This author prefers to take the position when confronted with this specific objection that “The DIFFICULT we can do at once; the impossible will take us a little longer. If we look at all of our roadblocks in this way, the road forward does not seem as formidable.

In the e-procurement space, teams are very often underfunded and understaffed particularly in low tier one and tier two companies. As such what you are not hearing is that the organization can’t change. More than likely what you are hearing is an internalized frustration with the fact that there is not enough time to evaluate new processes or tools and still get the demanding job they already have done in a successful fashion. In other words; we don’t do things that way because we don’t have the time or the commitment from senior management to do things in any way other than the way we have done things for years.

Confronted with this situation requires understanding and empathy. Understanding means having done the proper research of the company that you are going to be meeting with. Empathy means understanding your prospects emotions and feelings. In other words it is the ability to “put yourself into his or hers shoes”.

A sales pitch of I can save you money immediately may sound like a stunning offering. Followed up by we have done it for others may even sound better. However, how this resonates with your prospect is going to be determined by other factors that can only be understood by understanding their business. In the procurement space that means understanding the entire procure to pay process and its ramifications on your prospects company.

Safesourcing understands retail from the farm to the kitchen table. Let us help your company source better quality products from a more diverse list of suppliers that support safety, traceability and support environmental best practices.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

This author prefers to take the position when confronted with this specific objection that ?The DIFFICULT we can do at once; the impossible will take us a little longer. If we look at all of our roadblocks in this way, the road forward does not seem as formidable.

In the e-procurement space, teams are very often underfunded and understaffed particularly in low tier one and tier two companies. As such what you are not hearing is that the organization can?t change. More than likely what you are hearing is an internalized frustration with the fact that there is not enough time to evaluate new processes or tools and still get the demanding job they already have done in a successful fashion. In other words; we don?t do things that way because we don?t have the time or the commitment from senior management to do things in any way other than the way we have done things for years.

Confronted with this situation requires understanding and empathy. Understanding means having done the proper research of the company that you are going to be meeting with. Empathy means understanding your prospects emotions and feelings. In other words it is the ability to “put yourself into his or hers shoes”.

A sales pitch of I can save you money immediately may sound like a stunning offering. Followed up by we have done it for others may even sound better. However, how this resonates with your prospect is going to be determined by other factors that can only be understood by understanding their business. In the procurement space that means understanding the entire procure to pay process and its ramifications on your prospects company.

Safesourcing understands retail from the farm to the kitchen table. Let us help your company source better quality products from a more diverse list of suppliers that support safety, traceability and support environmental best practices.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

This author was reading a short story today in a section of the Arizona Republic called News from Home. The article had no byline but was attributed to the Wire Services.

The title of the article was “Bull gives slaughterhouse run for its money ? in vain”.

Police say a 1,400 pound bull that escaped from a northern New Jersey slaughterhouse dragged officers with a lasso down a street and ran 10 blocks before being captured and sedated. Chief John DeCando, spokesman for the Paterson Police?s animal control division, said the bull was being unloaded at ENA Meat Packing Inc. when it broke loose just before 8:30 a.m. Monday. DeCando said traffic was light during the Bull Run. He said the area where officers were dragged was not a residential area or near a school. Officers finally corralled the animal and DeCando was able to sedate it and return it to the slaughterhouse.

It certainly seems that this bull put up a valiant fight for its life. The appropriate ending might have been to find a farm willing to take the bull in and let is live out its life in a pleasant pasture or as a stud.

Many of us consume meat products. For procurement professionals, one way they can help is to make sure that farms, ranches, slaughterhouses and meat processors follow the most humane practices in order for your company to procure their meat products. One way to do that is to insist that your suppliers follow The Certified Humane Raised & Handled program.

The Certified Humane Raised & Handled program is an inspection, certification and labeling program for meat, poultry, egg and dairy products from animals raised to humane care standards. To learn more please visit The Certified Humane Raised & Handled website www.certifiedhumane.com.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

CSA International is the abbreviation for Canadian Standards Association International (CSA), a provider of product testing and certification services. CSA tests products for compliance to national and international standards and issues certification marks for qualified products. Certification marks tell potential customers and users that a product has been evaluated by a formal process-involving examination, testing and follow-up inspection-and that it complies with applicable standards for safety and performance

According to CSA?s website they have nine KPI?s for measuring performance during 2009. One of them CSA International and OnSpeX Monitor Product Recalls to Help Protect Consumers is used to monitor product recalls so that they can rely on global supply chains to provide safe products to the market.

