our companies. How we react and upskill now will determine our organizations’ trajectories for the foreseeable future.
The need to increase supply chain sustainability, boost profitability and mitigate supplier risk in the wake of COVID-19 has turned procurement from a cost-cutting department to a strategic arm of the business. Recent research found most procurement professionals believe colleagues consider them to be a key business partner, contributing significant strategic value (67%).
Ian Thompson of Ivalua shares his perspective that those businesses that have recognized procurement’s strategic value and given it a voice at Board level have been better able to weather the recent turbulence. They’ve benefitted from greater visibility into the supply chain and better access to actionable insights to make better, faster decisions. This leaves those businesses well placed to gain an advantage over competitors. However, he believes that there are still many that have not given procurement the investment it needs to step up, causing them to lag behind. For them, now is the time to transform.
In a series of columns that stem from investing ideas that excite me, I’ll share 10 theories that I believe will drive investments in earlier-stage (angel/seed and Series A/B) start-ups in the procurement technology market. For perspective, Thesis 1 looked at automation and vendors in that space. Thesis 2 looked at providers of marketplace solutions. Thesis 3 looked at UI/UX technology and adoption in the start-up stage. Thesis 4 dug deeper into bridge solutions. Today, let’s dig deeper into push savings.
It's no secret COVID-19 altered the work environment greatly. But, what's here to stay? In this SIGnature event, a panel of executives discussed the agile work environment in a post-pandemic world. What's good about the work-from-home model? What are some best practices?
The professional association SIG (Sourcing Industry Group) hosted a daylong online event Wednesday for procurement professionals to network and learn best practices for pivoting procurement in a COVID-19 pandemic world.
The sessions highlighted in this article cover third-party risk management, a Jaggaer exec exploring how we keep score, and Ivalua CMO Alex Saric's looks at procurement success in the time of COVID-19.
B2B payments are a $1 trillion opportunity. How can procurement professionals best use the vendors and services within the space to help organizations?
The fear of change is evolutionary in humans. We’re taught to keep our routines and resist change in order to stay in control. But what happens when that fear gets in the way of progress?
In a lot of ways, this is the crossroads that the source-to-pay (S2P) industry seems to be approaching. After years of hearing that “end-to-end is king” and that it’s easier, more cohesive and more streamlined to have a single solution to cover everything from sourcing through to payments — there are rumblings that there might be another way.
Right now, as the COVID-19 pandemic takes its toll on jobs, consumer spending and the global economy, many businesses are scrambling to adjust to a new financial reality. They are also coming to terms with the fact that the path to recovery remains long, and mostly uncertain. Experts, including Deloitte, predict the U.S. economy won’t bounce back until the middle of 2021. And the Bank of England is anticipating slower recovery, as late as the end of that year, for the UK.
Within organizations, the CFO’s voice is one of the most critical during a crisis, but contributing directly to the firm’s financial resilience is the CPO, who has a strategic role in leading the business through the tough times ahead.
We spoke recently with one CFO who has many years of experience across corporate finance and public accounting and is now CFO of spend management firm Jaggaer. We asked Jeff Laborde how he sees Procurement and Finance best working together to drive benefits across the business, given their natural overlap in priorities and responsibilities.
Mismatched invoices. Lost payments. Hours of reconciliation. For companies operating in international markets it can be difficult to manage spending abroad and integrate that efficiently with accounts payable processes. Often the invoices are not aligned with payments, and too many times the payment received is not the full amount due to international fees and FX charges removed along the way.
There can be enough challenges with the procure-to-pay (P2P) process to begin with, and adding in international payments can cause even more of a headache. It’s important for companies to align their procure-to-pay processes across departments and enact software that streamlines systems.
The procurement talent landscape has changed a lot with the COVID-19 disruption. We break down some of the procurement workforce trends amid the coronavirus disruption.
In a three-part series and a webinar, we'll explore how companies can better ensure success as they go through digital transformations. The VNDLY series will close with a webinar this winter.
In today’s fast-paced global economy, digital transformation isn’t a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. While true digital transformation requires a long-term operational and cultural commitment, it begins with the realization that a company’s processes and legacy software platforms are specific to individual departments’ operations and are not serving the greater goals of the enterprise.
Corporate leadership focused on change is imperative. This can mean new leadership ushering in new software and processes or existing leadership taking an honest look at how existing business practices and technology platforms are no longer supporting their company’s overall business goals.
So digital transformation becomes a foundational transformation, one where organizations adapt their core systems and processes. A common problem is the siloed business practices of various departments that hinder companies from making truly strategic business decisions. Barriers need to be removed, which means people and technologies have to talk to each other. Gone are the days when procurement, HR, finance, IT and legal operated in their own spheres, never sharing data.