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
Despite the challenging circumstances of today’s economic environment, you must embrace change in order to support shifting external environments and business strategies. At the same time, you look for opportunities to capitalize on disruptive changes in supply markets, which can drive greater value for your organization. You must become a purchasing hero. What is a purchasing hero? We believe a purchasing hero brings knowledge capital to multiple departments. They inspire collaboration and cross-coordinate with as many internal stakeholders as possible. … More
How are you using procurement data and insight to bring teams together? Procurement and data can dance (and sing) together if you have the proper tools, processes, and strategy in place to support your goals and growth initiatives. More importantly, you need the confidence to build strong internal relationships. What does it take to let the dancing and singing begin? Join Spend Matters, AOL, and Iasta for a live Webinar on Wednesday, March 27 to learn: A history of spend … More
The women featured in Supply & Demand Chain Executive’s “Top Female Leaders of the Supply Chain” are an impressive group of women that illustrate how far women have come to get where they are today in any industry role. We’re very pleased that our very own Mireia Brancos was featured in this list of female supply chain leaders. If you’re curious to learn more about Mireia, look her up on LinkedIn. Otherwise, we’re happy to share Mireia’s insight and impact … 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
Large companies must maximize the value of their applications environment to compete in today’s business environment. Because Application Development and Maintenance (ADM) is so intricately tied to bottom line results, many organizations seek specialized service providers to ensure best-in-class capabilities. While transitioning to an ADM outsourcing contract requires the staffing and onboarding of a significant set of new skills under a tight time frame, successful staffing remains important long after the end of transition. If not managed properly, this process … More
A significant part of an insurance company’s operations consists of back office processes that have been brought together through the acquisition of legacy books of business, differing client needs and an evolving regulatory environment. About 80% of insurers’ back office processes are similar to each other. The remaining 20% vary widely and can be very specific to the operation of a particular insurance company. The lack of a common operating model undoubtedly hinders companies from lowering the cost of operations … More
Until recently, governments at all levels have found the market for budgeting tools to be woefully inadequate. Accordingly, most governmental organizations continue to use cobbled-together, Frankenstein-like budgeting tools that, more often than not, rely on users to extract or re-enter data in offline spreadsheets to analyze budgetary policy proposals. Such tools are labor-intensive, inflexible, error prone, limited by the data collected and fail to provide timely, sufficient budgetary insight to optimize resource allocation. In this time of greater public budget … More
Welcome back! Just joining us? Click here to read Part 1. Today, I’m going to focus on how you uncover the underlying business problem(s) to mention when submitting your feature requests. At the surface, such a feature request may seem simple enough. However, we cannot neglect to consider the following: The requested button would do X, Y, and Z. Simple enough, right? Well, don’t forget that X touches A and B, Y touches C and D, and Z touches E … More
How many times have you used a piece of software and thought, “I wish there was a button that did X, Y, and Z…” Or what about, “Why does it work this way, instead of the way that’s more convenient for me?” Trust me, we’ve all been there. Depending on your perceived severity of the question/complaint, you probably acted in one or more of the following ways: Ignored the issue and continued working Complained to your coworkers, friends, or blog … 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
Contract management is an important aspect of managing supplier relationships and ensuring that commodities and services are negotiated at the right time. Unfortunately contracts are often managed poorly within a company. Even a smaller company can have hundreds of active agreements, adding up to thousands of contract terms and clauses. As you may know, not one of those contract terms carries much weight if the agreement isn’t monitored and enforced. Procurement Managers know that getting a fair price on goods … More
