The Marine Stewardship Council runs an exciting and ambitious program, working with partners to transform the world’s seafood markets and promote sustainable fishing practices. MSC?s credible standards for sustainable fishing and seafood traceability seek to increase the availability of certified sustainable seafood and their distinctive blue ecolabel makes it easy for everyone to take part.

The Marine Stewardship Council or MSC has developed standards for sustainable fishing and seafood traceability. Both standards are based on independent third-party assessments by accredited certifiers. They meet the world’s toughest best practice criteria and are helping to transform global seafood markets.

Safesourcing supports all efforts taken by the MSC as it supports traceability to the source for fifty three (53) fisheries. To this authors understanding, there is no other organization in the world that supports traceability to this level for any product.

We continue to support traceability beyond one forward one back while holding suppliers that participate in our e-negotiation events accountable to that standard in order to support our customer?s Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR initiatives as such promoting consumer safety as it relates to food borne illness outbreaks and tracking.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Speaking ill of the competition is not something this author does. I have always been an advocate of deserving business from my customers by providing the best products and services at the best possible ROI. Whether a company is new or evolving from a prior way of doing things should not matter. Where was Microsoft 30 years ago? Had anyone ever heard of Whole Foods? What was Intel? There has always been next generation companies made of leaders that are, thinkers and visionaries that do the same things we’ve done every day in very different ways. The goal of these companies is to drive increases in productivity, create new jobs, better work environments and focus on making the world a better place for those that follow. There have always been early adopters, and there have always been followers. One has to choose their own path.

Today, there is an epidemic in our world as a result of unsafe products. Not enough is being done about it. The global supply chain is growing larger every day and traceability which does not exist is critically important. As consumers we have become far too familiar with terms like listeria, salmonella, ecoli, botulism, noroviros and staphylococcus aureos etc. There are additional issues with non consumable products such as lead in toys, BPH, flammable liquid issues and other hazardous materials to name a few.

Our environment is also suffering. We can do something about it. By us, I mean our collective sourcing community of retailers, suppliers, brokers, growers, manufactures and others. Every day conversation includes terms such as global warming, recycling, biodegradable, alternative fuels, pollution, conservation, green living and dozens of others eco focused phrases.

When you look at a company name, look at the statement it makes. Is it clear what the company stands for? Visit the company’s website and see if its message is clear and supports the brand image they espouse. If you meet with the company insure that their messaging supports at a detailed level what their brand indicates because it is their promise.

Our company is SafeSourcing. We absolutely do things that other companies do such as e-negotiation events. However we do it in a far different way. We have streamlined the process with new technology, and added intelligent functionality. We have added a critical focus on safety and the environment with the largest retail supplier databases in the world which also supports a traceable history beyond one forward one back. And, we do it less expensively because our technology allows us to.

What’s in a logo? Ours is SafeSourcing..

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Speaking ill of the competition is not something this author does. I have always been an advocate of deserving business from my customers by providing the best products and services at the best possible ROI. Whether a company is new or evolving from a prior way of doing things should not matter. Where was Microsoft 30 years ago? Had anyone ever heard of Whole Foods? What was Intel? There has always been next generation companies made of leaders that are, thinkers and visionaries that do the same things we?ve done every day in very different ways. The goal of these companies is to drive increases in productivity, create new jobs, better work environments and focus on making the world a better place for those that follow. There have always been early adopters, and there have always been followers. One has to choose their own path.

Today, there is an epidemic in our world as a result of unsafe products. Not enough is being done about it. The global supply chain is growing larger every day and traceability which does not exist is critically important. As consumers we have become far too familiar with terms like listeria, salmonella, ecoli, botulism, noroviros and staphylococcus aureos etc. There are additional issues with non consumable products such as lead in toys, BPH, flammable liquid issues and other hazardous materials to name a few.

Our environment is also suffering. We can do something about it. By us, I mean our collective sourcing community of retailers, suppliers, brokers, growers, manufactures and others. Every day conversation includes terms such as global warming, recycling, biodegradable, alternative fuels, pollution, conservation, green living and dozens of others eco focused phrases.

When you look at a company name, look at the statement it makes. Is it clear what the company stands for? Visit the company?s website and see if its message is clear and supports the brand image they espouse. If you meet with the company insure that their messaging supports at a detailed level what their brand indicates because it is their promise.

Our company is SafeSourcing. We absolutely do things that other companies do such as e-negotiation events. However we do it in a far different way. We have streamlined the process with new technology, and added intelligent functionality. We have added a critical focus on safety and the environment with the largest retail supplier databases in the world which also supports a traceable history beyond one forward one back. And, we do it less expensively because our technology allows us to.

