Tomorrow, I am moderating the monthly member call for the LinkedIn Strategic Sourcing & Procurement group. This month’s topic is KPIs. So please join us if you have KPI questions or insights, or if you’d just like to hear your peers engaged in a lively discussion of the subject.
The details:
Tuesday, August 31st
9am Pacific Daylight Time
No [...]
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When I asked the Strategic Sourcing & Procurement LinkedIn group members to suggest topics for upcoming calls, there were a lot of requests pertaining to indirect spend. So, this Friday, the group’s July member conference call will be an open discussion on indirect categories (marketing and consulting will definitely be covered – if you have [...]
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Charles Dominick, of Next Level Purchasing, recently posted a question to the Strategic Sourcing & Procurement Group on LinkedIn that has been getting a LOT of attention:
“Should you share your selection criteria and weightings with suppliers?”
Needless to say, there are some very strong opinions for and against sharing this information. A few of the best answers [...]
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I caught up with Procurement Leaders‘ Mark Perera at Ariba LIVE in Amsterdam earlier this month. A year after our first 2 interviews (Part 1 and 2) on working capital management, Mark gave us an update on managing cash trends, priorities and success stories.
All of the interviews with attendees and speakers (about 40 videos) from Ariba [...]
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Spring has sprung. The markets, manufacturing and perhaps even … employment may be emerging from hibernation. And while we’re all happy to see the economy awakening from a brutal recession (please don’t hit the snooze button), it will mean some changes as we shift from buyer’s market conditions. Indeed, we’re already seeing commodity prices rising, [...]
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In the New Normal, it’s never been more important to understand where your organization sits relative to your peers and competitors. This is particularly true when it comes to commerce management strategies and approaches. A majority of companies are using some form of advanced commerce management techniques to help meeting their goals – [...]
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C-SPAN has never been known for their riveting programming line-up. Even die hard political junkies like myself shun the channel these days in favor of alternative sources of news and analysis. But C-SPAN’s value changes dramatically if you can cut out the bloviating and get to the meat of what you would like to see. [...]
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It’s an understatement to say that the global economic recession has heightened focus of cost cutting and elevated the importance of spend management within most every organization. Yet, I have become increasingly troubled by the advice executives I speak say they are getting from vendors, analysts, or even their own IT departments when they ask [...]
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Tim Cummins of IACCM recently did an excellent job summarizing an often-discussed topic in contracting circles – who owns the contract management function?
“It depends” is the obvious answer, but Tim provides some excellent insights and points to think about including:
The nature of your business and scope of contracting within it will have an impact
Who is [...]
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At the recent webinar, Assessing the CFO’s View of Procurement, an audience member asked a question that I’d like to share: What exactly is “spend under management?” Andrew Bartolini, VP and group director of Global Supply Management Research at The Aberdeen Group, answered the question as follows:
It’s an area that I’ve been focused on in [...]
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