Procure IQ

A recent article on CPO Agenda that asked if there is a hole in your synergy strategy bucket made some very good points about how Procurement can often help to identify the right IT strategy and synergies to make a merger or acquisition a success. However, what it failed to mention is that in addition to contract analysis and risk assessment, market research, negotiation management, and should-cost analysis, procurement can also serve as the mediator who helps the organization identify the IT needs and the most appropriate strategies. Furthermore, until the desired go-forward strategies are identified, contract analysis …

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Basware recently released its annual Cost of Control study for 2010, which contained, among dozens of other statistics and tables, the top 10 challenges for Finance over the past year. Reviewing them, it immediately struck me how most of them would be addressed with the adoption of good, modern, spend analysis and e-Procurement solutions. For example: Spend Analysis would solve: Spend Visibility You’d instantly see what you are spending, with who, for what, and by whom Difficulties …

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After reading first break all the rules in the special report on innovation in emerging markets in the April 17th edition of The Economist, I have to wonder if the charms of frugal innovation will be the salvation for supply chain leaders who have hit a brick wall in supply chain optimization. According to the article, the future lies in “reverse” or “constraint-based” innovation, which is being relabelled as “frugal” innovation. In frugal innovation, product companies take the needs of the poor consumer as a starting point and work backwards. Instead of adding ever more bells and …

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Three weeks ago, in Part I, we told you how b-pack, hot on the heels of Ivalua, had decided to cross the Atlantic and join in the conquest to bring the bohemian revolution to the world of Procurement and P2P with their extensive solution suite that actually closes the P2P loop. Then, two weeks ago in Part II, and last week in Part III, we expounded on some additional capabilities, relatively unique in the marketplace, that extended the basic value offering beyond basic P2P. Today we’re going to address one of the advanced P2P capabilities, the tightly integrated …

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Two weeks ago, in Part I, we told you how b-pack, hot on the heels of Ivalua, had decided to cross the Atlantic and join in the conquest to bring the bohemian revolution to the world of Procurement and P2P with their extensive solution suite that actually closes the P2P loop. Then, last week in Part II, we expounded on a few additional capabilities, which are relatively unique in the marketplace, that extended the basic value offering beyond what a standard P2P application delivers. Today, we’re going to dive into a few more value-adds, some of which are …

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Last week, in Part I, we told you how b-pack, hot on the heels of Ivalua, had decided to cross the Atlantic and join in the conquest to bring the bohemian revolution to the world of Procurement and P2P with their extensive solutions that actually close the loop. As noted in Part I, b-pack brings with it a suite of solutions that take you from the start of a traditional sourcing cycle (RFx), through a contract, to a requisition (which may be from a catalog), against a budget, to receipt (which can include asset tracking information), and an invoice, …

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Who says the French aren’t revolutionary anymore? Last year, Ivalua decided to cross the Atlantic to try and conquer the North American procurement market. Now, short on their heels, b-pack, a company that’s also been around for 10 years, and which also has a large number of clients (across 20 industries they have over 80 clients), has also made the crossing in their effort to conquer what they call the “purchase-to-pay and process optimization” marketplace. But, most importantly, like Ivalua, b-pack also has one of the broadest e-Procurement suites on the market. Just when you thought …

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You better make sure you’ve picked a good one! Not only can your Quest for Purchasing Fire require a lot of work, but it can also require that you fight a number of battles with people who don’t want to change, don’t want to spend money, or just don’t want to admit that there might be a better way. As a result, if you want the odds to be on your side, you need to make sure that the fight you pick is a good one. To this end, a recent article in the Harvard Business Review …

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A recent HBR post that asked if you were squandering your intelligent failures noted that instead of learning from failures, many executives seek to keep them hidden or to pretend that they were all part of a master plan and no big deal, which is all too true and a shame because you can often learn more from a failure than from a success (which sometimes, in CPG, is just pure luck and hard to learn from). Furthermore, some scholars believe that learning from failure is crucial to organizational learning, because they demonstrate where assumptions are wrong, where …

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A recent article by Alexander Arsath Ro’is of Benefit, an Amsterdam Procurement Consulting Company, provided 7 tips on how to align procurement with the boardroom that are worth a second look. Based on research they conducted with two Dutch universities, which led to the construction of the Benefit Boardroom Alignment Assessment Methodology, they concluded that the following best practices would benefit any company that wants to align procurement with the boardroom and wants to start with an accurate assessment of the current state. Tell the Board First Make sure your Board understands the challenges …

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