Archive for February, 2007

eWorld Day 2 – London Sourcing

Another great day at eWorld. The event seems to go from strength to strength. A significant change from September was the quality of the seminars. The feedback from delegates was that the all seminars were thought provoking and kept away from the temptation of being thinly veiled sales pitches.
One observation over the past 2 days [...]

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Supply Management: What it Takes for Mid-Market Success

Monday, I provided ballast for recent findings from Spend Matters that insufficient (and, at times, non-existent) supply management capabilities are putting mid-market firms at cost and operational disadvantages.
But such reports only tell part of the story. They provide an historical perspective and overlook the telling trend that mid-market firms are now hiring and investing for [...]

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Sourcing 2007: Part III

David Bush of eSourcing Forum started off by predicting that optimization will gain more mainstream traction (and considering companies employing optimization with advanced sourcing techniques are still saving almost 12% per event, now more than ever you have every reason to adopt optimization), M&A activity will spike, and supply management technologies will continue to align, [...]

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eWorld Day 1 – London Sourcing

First Day of eWorld Feb 2007 and the market has changed yet again! It seems delegates truly think auctions are soooo last year. eRFx is for beginners and optimisation is first school mathematics!
Well I exaggerate to make a point but in truth it is great. The benefits of eSourcing are not longer about just product [...]

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Alert: Podcast on Talent Crunch, Adoption, Sustainable Supply Now Available

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you the latest episode of the SupplyNow podcast series. Brought to you through a partnership between Supply Exellence and Spend Matters, this third episode delves into some of the hottest supply management topics:

The Talent Crunch: World-reknowned supply management guru Professor Joseph Carter of Arizona State University examines [...]

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Servigistics – Tomorrow’s Strategic Service Management Today

In yesterday’s post, Strategic Service Management, I talked about the importance of making the customer efficient while maintaining a profit – something you are likely to only achieve in today’s highly competitive marketplace with strategic service management – a proactive approach to service management that balances service strategy, resources, commitments, and pricing that supports the [...]

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Apexon performance woes

Yesterday, like many others, I learned from Spend Matters that Apexon had basically shut down operations by releasing most of its team, including executives like Kevin Brooks. Many are familiar with Kevin from positions at supply management companies and from posting guest blogs on sites like E-Sourcing Forum and Spend Matters on topics like [...]

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Supply Management: The Trouble With the Mid-Market

Last week, Spend Matters Jason Busch shared insights from his show-of-hands survey of an audience comprised largely of Mid-West companies from the “larger end of the mid-market” (an oxymoron unto itself). Despite this rather unscientific method of polling and sample selection (about 35 attendees at a  seminar hosted by a group purchasing organization), Jason’s findings were representative of [...]

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Capgemini – Strategies and Insights for Today’s CPO

Recently, our European outpost took part in a major SRM research project headed by Capgemini in the Netherlands and Mario van Vliet – Global Supply Chain Lead. As is consistent with many of these studies, there are very clear objectives and areas of focus that should be closely examined and considered by leaders in [...]

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Strategic Service Management

As I’ve been mapping out the supply chain space, one of the oft-overlooked areas that I keep stumbling on is service management – and by that I am referring to customer service management, and not just outsourced services management. After all, I do preach Total Value Management (TVM), and unlike Total Cost of Ownership [...]

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