Proper supply chain approaches have been actively pursued by companies looking for lower costs and improved service levels. However, obtaining this ultimate prize is not easy and can never be fully gained by those companies who choose to remain with the power based “winner takes all” supply chain approaches that use an adversarial pursuit of “value for me alone.” Don’t…
Don’t miss updates on Procurement & Supply Chain, Subscribe here! Are supplier salespeople circumventing your procurement processes in order to maximize their profits? If so, they are doing so at the expense of your organization. As a procurement professional, it is your job to put a stop to that supplier behavior, called “backdoor selling.” Supplier salespeople are often so skilled…
I hope that you have enjoyed the article “True Procurement Transformations, Part I.” Don’t miss updates on Procurement & Supply Chain, Subscribe here! As I wrote in the article, procurement transformation “means different things to different people” and I proceeded to list things that will change in a “true” procurement transformation. What I didn’t do was contrast what a procurement…
I hope that you have enjoyed the article “Surprise Supplier Audits: Pros, Cons, Ideas.” Don’t miss updates on Procurement & Supply Chain, Subscribe here! In the article, I’ve provided some ideas about how to best implement surprise supplier audits. I am using this additional space to share even more ideas on the topic. So here you go: The concept of…
Buyers Meeting Point has built up quite an arsenal of procurement-related content over on their growing site. While quite a bit of the content consists of summaries of reviews of third-party events, webinars, and the like – sharing “the best of the best,” if you will – they also have some great original content as well. Don’t miss updates on…
Thank you to everyone who contacted us to see if we were OK after Hurricane Sandy hit Pennsylvania. Fortunately, our area in Pittsburgh experience only moderate rainfall, so we are safe. Our thoughts go out to everyone further east who are felt Sandy’s effects more catastrophically. Don’t miss updates on Procurement & Supply Chain, Subscribe here! Today’s NLPA webinar, “Risk…
One of the students of a Next Level Purchasing online course asked me, as the instructor, whether I thought that “surprise” supplier audits were a good idea. The goal of such surprise audits would be to confirm that the supplier is truly meeting its obligations, whether those obligations are things like maintaining the agreed-upon stock levels, keeping up with production…
Don’t miss updates on Procurement & Supply Chain, Subscribe here! As part of Enterprise Risk Management, purchasing departments, should define their framework in terms of types of risk they face, risk appetite (risk level), and tools to measure the risk. They need to calculate the impact of risks in the company. They need to provide governance to make sure processes…
I hope that you enjoyed the article “Sourcing Negotiations & Political Debates.” Don’t miss updates on Procurement & Supply Chain, Subscribe here! I know, by the few instances of negative feedback we received, that not everyone enjoyed or comprehended this creative marriage of sourcing concepts with examples from the Obama/Biden vs. Romney/Ryan debates. I was careful not to take sides…
Wow. I have to say that this headline refers to one of the most dramatic procurement-related screwups ever. Don’t miss updates on Procurement & Supply Chain, Subscribe here! Yesterday, Google’s stock plummeted from $754.64 per share at 12:34PM to $687.30 per share at 12:50PM (source: Yahoo! Finance) before trading of the stock was halted. What was the reason for such…