Innovation
What Will 2008 Bring in the Metals Markets?
Earlier today, Lisa Reisman and Stuart Burns penned a thoughtful and lengthy post over on Metal Miner offering up their predictions for the metals markets in 2008. Among the metals categories they take the…
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After leaving Boston and landing in Detroit last week for MFG.com’s Fusion event, I showed a couple of snapshots of Emptoris on the iPhone to some folks and we collectively had a geek out moment. How cool, everyone thought. At that point, a few of th…
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At Emptoris’ conference this week, I was able to get some screen shots of Emptoris 7 running on an iPhone. Very cool indeed. I suspect in the next couple of years that we’ll see a number of procurement and supply chain applications offer complete or …
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Over on Sourcing Innovation, Michael Lamoureux plugs the concept of Lean Sourcing, which combines elements of strategic sourcing and lean manufacturing to reduce the total landed / manufactured costs for materials (full disclosure: I have a financial interest in the concept he is plugging through my wife’s consulting firm). Far beyond self interest, however, I [...]
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This past weekend, I read in Managing Automation that TrueDemand, a supply chain analytics vendor, scored a second round of funding. While playing on the fringes of what we could traditionally describe as Spend Management, the fact that TrueDemand Software was able to raise a substantial round ($8 million) in a somewhat challenging environment bodes [...]
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Last week, a number of my blogging colleagues began posting their thoughts on sourcing innovation. This unofficial brainstorm round-robin came courtesy of Michael Lamoureux, who suggested that we all chime in, providing our thoughts and opinion on the future of sourcing. Today, I thought I would share an innovative sourcing concept that I’ve been kicking [...]
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Industry Week — which is not usually a stronghold of Spend Management thought leadership — had a
worthwhile read last week that discussed how different companies are dealing with escalating prices for metals, plastics and other categories. One oft repeated concept which is called out in the piece is how “manufacturers are getting smarter about [...]
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While I’m not sure if I agree with all of the logic in this Supply Management article, I nonetheless found the argument creative. In the piece, Rich Simmonds, a consultant, is quoted as suggesting that procurement organizations “match the outsourcers by adopting their best practice to become an internal outsourcer.” According to Simmonds, the advantage [...]
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I found Patricia Moody’s recent article on technology adoption at HP, Caterpillar, and Datacraft Solutions in Supply Chain Management Review incredibly informative. In the piece, Moody profiles both basic and advanced Spend Management technology applications. For example, the article details how HP is using risk management analytics to balance “critical cost factors against projected market [...]
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It’s good to see Verticalnet enhancing its spend visibility capabilities. I especially like their positioning around using the solution to identify M&A synergies. Historically, Verticalnet has taken a largely services-driven approach to visibility while also offering supporting software. This model came out of Verticalnet’s acquisition of Tigris, a consultancy with a large spend visibility [...]
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