Procure IQ

According to a recent piece over on Supply Chain Digest that chronicled the Supply Chain Guru Predictions for 2010, this will be the year of CUTS: Consolidation, Uncertainty, Training, and Specialization. In other words, the year will be pretty bleak. We’re already at the point where, with the exception of BIQ’s inclusion of a new Computed Measures Language as part of their spend/data analysis package , I haven’t seen anything truly innovative on the technology side in over a year. I’ve seen lots of great stuff, but …

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A recent article in Logistics Management titled 2010: Loads of Innovation chronicled some of the new lift truck product introductions on the slate for 2010. Now, lift trucks might seem like a pretty boring topic, but they are the little workhorses of your physical supply chains, and if any of the improvements can improve efficiency, then they’re worthwhile. So what improvements are coming? Better Information Management More monitoring devices tied to better fleet management systems that track numerous metrics on lift truck utilization that can be used to create better fleet allocations. …

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A recent article over on Chief Executive on the 7 mistakes people make that kill their business made some great points, but when I saw the title, all I could think was only seven?The article pointed out these 7 classic mistakes that so many business owners make that often result in the demise of their business: Doing Too Much Yourself As the article notes, this will bog you down in day-to-day issues and fire-fighting and take you away from managing the core business and long term strategy. And considering you will not be well …

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I’ve been following the rather hostile takeover of Cadbury by Kraft for months now, just waiting for the hammer to fall. And this week it did. 400 Cadbury’s workers sacked after Kraft confirms factory will close just ONE WEEK after U.S. firm promised to keep it open. I guess that says it all. For a history of the takeover (bid), here are direct links to some of the more relevant articles over the past few months: …

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The MIT Technology Review just published a great post on the physics arXiv blog that covered some recent research from Maksim Kitsak et. al. that found that the best connected individuals are NOT the most influential spreaders in social networks. In a social network, most of the nodes (people) are not linked to each other, but most can still be reached by a small number of steps, according to the small worlds network theory. (In fact, recent research indicates that the average separation is now less than 5, and not 6.) In these networks, some nodes are …

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Last Saturday, I pointed out a recent article on how students [are] failing because of Twitter, texting, covered in this CNet video which asks does Twitter make you stoopid?. The article pointed out that, at the world renowned University of Waterloo, thirty percent of students who are admitted are not able to pass at a minimum level, a failure rate that has increased five percentage points in the past few years. The cause, according to experts in the field, is “cellphone texting and social networking”, which are collectively degrading writing skills. And as we all know, Twitter combines …

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Editor’s Note: Today’s post is from Dick Locke, Sourcing Innovation’s resident expert on International Sourcing and Procurement. (His previous guest posts are still archived.) Professors Hausman and Lee of Stanford University have written a paper titled How Enterprises and Trading Partners Gain from Global Trade Management: A New Process Model for the US-to-China Trade Lane. (Free registration required.) It’s been getting a lot of attention on the supply management blogs.In the paper, they present a flow chart of 106 process steps needed to identify a potential supplier and to place, receive and pay for a cross-border order. One hundred …

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The Harvard Business Review recently ran a great article on Breakthrough Ideas for 2010. While many of the ideas aren’t new (as a few can easily be traced backed decades), for many, their application would be. But more importantly, their application could fix a lot of problems in the world today.What really struck me was how they all had good supply chain equivalents that could help you revolutionize your supply chain. So, in this post, I’m going to tackle the last three ideas and explain how their supply chain equivalents are ideas you should strongly be …

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A recent article over on SourcingMag.com that addressed why vendors don’t like benchmarking clauses got my attention, because I believe that, since you’re outsourcing for better performance, that all contracts should have benchmarking clauses to help insure that you get that performance. So I read it, and then discovered that the “benchmarking clauses” being referred to were not really performance benchmarks, but market-cost benchmarks. All these types of benchmark clauses do is exert constant price pressure on the vendor and, as the author notes, create a lose-lose situation for the vendor. And that’s not good. It’s one thing …

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In my last post, I described how iValua, a ten year old French software and solutions company, has one of the broadest supply management suites on the market today. From RFX to payment, the majority of the key steps in the sourcing and procurement cycle are covered in one of iValua’s many solution modules. And while it is true that most of the modules aren’t very deep, it’s also true that many small and mid-sized companies, and even some of the larger Global 3000’s that don’t have that many complicated buys, don’t need deep functionality where sourcing …

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