Archive for the ‘E-supply Chain’ Category

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Sourcing prescription drugs gets a little simpler all of the time.

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

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Scottsdale Arizona’s SafeSourcing Inc. releases outstanding Q3 2010 results.

Monday, November 8th, 2010

Despite the continuing economic condition SafeSourcing Inc. reported significant 3rd quarter 2010 revenue growth of 42.45% versus the same period of 2009.Safesourcing has also continued to significantly grow its customer base with wins across all retail verticals as well as other new industries. SafeSourcing also recorded significant net income for the same period.

According to Ron Southard SafeSourcing CEO, We continue to honor the commitment we made to the retail market when we launched this company of being able to address all spends regardless of size. During 2010 we have sourced products for companies with 1000’s of stores and for companies with only a single location. SafeSourcing has run hundreds of millions of dollars through our system this year for all RFX types and provided new sources of supply, a focus on companies CSR inititives and significant savings across all categories. Southard continued by saying that they could not be more pleased with the faith that their customers have placed in SafeSourcing during a very challenging economic climate.

To learn more about SafeSourcing please visit our website www.safesourcing.com.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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Scottsdale Arizona?s SafeSourcing Inc. releases outstanding Q3 2010 results.

Monday, November 8th, 2010

Despite the continuing economic condition SafeSourcing Inc. reported significant 3rd quarter 2010 revenue growth of 42.45% versus the same period of 2009.Safesourcing has also continued to significantly grow its customer base with wins across all retail verticals as well as other new industries. SafeSourcing also recorded significant net income for the same period.

According to Ron Southard SafeSourcing CEO, We continue to honor the commitment we made to the retail market when we launched this company of being able to address all spends regardless of size. During 2010 we have sourced products for companies with 1000?s of stores and for companies with only a single location. SafeSourcing has run hundreds of millions of dollars through our system this year for all RFX types and provided new sources of supply, a focus on companies CSR inititives and significant savings across all categories. Southard continued by saying that they could not be more pleased with the faith that their customers have placed in SafeSourcing during a very challenging economic climate.

To learn more about SafeSourcing please visit our website www.safesourcing.com.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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Are you anti Social Networks? Be careful how you define yourself.

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

For those of you that do not think that social networks have a place in the business world or in procurement in general, just remember that they are the tool of choice of the younger generations. That would be those that are coming after those of us with a few with more than a few years of experience. By the way, that includes the use of these tools in their work lives.

The blogosphere is crowed with any number of opinions on any number of subjects. As a medium it has evolved from on line dictionaries in the early to mid 1990?s. Blogs are a form of Social Media just as Wiki?s are. Forums have been around for thousands of years, it is only natural that as technology evolved to include more people that offerings such as Facebook would evolve to include many of these tool types. It is only a matter of time before the evolve to help us solve complex problems in all areas of life and that include procurement.

If you visit the SafeSourcing Sourcebook? and become a member you can host forums on anything you wish to learn about in the procurement space and post that forum to thousands of other members. It may be something as simple as a question like this. Can anyone tell me how they are presently planning to source paper products based on the rumors of an up pulp market? How might you plan on mitigating price increases?

Job specific social communities are not the way of the future, they are here today. Visit Sourcebook? and create your forum.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments

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Before you comment about strategic sourcing!

Wednesday, September 29th, 2010

Recently Sourcing Innovation has carried a series of posts, comments and rebuttals as to whether strategic sourcing is alive or dead. This author also posted on the subject in a two part series titled Join the argument. Strategic Sourcing alive or dead? Part I of II on September 17th. And Join the argument. Strategic Sourcing alive or dead? Part II of II on September 20th.

As I read through much of the content in these posts I came to the conclusion that most solution providers comment are not seeing the forest for the trees. Officially strategic sourcing has been around as a sourcing term for 25 years. Unofficially it has been around as a process as long has man has been able to hunt and gather. Almost all searches on strategy will at some point refer to some from of military definition. That may unfortunately be a commentary on mankind. We can certainly agree however that from a military perspective we don’t need to look any further than Germany’s failure in the Ukraine during WWII to understand that not following ones own strategy can have disastrous effects.

Strategy is about understanding your subject area and all of the influence points associated with it. The question is; can we have a strategy without tools? The answer is yes. The key for solution providers is to develop and refine their tools so that they are easily usable by practitioners in order to carry out their strategy, goals and tactics which by their nature follow larger and more complex plans.

Let’s take a simple look at how we might be complicating things. From this authors perspective a strategic plan is made up of the following high level elements.

1. Strategy: Strategy is science or art and sometimes more of the later of combining and employing the means by which procurement can plan and direct supply chain improvement measured by level of operational efficiency and improvement.
2. Goals or Objectives: Goals or objectives fall directly from the strategy to drive a desired state or desired outcome of  persons or of  systems as set by the strategy
3. Tactics: Tactics are the conceptual action that drive goal fulfillment and are used by the procurement organization to achieve  specific goals or objectives

So simply it is not up to us to determine if strategic sourcing is dead or alive, it is up to the subject company that builds a strategic plan to makes sure they have a strategic procurement element of their plan that uses the best tools available to analyze and measure their results. And who are we to say that is not strategic.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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The economists say the recession has been over for more than a year.

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

Finding new sources of supply has always been an issue. It may even be more important if your current suppliers can not provide what you need because they were forced to down size during recent economic woes.

