Archive for the ‘Sourcing Strategy’ Category
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
Wednesday, August 18th, 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
It’s never been easier to drive down your costs.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in E-procurement Solutions, Sourcing Strategy, Strategic Sourcing
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010
I was reading a great article in yesterday’s USA TODAY titled Furniture to be greener, but pricier by Jayne O’Donnell. What caught my attention was an insert in the article also by the same author titled Finding ‘green’ furniture can take some effort. The premise of the insert was that you need to go to company’s websites if you are going to find out what makes up the products they sell as items will not be labeled or the sales people won’t know the answers.
For this author, that is complete whooie or at least should be. If a company of any merit has a set of CSR or Corporate Social Responsibility initiative, they tend to roll them out throughout their company to all employees as a differentiating service. This would certainly include everyone from the buyers who ask their trading partners these tough questions every day to the sales person that ends up selling the product.
However in a less than perfect world research is always helpful. If you do not post this information on your website, you should. If you do not have CSR initiatives, you should. If your sales people don’t know them by heart they should. At the end of the day your customers will have questions and they should.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments
Posted in Green eProcurement Practices, Sourcing Safe Foods, Sourcing Safe Products, Sourcing Strategy
Thursday, July 15th, 2010
One thing that news print (I still love newspapers) offers that internet based news does not is the tactile fell of holding the paper open and scanning all items on those two pages quickly. Sometimes you actually find pearls that really bring in to question the logic or understanding of the relationships between seemingly unrelated articles. In data analysis we call these tangential or affinity relationships.
Now back to my original premise. I was reading my local ARIZONA REPUBLIC business section the other day and two articles jumped out at me. The first was titled “Arizona Grocery prices continue to climb”. It was on the front of the first page in the business section. The second was titled “Technology helps Valley logistics company to thrive”. It was on the bottom of the second page of the business section right near DILBERT. In this case, that is appropriate.
The first article discussed the fact that prices were rising because of an improving national economy (why?) and higher energy costs (this means fuel). The second article discussed the use of technology to optimize the flow and storage of merchandise within the ground freight industry by selecting the best transportation options.
As I work in this space, I was already thinking (duh) when I saw the title of the two articles. It occurred to me during reading them that the authors could have combined these two articles to come up with something great that might be titled Retailers are finding better ways to keep retail prices flat during an improving economy by using logistics technology. The byline might read something like this. Retailers can improve profit without raising prices and gain market share.
I never would have found these articles on line or had them jump out at me like they did if I did not still read newspapers. Jay Leno always uses news articles in his humor that causes one to think. This is my version. So think about this if you are a retailer. Why do your prices need to rise when the economy improves? The truth is they don’t.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in Sourcing Strategy, Strategic Sourcing
Wednesday, July 14th, 2010
Unfortunately, elsewhere is most likely your competition if they want a job in retail procurement.
In a recent USA TODAY article by Trevor Hughes titled More Colleges using green as a selling tool; the author discusses the impact that green programs have on college students deciding where they will attend College or University. It is a safe bet if these students are using this as criteria for selecting where they will spend the next 4 years of their life, that they will also use the same criteria to make their career decisions.
The article goes on to quote results form The Sustainable Endowments Institute survey in 2009 which found that 27% of colleges and universities included sustainability messaging in their admissions process and that in 2010 69% did. That is a 156% increase in one year.
The Sustainable Endowments Institute focuses on areas such as food sourcing, recycling, and energy efficiency.
Quite often when this author asks this question of mid level managers, associates and employees, I just draw a blank stare. If you have this discussion with investors, the eyes just roll and you can see the note caption saying blah, blah, blah.
If you don’t have a plan you can not blame anyone but yourself.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in Business Sourcing, Green eProcurement Practices, Sourcing Safe Foods, Sourcing Safe Products, Sourcing Strategy
Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010
A Punch Out is a feature of e-procurement software applications that makes it possible for buyers to access suppliers Web sites from within the buyer’s solution provider’s procurement application. The buyer leaves their solution providers system and goes to an alternative supplier’s Web-based catalog to find and potentially order products. This is also a good way to conduct research and gather information. A vendor catalog that is enhanced for this process is known as a punch-out catalog.
This author has always felt that this is a good way to buy products that you currently buy from alternative sources, but it does not replace the possible price compression and other benefits of from taking these products through the normal e-RFX process.
Ask your solution provider their opinion on this process.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in B2b Supply Chain, E-procurement, E-procurement Solutions, Sourcing Strategy, Strategic Sourcing
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010
A great place to start is an organization called the The Construction Safety Council which was founded in 1989. Ask you conduction partners if they are a member.
The CSC is a non-for-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of safety and health interests in the field of construction throughout the world. It was chartered by a board of directors composed mostly of large construction company owners and operators whose vision and leadership made the organization possible. Since its humble beginnings in 1989, the organization has quickly grown to become a world class professional construction consortium with associations that span the globe. With an emphasis on quality and customer service, all of the construction safety and health resources and loss reduction tools developed by the Construction Safety Council have been designed to maximize positive impact on your safety program.
