Archive for September, 2008

E- Auctions success road blocks. What are your true savings opportunities?

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008

As we meet with retailers across North America, the most frequently asked questions are, ?what can we expect for savings? and what is the time to event from contract signature?

Our answer is that it depends on a variety of areas that need to be uncovered during the category discovery process. Many vendors quote historical savings in person and on their websites that at best are simple savings and do not include other hidden but real costs. Retailers beware. Net savings reflected on your auction results are not what you will save once you have awarded business and or finalized your contract with new or existing suppliers. Many tools available in the industry today simply calculate net savings based on a summary of low quotes across all supplier participants. This has no correlation to final savings.

Hidden costs can result from switching costs for new suppliers, product quality or lack there of uncovered when reviewing samples, poor contract negotiation for awards that cross business years and miscalculate future costs and renewal language in new contracts are but a few items that must be well understood before an item or category is approved for auction.

When trying to uncover these costs a key to moving beyond these issues is senior management involvement including the executive office to help eliminate barriers from cross functional departments. A clear directive as to the use of e-procurement tools as a way to improve earnings, quality, stock performance and a way of doing business is an absolute requirement. Also required are new and interactive tools that make it easier to share specifications, volumes and prices and the capability to review results and measure savings by applying alternative award scenarios.

If practices are followed properly, and these types of issues are addressed during discovery and adequate executive sponsorship is in place, time to market can be a matter of weeks and savings adequately forecast.

I look forward to your comments.

When does the 2nd amendment to The Constitution of the United States (Right to Bare Arms) apply to food safety?

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

I?m not sure that it really does directly. However, I will take any opportunity to report and comment on ways being used to drive safety in our food system even when I don?t agree with them. Who would have thought that over two hundred years ago when our founding fathers drafted the 2nd amendment to The Constitution of the United States, that it would play out as a way to protect our food supply from a variety of nefarious predators..

First of all, let?s briefly review the 2nd Amendment. There are numbers of groups that interpret the the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States ratified on December 15th 1791 to their own benefit. These interpretations tend to lean in one of two ways. The first is that the amendment was meant to ensure that individuals have the absolute right to own firearms; the second is that the amendment was meant to ensure that States could form, arm, and maintain their own militias.

I was stunned to read the following article. ?Farmers use guns, poison to guard crops?. As Reported in the Arizona Republic on Sunday August 31st in an area titled The Green Zone. The first paragraph read Farmers in ?America?s Salad Bowl? are turning into hunters ? stalking wild pigs, rabbits, and deer – to keep E.coli and other harmful bacteria out of their fields.

We also know that this is an area of the country that does not need another reason for people to carry guns. The best possible opportunity for a safe food supply is continued research and factual reporting as to the actual cause of an outbreak. These data then need to be captured in a central repository to support faster tracking of future outbreaks with better than one forward and one back source of supply reporting.

The st.paul outbreak is over. This author is not sure that the continued research to discover the cause ought to be. Statements that scientists are not sure of the exact source but suspect that cattle, feral pigs, or other wild life may have spread E. coli by defecating near crops requires careful control. Farmers don?t need guns; they need better research and quicker results. Is not manure a key source of fertilizer all over the world?

I look forward to your comments.