What?s in a logo? Ours is SafeSourcing..

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Social responsibility and the environment

Another blogger on the supply-chain front is Ron Southard, who started SafeSourcing
last year. It?s a company based in Scottsdale, Ariz., geared for retailers who need
help in procuring merchandise and want supply-chain advice, focusing on environmental
and social-responsibility practices as well as other issues.

Southard said there has been an increased focus on supply-chain management because
of the added profit it can generate for businesses if they take cost-effective steps and
use the chain wisely. ?It is a well-known fact that the supply-chain section hasn?t been the most highly respected profession in retail.

Operations, loss prevention and marketing have always gotten more attention,? Southard said. ?If you are going to have an impact on your profitability, this is certainly an area that should get attention.?

The company?s blog, published Mondays to Fridays, discusses a number of topics, from how to improve your corporate social responsibility to handling the logistics of shipping products and dealing with U.S.Customs? 10 + 2 rule.

SafeSourcing has a database with 300,000 suppliers that support the retail community. The company?s Web site, at www.safesourcing.com, also has its own Wiki, named after the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. It defines terms commonly used in the supply chain industry.

In fact, there has never been a better time to save money. Suppliers that are hurting want your business and incumbent suppliers don?t want to lose your business. What a great time to have suppliers compete for your business?

There could not be a better environment for using hosted e-negotiation tools. And, when you are using a full service hosted tool, your valuable resources and associates are free to tackle other issues. This really is a common sense approach. If during hard economic times, you were to put more of your spend under the management of these types of tools, your customers just might thank you with more loyalty in the way of increased wallet share. It?s time for creative sourcing professionals to look for alternative sources of supply and place a larger percentage of spend their under management. This is an area in which Retail lags all industries.

In a study released last year by the Aberdeen Group titled Strategic Sourcing in EMEA, the study revealed that top-performing enterprises utilize e-sourcing solutions for a remarkable 56% of their addressable spend. This study included an evaluation of an astonishing 230 EMEA based sourcing programs. In addition, the best in class organizations realized cost savings 40% higher than all other organizations.

It is time to look at how we do things in retail and make some needed changes. If a super market company?s total cost of goods were 72% of revenue, and supermarket net profitability averaged 1%. What type of net profit improvement might we anticipate if a $500M supermarket retailer were to assign just 10% of their total spend to these types of tools? The math is pretty simple. Existing net profit at 1% would equal $5M. Present cost of goods at 72% would equal $360M. If 10% of total spend were assigned which is $36M to these tools and savings averaged only 10% which is well below e-negotiation averages, this retailer would reduce cost of goods by $3.6M or an astonishing improvement in net profit of 72%. Theoretically these savings should drop straight to the bottom line minus certain switching costs associated with new suppliers and savings timing based on actual delivery timeframes.

The cost of these types of tools, are so minimal in a hosted environment or SaaS implementation that they almost do not impact the financial model listed above. Remember in the Aberdeen report, best practices companies assigned 56% of their available spend. Their cost models may differ based on the Industry. In retail, what in the world are we waiting for? Most of your suppliers are using these tools to reduce their costs.

We appreciate and look forward to your comments.

A good friend of mine that works in retail procurement recently had safety and green initiatives added to his list of responsibilities. We discussed some of what that entails and other thoughts as to how designing a program that supports safer and more eco-friendly procurement.

1. Be pro-active in driving not for resale and for resale product safety within your company, and also supporting eco-standards in the procurement process.
2. Pay it forward with all of your trading partners by sharing what you are doing, and asking what they do to support yours or similar initiatives.
3. Educate your employees and trading partners about common safety standards and guidelines such as the SQF Certificate www.sqfi.com and the Global Food Safety Initiative www.ciesnet.com.
4. Educate your employees and trading partners about common eco-standards such as Green- Energy National Standard www.green-e.org or EcoLogo www.ecologo.org.
5. Point associates and trading partners to free educational websites such as www.safesourcing.com to use their free SafeSourcing Wiki or the Sourcebook professional social network for procurement professionals.
6. Only use trading partners that follow your lead.
7. Train your team to understand and use all available tools that insure supply chain safety such the free daily safety in sourcing blog at www.safesourcing.com or the low cost SafeSourceIt Supplier Database and Reverse Auction Tools.
8. Impose a system of measures and controls to monitor performance against clearly defined goals.
9. Start at the top and engage all levels of your company.

We appreciate and look forward to your comments.

