Archive for the ‘Global E-procurement’ Category
Wednesday, December 8th, 2010
Many times the ideas for my blog posts come from conversations with customers. Often times those thoughts make it into our product development plans. In fact listening to our customers is one of our most important jobs.
During a visit with a customer several months ago, the head of procurement complimented me on our companies efforts related to food safety and in particular commented on the 27 safety certifications we hold our 380,000 global suppliers accountable to in our SafeSourceIt™ Supplier Database. He followed that with the statement that since they did not sell fresh foods, that area of our business did not apply to them.
This particular retail customer does sell food products, cosmetics, private label bottled water and also bags the products they sell to their customers in plastic bags. I think most of you can see where I’m going with this. Plastic bags are a growing area concern for many areas of the country and in fact outlawed in an ever increasing number of areas due to their negative environmental impact. Food packaging can contain BPA. Dog food has contained products such as melamine. Toys have been found to contain lead.
So, let’s see that’s clothing, packaged foods, pet food, toys and beverages. I guess we have to be careful with all of the products we buy. Suppliers need to be held accountable to a variety of standards and certifications while also providing traceability beyond the one forward and one back standard supported in the industry today.
E- procurement solutions providers need to be prepared to discuss how they intend to accomplish this for their customers in order to limit end user consumer risk, but also limit risk associated with litigation and other recall related costs that have a direct impact on company profit.
At SafeSourcing, all of our associates support our R4 program of Recycle, Reuse, Replace and Reduce and will be glad to have a detailed discussion relative to product safety and environmental impact and how our tools proactively address these opportunities.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments
Posted in E-procurement Solutions, Global E-procurement, Retail Supply Chain, Sourcing Safe Foods, Sourcing Safe Products, Supply Chain Procurement
Monday, November 15th, 2010
These are certainly not all of the benefits that retailers can drive from the use of e-procurement tools, but it is a good starting point.
Our list is not ranked in order of importance although many might argue that not much is more important than improved earnings.
1. Guaranteed to improve net earnings
2. Guaranteed to improve safety
3. Guaranteed to improve Corporate Social Responsibility.
4. Guaranteed new sources of supply
5. Retail has less spend assigned than any other industry
6. Streamlines the procurement process
7. Holds suppliers accountable to your standards.
8. Improves quality
9. Cost avoidance in a volatile market
10. Creates a competitive environment
11. Drives reliable market pricing
12. Maintains a reliable history for future comparison
13. Educates suppliers as to how retailers wish to procure products
14. Supplier training eliminates questions
15. Improved and consistent product specifications
16. Improved negotiation.
17. Improve carbon footprint
18. Simple award of business process
19. Frees up time for other tasks
20. Works for procurement of all product categories
21. Provides a detailed audit trail.
This author is not sure why a derivative of this list could not become the mission statement for any procurement department.
We appreciate and look for ward to your comments.
Posted in E-procurement, E-procurement Solutions, E-procurement Tools, E-supply Chain, Eprocurement Auction, Global E-procurement
Wednesday, November 10th, 2010
This was the case years ago, but with the advent of many of the internet based prescription drug sites such as RXlist, Drugs.com and many retailers sites, it is easy to find lists, formulations, directions, dictionaries and generic equivalents. What more could a Pharma buyer ask for. Now all you need to do is use your e-procurement solutions provider to drive your costs down.
According to RXlist, the top twenty prescription drugs in the U.S. are as follows.
1. Lipitor
2. Hydrocodone / Acetaminophen
3. Hydrocodone / Acetaminophen
4. Levothyroxine sodium
5. Amoxicillin
6. Lisinopril
7. Nexium
8. Synthroid
9. Lexapro
10. Singulair
11. Plavix
12. Simvastatin
13. Hydrochlorothiazide
14. Amlodipine besylate
15. Azithromycin
16. Warfarin sodium
17. Furosemide
18. Azithromycin
19. Levothyroxine sodium
20. Advair Diskus
Let’s hope this information helps you to drive down your costs.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments
Posted in E-procurement, E-procurement Solutions, E-procurement Tools, E-supply Chain, Eprocurement Auction, Global E-procurement
Friday, October 22nd, 2010
The agreements are really just a form of trade liberalization which is how these geographies or countries collaborate to the remove government incentives and restrictions from trade between themselves and other nations or groups of nations. Trade liberalization has always been open to much political debate because of its impact on local economies where jobs or lack of them impact the daily lives of its people.
