Category: Career

Posted on

News You Can Use: 9/16/2015

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  • Strategic Or Tactical: Time To Decide And Act
    If you have been reading this blog for the last two years, I have been shouting this.  This short post sums up my views on strategic sourcing.

    IT could well be an ally too, particularly in efforts to ensure cyber security and take advantage of the analytics possibilities with big data. And engineering could learn to appreciate procurement’s value too. While engineers may think they know the capabilities of some part suppliers, they may not know of the capacity constraints those suppliers have that can prevent them from delivering on time. Procurement should know about those constraints through its studies of the suppliers’ markets and industries.

    http://www.procurementleaders.com/blog/my-blog–paul-teague/strategic-or-tactical-time-to-decide-and-act-563904

  • Screwing up the Screw-Ups in BI

    Right! Except that the Holy Grail of trying to extend a “centralized” database umbrella over completely disparate systems is both incredibly expensive and nearly impossible. Baseline suggests “[partnering] with a reputable systems integrator.” Good for them — at least they dodge this bullet rather than getting the answer completely wrong. The right answer is that business analysts should be able to construct BI datasets on their own, as needed, from whatever data sources are useful/appropriate, and it shouldn’t be difficult for them to do so. Concentrating all of the information under one umbrella isn’t necessary; many umbrellas can do the job, and if they’re easy to deploy, they’re both inexpensive and provide a better and more flexible answer.

    http://sourcinginnovation.com/wordpress/2015/09/03/screwing-up-the-screw-ups-in-bi-repost/

  • 4 Ways to Construct a ‘Data-Innovation’ Map for Your Business

    A data-innovation map can give you a bird’s-eye view of your customers’ experience and show you how you can be more innovative with data — not to mention save time and drive revenue. Without a data-innovation map, you’re likely missing out on places in your strategy where you could more effectively use data and inadvertently give your competition a leg up.

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/249437

  • The journey from good to great

    Shrinking the pie also requires procurement professionals to hone and broaden their skill set. I think that one of the best characteristics for someone in procurement is ‘being nosey’ (or to say this more politely, ‘being curious’). This needs to extend and broaden if you are to shrink the pie. You need to be curious not only about the business need, the supply market and the total cost, but also about the interfaces between the supplier and the customer and the supplier and its suppliers.

    http://www.procurementleaders.com/blog/my-blog–caroline-booth/the-journey-from-good-to-great-565670

  • Why You Should Not Build Your Own Contract Management System
    Interesting to see them list the core “must have features”
    http://sourcinginnovation.com/wordpress/2015/09/07/why-you-should-not-build-your-own-contract-management-system/

Photo: Skitter Photo, StockSnap

Posted on

News You Can Use: 9/9/2015

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  • Overcoming IT Budget Planning Obstacles for Risk-minded CIOs

    While having access to benchmarks plays a key role in helping CISOs keep the budget in line with peer organizations, leadership will understandably want a clear picture of how the business is investing. This is why it’s crucial that CISOs build an easy to understand investment strategy that outlines exactly where the organization intends to spend its allotment and what the return on that spend will be. The goal here is to first gain an understanding of where the organization falls short today, as well as document and communicate strengths. CISOs need to be able to address how current security investments are performing, not just what the gaps are. This is where having something as simple as a security report card can effectively demonstrate security progress in language and terms that the organization’s leaders can understand. It also helps in building an incremental plan to clearly outline how the organization can improve security.

    http://www.cio.com/article/2978284/security/overcoming-it-budget-planning-obstacles-for-risk-minded-cios.html#tk.rss_all

  • Want Early Payment Discounts? It All Starts At The Back

    More troublesome still, above all of the influencing factors outside of the buyer’s control, is the need for vigour in the technologies supporting supplier payments. There’s obviously little point negotiating early payment discounts if the purchase-to-pay (P2P) system, whirring away in the back-end is too complex, outmoded or reliant on the rubber stamp – or, in the case of a great many banks, all three, and not so much whirring away as spluttering along – to facilitate such a thing.

    http://www.procurementleaders.com/blog/my-blog–harry-john/want-early-payment-discounts-it-all-starts-at-the-back-562355

  • Amazon Launches Amazon Business Marketplace, Will Close AmazonSupply

    “For years I’ve been going to procurement software events hosted by vendors,” she said. “Amazon is always the reference point for usability. ‘Why can’t buying for my business be as easy as shopping on Amazon?’ ‘Why doesn’t this procurement system work more like Amazon?’ Now Amazon has a specific marketplace for businesses to buy from Amazon and third parties, just as consumers use Amazon.com to buy from Amazon and used book sellers.”

