Category Archives: General
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
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
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
Few companies have the ‘cool factor’ that can be claimed by Apple. But with a high profile comes high stakes, and their procurement and supply chain operations are not exempt. In order to remain competitive (or dominant in Apple’s case) in the consumer electronics industry, a high level of secrecy is usually required – both in the introduction of new products and the release of next generations of existing products. Historically, Apple has been a highly secretive company, driven in … More
As a support team member for Iasta, I work closely with our clients for both strategic and tactical support. Below are five times you should contact your eSourcing support team for tactical advice: 1. You receive an error message that is preventing you or your suppliers from working on a project. Give your support team a call, and they will work with you to resolve the situation. Some errors are technical and require changing settings on your computer or network, … More
As the year comes to an end, we crunched the numbers to see which blog posts were the most popular. We’ll use the data to continue providing content that is relevant and useful. We thought you might be interested in knowing too so here they are. In ranked order, the top 5 blog posts on eSourcing Forum were: 1. Three Lessons Sourcing Can Learn from Firework Shopping 2. Procurement Fraud: A Costly White Collar Crime on the Rise 3. What Procurement Can Learn … More
Iasta’s annual user group conference, reSource ’12, will take place on March 12-13, 2012 at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. reSource ’12 is designed for Iasta customers and prospects who are responsible for procurement within their organization, especially super users, decision makers and new users. Click here for more information about Iasta’s reSource ’12 event. “We are very excited to host our annual user group conference in Las Vegas this year,” said Melissa Beuc, senior director of product marketing of Iasta … More
In-depth research from TPI Momentum continues to inform business leaders around the world. Nearshore Americas, an independent news blog dedicated to outsourcing in the Americas, recently highlighted TPI findings in its post LatAm is More Than a Delivery Destination: Domestic Demand Takes a Front Seat by Pablo Velasco, a TPI director who specializes in advising companies in Latin America. Pablo’s informed discussion of the growing trend in domestic outsourcing in Latin America stems from original, objective data collected and analyzed by … More
Last week, Seth Balsam, Director of Global IT Sourcing at Ciena, contributed to Iasta’s Webcast, Using Spend Analysis to Smooth the M&A Path: 4 Steps to Consolidate Your Purchasing Power. When Ciena acquired Nortel’s Metro Ethernet Networks, Ciena literally doubled its size overnight: twice the revenue, twice the customers, and twice the employees. All those doubles don’t come for free. Even though spend data doesn’t get a lot of headlines in M&A news, the merger also resulted in twice the … More
It seems that there are still some misunderstandings in the marketplace about the place of reverse auctions in eSourcing. I’ve noticed that several procurement professionals are facing resistance from their internal stakeholders to using eSourcing platforms. This puzzled me, so I decided to put on my detective’s hat. In my investigation, I determined that many procurement professionals: • Use a rigorous sourcing process or “playbook” • Have a common platform that provides a centralized place for everyone to collaborate and gain visibility … More
The United States’ economy is making headlines and causing much debate this week. Because this is not a political blog, I won’t go into details and opinions on that matter. However, I do believe that this economical downturn stresses the importance that now, more than ever before, is the time for procurement to lead the way to overcoming complex business challenges. Per Segerberg agrees and writes in a recent article in Supply Chain Management Review, “All over the world, the … More
In our recent webcast focused on building procurement’s cross-organizational credibility, we discussed several key tactics from picking your projects carefully to owning the data to automating the sourcing process with a COE. However, your single most important focus must be communication at all levels. A sourcing professional who masters the art of communications will gain credibility, support and quickly identify the path to success. Let me explain why. During a job interview several years back, I was asked, “What is … More
It’s that time of year again, when I think of grilled hotdogs, the American flag, baseball games, parades, family reunions and, of course, fireworks. Last year, consumers spent an estimated $3 billion on holiday weekend parties, food, entertainment and travel. Of that amount, nearly $600 million went to fireworks alone. That’s a large amount of money dedicated to one holiday, which reminds me of the large amount of money that can be spent on one project for sourcing teams. So, … More
