Archive for the ‘Product Procurement’ Category
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
I meet with buyers or other e-procurement knowledge workers on a regular basis that want to know what categories are the best to select in the short term to prove the benefit of e-procurement or e-negotiation tools. This quite honestly is not a bad approach for pilot selection as it creates an almost sure thing that results in a lot of excitement and the energy to move the process forward within a company.
Quite often before meeting with a new client, I will analyze their annual report and their summary P&L to get a good idea of where the opportunities are hiding that can have quick hit impact. However in order to have long term viability as a way to conduct the business of buying, a more detailed analysis is required. Quite frankly before you can even begin to discuss vendor or supplier selection, management or evaluation this process is critical to long term success.
Key data required to prepare you for this analysis can consist of but is certainly not limited to the following. All of this data is readily available from a variety of industry sources. Quite often the data is a year old but you can bet it is better than anything else your customer may be using today.
1. Research and accumulate your specific Industry data
2. Analyze last years P&L
3. Compare your cost of goods with your Industries averages
4. Compare your gross margins with you Industry averages
5. Compare your net earnings with your industry averages
6. Conduct the same comparisons with selected retailers with whom you compete
7. Compare your departmental sales and contribution margin results to those of your specific industry.
8. Look for department level anomalies
9. Look for specific product anomalies within major and sub departments.
10. Select top categories that are below plan and outside industry average for cost of goods and margin.
11. Select top products that are underperforming to industry averages and plan
An example of the above might be to look at the major department of grocery and the major category of pet care then drill down to the sub category of cat and dog products and a list of all accessories. Now look at what products are underperforming to the industry and plan. Continue your analysis with other underperforming categories.
Ask you e-procurement provider how they can assist you in accomplishing this with their tools.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in E-procurement, E-procurement Solutions, E-procurement Tools, Procurement Purchasing, Product Procurement, Strategic Sourcing
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010
And for those very large retail companies that have very expensive internal tools that were sold to you by the largest players in the space. Ask yourself why your event savings are much less than those reported by companies who have outsourced this functionality? If you want to drive the greatest possible savings across the broadest range of categories in the shortest amount of time; and have a sustainable process moving forward keep reading..
The question one needs to ask is; what type of event services does my e-procurement provider offer? If your company is deciding to try self service, which is to be 100% self-sufficient, you need to know if your provider offers readily available classroom education that can be conducted on-site in order to train your team in all the nuances of event support. These skills are the foundation that allows e-procurement providers to support large volumes of events in a full service mode, which drive greater savings over the long term. Knowledge transfer in this area is one thing; the passion, skill and headcount to carry out these practices on a day by day basis are what drive results.
Typically event services falls into two broad categories:
1. Event management
2. Event monitoring and support.
Event management provides end to end e-sourcing support that begins with a companies overall strategy and ends with the actual execution of the e-procurement event. This is a true cross category effort that includes a rather lengthy list of services that may include buyer training, supplier selection, category discovery, supplier communication, the strategy for taking a category to market, training and overall supplier expectation management.
Event monitoring and support is actually the tactical implementation of the over all e-procurement event management process. This may include all communications with suppliers on the day of an event including making sure they have access to the system, get logged in properly, don’t have problems placing quotes, monitoring supplier and buyer system communications techniques during an event such as notes and texting and being available post event for questions as needed.
These services are normally provided by people behind the scenes with a very specific skill set. If you plan to do self service it would be very wise to make sure you have them covered at the same quality level.
As always, we look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in B2b Reverse Auction, E-procurement, E-procurement Solutions, E-procurement Tools, Eprocurement Auction, Online Procurement, Online Reverse Auction, Procurement Auctioning, Procurement Solutions, Procurement Tool, Product Procurement, Retail Supply Chain, Reverse Auction, Strategic Sourcing, Supply Chain Procurement
Friday, January 22nd, 2010
An article in today’s Arizona Republic attributed to the associate press was titled 1.5 million strollers recalled. The reason for the recall was canopy hinges causing fingertip amputations. The article went on to mention that this was the 2nd major recall of strollers in recent months. In November of 2009 about one million strollers were recalled for fingertip amputation by the hinge mechanism from another manufacturer.
This author is aware that we can control the substances that go into these products from raw materials perspective but how do we in fact make sure they are safe for the children riding in them or the people pushing them.
The first thing we can do is ensure that the products are tested by Consumer Product Safety Commission or other groups with authority for that product. Last year the CPSC announced that they would be expanding and modernizing the agency’s testing facilities with a new facility, located off the “I-270 Technology Corridor” in Rockville, Md. One of the roles of the new facility is to provide additional space for CPSC’s Laboratory and Engineering Sciences Teams to test and evaluate consumer products.