Since January 1998, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued 3,428 product recalls and Health Canada has issued 493. Part of what we do every day at CSA International is to monitor these recalls, become involved if they bear the CSA certification mark and take lessons learned back into the standards development.

At SafeSourcing we monitor the activities of organizations like the CSA so that our customers do not need to. What tools does your solution provider use to make sure that the products you buy are safe.

We appreciate and look forward to your comments.

Many times the ideas for my blog posts come from conversations with customers or prospects. Often times these same thoughts make it into our product development plans. In fact listening to our customers is one of our most important jobs.

During a recent visit with a retailer, their head of procurement complimented me on our companies efforts related to food safety and in particular commented on the more than 30 safety certifications we hold our 300,000 plus global suppliers accountable to in our SafeSourceIt? Supplier Database. His thinking was that since they did not sell fresh foods, that area of our business did not apply to them.

This particular retailer does however sell packaged food products, pet food, cosmetics, private label bottled water and also bags these products l for their customers in plastic bags. I think most of you can see where I?m heading with this. Plastic bags are a concern for many areas of the country and in fact outlawed in some areas due to their environmental impact. Food packaging can contain BPA. Dog food has contained products such as melamine. Toys have been found to contain lead. Recently the U.S. government issued a warning on baby garments sold by a popular children?s label. Without too much effort we came up with the following five categories.

1. Clothing
2. Packaged Foods
3. Pet Food
4. Toys
5. Bottled Water.

This author would suggest that we need to exercise care with all of the products we buy. Your suppliers need to be accountable to a number of standards and certifications while also providing traceability for those products beyond the one forward and one back standard that is generally supported in the industry today.

Procurement solution providers need to be prepared to discuss how they intend to accomplish this level of accountability for their retail partners in order to limit consumer risk, while also helping to mitigate potential related risks associated with litigation and other recall related costs that have a direct impact on company profit.

We appreciate and look forward to your comments

First and foremost as your company builds programs intended to support our environment with your through your procurement processes; is making the decision that corporately you will procure, reuse and resell Environmentally Preferable Products or (EPP). At a minimum company?s should at least make this a significant checks and balances system within their existing procurement processes. By definition, an environmentally preferable product is a product or service that has a lesser or reduced impact on human health and the environment when compared with competing products or services that serve the same purpose. Such products or services may include, but are not limited to those which contain recycled content, minimize waste, conserve energy or water, and reduce the amount of toxics either disposed of or consumed.

The above process commitment will ultimately have an impact on reducing your company?s carbon footprint. Your carbon footprint is “the total set of greenhouse gas emissions caused directly and indirectly by a company, person or other organization. Even products can have a carbon footprint measure based on how they are manufactured. Carbon footprints are measured by undertaking a greenhouse gas emissions evaluation. Once the size of a carbon footprint is known, a strategy can be devised to reduce it.

Creating a measurement system is more difficult although there are measurements that the government holds manufcuturers to. A simple process as a retailer that this author supports is what percentage of product procured went through this system of check and balances this quarter or this year versus last quarter or last year. Another would be what percentage of products that you reuse or resell would qualify as Environmentally Preferable Products versus the number for prior reporting periods.

This is a very simple process to put in place and something that consumers are looking for. Ask your procurement solutions provider how they can support you in this effort.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

The Design for the Environment Program can drive a simple set of questions that can
insure that the products you offer your consumers are environmentally safe.

The Design for the Environment (DfE) Program works in partnership with a broad range of stakeholders to reduce risk to people and the environment by preventing pollution.
The Design for the Environment Program is a United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) program that works to prevent pollution, and the risk pollution presents to humans and the environment The use of Life cycle assessment (LCA) is employed to forecast the impacts of different (production) alternatives of the product in question, thus being able to choose the environmentally most friendly. The program also includes several subsidiary approaches, such as Design for Disassembly.

Since 1992, the DfE Program has worked with more than 18 industrial sectors to empower industry to incorporate environmental considerations, along with performance and cost considerations, into decision-making processes. By doing so, companies provide environmental protection more effectively and efficiently by using cleaner technologies. This Web site highlights findings and impacts of the DfE Program.

What process does your e-procurement solution provider follow in order to support your Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives (CSR)?

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Contract Management is the management of contracts with customers, vendors, partners, or employees. Contract management includes negotiating the terms and conditions in contracts and ensuring compliance with the terms and conditions, as well as documenting and agreeing upon any changes that may arise during its implementation or execution.

Contract Management or (CM) can be summarized as the process of systematically and efficiently managing contract creating, execution, and analysis for the purpose of maximizing financial and operational performance and minimizing risk.

