Back in March, I pondered whether the economic stimulus rebate checks would have any effect on inflation. It appears that they did. The inflationary correlation seemed particularly true with regard to gas prices. Stimulus checks were distributed during the period May 2 to July 11, 2008. Look what happened to gas prices per gallon during the period when checks were…
Welcome to another installment of Whitepaper Wednesday here on the Purchasing Certification Blog. In today’s installment, I’ll be reviewing a whitepaper entitled “10 Secret Strategies To Recession-Proof Your Business” from Coupa. While this whitepaper is geared towards company executives, there are some good nuggets for procurement professionals, though not all strategies will be within your control. However, if you can…
I hope that you have enjoyed the article “Supplier Partnerships: Your End of the Deal.” In the article, I shared four common supplier goals and how helping your supplier achieve them will result in more cooperation from your supplier towards achieving your goals. I wanted to elaborate further on those goals here. Supplier Goal #1: Reduce Payment Cycle – In…
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that I like to post a vlog (video blog) from time to time. Well, all of these educational vlogs plus SPSM® Certification Success Story Videos, the PurchSearch demo, and more are now collected on the newly-launched Purchasing Certification Channel on YouTube. Here’s our latest video in which we address some…
I sat in on an interesting presentation on Tuesday when Christopher Stockwell, VP of Procurement at Heinz North America, spoke about Heinz’s supply risk strategies. The portion of Stockwell’s presentation that I found most thought-provoking was his philosophies on handling commodity pricing in a volatile market. There are two primary approaches to handling pricing in such an environment: tying price…
This week, we announced one of several innovations and improvements that we are launching this quarter: the addition of multimedia mid-term games to our online purchasing training classes! While you may not expect to find purchasing-related questions on popular game shows like “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” and “Jeopardy,” here at Next Level Purchasing we wanted to add some…
Welcome back to another installment of Whitepaper Wednesday here on the Purchasing Certification Blog. Today, I’ll be reviewing an Aberdeen whitepaper entitled “The CFO’s View of Procurement: Same Page, Different Language,” available from Zycus. Contrary to many whitepapers I’ve reviewed, this is one that I found interesting right away. Early in the whitepaper, Aberdeen introduces three tiers of cost savings:…
Earlier this year, I did a podcast with Michael Massetti, the VP of Procurement and Quality at Tekelec, as well as an article, both entitled “Skillfully Managing Supplier Relationships.” During the podcast, we discussed the concept of supplier stratification. Massetti revealed that he stratifies his supply base into three tiers: Partners, Suppliers, and Vendors – listed in the order from…
Source One Management Services, LLC has become the newest sponsor of the Purchasing Certification Blog under our new sponsorship arrangement. Source One is a company that has fascinated me for some time now. They have their hands in a lot of different activities and I’m hearing and seeing their name pop up more and more. I first learned about them…
For those of you who haven’t checked in recently, the SPSM Group on LinkedIn has been gradually picking up in terms of activity. There have been many discussions started and some interesting opinions and advice shared. Here are just some of the questions/topics that have started discussions: What are the three most important tasks of any Sourcing or Procurement top…