This author was watching a television commercial the other night that indicated that as many as 61 million Americans last year did not refill their prescriptions on time.

The company was touting a service capable of filling prescriptions on file for customers automatically and then calling the customers to come pick it up. This would be a great service for me, as I always wait until the last day when I am about to run out. However this does not answer the problem of consumers that can not afford to fill their prescriptions on time if at all.

In trying to research the above inforamtion, I came across a survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation called The Kaiser Family Foundation health tracking poll that indicated of their survey respondents who admitted that they have delayed or put off care due to cost, over one-quarter admitted to failing to fill a prescription. Worse, 18% said that they had cut their pills in half, a practice not

The United States pays the highest prices in the world for brand-name drugs. Retailers have been dealing with this issue for years and have come up with a variety of strategies and programs in order to save their consumers money.

During September of 2006, Wal-Mart announced that it would make nearly 300 generic drugs available for only $4 per prescription for up to a 30-day supply at commonly prescribed dosages. The Wal-Mart plan later drove other retailers to create programs of their own. Target, Meijer, Wegmans, Costco and K-Mart and others have since announced similar generic plans. The Wal-mart program since its inception has grown to over 1,000 over the counter medications and claims to have saved consumers over $1 billion.

One way retailers have been able to drive down their costs with generic drugs and other over the counter medications, is to hold the drug manufacturers and other distributers accountable by purchasing their generic drugs through the non biased use of e-negotiation tools such as reverse auctions. Many retailers are not aware of the very large number of suppliers capable of bidding on their business. With the down economy, these suppliers are very anxious for new business.

History indicates that generic drug events can drive savings in some cases that are greater than thirty percent. Events can be held for dozens of suppliers and hundreds of products at one time and left open for days if not weeks in order to collect pricing prior to the final price compression. The fact is that major pharmaceutical companies use these tools regularly in order to drive down their costs and so should retailers.

Ask your solutions provider how many suppliers they can provide for your sourcing needs?

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

A statement of work or SOW is another document that is typically added to e-negotiation events in order to bring clarity to what is included in a bid. In essence the document lists the work activities to be agreed upon, the deliverables and a timeframe in which a supplier will be expected to perform against. The SOW requires agreement as do other documents prior to a supplier being allowed to place bids.

Areas that are normally included in a Statement of work might include but are not limited to the following.

1. The actual scope of work to be completed
2. The time period in which the work is to be performed
3. The location of work.
4. A list of the detailed deliverables
5. A Schedule of all deliverables
6. A standards adherence document.
7. Acceptance criteria
8. Other requirements.

Make sure that when you are running e-negotiation events that you make sure that all of the above information is considered and captured before you approve of an event being passed on for suppliers to review.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Has you ever heard a buyer say I can?t find or don?t have a specification for that product or service? If we are all being totally honest with ourselves, we know this is true and it happens every day of every week of every month. The interesting part is that we are asking for something that is already being used by the company or being sold by the company. How in the world can the specification be missing or not exist in the first place? How would we even know if what we were receiving is what we ordered? Back door receiving systems have tracked this for years. What happens if we order one type of copy paper like recycled 96 white, and receive a lower quality product?

This has always amazed me because an original order had to be placed at some point in time. In many cases the invoice (at least the original one) may even reference the product number or description if not both. Sometimes the invoice even calls attention to the terms and conditions. In fact, it may be a good bet that the current supplier has a copy of the original contract and specification on file that can be obtained with a simple phone call. On many occasions when hosting e-negotiation events new sources of supply may help to clarify specifications through their questioning. And then, and it is a big and then, there is of course the internet and sites like Ask, Google, and now Bing.

Of course you can also ask your e-procurement solutions provider if they have a product specification template library that is constantly updated. If they do, you can get a specification from them. At least it?s a place to start.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

If a Golf Tournament sponsored by a retailer can go green, then certainly retailers themselves can follow the same process.

I was reading our local newspaper The Arizona Republic today when I came across an interesting article titled Frys.com golf event goes green.

In the article it mentioned that the tournament has partnered with a third party called EcoAid to make the tournament more eco friendly. Together the companies will source the following products and services at a minimum.

1. Solar Generators
2. Soy based inks
3. Carbon neutral transportation services
4. Recycled paper for tickets
5. Products made from recycled materials
a. Cutlery
b. Plates
c. Napkins
6. Organic Dry Cleaning Services

The logical question is where would EcoAid find a list of suppliers for all of these products that are also held accountable to the same standards they support? The SafeSourceIt? Global Supplier Database is the best source for that search.

We appreciate and look forward to your comments