Todays post is from our SafeSourcing Archives.

Opportunities to learn are everywhere but can be used either to improve or damage your capabilities. For example, any married couple knows it’s not easy to have two flawed individuals share life together. However, even in less than ideal situations, there are opportunities to learn that you will never get anywhere else other than a situation where someone’s soul is borne to you in ways neither individual can hide from. There will be opportunities to learn how others think and operate, and to discover your own biases and shortcomings. However, there will also be opportunities to hide your insecurities, deny your flaws, blame shift, and stubbornly hold fast to your own LIMITATIONS. This is typically what people do when meeting viewpoints different from their own: We get defensive, myopic, and squander an opportunity to better ourselves.

Whether we like it or not, character traits like humility, and work ethic, will profoundly influence how well we perform our professional activities. No one promoted this fact more heavily than the author of. The 7 habits of highly effective people.

Stephen Covey proposed that maturity is a continuum from least to most mature by the steps of Dependence (reliance on others), to Independence (reliance on self), to Interdependence (Independently chosen reliance on others, to accomplish cooperatively what we cannot independently). This is counterintuitive because we typically think of Independence as being the most mature, in the form of the lone wolf leader, or the maverick who does things his/her way. But the truth is it’s far more difficult and beneficial to assume someone else might know something you don’t. By definition, this means you have to let other people make decisions out of their unique perspective and expertise that you WOULD NOT, or else you’ll always be LIMITED by your own understanding, and no organization will ever be all it can be without utilizing the collective expertise of the group.

Are your limits strictly determined by how hard you work? How fearless you are? How smart you are? What if you’re limiting yourself by making assumptions about how much value other individuals or organizations can contribute to your business? Do we have the strength of character to admit there are individuals or organizations that can perform certain tasks better than we can? Leaning on other’s expertise isn’t an insult to your capabilities; it’s a means of interdependent improvement.

There are variables in our lives we genuinely can’t control, and we shouldn’t want to, especially when it comes to learning through how we work and relate with other people. If we truly want to extend beyond our current limits, we have to allow external factors to force us to explore outside of our current paradigms, and deliberately chose to EXPAND, not LIMIT, our understanding through it.

For more information on how SafeSourcing can assist your team with this process or on our Risk Free trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative. We have an entire customer services team waiting to assist you today.

We look forward to your comments.

Today’s post is by Troy Lowe; Vice President of Development at SafeSourcing Inc.

With Amazon Prime Day rapidly approaching, it might be time for you to consider purchasing an Amazon Echo if you do not already own one. The Echo is a voice activated; internet connected smart speaker that contains a built-in virtual assistant named Alexa. Alexa will follow voice activated commands and can answer questions, stream music from current music services, set alarms and timers and control smart home devices such as lights, alarm systems and thermostats. If the Echo is a little out of your price range, or you are looking for a more inexpensive alternative, you may consider purchasing an Amazon Echo Dot. This is a hockey puck sized device that is smaller than the Echo and about half the price. Since the Dot is smaller, the sound quality will not be as good as the Echo but is still packs all of the same features. One of the things that make these devices so powerful are the Alexa skills. Alexa comes with a set of built-in skills, but other third-party skills can be downloaded as well. You can think of skills like apps that you download to your smartphone or tablet. These skills can be used for a variety of things such as answering questions, receiving weather forecasts, controlling smart home devices and receiving news content. There is an endless selection of skills that are available and here are a few of the most popular.

• Apple Music
• Nest Thermostat
• Philips Hue
• Logitech Harmony
• iRobot Home
• Amazon Storytime
• Spelling Bee
• ESPN
• Sleep Sounds
• Zyrtec Daily AllergyCast
• Uber/Lyft
• NYC Subway
• Domino’s Pizza
• GrubHub
• OpenTable

If you are interested in upgrading any of your electronic devices, feel free to contact SafeSourcing. We can gather all the necessary information for you and help you decide which devices meet your needs. If you would like more information on how SafeSourcing can help you, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service representative.  We have an entire team ready to assist you today.

Todays post is by Ron Southard, CEO at SafeSourcing Inc.

What it is not; are the things you buy all the time and use frequently. I have had many buyers, category managers and other procurement knowledge workers say to me on many occasions that Reverse auctions are good for buying our commodity purchases like cups,, cleaning supplies etc. but not for much else. We all know that is 100% not true. First of all, most buyers do not buy commodities unless they are going to make a finished product or are buying a consumable like beef or corn. Most buyers buy products that are influenced by or contain commodities. An example might be something like corrugate, where the pulp market, the corn market to name a couple are involved in the final product. You would be shocked by the number of products that are produced that come from corn.

