Procure IQ

… but are they right? Let’s take the five global trends they have identified as key transformational forces one by one: The Great Rebalancing The emerging market countries will contribute more growth than the developed ones. Once emerging countries increase their standards of living across the board, they will no longer be low-cost countries. If you rely on low-cost countries to power your supply chain, you’ll have to find new low-cost sources of supply. …

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I was thrilled with the results of the recent IACCM worldwide study that found Canada is ‘Top Dog’ when it comes to World Trade. It just confirms what I’ve known all along … there’s no one easier to work with than us canucks and no one more eager to help you solve your supply chain problems. Furthermore, as Tim Cummins notes, with companies and public sector agencies worldwide increasingly concerned about reputation risk, it’s ethics, fairness, integrity that really matter. If there’s one thing us Canadians tend to have in spades …

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A few months ago, the CPO Agenda published the transcript for its roundtable in London in May 2010 on budgeting for a wider influence. While this post is not going to summarize the transcript as it really doesn’t say anything that this blog hasn’t been telling you for years, buried within the transcript is a very interesting quote by David Noble, the Chief Executive of CIPS. If we do not have the ability to get in there and hold the door, we will lose it and be back to where we were 10 years ago. In other …

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A recent article over on strategy+business on why it makes sense to adjust did a great job of outlining why business transformation needs to be a continuous process. Now that operating in a more volatile, less predictable environment has become a way of life, companies must be ready to repeatedly transform themselves. If the company can not respond to new challenges with a broad-based, enduring plan , it may soon be left in the dust by its competitors. But most companies can’t do this, because they don’t have an adequately proactive road map for transformation. Instead, …

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From the Fail Blog: …

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LOLCat wants to know! ICanHasCheezburger.com …

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I was astounded to find that a Chief Procurement Officer of a major electrical retailer used the word “squillion” in the CPO Agenda Executive Roundtable this past May in London on budgeting for a wider influence. In order for Procurement to get a seat at the table, it has to first impress the CFO. To do that, it not only has to speak the language of finance, but use real numbers! In North America, and in the general scientific community, these are the units of the Base 10 number system. …

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Without the transparent due diligence that accompanies the best practices these systems enable, this is what the organization ends up buying: …

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Without the transparency these systems, this is how vendor discovery really happens: …

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Today on Dilbert, Scott Adams uses Dogbert to effectively illustrate what happens when you use a Walmart consultant. What you have to remember with consultants is that you get what you pay for. If you pay a cut rate, you get a job with corners cut, as illustrated today in Overboard … … and you get the pleasure of the consultant blaming you for their incompetence! When hiring a consultant, it’s important to remember that it’s all about the value they can deliver, directly or indirectly. For example, a consultant with the skills and to …

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