Welcome back to another installment of Whitepaper Wednesday here on the Purchasing Certification Blog. This week, I’ll be reviewing a whitepaper entitled “EMERGE STRONGER: Identifying the Right Business Vehicle Strategy for the New Economy” from Runzheimer International and CFO.com. In the early part of this millennium, fleet management was one of the new non-traditional categories that strategic sourcing became involved…
The following video gives some general tips on body language in business and personal settings. I’ve written before about body language in negotiation and I think many of the tips can be applied to procurement situations. Here are a few things that I gleaned from the video that bear repeating here: When greeting your negotiation counterpart, make the handshake firm…
Over on Twitter, Purchasing Magazine’s long-time editor extraordinaire Dave Hannon linked me to an article that he had written on Purchasing’s social network, Purchasing BIZconnect. The article was entitled “The company you keep: Purchasing’s role in managing the brand.” Even if you’ve read my related articles/posts such as “Trend Alert: The Supplier Code of Conduct” and “Dell, and then Apple,…
Here in Pittsburgh, there never seems to be a long respite between public procurement scandals. The latest involves Michael Kenney, the executive director of the Pittsburgh Water & Sewer Authority, who reportedly has close ties to one of the companies with whom the city has a contract. Here’s the situation…The city has a contract with a company called Utility Line…
I’ve worked in the procurement departments of some pretty large organizations. And a common problem among them was there being too much “tribal knowledge.” Tribal knowledge in business refers to knowledge that is known by certain people in a company that has not been documented or proliferated to everyone who needs it. The existence of tribal knowledge is problematic because…
Welcome back to another installment of Whitepaper Wednesday here on the Purchasing Certification Blog. This week, I’ll be reviewing a whitepaper entitled “The Intersection of Analytics and Supply Chain Risk Management — Using Intelligence to Drive Early Intervention.” This whitepaper is part of the exciting new “Spend Matters Compass” series of research from, of course, Spend Matters. Cutting right to…
I hope that you have enjoyed the article “Measuring Cost Savings For Mid-Year Deals.” While I consider all of our PurchTips articles to be special, this one is a little extra special to me. It is our 200th edition! When I penned the first edition of PurchTips back in July 0f 2002, I had no idea that it would be…
Each month, the US government reports on composite price changes. In case you missed it earlier this week, the US government reported that wholesale prices – as measured by the Producers Price Index – fell 0.6% in February (reported by Yahoo! Finance). Part of a procurement professional’s job is to monitor his/her assigned markets to determine current and future price…
After a brief hiatus, Next Level Purchasing’s “Dedicated Purchasing Student of the Month” program is back. And I am delighted to recognize this month’s winner: Kimberly Zadnik from Northfield, Ohio, USA. In February 2010, Kimberly successfully completed the following online purchasing courses: Microsoft Project For Purchasing Professionals14 Purchasing Best PracticesSavings Strategy Development Please join me in congratulating Kimberly! To Your…
Welcome back to another installment of Whitepaper Wednesday here on the Purchasing Certification Blog. Today, I’ll be reviewing a whitepaper entitled “Seven User Adoption Strategies That Will Guarantee e-Procurement Cost Savings” from Coupa. Though this whitepaper is 10 pages long, it was a superfast read. Despite that, I think that you will find some powerful tips in it. None of…