A subject we are all familiar with that is a good example is that of jobs going overseas from the United States particularly in the area of manufacturing. That subject could be an entire book relative to the impact of World War II on creating breeding beds for new economies based on new technologies that ultimately caused our own manufacturing decline and the need for tariffs in the first place.
This all sounds like a self fulfilling prophecy, but I digress.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in B2b Supply Chain, Global E-procurement
Thursday, October 21st, 2010
Comparative advantage is a theory that advances that in a free marketplace, each entity or country such as the EU or NAFTA or trading countries will ultimately specialize in activities where it has comparative advantage. Examples of such might be technology, natural resources, local workers skill sets, agricultural advantages, transportation benefits etc.
Sometimes countries create trade agreements that eliminate the comparative advantage they each may have in favor of benefits that both or multiple countries derive from the agreement where one may have an advantage over the other that creates an imbalance in trade. As an example in the NAFTA agreement, Mexico may have a lower cost labor pool than the United States but the United States may have a transportation advantage that could leverage that low cost of labor. These agreements are called Free Trade Agreements in which both parties agree to lift most or all tariffs, quotas, special fees and taxes, and other barriers to trade between the entities to their mutual benefit.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in B2b Supply Chain, Global E-procurement, Retail Supply Chain, Supply Chain Procurement
Wednesday, October 20th, 2010
The problem today is that there is so much retail data available that buyers and category managers could easily suffer business paralysis by data analysis.
Below is just a partial list of systems and places where data resides that is meaningful if not critical to sourcing professionals. Most of you can probably add to this list pretty easily. The unfortunate issue that confronts retail procurement professionals daily is that most of this data is not integrated in any way and even at very large companies, to much critical data is sitting on local employee desktops or even worse in their heads. And that is not what we mean by a neural network.
1. ERP systems
2. Enterprise Data Warehouse systems
3. Replenishment systems
4. Financial reporting systems
5. Demand Planning systems
6. Purchase Order management systems
7. Distribution and Logistics systems
8. Merchandise management systems
9. Retail Planning systems
10. Local employee desktops
11. Contract management systems
Number two from above the enterprise data warehouse is probably the most logical place to bring all of these data sources or elements together within one logical data model that drives the master data source integrated with a s business reporting and busyness intelligence front end. Small companies may never make it to this level, but if they can find a business partner that offers these solutions in a SaaS format it will be much better than the current; Hey Joe, how many of these did we order last year?
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in Business Sourcing, E-procurement Solutions, Global E-procurement, Procurement Company, Procurement Outsourcing, Procurement Purchasing, Procurement Solutions
Thursday, October 14th, 2010
Nothing else that a retailer is doing including remodels, customer marketing campaigns, new formats, new products or any thing else focused on sales increases can have the impact on your bottom line that e-procurement tools can. If you choose to use hosted or SaaS based offerings, the cost is so low as a percentage of savings that it’s almost silly. If you want to free up some cash in order to fund those other opportunities mentioned above now is the time to reach out to companies like SafeSourcing.
Cost of goods and services is the largest area of retailers P&L. Focus on this area can drive cost from their business immediately. Since the early 1990’s, initiatives focused on the customer in the form of CRM programs, Efficient Consumer Response initiatives, and Large scale data warehouses or decision support systems have been implemented, but have not appreciably improved the bottom line for many retailers.. E-procurement solutions immediately improves the effectiveness of buyers and category managers by offering them a broader universe of choices over a shorter period of time, without the need to conduct detailed research, and as such makes their job easier.
Calculating the dollar and percentage return on investment at the conclusion of an e-procurement event is immediate so the ROI in most cases is also instantaneous. Historical savings in the retail industry have averaged as much as 20% and in many cases has been as much as 10X or greater. In almost all cases these are direct savings versus budgeted expenses. As such the dollars drop directly to the bottom line and can easily be converted to basis points of improvement that are factual and reportable within a current quarter. To this authors knowledge there are no other applications or tools that can make this claim.
