- Outside-In Issues are Shaping Modern Procurement — Is Your Organization Ready?
One has to remember that stagnant GDP growth, rising inflation, steady or increasing unemployment, rising inequality between the rich and poor and an increasing need for resources in greatly limited supply are creating a perfect economic storm that will sink any company not ready to compete in the global marketplace that has taken hold in most large economies. Value chains are becoming bifurcated and turned on their heads. Consumers want local and they want global on demand. Products need to come from everywhere and go to everywhere, be compliant with local and foreign regulations, be produced in a socially responsible fashion and be sold through the appropriate digital channels. And this all has to be done by Monday morning at 9 am.
- The Most Damaging Thing an Employer Can Say to an Employee
There’s one thing a manager should never say to an employee: you will not move up here.
- Better Intel Through Better Info: Why CPOs Should Focus on Information, Not Technology (Part 2)
If you want to solve this problem of better intelligence through better information, you can’t just outsource it away. There is nothing wrong with setting up a center of excellence (CoE) for supply market intelligence and using it to parse out intelligence requests from stakeholders via category managers to low-cost third parties. But it’s only a temporary fix. You need to get your procurement information management capabilities understood and improved so that you’ll be able to take advantage of the massive and diverse forms of digital assets that are getting built out.
- I am just going to leave this one right here…
DONALD TRUMP SAYS HE’D GET APPLE TO MAKE ITS PRODUCTS IN AMERICAOf course, even if Trump is elected president, it won’t happen. There are a number of reasons why Apple can’t or won’t bring its manufacturing jobs to the US:
Legal reason: For starters, there is no U.S. law that can force an American company to make its products in America, notes Engadget. Any attempt at passing such a law would be vigorously opposed by virtually every U.S. company, Constitutional scholars, and likely, even most Republicans in Congress.
China reason: Then there is China, which is increasingly becoming Apple’s most important sales territory in the world. No tech company wants to annoy China, the country with the largest amount of consumers on the globe. Can you imagine how China would react if Apple said it was moving Chinese manufacturing jobs out of the country? If it wouldn’t ban Apple’s products outright, it would almost certainly levy draconian import taxes on them, making them so expensive for consumers that Apple’s sales in China would nosedive.
Cost reason: Another reason Apple would probably never move all of its manufacturing jobs to the U.S. is because it would increase the cost of its products all over the world. Wages are higher in the U.S. than in other countries where goods are manufactured and those wage hikes would almost certainly be passed on to the consumer in the form of more expensive iPhones and iPads.
- From chaos to control — The benefits of better contract management
Rob Woodstock, Accenture managing director, operations strategy for UK and Ireland, says the same lesson is true for all organisations. And while procurement has been successful in creating savings during sourcing and tendering, better management of contracts represents an untapped opportunity to improve performance.
Additionally:
This fragmented, complex picture of contract management can mean organisations miss opportunities to save money and face increased legal risks, Woodstock says. It also leads to difficulties understanding the pricing schedules across multiple contracts. “Even for those that are available, a large number are out of date,” he says, adding that there is often no visibility as to when contracts come up for renewal.
- For you procurement nerds out there… there very first purchasing manual ever:
The Handling of Railroad Supplies — Their Purchase and Disposition, written way back in 1887 by Marshall M. Kirkman and printed by Chas, N. Trivess, has the basic definition of the requirements of a purchaser down flat…
Photo: Tirza van Dijk