Procure IQ

A recent article over on CFO, which states the obvious, says that big lesson from the downturn is to cut inventory, not people. The timing of this is so poor it’s shocking! Why couldn’t they have run this *before* organizations cut so many people that joblessness came close to reaching an all time high: 10.1 in October of 2009 compared to the all time high of 10.8 in November of 1982! (Source: The Misery Index) As noted in the article, there is a huge savings potential in inventory reduction, which ties up working capital, eats up storage …

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A recent headline on the Supply & Demand Chain Executive site that stated poor visibility of key financial information [is] undermining CFOs’ confidence in company performance commanded my attention because there is just no need for this in 2010. The article, which referenced Basware’s 2nd annual global study on The Cost of Control, noted that only 50% of finance executives profess a high level of confidence in the performance of their departments and only 44% maintain this level of confidence when considering the company’s performance overall. This is, in a word, pathetic. There’s no need …

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A recent article over in Inside Supply Management is shining a new light on asset reinvestment by pointing out that many companies can save as much as 44% of sale proceeds if they use like-kind exchange (LKE) or “1031″ exchange to defer capital gains tax on sold assets when the sale is being used to generate cash to buy new, similar, assets to replace deprecated supply chain assets. If you plan reinvest the the funds from the same of an asset in a similar or like-kind asset within the IRS established timelines to identify and purchase the replacement …

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Use according to your own judgment. For even more tips, WatchTheGuild.com. …

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Like these liquid mountaineers, too many fat cat bankers thought they could walk on water. However, as these overly adventurous individuals demonstrate, while you may be able to take a few steps with a running start, you always sink in the end. …

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That’s right, the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) could be replacing the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) at your US headquarters in as little as four years with the current proposals on the table. And since you have to maintain double books for a year (in GAAP and IFRS) before you switch over, to make sure you have a good handle on the new rules, that means your new IFRS-friendly systems have to be in place in less than three years. Which means your people have to be trained in less than two years … especially since …

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A recent article over on CPO Agenda on Skills for the Future that summarized the findings from a recent workshop that debated the skills the future would require identified better finance skills as keys to future purchasing success. Since the article simply rambled off a list of terms with no definition, I decided I’d define the basics for you.Asset Turnover: is the amount of sales generated for every dollar worth of assets. Simply put, it is revenue divided by assets. It measures an organizations efficiency at using assets to generate revenue. The higher, the better. …

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A recent article over on CPO Agenda on Skills for the Future that summarized the findings from a recent workshop that debated the skills the future would require identified better finance skills as keys to future purchasing success. Since the article simply rambled off a list of terms with no definition, I decided I’d define the basics for you.Cost Breakdown: is the process of breaking a cost down into its components.Cost breakdowns are the basis of Total Landed Cost and Total Cost of Ownership calculations. For example, the cost breakdown of a transformer would be steel, labor & …

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A recent article over on CPO Agenda on Skills for the Future that summarized the findings from a recent workshop that debated the skills the future would require identified better finance skills as keys to future purchasing success. Since the article simply rambled off a list of terms with no definition, I decided I’d define the basics for you.Working Capital: is a financial metric which represents the operating liquidity available to a business. It’s calculated as current assets minus current liabilities. Positive working capital is required to ensure that a firm is able to continue its operations. …

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Earlier this year I told that that this is the year of the tiger … and China is going to roar as it is on track to overtake Japan as the 2nd largest global producer of GDP. But this is just the beginning. China is expected to become the global leader in scientific research in a mere 10 years (Financial Times [FT]) and the global leader in GDP within 25 years (The Economics Journal). According to the FT article, Thomson Reuters, which indexes scientific papers from over 10.5K journals, analyzed the performance of the BRIC over the …

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