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2015/04/28/amazon-launches-amazon-business-marketplace-will-close-amazonsupply

  • Why Millennials’ Amazon Experience Is Shaping Vendor Selection

    Bottom line, the future of procurement, is in the hands of people who are used to total buyer control. Depending on how you look at it, platforms like Amazon’s have either spoiled or enlightened them as to what’s possible for purchasing. They’re used to finding complicated commodities (organic, top-rated, fair trade, non-GMO, free shipping, crunchy peanut butter) in 2 minutes online.

    http://www.procurementleaders.com/blog/my-blog–guest-blog/why-millennials-amazon-experience-is-shaping-vendor-selection-560877

  • Sourcing Secrets: Web Scraping
  • Email is not dead

    Also, we spend much time talking about the “right time to send an email,” but the Adobe data shows we are consuming data at all times of the day. If you knew when your customer was in bed or in his “second office,” you could better target delivery when they are reading email.

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/250253

Posted on

News You Can Use: 9/2/2015

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  • The real reason why women are cold in the workplace

    Heating and cooling systems are based on a complex metric encompassing subjective feelings of comfort and an averaged metabolic rate—that of a 40 year-old man weighing 154 lbs. “When you turn it over to operations, that’s when it all goes downhill,” Brookshire explains.

    http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/thepulse/item/85293-the-real-reason-why-women-are-cold-in-the-workplace

  • China’s factory activity hit a 77-month low

    The “flash” measure of sentiment among manufacturing purchasing managers fell to 47.1 in August, the worst figure in 77 months and a decline from the index’s final reading of 47.8 in July, according to Caixin Insight and Markit Economics. Any number below 50 indicates a deceleration in the manufacturing sector.

    http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/20/news/economy/china-factories-growth-pmi/index.html?section=money_topstories

  • Common knowledge about procurement protests more myth than fact

    http://federalnewsradio.com/acquisition-policy/2015/08/common-knowledge-procurement-protests-myth-fact/

  • Why Tech Companies Share Costs

    Choosing internal shared services over outsourcing can improve risk management, performance management and collaboration―which can often be lost in a sourcing arrangement. Technology companies may be hesitant to migrate fragmented processes―which rely heavily on the skill and experience of the current staff to operate smoothly―to an SSC, but it may be worthwhile in the long run to cut that dependency. Outside of the substantial upfront costs involved with establishing an outsourced or offshore service center, recent concerns show that labor costs are rising in emerging economies such as India, China and the Philippines―which may result in the erosion of offshore benefits. Despite the appeal of a quick-fix, outsourcing should be considered a shift of service, not a solution. Consider resolving the issue internally before involving a third party. You may even find that automation improvements play a large role in partially or fully eliminating the drivers for outsourcing.

    https://www.chase.com/commercial-bank/executive-connect/why-tech-companies-share-costs

  • 84 Percent of Procurement Executives Unsatisfied with Insight from Company Data

    A majority of procurement officers (53 percent) named spend visibility as the data metric proven most effective in supporting their operations. However, 69 percent of procurement executives reported that they believe metrics used to evaluate their function drive the wrong behavior within their organizations.

    http://www.sdcexec.com/news/12108262/84-percent-of-procurement-executives-unsatisfied-with-insight-from-company-data

  • Think you’re agile? You’re probably wrong

    But while the study shows that businesses have a healthy respect for agility, their capacity for it is another story. Fifty-two percent of global respondents (and an equal percentage of U.S. respondents) say their business does not have an IT infrastructure capable of meeting competitive threats. In addition, 49 percent of respondents say they either cannot or do not know if they can shift workloads between public, private and hybrid clouds, or migrate on-premises applications to the cloud. Only 50 percent of respondents say they can develop, test and deploy new business applications for use on mobile devices within six months, with the percentage falling to just 30 percent that can do the same in a one-month timeframe.

    http://www.cio.com/article/2976980/agile-development/think-youre-agile-youre-probably-wrong.html#tk.rss_all

  • 3 Ways to Combat Stale Ideas

    This time, I knew I needed someone different. I hired the best coach I know who specializes in “Intuitive Action.” Of course I’m partial to the field of coaching, but in this case I knew I needed it more. While sometimes it makes sense to consult with friends, colleagues, mentors and others, working with a coach is different. Coaches are impartial and are there to challenge you and push you out of your comfort zone. There’s not a better place to find new ideas than in the unknown.

