Tag: Government Procurement

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News You Can Use: 11/4/2015

sn_terminal_Jordan Sanchez

  • Millennials: Death to the Cubicle!
    Open floor plans are not the answer, having worked in open spaces and cube farms – neither are good.  It is about the culture of the work place.  If the company has their people on the phone all day, you need enclosed places.  If you are developers that need to collaborate (and spent large portions of the day in quiet), open floor plans work nicely.  

    Millennials have grown up understanding that work is an activity, not something that happens in any predetermined time or space. Accordingly, they insist on having the freedom to choose where and when they work, and they want to be measured on performance — not face time or office politics. So how does that change the way our workplaces and workflows are designed?

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/252164

  • Federal IT outsourcing spend alarmingly poorly managed

    The GAO analyzed agency policies, procurement and contracting data, and interviewed agency and contractor officials. While leading companies strategically manage about 90 percent of the IT procurement spending, these government agencies strategically managed just a fraction of that. The U.S. Navy, for example, which spent $3.3 billion on IT services in 2013, awarded just 10 percent of that work via strategically managed outsourcing contracts, according to the GAO. The U.S. Air Force strategically managed 17 percent of its $1.4 million IT services spend, the U.S. Army did so with 27 percent of its $3.5 billion spend, and NASA did so with 35 percent of its smaller $855 million IT outsourcing investment. DHS was the best performer, sourcing 44 percent of its $2.2 billion IT procurement budget in strategic deals.

    http://www.cio.com/article/2999467/outsourcing/federal-it-outsourcing-spend-alarmingly-poorly-managed.html

  • 11 Tweaks to Your Daily Routine Will Make Your Day More Productive
    Listicles… there are some solid points in this post once you get around the trash:

    “Eating a frog” is the greatest antidote to procrastination, and the most productive people know the importance of biting into this delicacy first thing in the morning. In other words, spend your morning on something that requires a high level of concentration that you don’t want to do, and you’ll get it done in short order. Make a habit of eating three frogs before you check your e-mail because e-mail is a major distraction that enables procrastination and wastes precious mental energy.

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/251989

  • Software vendors – fear and loathing

    Why? Because the most successful software firms are masters at high-pressure, bullying sales tactics. Take Oracle. The company specializes in trying to convince potential new customers that its license terms and model are harmless and easy to use.

    Once the customer licenses the product, however, Oracle takes a new tack. The company launches software audits and then argues that there are license restrictions it did not talk about during the sales process but that the customer has now breached.

    How do Oracle and other vendors get away with these tactics? Path dependency. Software vendors know that once a large company has implemented an enterprise-wide or otherwise significant software tool it is hard to switch.

    http://www.cio.com/article/2997879/enterprise-software/software-vendors-fear-and-loathing.html#tk.rss_all

  • The Six Strategic Sourcing Samurai

    So who are these six strategic sourcing samurai? They are the six remaining companies that took the time and effort to not only research and build a solution, but take it to market and wait while the market caught up with the vision that a few pioneers had fifteen years ago — a vision of true best-cost global sourcing from a total cost of ownership (and, more recently, from a total value management) perspective.

    http://sourcinginnovation.com/wordpress/2015/10/30/the-six-strategic-sourcing-samurai/

  • 39% of L.A. millennials ‘chronically stressed’ about money, survey finds

    A new survey by Bank of America and USA Today found that L.A. millennials ages 18 to 34 say they have a clear understanding of their financial situation and 44% are prepared for a rainy day, with three months of living expenses saved up.

    But 75% say they worry about their finances “often” or at least “sometimes,” with 39% saying they are “chronically stressed” about money.

    http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-millennials-money-20151022-htmlstory.html

  • Are US tech giants harming national security by partnering with China’s firms?

    A report made public this week from a security firm with longstanding ties to the Defense Department, the Defense Group Inc., said IBM’s partnerships in China, which are part of a global initiative that the company calls Open Power, are already damaging US national security. “IBM is endangering the national and economic security of the United States, risking the cybersecurity of their customers globally, and undermining decades of US nonproliferation policies regarding high-performance ..

    http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/are-us-tech-giants-harming-national-security-by-partnering-with-chinas-firms/articleshow/49606797.cms

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News You Can Use: 9/2/2015

sn_balloons_DanielaCuevas

  • 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

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The Supply Chain: 2/25/2015

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  • 6 fixes for the federal procurement process (there are some points that carry over to the private sector):

     Procurement decisions are taking significantly more time than ever before. “Sliding to the Right” is a commonly used phrase these days. More are even being cancelled after proposals are submitted. Contractors spend countless hours and thousands of dollars bidding, often working late nights, holidays and weekends. Contractors often spend anywhere from 20-35 percent of a contract’s value on business development, capture, and proposal development compared to the private sector, which typically spends three to eight percent. Make decisions quicker and be respectful; it takes a lot of money and effort to respond to your RFP’s.

    http://www.federaltimes.com/story/government/acquisition/blog/2015/02/20/procurement-fix-legislation-rule/23754523/