The SafeSourceIt™ Global Supplier Database has hundreds of construction companies that are held accountable to these types of standards. Are you asking all the right questions or is your solution provider?
We look forward to and appreciate your comments
Posted in Business Sourcing, Procurement Solutions, Retail Supply Chain, Sourcing Safe Products, Sourcing Strategy
Wednesday, June 9th, 2010
A conundrum in it’s simples definition is a riddle or a question to an intricate and difficult problem, so it’s know wonder with the above scenario that we have compliance and other related issues such as ever greening in the retail industry that literally costs companies millions of dollars. The answer to the conundrum is that with little effort this problem can be avoided. And the way to avoid it is to use a contract management solution. Most retailers do not do so today.
We know that fortune one thousand companies many of which are retailers may have as many as 100,000 contracts. We also know that in the retail trade less than 15% of companies have contract management solutions. We also know that companies that do use contract management solutions have compliance ratings significantly higher than companies that do not. It is a well known fact that these solutions can reduce administrative overhead by up to 30%. Those savings although significant from an ROI perspective pale in comparison to the loses associated with evergreen or auto renewal contracts that include price increase language when written notice is not received as called out in the contract. Just imagine a bulk fuel contract for millions of gallons with a single basis point escalator above a current Platts, OPIS or Gulf coast index if the contract evergreens. Ouch.
The good news is that a contract management solution like SafeContract™ can solve this problem and provide a near instantaneous ROI. SafeContract™ is offered in the form of Software as a Service or SaaS which makes it much more affordable than an in-house solution. The good news is that the data is yours and you only use what you need.
Don’t wait any longer to reduce your administrative costs, manage discounts and rebates, make your auditors happy with improved compliance and eliminate ever greening.
Contact SafeSourcing™ today.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in Contract Management, Sourcing Strategy, Strategic Sourcing
Tuesday, June 8th, 2010
Contributions to the welfare of society can come in many forms such as supporting the arts, further education, giving to social welfare agencies, supporting community-building initiatives, reducing pollution, and the other charitable causes. Businesses that adopt socially responsible directives help to allow government agencies to minimize their involvement with the corporation
One way that retail companies can add to their social consciousness is to try and use Certified Reference Materials or (CRMs) which are the controls or standards used to check the quality and traceability of products. Requiring these standards prior to purchasing products indicates a lot about a company’s commitment to its stakeholders which includes their consumers. This will also mitigates risk should recalls occur as a result of harm.
By the way of an example, a reference standard for a unit of measurement is an artifact that embodies the quantity of interest in a way that ties its value to the reference base. At the highest level, a primary reference standard is assigned a value by direct comparison with the reference base.
A primary standard is usually under the jurisdiction of a national standards body such as ISO or The International Organization for Standardization which is an international standard -setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. Relative to the example of a primary standard, you might refer to the Future ISO 26000 standard on social responsibility published as Draft International Standard which ties very nicely to this post.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in Sourcing Safe Foods, Sourcing Safe Products, Sourcing Strategy, Strategic Sourcing
Tuesday, June 1st, 2010
If you have a limited source of new suppliers, including new vendors every time you run a new e-negotiation event will be incredibly difficult. Resultantly your process by default ends up as just a new way to continue to award business to the same suppliers over and over again. This process may yield some productivity increases initially, but over time meaningful price compression will be difficult if not impossible.
Solution providers suggest that somewhere between six and ten suppliers are required to drive optimum e-negotiation results, these data suggest that attaining sustainable results from the e-negotiation process has a direct correlation to the number of new suppliers available and willing to compete for your business.
By example let’s suppose you can only find six suppliers to invite to an e-negotiation event. Your customer services team using their best sales skills can probably convince most if not all of these suppliers to participate. This may be fine the first time around. Although this author believes there are better sustainability strategy even given this scenario.
Suppliers that finished first or second or incumbents that were displaced may agree to participate again in the future, but with a smaller number of suppliers and no new sources it will make the rerun of this auction less successful.
Lacking a robust source of new suppliers, and in the above case we only had a total of six available how can companies create a sustainable process.
The lack of a robust global supplier database limits future price compression at a minimum. It may also have a negative impact on quality, process and service. Particularly if history suggests a minimum of six to ten suppliers in order to drive optimum results…
Make sure to ask your e-negotiation solutions provider how many suppliers they have in their supplier database and if you can have regular access, it will determine your future success.
We appreciate and look forward to your comments
Posted in E-procurement, E-procurement Solutions, E-procurement Tools, E-supply Chain, Global E-procurement, Procurement Solutions, Procurement Tool, Sourcing Strategy, Strategic Sourcing, Supply Chain Procurement
