4 days agoComplexity and Price Volatility in ProcurementWe’ve written previously about the conceptual difference between complexity and complication. “To say that a process is complex is the not the same thing as saying it is complicated.” For example, we can imagine the developer of a large mixed-use residential and commercial construction project. These undertakings can have upwards…Procurement3 min read
May 19What Is the ROI of a Procurement System?When making any kind of a decision about digital transformation, people like to talk about the Return on Investment (ROI). What is the ROI of a procurement system? How can we think quantitatively and qualitatively about the costs and benefits? Imagine Betty Buyer. Her CFO tasked her with finding a…Procurement4 min read
Apr 26How Can B2B Buyers Collaborate Across Organizations?How can B2B buyers collaborate across organizations? Why is joint purchasing something B2B buyers should consider? Before the trade skirmishes and the Pandemic and inflation and war in Europe, the mandate for procurement was simple: cut costs. The oppressed, underappreciated procurement department labored to squeeze supplier pricing, even as they…Gpo7 min read
Mar 28How Can We Improve the Performance of Procurement?How can we improve the performance of procurement generalists and buying specialists to make purchasing more successful? Some companies have dedicated procurement experts. These are people who have worked principally on purchasing throughout their careers. They focus on a specific category, such as buying IT. Their knowledge of suppliers, trends…Sourcing5 min read
Feb 20How Can We Improve the B2B Buyer’s Journey?Buying goods or services for your business isn’t like buying things for yourself or your family. B2B buying is difficult. When you consume things as an individual, you may do some research, but you have a need and you decide quickly. It’s not necessary to have a deep relationship with…B 2 B6 min read
Jan 24Bureaucracy Is the Enemy of ProcurementTechnology can liberate procurement from bureaucracy. Or it can imprison it. The first mile of the supply chain is sourcing. This is a process to identify the right solution from the right supplier at the right price. Once we have completed this step, we must negotiate a contract and evaluate…Sourcing5 min read
Jan 5Effective Procurement Change Is EvolutionaryThe Wall Street Journal had a light-hearted piece to mark the New Year in which they asked Chief Information Officers about buzzwords they would like to see fade away. Here’s the CIO of Cardinal Health, Brian Rice, on “digital transformation”: “We’ve struggled with that one ourselves, like, what does ‘digital’…Sourcing6 min read
Dec 28, 2021Sourcing Is PervasivePeople get trapped by labels. One label that is fraught with meaning and (often painful) memory is procurement. Perhaps they were involved in a purchasing committee for a large acquisition in the past. …Sourcing3 min read
Nov 3, 2021Why Firms Should Have More than One Sourcing SystemWe’ve written previously about the growing ease of integrating applications with one another. We argued that this favored choosing the best-of-breed application over the incumbent ERP module. The conventional wisdom that integration was difficult and expensive constrained buyers to having only one sourcing system. What if we were to relax…Sourcing3 min read
Oct 13, 2021Why Is a Best-of-Breed Vendor the Right Software Solution Today?We have spoken previously about how to make the case for procurement technology change. But, having decided to change, we come to the next logical question. What solution should we choose? The most basic element of this, as it turns out, asks whether it is better to go with a…Software5 min read
