Today’s post is from Sarah Kouse a SafeSourcing Center of Expertise Account Manager

For practically forever the U.S. Postal Service has been in service delivering mail to businesses and residents six days a week all over the country. I always remember as a child getting very excited to go check the mail to see what arrived that day. Most of the time it was bills and/or advertising mailers for my parents, but on occasion I would receive a letter in the mail and it would feel like Christmas and bring me excitement to reveal what was inside.

The U.S. Postal Service has decided to discontinue Saturday’s for mail delivery, but continue to delivery packages to businesses and residents. Doing this, they are able to save about $2 billion. They plan to make this cut in August 2013.

Could they have chosen other actions of saving money and cutting costs without completely cutting out a service that patrons have been used to receiving for decades? Could they have looked at ways at cutting their spending on necessary items they purchase to run their business?

Cutting cost by downsizing is not always the only answer. That’s where SafeSourcing can help you and your business. SafeSourcing can look into ways to help you cut cost without downsizing or changing how you run your business. We can look at items that are purchased on a regular basis, that are necessary to run your business, and look at alternative options at purchasing those items significantly cheaper and still retaining that same quality of the product and/or service.

Contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative for more details on how we can save you money.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments

I recently reread an old survey conducted in 2008 by the Disney Family of eight thousand (8,000) adults. When asked who should enforce environmentally sound practices?  Forty percent of respondents indicated that it should be the government; thirty nine percent indicated that it should be individuals; thirteen percent indicated that it should be businesses and nine percent indicated that it should be the schools. That forty percent of individuals surveyed defaulted to this being a government responsibility is an issue or a cop out dependant on your own beliefs.

This author doesn’t believe that government can do it alone without guidance from the people. I don’t believe that businesses can do it alone without guidance from the government in the form of standards. I don’t believe that people can do it alone without taking it to the work place. And, unless we focus on it in the home and the workplace there is not much schools can do to enforce their environmental educational content. If parents don’t support it, children will not participate. In fact without all of us working together towards a common goal success is questionable.

At SafeSourcing there are many things that we are passionate about. However, three drive our daily thinking and actions.

1.   Reducing the costs of goods and services for our customers.

2.   Supporting the global community through the sourcing of safe goods and services.

3.   Supporting the environment through eco friendly sourcing practices that we hold suppliers accountable to that provide those goods and services.

Through these beliefs, we try to pay it forward every day where the environment is concerned. Can you or your company boil your environmentally focused CSR initiatives down to three distinct points that can be measured? If you can, your customers will notice. Ours do.

It would be interesting to see the statistics today (5 years later). Would they be better or worse. If you’d like to learn more about how to incorporate environmental best practices into your sourcing, please contact a SafeSourcing customer servvices account manager.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Please enjoy another post by SafeSourcing Account Manager Michael Figueroa

Here’s a quick little guide to get you started!

The first thing you need to know, is that in 1977 an organization was started called GS1 who’s purpose was to standardize data formats to facilitate trade throughout global supply chains. The GS1 standard is the most widely used in the world.

One of the standards GS1 developed is called “Global Trade Item Number” or GTIN. These numbers are meant to serve as globally recognized, unique identifiers to represent information about a particular product. Within this GTIN standard, there are also multiple sub-formats, some of which are GTIN-14, GTIN-13, GTIN-12 , and GTIN-8 and so forth, the suffix eluding to the number of digits the code uses. These GTIN formats can be further sub-categorized into some other widely accepted formats, though for simplicities sake we can just think of them as different languages whose use is grouped by regions or organizations that have found that particular language to be the most fitting for their business needs.

-Universal Product Codes (UPC) are the most widely used barcoding standard in North America. The most common sub-formats are UPC-A, and UPC-E, though there are others.

-European Article Numbers  (EAN) are used most commonly in Europe, and were developed as a superset to the UPC format. Of the UPC  formats however, the greatest number of digits is 12, whereas some EAN formats can have up to 17. Due to the ever increasing number of unique global products it is thought that the technical constraints of the UPC format will likely soon become obsolete and force users to move to the EAN format.

There can be different meanings behind the different prefixes and suffixes of these codes to designate a manufacturer, company, or item. However, for the casual user the important thing to know is that when you are referred to a GTIN code it can refer to any one of a number of formats, and if it is followed by a prefix of zeros it is likely a sub-group format.

(i.e.  a UPC  012345678905 is the same as GTIN  00012345678905)

When trying to find specific product information, a GTIN number is essential to making correct comparisons. Private Label contracting for instance, when informing your formulation specifications, will need to have more narrow definitions than just a National Brand Equivalent’s name. This is one area that SafeSourcing excels in, is making sure your procurement projects are making correct comparisons by managing the data within the project correctly.

Please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Services account manager for further information

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Today’s post is by Mark Davis; Sr. Vice President of Operations and CTO at SafeSourcing.

Fortune Magazine just published the top small and medium companies to work for.  Some of the highlights included extra money and vacation at long term anniversary, on-site childcare, monthly, company sponsored back massages, free breakfast buffet and game rooms.  You may be wondering what this has to do with your company.  The answer is everything.  When your suppliers are doing things right and creating a great place for their employees to work, it means they can service you better, provide better prices and products and have employees who are happier to work with your company.

In today’s blog we will be looking at a few other areas that suppliers are evaluated against that should be part of how you measure your potential and existing suppliers.

