Procure IQ

Last November, Basware released a research report on Cost of Control: The Real Price of Cost Cutting that expanded upon their Cost of Control research summary (that they released last June) with in-depth interviews to illuminate some of the key issues that will form supply management strategy in the years to come. The white paper illuminated some good points which I’d like to expand on in this post.Technology is Key to EfficiencyThe report noted that respondents are alive and alert to the potential of efficiencies delivered through the use of technology, although IT investment is tight in the current …

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In the recent webinar, Correcting Your Spend Vision with Visibility, Mickey North Rizza, research director with AMR Research, discussed implementing spend visibility tools to bring more spend under management, gaining competitive advantage through analytics.
During the webinar, we received three really great questions from our audience, and wanted to share Mickey’s responses covering maverick spend, data [...]

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Last week, Pierre Mitchell of The Hackett Group asked you if you knew the difference between procurement value and procurement performance (part I and part II) over on Spend Matters and invited you to participate in a study that would help you identify where you were on your procurement journey by way of 18 value streams that range from “naive apprentice”, where you’re measuring performance at an elementary level, to “expert sorcerer”, where you’re extracting procurement value at a very advanced level. (Pierre also posted a link to a corresponding finance study that will help Hackett compile a …

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A recent article in Strategy + Business on The Promise and Perils of Open Collaboration presented seven strategies you can use to make your open collaboration a success that are worth repeating. Craft a Leadership Message The best CEOs articulate a leadership message that is both universal and of immediate relevance to a company’s strategic needs. Open collaboration is a social process that needs to extend beyond R&D and penetrate the entire organization. For that to happen, a clear message of support needs to come from the top. Collaborate with …

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This morning I told you how year-over-year savings targets are costing you a small fortune right now. Now I’m going to tell you how they cost you a large fortune over the long term. Typically what happens in a company that gets serious about cost reduction as a result of a knee-jerk survival reaction in a recession is that, if they can attract one, they bring in a top-notch CPO. This CPO pulls the weeds out of the organization and replaces them with strong trees, acquires some decent tools (or at least access to some on-demand SaaS …

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You heard me right. They’re bloody ridiculous. You might think you’re saving money, but in reality, you’re losing a small fortune. And if you take the time to read this post in its entirely, I’ll show you why.One of the good things about the lingering recession, which is the third significant recession in less than a decade, is that it’s finally convinced many companies that they need a long-term plan for spend control. However, this is also one of the bad things because many companies have made a knee-jerk reaction of just imposing across-the-board year-over-year savings …

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Cash is king, credit is scarce, and stubborn clouds of uncertainty refuse to dissipate. In this time, maintaining a strong balance sheet and an eye on cash flows is a prerequisite for business leaders seeking to master the twin near-term imperatives of viability and maneuverability.
Scrutiny on money flows outside the four walls of a company, [...]

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A recent article over on the Harvard Business Review blogs addressed Obama’s Five Collaboration Mistakes that are representative of many of the common collaboration mistakes that prevent cooperation efforts from ever bearing fruit. If you understand them, you can take steps to prevent them, and have a much better chance of seeing results from your efforts. Use the Right Language with Rank-and-FileDon’t do like his Chief of Staff and call them F@cking Retarded. They might not have your understanding of an issue, but it’s not their fault, it’s yours. You should be educating them, at their level, …

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When I say “casino”, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?
Probably for most of you, it’s money. Actually more like MONEY. Money being spent, won and lost at breakneck speed. And although you’ve possibly had trips to Vegas where you were up against The House (and ask a gambler, and they’ll always tell you [...]

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Friday’s group discussion on Vested Outsourcing led by University of Tennessee faculty member Kate Vitasek went very well. For anyone unfamiliar with her work, Kate literally wrote the book on Vested Outsourcing, a model that utilizes incentives to create more strategic relationships between buying organizations and their outsourcing vendors. So when she stepped up and [...]

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