Is poor supplier selection putting your organization at risk? Selecting suppliers is one of the most important jobs you have as a procurement professional. A flawed supplier selection process can result in poor supplier performance, supply disruptions, and inefficiencies. Unfortunately, most purchasing professionals don’t use a well-thought out and consistent method for arriving at the best supplier selection decisions, which…
I hope that you have enjoyed the article “Getting & Using Information In A Negotiation.” I gotta admit that, of the three negotiation tips I covered in the article, my personal favorite is “Don’t talk too much.” Imagine that you bought a lottery ticket on this same date last year. Say that lottery tickets are valid for exactly one year…
Supply & Demand Chain Executive recently published an interesting piece on the value of supply chain associations. It gave a nice, balanced review of what is going on currently with three major associations in the space: ISM, CSCMP, and, of course, the NLPA. I was quoted on several topics, including how professional networking has evolved in today’s digital world and the…
In procurement, we view sourcing a certain way: a 7- or 10- or whatever-number-step process that is conducted with the utmost professionalism. But how does the outside world view sourcing? In the free webinar “Two Views of Sourcing (And How To Do It Right!)” – featuring yours truly as the presenter – you may be surprised, you may be entertained,…
The Next Level Purchasing Association (NLPA) has posted another interesting procurement case study on our site. Today’s case study follows the journey of Erste Group Procurement – a discrete entity established to manage all external spend for all majority owned entities within Erste Group. Erste Group is one of the largest financial services providers in Central and Eastern Europe. Like…
Is apprehension of outsourcing and its complexities holding your organization back from achieving strategic goals? While there are many misperceptions regarding outsourcing, the justifications for it are strong. Outsourcing is a powerful business tool that can result in improved profitability, rapid growth in capacity at reduced expense, and added advantages against your more agile competitors. Preparing an outsourcing initiative, however, can be…
One of the Next Level Purchasing Association’s relatively new initiatives has been to research and develop procurement case studies. Existing members will recall us adding our first case study in August 2012 and we will be adding a few new ones to our site effective immediately. Today, I’ll share a link to a new procurement case study involving Island Hotel…
On February 28, 2007, the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) ruffled some feathers by laying to rest its Accredited Purchasing Practitioner (A.P.P.) certification, calling it “financially infeasible.” Then, the once-venerable institution continued its self-immolation by burying the Certified Purchasing Manager (C.P.M.) certification, which had its final day of testing set for December 31, 2008. After experiencing a backlash from procurement…
I hope that you have enjoyed the article “The 25 New Rights of Purchasing, Part I.” Let me address question posed in the subject line of this post: Are the five rights of purchasing obsolete? Well, as you’ve read in the article, much has changed in purchasing since the “five rights” were a hot topic in the field. But you’ve…