To simplify, a Commodity as defined by the Bing Dictionary is a raw material or primary agricultural product that can be bought and sold, such as copper or coffee. And from  Wikipedia, a Commodity as used In economics, is an economic good, usually a resource, that has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them.

Quite often you can find a commodity index that report on the price of a commodity in both a forward looking or future as well as historical view. These tools can be helpful in determining where pricing was and where it is going particularly if you finished good contains significant amounts of multiple commodities as mentioned above.

Commodities are a beast to manage and keep track off! Companies like SafeSourcing are set up to watch their movement and recommend strategies to mitigate that movement in your pricing. To learn more, please reach out to a SafeSourcing Customer Services Representative. You will be glad you did.

Today’s reposted blog is by Margaret Stewart, Director of HR and Administration at SafeSourcing Inc..

Many of us have noticed the global effects of climate change more and more. Pictures of polar ice caps disappearing, the Great Barrier Reef dying, honey bees being few and far between, and record high temperatures breaking everyday are just some of the things we are facing. So, what can each of us do to help slow the damage?

Individually, we can try to consume and waste less. Home recycling has grown in availability and helps to lower the amount of waste sent to landfills and helps reduce the amount of plastic waste polluting ocean life. In addition, we are now able to use more energy efficient machines and lights in our homes. This helps reduce the amount of fossil fuel energy needed and even lowers our utility bills. So, what about our organizations?

Businesses often take the lead in their help combatting climate change. So, what are some things they can do? For one, many retailers are switching from single use plastic bags to reusable bags. These bags will help reduce the amount of bags needing to be made, reducing energy needs, and reduce the number that wind up affecting the ocean life directly. In addition, many companies are also switching from single use plastic bottles and utensils to biodegradable products. Some can be made from hemp, avocado seeds, and even corn and can degrade into the earth in comparably short amounts of time compared to the plastics currently being used. Not all companies have implemented these measures, so what can you do?

The first step to using greener products is to source them. A procurement partner, like SafeSourcing, can help your organization every step of the way, from identifying what options are available to implementing a change with continued support throughout. We can help your own team source the products and services that can help reduce our carbon footprint and can save money while doing so.

For more information on how SafeSourcing can help your procurement efforts, or on our Risk Free trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative. We have an entire team ready to assist you today.

Today’s blog is by Margaret Stewart, Director of HR and Administration at SafeSourcing Inc.

Like most things in life, we must be consistent to see the best results. We must brush our teeth twice a day to keep cavities away. We must work out regularly to maintain strength. We eat healthy foods to stay healthy. A similar routine can be said for your organization too. While business consistency may vary a bit from health and hygiene, it still affects the health of your business.

A lot of organizations today regularly need and/or sell supplies. This puts nearly every organization somewhere in the supply chain and most of these organizations will say that being consistent is key. You must have a steady supply of goods, have a consistent quality of those goods, and also maintain fair pricing. If any of these consistencies fails, so often does the business too.

Whether you are a supplier or a buyer of supplies and you find that consistency is lacking, a procurement professional can help. If you want to find a new supplier for the goods or services you already purchase, then a procurement professional, like SafeSourcing, can streamline your efforts, assist your team with their work, obtain competitive pricing, or simply find the vendors that might be a good fit. If you are a supplier, SafeSourcing can match you with the company that is already looking for the goods or services you might offer. The procurement partnership can help all those involved and help keep you supply chain consistent and working the way you want it.

For more information on how SafeSourcing can help your procurement efforts, or on our Risk

Free trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.  We have an entire team ready to assist you today.

Today’s post is  SafeSourcing Archives

When buying and selling goods and services, one of the first steps is to look at the atmosphere of the market.  Without this crucial step, you may find yourself in a dangerous situation.

One issue that typically applies to individuals when they are searching for the perfect home or the right car is that they can be sucked in by the market and not even realize that they have reached their demise. For instance, if there is no market in a category, then the products will never go anywhere because no one wants them.

Potential simple things that  can and will affect the market:

-Seasons
-Natural Disasters
-Changes in trend
-The items are too specialized

Each of the above are pretty simple, but the cause and effect associated with each have a huge impact on everything you buy, ship and use. A change in trends, might be something as simple as the size of container ships increasing. More products on one ship that uses less fuel is great, but can the ports handle it? Can the existing logistics mapping handle it. Can weather (wind) impact it.

Do you have time to think this all through? I doubt it.

There are many factors that can positively or negatively affect how you buy and sell goods. Luckily for you, SafeSourcing is here to help because we study these things! Please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Services Account Manager.

We look forward to your comments.