This author has posted on numerous occasions relative to the importance of a robust retail supply chain and how retail companies might manage their relationships with current and new sources of supply. A significant part of the process is to have alternative sources of supply that you can rely upon. During last years H1N1 flu outbreak, The SafeSourceIt™ supplier database was able to provide multiple sources of surgical mask suppliers to a customer that had not been able to find them elsewhere for resale in their stores. Although this particular issue was caused by panic buying, it is still a supply and demand problem. The question this begs is are your suppliers capable of supplying your needs as demand increases? Did they reduce staff during the downturn? Have they been able to ramp up since then? Have their suppliers? The message here is, don’t wait until a time of panic or increased prosperity to work and plan for spikes in the supply chain that may cause your customers pain.

The SafeSourceIt™ Retail Supplier Database contains over 380,000 vetted global suppliers that are certified in over 25 different areas.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments

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If you want to improve your profitability maybe it’s time to look at a private label program.

Thursday, September 23rd, 2010

According to Wikipedia Private Label goods and services are available in a wide range of industries from food to cosmetics.

Historically these products or store brands were positioned as low cost alternatives to major national and international brands. Today if you read the labeling many of the products are virtually identical and in some cases companies are positioning their brands as better or premium to the large brands.

A great source if education is The Private Label Manufacturer’s Association or PLMA. Their website is www.plma.com. PLMA sponsors an annual show which this year is being held in Chicago the 14th-16th of November. This show is full of great workshops as well as manufacturers that would be glad to compete for you business.

According to GfK Roper, 57% of all shoppers now say that they purchase store brands which represents a 21% increase from ten years ago and an impressive 38% growth rate.

E-procurement tools typically assigned to the e-RFX suite are an ideal way to source these products and will help to drive your costs even lower. Start with an RFI to select the companies or manufacturers you are interested in partnering with and then invite the best few to bid for your business.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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Are you comfortable with your sources of supply? Are your suppliers comfortable with you?

Thursday, September 16th, 2010

Being comfortable is great. Sometimes however being to comfortable can also create complacency. We all know we have coworkers that come to work everyday and do what only what they perceive their job to be. Nothing extra is ever done, and few ideas come from these folks that are just comfortable with what they are doing and how they are doing it. They do a good job at it, but that?s it.

Let?s apply this type of complacency to knowledge workers in the supply chain. If we are being honest with ourselves; we see this situation all the time.

?A buyer you know has a list of products or a category manager has a category that they are responsible for. There are only so many hours in the day and they have a job to do in order to get product to a distribution center, warehouse, store or some other location on time. They have done business with the same suppliers for a number of years. In fact the person in the job before them did business with these same suppliers and the person before that. So its easy to not rock the boat. It takes to much time to look for new sources of supply and after all one can only manage so many relationships anyway. Finally the buyer is comfortable with product quality and pricing has not gone up to much over time.

With the help of your e-procurement solution?provider, this situation is easily rectified, but you need to be open to change. This is normally led from the top of the organization. The following is a partial list of what you can do to eliminate complacency and support the fact that you knowledge workers don?t have a lot of free time.

1.?Provide your e-procurement company with a list of your suppliers by category.
2.?Provide your e-procurement provider with a complete list of products carried by each supplier.
3.?As your e-procurement provider to produce a list of new sources of supply located within a fifty mile radius of each distribution center or warehouse
4.?Ask your e-procurement provider to provide data on each supplier?s including incumbent?s safety certifications such as GFSI and ISO.
5.?Ask your e-procurement provider to provide supplier background information such as years in business and user references.
6.?Select categories or products to source from your incumbents catalog and cross reference with new suppliers offerings.

The additional steps to this process can be provided by SafeSourcing as a part of our best practices deliverables which are included in our event pricing. The SafeSourceIt? Supplier database includes over 360,000 global sources of supply that can be sorted by a variety of filters such as country, county, postal code or mileage from a particular location, plus many more.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments

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E-procurement.What’s in a definition?

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

I was reading a blog post from the Doctor over at Sourcing Innovation today titled “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to e-Procurement: Terminology” and I thought it was great as well as very timely.

Ultimately it is up to practitioners and solution providers of these tools to educate their customers as to what the proper terms are for the tools they are using. As an example E-RFI, E-RFP, E-RFQ. I have numbers of customers that have used other solution providers and not only are the definitions different by customer; they are actually different within a specific company. In some cases everything is referred to as a reverse auction and in other situations the companies have made up their own name for the service or tool.

This author uses Wikipedia and Wictionary quite often as a source and in this case, they have a very good definition that covers most of the terminology in the entire e-procurement space as well as related B2B and B2C internet based or private network based functions. As your company moves in the direction of a computerized supply chain management solution for your company understanding what you are asking for and what you are using will make both your job and that of your solution provider easier.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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E-procurement.What?s in a definition?

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

I was reading a blog post from the Doctor over at Sourcing Innovation today titled ?A Hitchhiker’s Guide to e-Procurement: Terminology? and I thought it was great as well as very timely.

Ultimately it is up to practitioners and solution providers of these tools to educate their customers as to what the proper terms are for the tools they are using. As an example E-RFI, E-RFP, E-RFQ. I have numbers of customers that have used other solution providers and not only are the definitions different by customer; they are actually different within a specific company. In some cases everything is referred to as a reverse auction and in other situations the companies have made up their own name for the service or tool.

This author uses Wikipedia and Wictionary quite often as a source and in this case, they have a very good definition that covers most of the terminology in the entire e-procurement space as well as related B2B and B2C internet based or private network based functions. As your company moves in the direction of a computerized supply chain management solution for your company understanding what you are asking for and what you are using will make both your job and that of your solution provider easier.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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