Procure IQ

Well, it sure didn’t take CNN long to get the 2010 Fear Mongering Bandwagon rolling. Check out The Buzz from January 2 on what could go wrong in 2010. (That’s right, Saturday January 2nd. They couldn’t even wait two days for the first work week to start!)According to the article, we’re in for part two of the double-dip recession, the US currency is likely to be debased, the housing market could still hit bottom, the market is in for a lacklustre year, and the …

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An article this summer in Canadian Business by Jeff Sanford on the Burden of Truth referenced Bob Farell’s top ten market rules which have a a lot of bearing on supply management. Bob Farrell was the Chief Stock Market Analyst at Merrill Lynch for 25 years and knows a thing or two about the market. Markets tend to return to the mean over time. So if you beat up your supplier when times are tough for them, don’t be surprised if they do the same when times get tough for you, which …

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From the Fail Blog: …

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Check out this great experiment chronicled on Boris Dinkevich’s blog on technology and what’s wrong with it. According to Boris, A friend used the Twitter APIs to create an account that automatically scanned twitter users and find users who were “most likely” to read his twits. The first pass returned a: 50+ Twit Count (user active) 100 Following Count (might read twits) 50 Follower Count (typical statistic for real users) Everyday it would delete accounts added the previous day that didn’t …

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Check out this Shipment Travel History from FedEx (posted by an anonymous shipper). Apparently, to get a package from Ontario, Canada to Antilles, Netherlands you ship it to Indianapolis, Indiana, USA then to Paris, France, then to Memphis, Tennessee, USA then back to Paris, France, then to Newark, New Jersey, USA, then back to Memphis, Tennessee, USA … It looks FedEx needs a new routing algorithm. I’d certainly be happy to help … …

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Today’s post is from Eric Strovink of BIQ.A “measure” is a quantity that’s computed for you in an analysis dataset — for example, spend, count of transactions, and so on. There could be many measures in a dataset, such as multiple currencies, or entirely different quantities such as number of units.Measures are derived from the data supplied, and rolled up (typically summed) to hierarchical totals. Sometimes, however, you want and need control over how (and when) the measure is calculated. Such measures are termed “user-defined” measures.Let’s first dispense with the usual definition of user-defined measures — …

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Toyota consistently ranks among the most respected global corporations and is well-known for their manufacturing prowess and strong supplier ties. That’s exactly why this week’s news about the accelerator problems for 4 million vehicles came as a shock to so many of us. The impact of this episode will be long-term, far-reaching, [...]

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A recent article over on the Harvard Business Review on China Myths, China Facts reminded me how China is starting to change and how my advice in my recent post on overcoming cultural differences in international trade with China to take time to get to know the people you will be dealing with because their behaviour may be nothing like the usual behaviour of the country in which they reside is becoming truer and truer by the day in some parts of China (that deal regularly with the west). According to the article, which isn’t entirely accurate (just ask our …

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Telecom is normally one of the largest spend categories that is over looked within large multi-national corporations.  Most CIO’s don’t have the knowledge or background to understand the spend they have in Telecom.  This lack of understanding lea…

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In Part I, I discussed how I was quite impressed with Rosslyn Analytics’ spend analysis platform and their overall approach to the problem as compared to many of the spend analysis providers in the space and how I saw vision, clarity, and execution in their offering. In this post, I am going to discuss their current platform capabilities and overview a few of the enhancements coming over the next few months.Spend Basics: As I mentioned in my last post, they integrated with over 30 standard ERP/MRP systems out of the box, and can quickly add additional systems with …

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