We are living in times of a growing amount of digital data. Economist writer Ludvig Siegele claims 2012 will be the year in which the trend of ‘big data’ gets noticed more widely. “Many more firms will start to analyse huge piles of data to optimise everything from their supply chains to their customer relationship,” he wrote. (more…)
As supply chain management has become dependent on electronic systems it has simultaneously grown more vulnerable to attacks from external (or internal) sources. (more…)
So far we have looked at the strategies you could use to drive value in both office supplies and IT consumables. This week we are considering the challenge presented by IT hardware.
Galloping technology innovation and an ever-increasing circle of CAPEX and OPEX purchasing choices have changed the IT hardware sourcing landscape. Once relatively simple, it’s a category now crammed with more components parts than the average circuit board. (more…)
Last week we began our series of blogs looking at indirect spend categories with office supplies. The category up for review this week is IT consumables.
You might wonder why I am focusing on this category this week, as many companies consider it to be the same category as office supplies. But I believe the pursuit of best value for any big spender on IT consumables can be best achieved when it is treated as a category on its own. (more…)
As natural disasters continue to impact on manufacturing, supply and prices, ICT buyers need to shift their ethos towards buying for today and tomorrow.
Mercato Solutions estimates that 70 per cent of private and public sector IT buying for consumables, desktops and printers is conducted on a day-to-day demand or reactive basis. This is in the context of a highly volatile IT supply chain where price and stock change daily. When there is a requirement, the ICT buyer – who often multitasks as an IT manager or procurement champion – contacts suppliers, potentially benchmarks prices and makes a purchase. (more…)
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…)
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