Archive for the 'Strategy' Category

Is Trouble Ahead for the Purchasing Profession?

Share This on Linked In A recent report by Loudhouse, sponsored by BravoSolution and covered in Industry Week in their article on Purchasing Officers: Confident Now, But is Trouble Ahead?, found that 69% of the CPOs surveyed had not examined the impact of the last six months on their supply management strategy, which leaves […]

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Business Network Transformation: A Review

Share This on Linked In Recently, Jeffrey Word, the Director of the Center for Business Network Transformation and Vice President of Product Strategy at SAP, edited and published Business Network Transformation: Strategies to Reconfigure Your Business Relationship for Competitive Advantaged through Jossey Bass, with all royalties from the book being donated to the World […]

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Characteristics of a Well Organized Supply Chain

Share This on Linked In A recent article on the Supply Chain Brain site by Enporion did a great job of outlining the necessary requirements for organizational success in your supply chain. Even though a center-led model is usually optimal, as it lets you take advantage of the best aspects of the centralized […]

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The McKinsey Quarterly’s Top Three Strategic Planning Tips for 2009

A recent article in The McKinsey Quarterly elucidated their three top strategic planning tips for 2009. In brief, they were: Be realistic about scenario planning Recognize that several different futures are equally plausible, develop plans accordingly, and try to focus on the […]

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The Market Dilemma IV: Buyers Win the Battles

Vendors and Consultants are but a small portion of the industry, and the economy … as Buyers, you work for organizations that compose the majority. The only way we’re truly going to get back to business-as-usual is if you use the vision provided by the vendors to identify what clarity you need, bring in […]

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The Market Dilemma III: Consultants Provide the Clarity

Just like vendors need to stand up and provide a vision, consultants need to sit down (with executives) and provide the execution clarity that will get buyers on the fast-track to procurement, organizational, industrial, and economic success. More specifically, at this time, they need to: Focus on a Niche […]

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The Market Dilemma II: Vendors Provide the Vision

As I said in Part I, the way out of this prolonged recession is business-as-usual. For technology solution providers, that means the following: Continued New Product Development Continued Spending on Marketing and Thought Leadership Continued Workforce Development […]

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The Market Dilemma I: The Key to Getting Out of this Recession

I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to state the obvious, but everywhere I look it’s doom and gloom together with ridiculous economic explanations pulled out of a depth so dark that even a proctologist with a flashlight would have trouble finding the source, when the answer is extremely simple. In fact, I can sum it […]

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Tried-and-True Strategies on the Road to CPO-dom

e-Side Supply Management recently published an article on The Road to CPO — and beyond that chronicled advice from David Nelson (of TRW, Honda of America, and Deere & Company) and Maureen Corcoran (State Street) for up-and-coming procurement professionals who aspire to take on the CPO role. […]

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The Death of the (Linear) Supply Chain

Globalization, outsourcing, and technology are pervasive and dramatically transforming the traditional notion of a supply chain from a traditional linear model to a highly dynamic demand-supply network. As a result, visibility is greatly diminished in your average supply chain. And, as this recent Industry Week article points out, that’s a problem. Loss […]

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