A recent study found that 42% of enterprises indicated that the top driver for improvements in the management of contracts is the pressure to better assess and mitigate risks. In addition, nearly 65% of enterprises report that contract lifecycle management (CLM) has improved exposure to financial and legal risk. Common commercial contracts include employment letters, sales invoices, purchase orders, and utility contracts. Complex contracts are often necessary for construction projects, goods or services that are highly regulated, goods or services with detailed technical specifications, intellectual property (IP) agreements.

A significant problem with the life cycle of contracts today particularly in the retail space is a process called evergreening by which a contract is renewed automatically, often with less favorable terms. These evergreen contracts between two parties will automatically renew after the completion of the contract period. This will occur until the agreement is cancelled by either party. Without a system in place to monitor or manage contracts, evergreening can add unnecessary costs to businesses, often for millions of dollars as well as damage ongoing relationships between suppliers and buying organizations.

Ask you solutions provider how they can help you in this area.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

According to the king of all wikis, Wikipedia; a wiki is a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language. Wikis are used in businesses to provide affordable and effective intranets and for knowledge management. Ward Cunningham, developer of the first wiki, originally described it as “the simplest online database that could possibly work”.

“Wiki? is a reduplication of “wiki”, a Hawaiian word for “fast”. It has been suggested that “wiki” means “What I Know Is”.

The SafeSourcing wiki is one of many tools available on the SafeSourcing website which is dedicated to easy to use and free sources of information for retail procurement professionals. This type of wiki is generally referred to as a specialized wiki. As such, the Safesourcing wiki is focused on procurement terms and discussions that provide general knowledge relative to any number of procurement and supply chain related issues. Subject matter can be wide ranging and could include the following subjects, and much more.

1. Safety in the supply chain
2. Environmental consciousness in the supply chain
3. Retail procurement terms and definitions.
4. Supply Chain Standards

An example of how a procurement team or individual knowledge worker might use a wiki could evolve like this. A retailer decides to develop their social responsibility programs around the procurement of humane raised meat products, sea food products and other environmentally supported products. As you have noted through following the above links a well thought out wiki can provide greater definitions, discussions as well as links to other information sources such as group websites etc.

The nice thing about wikis is that the definitions and discussions are not static. Authorized users can add to definitions, discussions as well as rate the site. This in and of itself is educational. In this way a body of work can grow from the contribution of all users and help to provide a reliable source of data for professionals in a specialized field.

Please feel free to visit the safesourcing wiki regularly and offer your comments, terms, definitions and suggestions. This section of the SafeSourcing website is a free tool for procurement professionals. It is just one way we try to support the retail procurement and supply chain professional, which is the most difficult job in retail.

We appreciate and look forward to your comments.

Ron Southard

According to the king of all wikis, Wikipedia; a wiki is a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language. Wikis are used in businesses to provide affordable and effective intranets and for knowledge management. Ward Cunningham, developer of the first wiki, originally described it as “the simplest online database that could possibly work”.

“Wiki” is a reduplication of “wiki”, a Hawaiian word for “fast”. It has been suggested that “wiki” means “What I Know Is”.

The SafeSourcing wiki is one of many tools available on the SafeSourcing website which is dedicated to easy to use and free sources of information for retail procurement professionals. This type of wiki is generally referred to as a specialized wiki. As such, the Safesourcing wiki is focused on procurement terms and discussions that provide general knowledge relative to any number of procurement and supply chain related issues. Subject matter can be wide ranging and could include the following subjects, and much more.

1. Safety in the supply chain
2. Environmental consciousness in the supply chain
3. Retail procurement terms and definitions.
4. Supply Chain Standards

An example of how a procurement team or individual knowledge worker might use a wiki could evolve like this. A retailer decides to develop their social responsibility programs around the procurement of humane raised meat products, sea food products and other environmentally supported products. As you have noted through following the above links a well thought out wiki can provide greater definitions, discussions as well as links to other information sources such as group websites etc.

The nice thing about wikis is that the definitions and discussions are not static. Authorized users can add to definitions, discussions as well as rate the site. This in and of itself is educational. In this way a body of work can grow from the contribution of all users and help to provide a reliable source of data for professionals in a specialized field.

Please feel free to visit the safesourcing wiki regularly and offer your comments, terms, definitions and suggestions. This section of the SafeSourcing website is a free tool for procurement professionals. It is just one way we try to support the retail procurement and supply chain professional, which is the most difficult job in retail.

We appreciate and look forward to your comments.

Ron Southard