Earlier today we discussed the unique challenges of travel procurement – a nightmare shared by your employees as well as your finance team. After all, when booking a single trip can take an hour by the time you book your flight, rental car, hotel, airport transportation, off-airport parking, and dinner reservations and when finance has [...]
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The accounting or ERP system is not the only source of useful spending data in the enterprise. There are many other datasets with stories to tell. Here are just a few:
Insurance claims systems
Purchasing card feeds
T&E data
Fleet vehicle records
Cell phone usage records
Invoice-level detail by vendor, by commodity
And that’s just on the cost side – [...]
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I sat down with the new supply management research squad at Aberdeen Group yesterday to discuss their latest research effort: compliance. The team, anchored by ex-ERP and e-procurement solution provider veterans, Vance Checketts and Andrew Bartolini, has set its sights on how new regulatory requirements — especially the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) — have impacted supply [...]
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Travel procurement is challenging because it is services-oriented procurement. Services-oriented procurement is challenging because it:
is Calendar-based
is Time-critical
requires Confirmations and updates
revolves around Real-time inventory
is Dynamically Priced
is often Group-Oriented
Travel procurement is even more of a challenge because:
Travelers have limited flexibility and the need for frequent changes
Employee expectations are [...]
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Ealier this year, Microsoft President and CEO Steve Ballmer signaled his company’s views on the future of enterprise applications: “If you want to be a leading software company, you’ve got to be a leading Software as a Service company.”
Mark Barry, Microsoft’s Managing Director of Strategic and Emerging Business Development, is one of the executives in [...]
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I’m always amused when I run across new marketing-speak for old ideas, but the “Web 2.0″ meme has some interesting applicability to spend analysis. Web 2.0 refers to the evolution of the Web from a static content-delivery mechanism into a higher-value interactive medium – and spend analysis needs to make the same transition.
But, more [...]
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I’ve been blogging a lot about visibility lately and mentioning Apexon rather frequently even though I’m sure most of you haven’t heard about this little company or what they do. Last week I had the opportunity to sit down with Kevin Brooks (an occasional guest blogger here on Sourcing Innovation, in other words, his commentary [...]
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I expect Procurement Central will hit 20,000 unique page views this week. Thanks to all of you who stop by from time to time.
Like most blogs, Procurement Central started out as an experiment. And let me tell you – the novelty of trying to be interesting on a daily basis wore off just a few [...]
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I enjoyed an article published today in the New York Times entitled “Oil Prices Fall as Speculators Retreat.”
Oil prices dipped below $60 a barrel briefly today. Here’s how the CASH chart looks:
(Click Flipcharts from this link for more)
Beyond crude oil, consider the metals market. Gold is down from its high of around $730/oz on 5/12 [...]
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I’ve avoided commenting on Oracle’s Q1 till now. And this will be just a snippet. Truth is, we really need SAP’s quarterly report to parse the results. Oracle claimed 80% growth in Applications, of which they said 47% were organic. I think it’s worth explaining what “organic” means. It simply expresses how much Oracle e-Business [...]
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