No new year’s resolutions for me again this year. How can you improve the unimprovable? I’m joking of course, but there is a more serious point here. As we all know, those seemingly earnest commitments we make in the first week of January do tend to unravel by… well, by the third week of January. (more…)
Procurement professionals are increasingly getting the opportunity to be involved in more challenging areas of spend and from the start of a deal being considered.
A lively roundtable debate held at Supply Management towers gathered together buyers who are involved in the purchase of digital marketing and yielded some interesting results. (more…)
Cloud computing is a remarkable phenomenon, with analysts at IDC predicting public cloud computing services to be a $73 billion (£46 billion) market by 2015. However, many CIOs are still puzzled by the term and may not yet be familiar with how appropriate it is for certain business IT functions. Concerns over security, too, remain an issue for some. (more…)
At the recent CIPS conference, Ellis Watson, a veteran CEO with an impressive CV, called for procurement practitioners to display passion in everything they do. “Step up and take your message out to the business,” was his plea. I’ve been thinking about this and reached the conclusion that passion is not enough. (more…)
Increasingly, businesses are being seduced by bargain basement IT support contracts, wrongly assuming – as with, for example car insurance – that one policy arrangement is much the same as the next. (more…)
Research from Barclays Corporate out today suggests that in the next 10 years the amount of money spent via mobile phones will rise from the £1.3 billion it is today to £19.3 billion by 2021. (more…)
As technological advancements have impacted the business world, the way we work and interact with suppliers has similarly changed.
E-procurement became a buzzword in the purchasing profession as the internet transformed business. Even now, purchasing technology remains a topic of conversation as communication methods and processes adapt to reflect the modern world. (more…)
While software has helped revolutionise the supply chain over the past few decades, a recent conference call with members of the Strategic Sourcing & Procurement group on LinkedIn emphasised an important point: no amount of technology can replace the need for building mutually beneficial relationships between suppliers and buyers.
The question posed was: do supplier penalties and incentives make for a better supply chain operation? I would argue they can, but only if used systematically and effectively. (more…)
While some argue Facebook is reaching tipping point for personal use, social networking for business purposes has some bright days ahead.
The latest addition to the long list of Facebook-inspired business tools is New-York start-up BestVendor, a sort of social networking site for buyers and suppliers, designed to help small businesses make “faster, smarter purchasing decisions” using a system of recommendations. (more…)
You will probably be familiar with the phrase “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. It was coined by Bert Lance, who was director the US Office of Management and Budget (which coincidentally also handles procurement policy) in 1977.
But it seems some office workers have decided to apply reverse logic by purposefully breaking their company’s IT equipment to get new devices. (more…)
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