Pretty soon, I’ll be traversing the North American continent for the spring 2008 conference season. You really don’t want to know what my personal carbon footprint will be (although at least I’m not being a hypocrite like Al Gore by flying private). …
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As I’ve written about before, of the Big 3 automakers, Chrysler has long been known as the most collaborative with its supply base — at least until the past few years — when it comes to joint product design and engineering efforts. Detroit insiders…
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Over the years on Spend Matters, I’ve written at least a few times about a vendor that I think has the chance to really break out from the crowd. And that’s Rearden Commerce. For those who are not familiar with Rearden, the provider is focused on aut…
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While scanning Logistics Management, an article by Jeff Berman that said a new approach for sustainable supply chains is needed caught my eye. I’m a big believer in sustainability, but I’m also a strong believer that in their effort to jump on the bandwagon, some companies, governments, and individuals are doing - to be […]
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When it comes to the pragmatic marketing of its category expertise over the years, Ariba has come up short. I know firsthand from my experience over the years that the amount of knowledge inside the global services organization (i.e., the category so…
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The House Energy and Commerce sub-committee on Oversight and Investigations had some of the nation’s top food company CEOs on the witness stand this week. Congress’ look at the record breaking recall of 143,000,000 lbs of beef, piled on top of the tainted vegetable stories of the last year, serves to highlight another example of […]
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As Judge Judy, if you told me that a politician or civil servant who gave his life to public service — working 70 hour work weeks for decades on end — was accused of procurement fraud, I might be inclined to take pity on him and grant probation. Bu…
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I’m usually an optimist, but I’ve been reading enough economic forecasts of late to start making me look at the US economy’s glass not as half full, but nearly empty. As one example, consider this story from the Financial Times. Quoting and citing th…
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The McKinsey Quarterly recently published an article on eight business technology trends to watch that was not only quite good, but a good summary of the trends that you should be implementing, appropriately, in your supply chain. In this second part of this two part series, we are going to review the remaining trends […]
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Over on the Alan Buxton’s excellent blog, Where Next, a recent guest commentator offered up some thoughts on how suppliers view reverse auctions. These observations came from questions and interactions with UK sales executives at a Strategic Account …
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