You may be able to locate information about the products you procure at the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s website area for regulations and laws, but it will take some digging if you have never been there before. The product may have a FEDERAL HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCES ACT to support it as do a number of baby and children products.
What appears to be common sense to this author is in addition to holding companies accountable to regulations is also to simply ask what type of testing a product has gone through and where it was manufactured? Most companies have great intentions for the products they manufacture and sell. We may be able to keep our children safer by simply asking some logical questions.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in Business Sourcing, Product Procurement, Sourcing Safe Products
Monday, January 4th, 2010
Fair Trade Certification Overview:
The Fair Trade Certified™ label guarantees consumers that strict economic, social and environmental criteria were met in the production and trade of an agricultural product. Fair Trade Certification is currently available in the U.S. for coffee, tea and herbs, cocoa and chocolate, fresh fruit, flowers, sugar, rice, and vanilla. TransFair USA licenses companies to display the Fair Trade Certified label on products that meet strict international Fair Trade standards.
Fair Trade Certification empowers farmers and farm workers to lift themselves out of poverty by investing in their farms and communities, protecting the environment, and developing the business skills necessary to compete in the global marketplace.
Fair Trade principles include:
• Fair prices:
• Fair labor conditions:
• Direct trade:
• Democratic and transparent organizations:
• Community development:
• Environmental sustainability
If you are a supplier, do the right thing and get certified.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in Product Procurement, Sourcing Safe Foods, Uncategorized
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
During the last ninety day period the SafeSourcing website www.safesourcing.com has experienced significant growth globally. According to a number of rating services including Alexa and Google Analytics our website has had visitors from thirty seven (37) countries. Our reach which is a percentage measure of global internet users has grown 130%. Our traffic rank has increased 168% and our page views have increased 150%.
This growth places us amongst the top websites in the procurement space. Spend Matters and Sourcing Innovation continue to be the ranking leaders in our space. Both are required daily reading for this author.
We are very proud of our growth as it indicates that SafeSourcing is providing valuable content to regular visitors as well as registered members. We are also enjoying a good mix of both returning and new users. In reviewing these data the entire website is being explored on a regular basis including the following areas.
1. Sourcebook our professional social network for procurement professionals.
2. The SafeSourcing Wiki
3. The SafeSourcing daily Blog
4. SafeSourcing environment and safety alerts
5. SafeSourcing specifications template library
6. The SafeSourceIt™ Supplier Database
7. The SafeSourcing Query tool
8. SafeSourcing Product Information Sheets
9. SafeSourcing White Papers
10. SafeSourcing Press Releases.
Thank you to those of you that have allowed us to achieve this growth.
As always, we look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in B2b Reverse Auction, B2b Supply Chain, Business Sourcing, E-procurement, E-procurement Solutions, E-procurement Tools, E-supply Chain, Eprocurement Auction, Global E-procurement, Online Procurement, Online Reverse Auction, Procurement Auctioning, Procurement Company, Procurement Outsourcing, Procurement Purchasing, Procurement Solutions, Procurement Tool, Product Procurement, Reverse Auction, Reverse Auction Procurement, Sourcing Strategy, Strategic Sourcing, Supply Chain Procurement
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
From a purely systematic or technological perspective, a wizard is a computer user interface that leads a user through dialog steps in order to accomplish something easily or for the sake of appearances magically. So to begin with if you are not using technology in your retail procurement practices this would be a good place to start. You can never tell improved profits may simply be as easy as abracadabra.
Magic which is practiced by wizards is the act of performing, entertaining or enlightening an audience by creating illusions of seemingly impossible feats, using purely natural means. As an example; maybe finding new sources of supply in order to compress a retailers pricing is as simple as having access to a supplier database (hidden knowledge) that can conjure up new sources of supply through an easy to use interface (wizard). Since most retailers do not know that such a database exits, a novice supply chain team member or apprentice (audience participant) could conjure up a query on their PDA (magic wand) that searches this database (universe) by major category, country, postal code, sub-category, safety certifications or other incantations, and in less than 15 seconds produce a result set of 200 suppliers seemingly from thin air. This act of prestidigitation to most retailers would appear as magic. To his or her boss (lord or lady) this novice or apprentice team member would be looked at as a wizard, magician or seer.
Call your solution provider and see what type of sorcery they can share with you. If they can’t, call SafeSourcing the sorcerers of sourcing.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in Procurement Solutions, Procurement Tool, Product Procurement, Retail Supply Chain, Sourcing Strategy