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/249929

Photo: Daniela Cuevas

Posted on

News You Can Use: 8/26/2015

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  • The hazards of go-to people

    For the staffers who are not the go-to people, things often don’t work out too well either. They can end up in a self-reinforcing cycle of unhappiness and poor performance. When they realize that they are not one of the go-to people they might miss out on the opportunities to work on exciting or important things, since they are not considered dedicated and capable.

    http://www.cio.com/article/2973120/leadership-management/the-hazards-of-go-to-people.html#tk.rss_all

  • Target’s Big Issue: Modernizing Its Supply Chain

    From September, Mulligan will be overseeing a reorganization of Target’s supply chain system. CEO Cornell described the present system as “an incredibly complex supply chain, built to serve an outdated linear model in which product flows from vendors through distribution centers to stores.” Now what is needed is a new structure that goods can flow in multiple directions as orders are made, including orders from customers for store pick-up or home delivery. The outmoded way is costing Target money and time, neither cheap commodities.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3458396-targets-big-issue-modernizing-its-supply-chain

  • Amazon sounds like a hellish place to work (the complete saga):

    Oh, and if you have any shred of a personal life or bodily ailment, Amazon is probably not the best place to work. The Times notes several disturbing cases wherein employees have been criticized for scaling back their hours to take care of sick and dying family members or small children. A woman who had thyroid cancer was given a low performance rating after she returned, while another woman suffering from breast cancer was put on a “performance improvement plan” because her personal “difficulties” had interfered with fulfilling her work goals.

    http://gizmodo.com/working-for-amazon-sounds-utterly-soul-crushing-1724325816
    To add more (from the NYT):

    Amazon employees are held accountable for a staggering array of metrics, a process that unfolds in what can be anxiety-provoking sessions called business reviews, held weekly or monthly among various teams. A day or two before the meetings, employees receive printouts, sometimes up to 50 or 60 pages long, several workers said. At the reviews, employees are cold-called and pop-quizzed on any one of those thousands of numbers.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1

    And now, the NYT backs off (seriously?)

    In addition, the evidence against Amazon, while powerful, is largely anecdotal, not data-driven. And anecdotes can be used and interpreted in any number of ways. A reader, Len Edgerly of Cambridge, Mass., wrote to object to parts of the article, particularly a story from Mr. Bezos’ childhood in which he tries to make his grandmother quit smoking by blurting out precisely how many years of her life she had already lost, causing her to burst into tears.

    http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/18/was-portrayal-of-amazons-brutal-workplace-on-target/

  • Monitor Financial Distress in Your Supply Chain

    Manufacturers should prioritize, understand, and address troubled supplier situations with advance awareness. That’s why companies should continually analyze their contracts to maximize leverage, and understand available legal options. To alleviate the pressures of financial distress, manufacturers should exercise common law and statutory remedies in order to purposefully tweak standard terms and conditions of new contracts (or negotiate changes to existing contracts). The terms of these contracts significantly impact the manufacturer’s ability to re-source production to a healthier supplier, recover tooling, and utilize certain remedies.

    http://www.natlawreview.com/article/monitor-financial-distress-your-supply-chain

  • The 4 Levels of Organizational Alignment

    No matter how SMART goals are, they’re irrelevant if they aren’t actively communicated. This is a top-down process, meaning employers need to play an active role in communicating the company vision. Whether it’s through company-wide newsletters or calendars, weekly meetings or goal-management software, keep employees up to date on progress toward goals.

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/249312

  • 8 Team-Building Mistakes Richard Branson Would Never Make

    During an Entrepreneur blog post, Branson said, “You need to give your people the freedom to get creative, to come up with their own ideas and run with them. If someone comes to you with an idea for a business, why not ask that person to launch a startup? Over the years some of our employees’ ideas have resulted in our setting up businesses. This has helped us to enter new markets and, more often than not, succeed. Your company should act as a springboard for ambitious employees, not a set of shackles.”

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/249616