Procure IQ

Are you prepared for them? The best part of a recent ChainLink Research piece on Contract Management: Negotiating, Creating, and Monitoring Compliance was actually the sidebar on supplier reverse auction tactics that presented some of the less-than-scrupulous strategies sophisticated suppliers will employ in an attempt to win, or deflect, your business. If you are not prepared for them, they could derail your event. They include: bidding to purposely come in second with less aggressive price, …

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Last week, we shared key findings from a Saugatuck-BusinessWeek study of more than 400 C-level executives pointing toward economic recovery in the coming year. The study, Shifting C-Level Business Priorities as the Recovery Take Hold,  found that top execs surveyed have traded in their recent cost-cutting myopia for a focus on increasing sales and revenues, [...]

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Over on the International Association of Commercial Contract Management (IACCM) blog Commitment Matters, negotiation and contracts guru Tim Cummins shares some interesting research into the (im)maturity of buyer-supplier collaboration. According to a recent IACCM study, 46% of respondents feel that buyer-seller relationships are more mutually beneficial and collaborative than they were 24 months ago.
While that’s [...]

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Much debate has raged over the impact President Obama’s new universal health care law will have on business. To date, most of the analysis has focused on the impact the rule will have on businesses’ insurance and benefits costs. But a little-known tax-reporting provision in the law could be far more costly and burdensome procurement [...]

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Today’s post is from Robert A. Rudzki, President of Greybeard Advisors LLC, who has (co-) authored a number of acclaimed business books, including Beat the Odds: Avoid Corporate Death and Build a Resilient Enterprise, On-Demand Supply Management, and the supply management best seller Straight to the Bottom Line. A supplier representative visits your offices and begins to talk about “the partnership” between your two firms. You hadn’t realized the relationship was that comprehensive, so you ask him to describe the exact nature of this partnership. Chances are that the answer you receive will be rather wordy and nonspecific, about …

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When we introduced you to Ecovadis back in 2008, we pointed out how this European start-up was building a sustainability solution for evaluating and monitoring suppliers in a manner that would help companies meet and exceed the emerging green and sustainability regulatory requirements. Fully compliant with GRI G3 (Global Reporting Initiative) standards and the ISO 26000 CSR Guidance with their solution that tracks metrics across 23 green/sustainable criteria for the 150 procurement categories they support, it provides a very extensive CSR scoring mechanism across environmental, social, ethical, and supply chain issues. Back in 2008, all they had on …

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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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It’s hard to say, as it depends on what the technology is, what it can do, and how readily (and often) it’s embraced by your people, but it’s probably worth it. Video conferencing reduces travel (which not only takes up time, but costs money at an average of over 1,000 a trip per person), online document sharing reduces wait-times (when you have to rely on mail or courier), and online inter-enterprise information sharing reduces issue resolution time (as compared to phone and fax tag). If the tools enable collaboration, and you use them with the intent of collaboration, …

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As per a recent article over on ChainLink Research, a diversified international manufacturer discovered that real improvements happened once it made performance information available quickly and easily to both buyers and suppliers, and then based buying decisions on that data. This was accomplished through a centralized tool that supported real data analysis. Every week the tool pulls all of the relevant data from the manufacturer’s various systems (ERP, MRP, factory management, etc.) into a single repository where it is mapped against a common data structure that can be sliced and diced as required by a commodity …

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… but they might not keep you dry and warm if a storm blows in! Allow me to explain. Intelligent Enterprise recently asked if the enterprise 2.0 emperor has no clothes because, when it comes to collaboration: it’s already going on in enterprises, just as it always has and it’s not that interesting if it doesn’t impact the core business processes of the intended users. The new tools may look great, and may streamline the processes with their aerodynamic properties, …

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