Like other sectors of the economy, news from the credit markets are a mixed bag of good and bad news. On the one hand, you have signs that consumer credit is loosening , which obviously helps the consumer driven US economy and possibly indicates loosening of business credit as well. But then on the other hand, you have dire news like the CIT bankruptcy . While things may be headed in the right direction,...
Last week on SpendMatters , William Busch covered the shutdown at a Canadian Ford Motors factory that was caused by labor unrest at an auto parts supplier facility in India. I provided my views in the Comments , but wanted to share them here as well, since Supply Excellence readers may also have some insights on the topic. Unfortunately for Ford, this case caught them off guard and demonstrates how...
Last week in the Strategic Sourcing & Procurement Group on LinkedIn, I posed the question: “What lessons or changes - brought on by the recession - will you continue during the recovery'” Certainly, with the volatile business climate we’ve all experience in the last 18 months (and are hopefully emerging from), there are adjustments that have been made and take-aways that were...
Last week, we had a tremendous turnout to the Myths, Pifalls and Realities around Services Procurement webinar ( click here for the replay ) and there were some follow up questions from attendees that I thought everyone might be interested in. Please feel free to comment and add your insights. Q: “Can you provide your position on whether Services Procurement differentiates from a Vendor Management...
I thought we might try something different this Friday and if it works perhaps turn it into a regular feature here. The news often tells the story of spend management efforts gone awry … or worse yet … a total lack of spend management! Thus is the case with the Air Force’s attempt to award a bid for new aerial refueling tankers . The facts: Auditors blocked a previous award due...
Monday the New York Times ran an article on the “new state of normal” in terms of corporate travel . Many companies have tightened their controls over travel spend during the recession and are unlikely to loosen the reigns in the recovery. And according Directravel’s Vince Vitti, who is quoted throughout the article, companies should accomplish their belt tightening goals by cracking...
At the Atlanta Spend Management Day yesterday, Kurt Albertson, Director of Advisory Services with The Hackett Group , examined past predictions and gave some new insight into 2010 predictions and beyond. According to Hackett’s forecasts from July 2008, the 2009 economy was going to create the “perfect storm.” It was a time to secure up supply, highlight difficult-to-find savings,...
The DonorsChoose.org Social Media Challenge is in its final week and it’s been a huge success thus far. All together, over 300k has been raised from nearly 4,000 donors. Best of all, due to DonorsChoose.org’s model - where donors give directly to individual projects posted by teachers - we know that 94,609 students have been helped (how’s that for real time metrics?!?!). Here’s...
After his presentation in Boston last week , Chris Sawchuk expanded on his recommendation that procurement departments focus on becoming the “customer of choice” in anticipation of the economic recovery and tightened supply. I’m very curious to hear from Supply Excellence readers. Do you feel the need to mend fences with key suppliers due to your cost take-out strategies over the...
At the Ariba User Conference held last week in Nashville, I had the opportunity to lead two sessions focused on spend adoption-an initiative that’s getting a lot of traction in the marketplace. What is spend adoption? It’s the process of selecting a category of spend, enabling the catalog or contract content on the P2P solution, and training the suppliers and end users on their role in...
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