  • UHC Member Hospitals Achieve More Than $450 Million in Supply Chain Savings

    The growth in member savings is attributable to many factors, including higher-volume purchasing through UHC’s supply contracting company, Novation; greater adoption of UHC’s advanced analytics; and member collaboration with UHC experts to identify savings opportunities linked to physician preference items, supply utilization, and standardization.

    http://www.virtual-strategy.com/2015/02/19/uhc-member-hospitals-achieve-more-450-million-supply-chain-savings

  • How eSCRM protects the supply chain
    http://www.federaltimes.com/story/government/it/blog/2015/02/19/escrm-protects-supply-chain/23694359/
  • Talking to a Rising Supply Chain Star: Brian Dean, General Dynamics

    Being primarily a military contractor, like my company is, communication is a huge thing we use to build relationships with suppliers. A lot of times, there is little information we can share with the rest of the world but when we can share forecast or plans or anything like that it goes a long way to creating a strategic relationship with our suppliers. They can take that information and plan better on their side, which all of us want to do, and in the long run it makes things better for both of us. Also, when we find a supplier that is high performing, we want to promote them throughout the company and put them where it is a good fit. From our side, we get economies of scale, and the supplier gets more exposure into other lines of business. It’s all a give and take, working on finding ways that we can help each other meet our goals.

    http://www.ebnonline.com/author.asp?section_id=3219&doc_id=276651

  • Procurement Leaders offers a post that seems to refute IBM’s generational survey:

    So what, you may ask? For starters, millennials are very different from any of the previous generations. It starts with their upbringing and constantly being surrounded by mobile technology and social media. Apparently, they are also quite motivated, but not necessarily willing to compromise their personal life (we hear of more and more CPOs rethinking the 9-5 office life). And because millennials are so ambitious, they will also want to progress at a faster pace than the organisation can keep up with.

    http://www.procurementleaders.com/blog/my-blog–maggie-slowik/2015/02/17/do-you-know-who-is-on-your-procurement-team-

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The Supply Chain: 1/21/2015

sn_SupplyChainManagement_o2

  • Assessing and managing risk: Interview with IBM’s Louis R. Ferretti

    As supply chains have become more global, the complexities of managing risk across vast and varied physical and political geographies arguably have grown by orders of magnitude. That’s a lesson that IBM, one of the world’s largest technology companies, has taken to heart. Beginning in 2009, the company undertook the task of building a complex supply chain risk management tool, now deployed globally, that provides managers with a way to examine supply risk in a much more robust fashion than ever before.

    http://www.dcvelocity.com/articles/20150116-assessing-and-managing-risk-interview-with-ibms-louis-r-ferretti/

  • Supply chain risk has companies on edge:

    In its fourth such survey, the Allianz Risk Barometer 2015 shows “business interruption and supply chain” risks remains of most concern for 47 per cent of respondents for the third year in succession.

    http://www.fullyloaded.com.au/news/logistics/1501/supply-chain-risks-have-companies-most-on-edge-allianz/

  • Corrupt government procurement leads to $1.5 trillion mistake:

    The F-35 fighter jet was supposed to do a bit of everything, as James Fallows explains in “The Tragedy of the American Military”. Instead, the aircraft can barely do anything: it has trouble flying at night, its engines have exploded during takeoff, and early models suffered structural cracks. There’s no end in sight, either. The all-in costs of this airplane are estimated to be as much as $1.5 trillion. (That’s approximately the same price as the entire Iraq War.) In an Atlantic magazine video, Fallows explains how such a disastrous project came to be—and why it can’t be stopped.

    http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/01/pentagons-15-trillion-mistake-is-one-of.html

  • Making supply chain green:

    Workers in sustainable supply chain management must be adept at negotiating supply chain complexities and creatively applying broad business and environmental knowledge. Weaving between profit-related subjects and environmental research generated by NGOs, they innovate cross-sector solutions seamlessly. These workers represent a new breed of eco-polymath and they are in demand.

    http://www.alternativesjournal.ca/community/blogs/aj-special-delivery/greening-supply-chain-management

  • Is There a Third Option for SCM Executives Looking to Revamp their Supply Chain Management Operations?

    Improvements need to be achieved in months, not years, a reality that can only be realized through a managed services partnership in which the only measure of success is tied to the operational improvements resulting from the program. While many supply chain executives have never seriously considered managed services as an SCM option due to liability, performance or security risk concerns, this is indeed an economical, efficient and strategically viable solution that supply chain leaders should consider to deliver operational performance.

    http://blog.kinaxis.com/2015/01/is-there-a-third-option-for-scm-executives-looking-to-revamp-their-supply-chain-management-operations/

  • What if the Problem Isn’t the Rules, but the People? [This is a good article on Federal sourcing, but it applies]

    The study found that while there certainly are problems in buying and implementing the latest technology in government, “many federal leaders believe that these problems are the result of execution of the procurement process rather than regulatory requirements.” While nearly 40 percent of the more than 500 survey respondents had some influence in the procurement process, only one of them cited problems with the Federal Acquisition Regulation in written comments.

    http://www.govexec.com/federal-news/fedblog/2015/01/what-if-problem-isnt-rules-people/102792/