I’m about to throw you a curveball… How does Procurement Analytics relate to the baseball-themed movie, Moneyball? Well, if you haven’t seen the movie before, let’s recap the story. Brad Pitt stars as Billy Beane, General Manager for Oakland Athletics (A’s). Beane is faced with the challenge of assembling a winning team, but he is handicapped with the lowest salary constraint in baseball. If the Oakland A’s ever wanted to win the World Series, Beane knew he needed to find … More
One day last week, I was driving to work and listening to a story on NPR about a coffee farmer from a remote region in Guatemala. The story continued as they discussed a hip coffee shop in Portland, Oregon that is using spend visibility to sell cups of coffee. Okay, they didn’t say, “spend visibility,” but the coffee shop is certainly following spend analysis logic. The story by Allison Aubrey was about how a struggling coffee farmer managed to cut … More
Are you taking a gamble and leaving millions of dollars on the table? You could be if you don’t have the right solutions in place… As a modern procurement pro, you know that having the right technology in place is a key component of your procurement strategy. Implementing eSourcing and eProcurement solutions together allows your team to enhance its performance and impact across the entire organization. What else can you do with the right technology in place? You can: Collaborate … More
Perhaps your organization has a contract already in place with a service provider, and you are thinking those pre-negotiated contract terms and conditions might save you time and money in sourcing the next area of your business. Or perhaps your organization decides that skipping a competitive process and sourcing directly with one service provider will be more efficient. Of course, sole-sourced contracts can be successful, but these Top 5 suggestions remind us that a competitive solicitation process delivers increased knowledge … More
Welcome back! Just joining in? Click here to read Part 1. As many of you know, providing a high level of influence and performance in non-traditional spend categories will require subject matter expertise and skills beyond traditional negotiating skills such as: Strategic thinking and analysis Project / program management Data analysis and modeling Change management and Influencing skills Problem solving Relationship management All of the above business skills are key for sourcing professionals to learn and adopt. While these non-traditional … More
For many Sourcing organizations, especially those at mid-market companies, being involved in Strategic Sourcing of Indirect Spend categories is still a relatively new opportunity… and a challenge! Many manufacturing companies, which have historically had sourcing organizations focused on Direct Material and Capital Equipment purchases, may not have the internal staff or correct Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to get involved in negotiating and managing indirect expense categories. In fact, sourcing organizations may not even exist at some companies, namely those in … More
Welcome back! If you’re just joining us for this two part series, click here to read Part 1. All companies have a minimum of two levels (tiers) of suppliers – Tier One (directly contracted suppliers) or Tier Two (suppliers to the Tier One suppliers). Large companies do a fairly good job of assessing their risk exposure to Tier One suppliers during the initial assessment and contracting process. Usually, little if any review of Tier Two suppliers occurs at this stage. … More
Global supply chains are constantly exposed to risk, ranging from disruptions of continuity to various levels of operational destruction. Risks can include weather, significant cost variances, resource availability, legislative/tax changes, logistical disruption, power outages and health epidemics, and usually occur without warning. Most supply chain management functions, even in the most advanced companies, are ill-equipped to address the wide range of risks they’re exposed to. Whether company is a manufacturer of raw materials, finished goods or a supplier of services, … More
On average, our clients are working between three and seven systems. However, tool proliferation does not mean you are a healthy procurement function. In a recent Webinar with AOL and Spend Matters, Scott McBride from Iasta gave this example: “If we draw on the conversation of health, you can put a skinny teenager like Napoleon Dynamite in a room with a treadmill and free weights. He has the tools, but that doesn’t mean that he is healthy.” Now obviously, you … More
After signing a contract, both parties have to protect their own business and value case while they work to achieve a common objective, contractual milestones and specific deliverables. No matter how sound a contract is, what matters in real life is relationship management. Consider the following Top 5 golden rules to avoid pitfalls and create a successful relationship with your service providers … in real life. 1. Success comes from collaboration. Mirror your project model with the service provider’s organization … More
Welcome back! Just tuned in? Click here to read Part 1. Today, I’m going to discuss additional areas where IaaS can reduce costs over the long term. Reduce labor costs and greater availability of resources. By moving toward de-facto open industry IaaS stacks, organization will have an easier time obtaining lower cost resources to build and support their applications and workloads. Training and on-boarding employee costs will decrease, while choices around third parties to support the workloads will increase. With … More
A well-planned and executed deployment can make an incredible difference when rolling out a new application. At Iasta, we find this to be especially true when rolling out a new eSourcing platform because all of our clients have such unique requirements, challenges, and goals to accomplish with the software. Do you (or some of your stakeholders) consider training the main focus of a deployment? Although training is an essential piece of the puzzle, a good deployment includes a deep understanding … More
The promise of IaaS savings can be elusive and not readily apparent. In fact, some ISG customers question if they will really achieve any cost savings, or if adopting IaaS will be, ‘Another technology and, another vendor to support, thus driving up costs.’ In our view, those willing to invest the proper management commitment and oversight will reap cost savings over the long term. It’s all about discipline, convergence and standardization. To begin this two part series, here’s a look … More
