Archive for September, 2014

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You should always be thinking outside of the box when sourcing every category you manage!

Tuesday, September 9th, 2014

Straw is now a new sustainable option for supermarket and food retail packaging in Europe.

Today’s Blog is by Ryan Melowic, Director of Special Projects at SafeSourcing.

Let’s take a look and some of the new packaging innovations and their impact on the supermarket and food retail packaging industry in Europe.

The UK company, ValueForm, has developed 100% straw pizza discs and plans to have them on supermarket shelves sometime before the end of this year. In efforts to move away from paper and plastic, ValueForm has developed this sustainable, but cost competitive product.

Typically, environmentally friendly packaging options are more expensive to produce and therefore come with a higher price point for supermarkets and food retail packagers. ValueForm’s products remain competitive in price and, in most cases, are less expensive than the plastic or paper products they would replace.

ValueForm can deliver their products anywhere in the world. They have also introduced a technology transfer license that reuses the infrastructure of existing paper pulp molders to convert them to using straw. This will allow new manufactures to improve the technology. The results could be new products and materials being produced worldwide.

This type of forward thinking will reduce our world’s dependencies on other commodities with more sustainable products. It will also reduce costs for supermarket and food retail packaging by creating a more competitive market for packaging products.  Currently, ValueForm’s clients range widely in size and in the products they purchase.  Products range from disposable medical products to supermarket and food retailer packaging.

For further information as to how SafeSourcing can help your company with sustainable product research, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments

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Customer Focused: Is It Slipping Away?

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2014

Today’s post is by Shelly Hayre; Project Manager at SafeSourcing.

With changes in organizations and technology, customer focused goals and objectives have become unrealistic. But, why? Research shows customer focused companies outperform their competitors in profitability, innovation, and customer satisfaction. It seems like a no-brainer that companies would remain customer focused, but it is slipping away from companies.

Many changes in business contribute to this challenge to remain customer focused.

1.  Processes and protocols- Organizations focus on protocols and process with lacking empathy for customers’ needs. Customer service departments are unaware of customers’ needs.
2.  Information silos- This limits customer interactions through the organization and do not have clear image of big picture.
3.  Technology- Technology is saving organizations labor, but is it hurting their customer focus? The empathy, I discussed earlier, does not come from robots or voice-prompts.

How do you get customer focused AGAIN?

1.  Define “customer focus” for your organization- What does being customer focused mean in your organization? Make sure everyone understand this and the level of expectations.
2.  Get everyone’s buy in- If only directors and sales department give input to initiative and not every level of service is on the same page, execution will fall through. This will only make things worse for the customer.
3.  Help employees connect- it is very easy for employees to become disconnected with customers. Provide the training and skills to handling customer concerns and provide empathy when needed.
4.  Add customer to the agenda- If your organization is having meetings without discussing customers, how can you be customer focused? Customer discussion should be included in meetings.

SafeSourcing has a team that is trained and provides the skills to be customer focused. We care about your needs and want to help you and your organization. It does not stop there, though. We understand your suppliers are very important too. We treat your suppliers like they are our customers.

At SafeSourcing, we will take every step to exceed all parties’ customer service expectations.

For more information on how we can help you with your procurement needs or on our “Risk Free” trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.  We have an entire customer services team waiting to assist you today.

We look forward to your comments.

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This unfortunately happens much too often in procurement!

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2014

Now you have to be very careful and clear what you are asking for.

You hoped to get a product based on your specification that looked something like this.

Unfortunately you ended up with a product that looks exactly like this, and also spits at you to boot.

Remember that “A camel is a horse created by committee” so be careful what you ask for because that is not necessarily what you’ll get .

If you want really clean well thought out specifications and terms and conditions, please contact a SafeSourcing customers services representative.

Thanks.

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