IACCM — Blogging Live (Dispatch 2)

It’s been an enjoyable 18 hours so far in Scottsdale and IACCM Americas 2008 event. The content in many of the presentations has been up and down, but in general, the crowd is receptive to really taking the issue of contracting — and what it means f…

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What You Don’t Want to Know About Child Labor

Even though it’s hard to find conclusive facts on the frequency of child labor in the developing world, there’s no doubt that its commonplace in certain industries and regions. A recent Supply Chain Digest article quotes a column from Forbes noting t…

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Spend Management Maturity: Hackett Dials Up the Amp to “Eleven” (Part 1)

A Discussion With Pierre Mitchell (Part 1)
I recently had the chance to catch up with my old friend and colleague, Pierre Mitchell, on a variety of topics. The main focus of our chat was to discuss Hackett’s latest procurement capability maturity …

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Supply Risk: The (Dinner)Table Stakes Just Got Higher

About a month ago I had dinner with the head of supply chain for one of the world’s most recognized food service brands. We weren’t even through the salad course when he lit into me about previous Supply Excellence posts encouraging buyers to consider alternative fuels, materials, and lighting methods.
“Next time you’re at one of [...]

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10 + 2 = 690,000,000

CBP. ACE. C-TPAT. SAFE Port Act. You’d think importers already had enough documentation and security initiatives. Apparently not. The U.S. Government recently announced the Secure Freight Initiative in an effort designed to help reduce the risk of terrorism by leveraging trade data, trade partnerships, host country governments and the [...]

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IACCM — Blogging Live (Dispatch 1)

After an uneventful trip, I made it to IACCM just a few minutes after Tim Cummins opening keynote began. While the pearls of wisdom in the initial discussion so far have been somewhat limited — other than the need for closer collaboration between le…

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Chrysler: Tossing in the Towel for Two Weeks

I don’t know about you, but does anyone else find it odd that Purchasing — or anyone else, for that matter — did not further analyze Chrysler’s decision to shut down for two weeks this summer? According to the above-linked article, “Chrysler announ…

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Where Are Your Offshore Manufacturers Sourcing Their Workers?

This morning, I’d like to welcome back a regular guest columnist to Spend Matters, who is sharing part two of a two-part piece. Brian Sommer is author of the blog Services Safari.
Newsweek’s piece “Bottom of the Barrel” is tough to read and disqui…

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Sometimes Cost Can Go to (nearly) Zero

If Spend Management has a limiting axiom, it might be the idea that there is a limit to how much cost you can take out of an item, service or process. After all, cost can not go to zero…can it?
With a slightly different perspective on things, it turns out that cost can nearly go to [...]

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A Procuri Post-Mortem Redux

It’s been a while since I’ve taken out the microscope to a company’s financial statements, but over the weekend, I called up a colleague from Chicago who specializes in tech M&A and we decided to take a quick look Procuri’s
released financial statem…

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