Give us a call; if you don’t save you don’t pay.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in E-procurement, E-procurement Solutions, E-procurement Tools, E-supply Chain, Eprocurement Auction, Global E-procurement
Tuesday, September 21st, 2010
Having a large international supplier database to drive sustainable results in e-procurement events such as ant e-RFX funtion is critical to that events success. Maybe even more critical is making sure that the suppliers once selected for participation in an event are of the highest quality, professional, responsive and have your best interests at heart. There are several areas in the early strategy stages of a an e-RFX process which if properly monitored can be leading key performance indicators as to future performance. These KPI’s are; the initial supplier response and supplier training schedule adherence. If suppliers are not interested enough during these early stages, this may be an indicator of future performance in other more critical areas such as on time delivery, back order management, documentation and audit compliance.
A reasonable process for measuring these KPI’s would be to measure the number of days between the project start date or initial supplier contact and the event start date, where the supplier has been sent an invitation but has not responded either positively, negatively or given a reason for their response. Maintaining an active status of response dates could be scored based on the number of days it takes invited suppliers to respond. The longer it takes a invitee to respond the lower KPI score that supplier would receive. Another possible KPI measurement or filter once the invitation has been accepted would be the number of days between the date accepted and the event start date, where the supplier has accepted an invitation but has not completed their automated training.
These are not intended to be punitive measures. In most cases suppliers will perform beyond your expectations. Sustainability and quality require measurements regardless of how simple.
We appreciate and look forward to your comments.
Posted in Business Sourcing, E-supply Chain, Global E-procurement, Retail Supply Chain, Scorecards, Supply Chain Procurement
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010
A recent survey by UN Global Compact and Accenture releases findings of largest CEO research study on corporate sustainability. According to this survey Chief Executives believe overwhelmingly that Sustainability has become critical to their success, and could be fully embedded into core business within ten years.
According to the survey CEO’s also believe that companies will need to meet the conditions listed below.
1. Shaping consumer tastes in order to build a stronger market for sustainable products.
2. Training management, employees and the next generation of leaders to deal with sustainability issues.
3. Communicating with investors to create a better understanding of the impact of sustainability.
4. Measuring performance on sustainability – and explaining the value of business in society.
5. Working with governments to shape clearer regulation and create a level playing field.
As a procurement leader what can you do in order to be prepared for those questions that may be coming to your desk tomorrow?
1. Stay educated by seeking sources that offer readily available and fresh content on procurement related sustainability developments.
2. Make sure that your procurement solution providers are also focused on sustainability.
3. Ask your procurement solution providers what their environmental support plans are and how to include them in your procurement business plan.
4. Ask your procurement solution providers what their product safety plans are and how to include them n your procurement business plan.
5. Ask your procurement solution providers what training programs they can offer to your company in order to educate your associates.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in Global E-procurement, Green eProcurement Practices, Procurement Solutions, Sourcing Strategy, Supply Chain Procurement
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010
There was a point in time that sourcing products from China insured a low cost for your product. Then the price of oil went through the roof and melting down containers returned more than trying ship product in them. Even with oil down somewhat from that time, costs are increasing in China as plant safety and quality and worker safety and quality improves. However, there are still probably bargains to be had, but caution should be your guiding word.
A great example of this is a recent find by Chinese officials of tons of milk products tainted with Melamine. If this sounds familiar, it should. This was an issue in 2008 on which this author posted. The scandal actually killed 6 babies and made hundreds of thousands sick at the time. China actually executed two individuals for producing or selling toxic milk. So here we are in 2010 and the problem has still not been totally corrected and we are talking about products that are only sold in China. It would seem that a country would be more concerned about the quality and safety of products made by the Chinese for the Chinese consumer.
As such, companies need to complete the due diligence necessary to insure that the products you are planning to source include detailed raw materials descriptions, formulas and certifications that are mandated globally to insure product quality, safety and environmental impact standards.
Ask your solutions provider what their vetting procedures are for including suppliers in their database?
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in B2b Supply Chain, E-supply Chain, Global E-procurement, Retail Supply Chain, Sourcing Safe Foods, Sourcing Safe Products, Supply Chain Procurement
