Procure IQ

Corrugated packaging has seen prices rising due to a host of factors, including winter weather, raw material prices and a rise in manufacturing activity.
In the recent Top 5 Categories to Source Now webinar, Kimbely Davis explained why this category is still among the most active right now, despite rising prices (full webinar replay here).
Kimberly’s four [...]

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Supply Watch report subscribers likely know about this (and have hopefully registered already), but the Category Management team is holding one of their Top 5 Categories to Source Now webinars tomorrow. The details:
Thursday April 1st at 11am Eastern Time (3:00 GMT)
Register here.
On the agenda tomorrow are:

Mike Petro, Lead Category Manager, North America
Loriann Andersen, Category Manager, [...]

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Here are some nuggets that Andrew Bartolini, Aberdeen Group shared earlier this week on a webcast – ‘Assessing the CFO’s View of Procurement’ – on how you can start building bridges between Finance and Procurement. This is a key focus area for companies enjoying best in class performance – those that are noted for superior [...]

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In the recent webinar, Correcting Your Spend Vision with Visibility, Mickey North Rizza, research director with AMR Research, discussed implementing spend visibility tools to bring more spend under management, gaining competitive advantage through analytics.
During the webinar, we received three really great questions from our audience, and wanted to share Mickey’s responses covering maverick spend, data [...]

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Earlier this week, Dan Ashton hosted a webinar (replay here) with speakers from Travelers Insurance and Kelly Services to discuss the current opportunity for driving value in contingent labor procurement. Here he shares some of the key take-aways.

Justin Fogarty is Managing Editor of Supply Excellence. For any questions or feedback on the blog or its contributors, Justin can be reached at jfogarty[at]ariba.com.

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Last week, we had a tremendous turnout to the Myths, Pifalls and Realities around Services Procurement webinar (click here for the replay) and there were some follow up questions from attendees that I thought everyone might be interested in. Please feel free to comment and add your insights.

Q: “Can you provide your position on whether Services Procurement differentiates from a Vendor Management System? If a company already has a VMS /MSP, is it beneficial to move to a Services Proc. system and what are the benefits?”

A: A Vendor Management System (VMS) is dedicated to contingent labor while a Services Procurement Solution includes VMS plus allows you to purchase contingent labor AND any other service such as Print, Market Research, Consulting, Installation, Promotional items and more. Each of these has unique attributes that must be recognized in the solution. For example with Labor you need to consider time tracking; Print, stock, color, formatting, etc.; Consulting, milestones, fixed fees, time and expense. On top of all this the Services Procurement really should be part of an overall eProcurement Solution that allows you to purchase goods as well. It doesn’t make sense for users to have to learn 2, 3 or more systems depending on what they are purchasing.

It is absolutely beneficial to move to Services Procurement from several points.

1. Tying your VMS to your MSP can be very risky. Ask the hundreds of customers that were abandoned when Chimes went bankrupt in 2008. The VMS and MSP should be decoupled allowing you reduced risk and greater flexibility. Remember the VMS becomes part of your internal process and culture. The MSP is actually easier to swap out if need be.
2. As I pointed out earlier, one system is a huge advantage. Easier to train and use. Admin and IT has less to worry about The down side may be that the all-in-one solution may have only 98% of the functionality of a VMS but the advantages far outweigh this disadvantage.
3. Perhaps most important, with a Services Procurement Solution you can manage more spend from additional categories such as goods, print, marketing, consulting, etc., so that more spend can be managed. By managing your spend more effectively you can realize significant savings to your bottom line.

Dan Ashton is Senior Solutions Marketing Manager, responsible for Services Procurement & Content, at Ariba.

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Today the US Treasury announced that they’ll use up to $5 billion in TARP funds to guarantee auto suppliers’ receivables, thus unlocking the liquidity needed to keep the supply chain flowing to GM and Chrysler…AND by extension, the other OEMs since they all share the same web of suppliers. The long awaited move (well, “long [...]

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Yesterday was a horrendous day for manufacturing news. First up were the highly anticipated restructuring plans by GM and Chrysler. Chrysler’s announcement of 3,000 job cuts combined with their $5 billion in requested federal funds looked relatively good compared with GM’s 47,000 planned cuts and additional $16 billion request. Yikes. Both companies are aiming for [...]

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The Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) primary manufacturing index (PMI) improved to 35.6 in January after a 28 year low of 32.9 in December. Last month’s number beat expectations, since the survey respondents actually anticipated the PMI to drop to 32.6. Although some would like to take this as a sign that the manufacturing sector [...]

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Last week, Marketplace had an interesting report on the growing trend of “contango” in the oil industry. For those of you who are not familiar with the practice, contango occurs when investors sit on a commodity because the future price is higher than the spot price. In this case, that results in full oil tankers [...]

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