Category Archives: Sourcing Blogs
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
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
Benchmarking business and IT operations is a tried-and-true method of ensuring that internal and/or external service providers are performing efficiently in terms of costs and service quality. A good benchmark shows how an organization is doing relative to industry peers and market standards, identifies improvement opportunities and provides a stake in the ground from which to plan and implement a transformational change strategy. But a good benchmark doesn’t happen by itself. As a client, you have to conduct due diligence … More
In a previous blog, we discussed the use of spend analysis technology as a compliance tool. Today, I want to introduce an additional value that spend analysis can greatly improve—sourcing cycle time performance. In today’s world, spend visibility has become vitally important for procurement organizations to make the right sourcing decisions, especially when there is an increased focus and visibility on driving bottom-line results. With added pressures on procurement teams, often the primary way to improve the bottom-line is to … More
Jason Winmill is a Partner at Argopoint Consulting LLC. Argopoint has designed legal sourcing approaches for leading Fortune 500 companies that have been nationally recognized by The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, and the Association of Corporate Counsel. This is the fourth and final post of this series. Just joining us? Click here to read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 . What’s Next for Legal Sourcing Much has changed in the legal category landscape in just the past … More
Jason Winmill is a Partner at Argopoint Consulting LLC. Argopoint has designed legal sourcing approaches for leading Fortune 500 companies that have been nationally recognized by The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, and the Association of Corporate Counsel. Just joining us? Click here to read Part 1 and Part 2. Best Practices for Sourcing the Legal Category So – how should sourcing proceed? As an attorney and an accomplished sourcing professional, Krissa Kean Spence, Vice President, Strategist and Counsel at … More
Jason Winmill is a Partner at Argopoint Consulting LLC. Argopoint has designed legal sourcing approaches for leading Fortune 500 companies that have been nationally recognized by The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, and the Association of Corporate Counsel. Just joining us? Click here to read Part 1. Why Legal Is Different So, what could be responsible for the “great divide” between those procurement groups actively working on the legal category and those sitting on the sidelines? “When procurement enters a … More
By Ronald Paschen, Partner, ISG Today’s information technology (IT) organizations face a dilemma. On the one hand, the digital economy is accelerating the pace of change in IT. The adoption of emerging technologies, the development of new business models and the consumerization of IT require that it evolve rapidly. On the other hand, IT faces a constant cost pressure and an increasing commoditization of services, which enable new sourcing approaches. In either case, incremental improvements and minor upgrades are not … More
Iasta is pleased welcome a new guest blogger, Jason Winmill. Jason is a Partner at Argopoint Consulting LLC. Argopoint has designed legal sourcing approaches for leading Fortune 500 companies that have been nationally recognized by The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, and the Association of Corporate Counsel. Bustling mid-town Manhattan was the location for a recent conference on collaboration between sourcing and the legal function. On the rostrum, a seasoned sourcing executive from a Global 200 company was sharing his … More
As consumers, we are all flooded with TV ads from GEICO, Progressive and other insurance companies that are providing insurance coverage direct to consumers. In fact, it seems the Gecko is TV’s most famous and recognizable celebrity today (at least he is to me). So, why do these companies sell their insurance products directly to the consumer instead of through insurance agents? The reasons are simple: Increased profit margin A direct relationship with the buyer The intermediary/agent provides little added … More
Many times organizations begin using eSourcing tools with the mistaken assumption that the tool will automatically take care of all the work for them. Communicating with suppliers throughout the eSourcing process is probably the most neglected, yet important, piece of an eSourcing project. One of the biggest mistakes a project manager can make when running an eSourcing event is to publish the project and then wait for supplier responses. The project manager needs to engage suppliers and demonstrate how important … More
It’s easy to get caught up the “go live date” for your eSourcing software implementation. Many procurement leaders believe their team will be empowered to succeed simply by turning on a tool. However, that is not the case. Michael van Keulen from VF Corporation (an Iasta client) shared some best practices and advice at eWorld London for groups who are rolling out new eSourcing software. Michael shared some key elements from VF Corp’s successful eSourcing technology adoption that included: Developing … More