Industry Reviews – There are so many organizations these days whose sole purpose is to research and rank other companies against one set of criteria or another.  This BLOG was sparked by one of these surveys performed by a financial periodical, but there are other major companies like Gartner and Hoover who regularly publish the findings of their research for both companies and products.  These types of surveys and research results are important because they include the same types of criteria found in an RFI and are performed by independent organizations saving your organization some valuable research time.

Non-Profit Organization Ratings – Along with industry reviews, there are also organizations like the Better Business Bureau who give its ratings to companies based on complaints that have been logged against those companies and any other information available.  Others sites like Angie’s List and customer driven feedback sites allow you to see consolidated views of the companies, services and products.  These sites go beyond surveys and get right to the customer feedback you are looking for.

Certifications – Almost all organizations have been certified for one reason or another depending on the industry they belong to.   Many times their customers have no idea that they carry these certifications.  Capturing these during an RFI or RFP process will help you better evaluate the vendors you do business with.  Another way of getting this information is to go to the Certifying Organizations websites to find out which companies have been certified by their processes.

Peer Opinion – One of the most valuable questions you can ask a supplier but one that is rarely asked is “Who are your top three competitors?”  By asking all of the vendors this question during an RFI or RFP process you will quickly understand the landscape of who the leaders in the field are and how they view each other.  This can be valuable information to get from the companies who know their industry the best.

Understanding your potential and existing suppliers and how they compare in areas outside of the normal metrics, can help you develop good partnerships well in advance of any final contract with them.  For information on how SafeSourcing can help you gather these types of details, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.  

We look forward to your comments.

Today’s post is by Sarah Kouse an Account Manager at SafeSourcing.

Are you one of the many people that just recently purchased a new iPad 3rd Generation? Well, Apple announced last Tuesday, October 23rd that they were launching a new iPad 4th Generation. When the Apple event was taking place, many knew that they were going to announce the new iPad Mini, which shares similar specs of the iPad 2nd Generation, but has a 7.9-inch LED display instead of a 9.7-inch LED display. Along with the iPad Mini launch, they shocked consumers with an announcement that they were launching an iPad 4th Generation, just 6 months from the launch of the 3rd Generation. Not only was it very outrageous for Apple to have such a shocking announcement of the launch of the 4th Generation, but it is taking the 3rd Generation completely out of the iPad lineup.

It is important you know exactly what you are buying when you are purchasing any product. There are several reasons to get to know the product you are buying. If you get a product that you don’t know everything about and you don’t qualify yourself on the product, you could be getting a product that doesn’t necessarily fit your needs. When you get a product that doesn’t fit your needs, you are essentially wasting time and/or money because you will either need to return the product and get something that does fit what you need or you may not be able to return it and have to spend more money on another similar product. Another thing that may be helpful to you and your business is to incorporate in any contract for a product, that it includes new versions and upgrades. This will take care of any frustration for if something like what happened with the iPad were to happen with the product you purchased.

With all this being said, make sure you know all the facts of the product and what you need the product for before purchasing a product. For all of your sourcing needs, contact SafeSourcing to help!

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Today’s post is from Michael Figueroa an Account Manager at SafeSourcing.

Here’s a quick and telling experiment for you to try: Close your eyes, and imagine a NEW color. Not a new shade or combination of an existing color, invent in your mind a completely new (primary) color. Have you invented your new color yet?

Most likely, you did not succeed. Why do you think that is? Here’s the part most people don’t like to hear: Human beings are NOT creative, in the sense of being able to create new ideas from nothing. ALL creativity originates with INPUT.

For example, no one was ever capable of writing music before hearing notes. No one could ever design a building without being able to observe shapes. We can’t write a novel without having observed bits and pieces of the concepts written about. We can’t imagine the flavor of a spice without ever having tasted it. Everything we “create” is just a piecing together of inputs/information we have collected through our 5 senses.

This concept has profound and far reaching implications for our creativity and innovation efforts! One of which is that We don’t know what we don’t know. We can’t assume that if we think about something long enough, we’ll spontaneously generate new information. Yet we treat our businesses this way all the time. Innovation initiatives encourage employees to sit in their gray, sterile cubes all day and come up with something brilliant. We assume we know the best answer because we thought about it for a while, instead of because we researched and experimented with it. We surround ourselves with people who think like us, instead of learning from a diversity of thought.

What we should be asking ourselves, is “am I and my organization receiving the inputs we need to be innovative”? There are many strategies for obtaining and utilizing your inputs toward innovative ends, we’ll cover some of those in future posts. But if there are aspects to the products and services you use where you “don’t know what you don’t know”, give us a call at SafeSourcing, and let’s discuss how our research and knowledge base can help your organization innovate its procurement strategy.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Years ago we called these products store brands. During that time they were not considered premium products. Today you’d be amazed at how many companies there are that can provide you products under your own label. In many cases these products are just as good as the brand names, cost your customers less and more profitable as well.

Probably the best source of information relative to private label or store brand products is the PLMA or Private Label Manufacturers Association. This is actually a global organization.

According to their website, their show this year in Chicago from the 11th -13th of November will present more than 2,000 exhibit booths, featuring food, snacks and beverages, household and kitchen products, GM, and health and beauty. Exhibitors range from large, well-known store brand makers to small and medium-size companies. More than 35 countries will be represented on the show floor, including ten national pavilions.

If you’re not happy with your current private label offering or have never had one, this show is a must. There are also a number of educational workshops. In fact, PLMA sponsors workshops throughout the world annually. You can find a little more information on these at their website http://plma.com/.

If you’d like help with specifications or locating suppliers eager to bid on your business, please contact a SafeSourcing customer’s services representative.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.