One of my favorite pasttimes is coaching purchasing teams. Another is coaching hockey teams. The first I’ve done successfully in the real-world. The second…well, not so much. Unless you count coaching from my game room couch. But I still couldn’t help seeing parallel principles between purchasing and hockey as I watched and analyzed the first three games of the Stanley…
Today, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that the Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett is fighting to require businesses to include fuel charges in their advertised prices. “The total price of a product or service is a key factor in any purchase, and is something that needs to be disclosed to consumers upfront,” Mr. Corbett said. “Any business intending to collect an…
Yesterday, I reported the latest ethical brouhaha in Pittsburgh that involves lessons in purchasing as well as politics. Well, it seems like our mayor Luke Ravenstahl has seen the light. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette today reported that Ravenstahl has decided to pay for his own tickets to see the Penguins play in Detroit: “After initially asking the city Law Department for…
I blogged this past August about an ethics dispute involving Pittsburgh mayor Luke Ravenstahl. Well, it seems that Mayor Luke likes the perks of being a mayor. Likes ’em a little too much in my opinion. Now that the Pittsburgh Penguins are in the NHL’s Stanley Cup Finals, Ravenstahl is apparently trying to score some free tickets to watch a…
One of the attendees at my presentation at Iasta’s reSource conference last week was Sourcing Innovation’s blogmaster Michael Lamoureux (a.k.a., the doctor). the doctor must have taken copious notes because he did a fine job of summarizing my presentation in his blog post entitled “Purchasing Certification as a Savings Strategy,” which he posted today. Check it out! To Your Career,Charles…
I hope that you have enjoyed the article “Skillfully Managing Supplier Relationships.” This article, like several that I’ve done over the past two years, was based on an accompanying podcast from the Purchasing & Supply Management Podcast SeriesSM. So let me ask you about that… Personally, I enjoy doing the podcasts and want to do more and more. I feel…
A week or so ago, I posted a short blog about leadership. In it, I encouraged aspiring leaders to become more comfortable with delegating. In some situations, however, a leader does need to roll up his or her sleeves to ensure that s/he gets the deliverable s/he wants. Most leaders would love it if they gave general (read: cryptic) instructions…
Well, I’m sitting in the Indianapolis airport waiting for my flight back to Pittsburgh and hoping that I’ll get home in time to see at least the 3rd period of Game 3 of the NHL Eastern Confererence final (go Pens!). Though my presence at Iasta’s reSource conference was limited to the time allotted to my presentation, I did get to…
I just received a press release yesterday noting that Iasta was named to Entrepreneur Magazine’s Hot 100 list. You may recall that I recently did an interview with the CEO of Iasta for this blog just a few weeks ago. This is impressive. Not just the honor, but the fact that Iasta has the PR people keeping tabs of all…
We will be upgrading and testing our database on May 8, 2008 between 8:00AM and 5:00PM Eastern US time. The online classroom will be down during this time. NOTE: An incorrect starting time for the outage was posted earlier. The official start time for the outage is at 8:00AM Eastern US time. The new database will give us a lot…