Tag: Risk Management

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Procurement: More Than Just Saving Money

I’m back after a six-month hiatus to dive deep into the core functions of procurement. It’s been a while, but the questions keep coming in: “What does procurement actually do?” and “Is it a good career path?”

Let’s get back to basics. Procurement plays a crucial role in any organization by:

  1. Saving Money: We negotiate contracts, manage supplier relationships, and implement strategies to reduce costs.
  2. Managing Risk: We identify and mitigate potential risks, ensure continuity of supply, and protect our organizations from disruptions.

After 15 years in the field, I can confidently say that procurement offers a rewarding and challenging career path with plenty of opportunities for growth and development.

In this video, I’ll discuss the key responsibilities of a procurement professional, explore common misconceptions, and share my insights on why I love this field. So, whether you’re a seasoned pro or just starting your procurement journey, join me as we redefine what it means to create value and manage risk.

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News You Can Use: 9/26/2018

The Source: Staying nonpartisan

  • Google CEO Warns Staff: Stay Nonpartisan

    In a staff memo reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Pichai told employees, known as “Googlers,” that the company has strict policies against letting political views influence the products they create.

    “We do not bias our products to favor any political agenda,” Mr. Pichai said. “The trust our users place in us is our greatest asset and we must always protect it. If any Googler ever undermines that trust, we will hold them accountable.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-ceo-warns-staff-stay-nonpartisan-1537580004?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Amazon Is a Giant. But Bigness Isn’t a Crime.

    Many in the field point to the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion in the 2004 case of Verizon v. Trinko. It examined the question of whether Verizon was required, under antitrust law, to provide competitors wholesale access to its telephone network.

    “The mere possession of monopoly power, and the concomitant charging of monopoly prices is not only not unlawful; it is an important element of the free market system,” Justice Scalia wrote.

    In this view, there is no crime in being monopolist; the crime is in abusing that power. According to Justice Scalia, a healthy monopoly “induces risk taking that produces innovation and economic growth.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-is-a-giant-but-bigness-isnt-a-crime-1537534900?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • An astronaut’s guide to risk taking | Chris Hadfield
  • How to Successfully Delegate Work to Someone Else

    Even if you don’t have a specific “deadline” for a delegated task, come up with an arbitrary one that you give someone the first time you pass a responsibility their way. A reasonable deadline can make sure the task doesn’t get forgotten and can give you a good idea of when you can expect the work to be completed.

    https://lifehacker.com/how-to-successfully-delegate-work-to-someone-else-1829254908

  • Hate your cubicle? Thank medieval monks

    But medieval monks may have been the first to use cubicles–or a scriptorium, as it was called–as they worked on manuscripts. These writing rooms were also used by lay scribes and illuminators.

    Botticelli’s painting of St. Augustine in his cell depicts a small three-walled alcove with a curtain, further suggesting that such work in Renaissance times was done in secluded spaces to maximize focus. Coincidentally, this painting hangs in the Uffizi Gallery, which was originally the central administrative building of the Medici empire.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90236769/hate-your-cubicle-thank-medieval-monks

Photo by Angelo Pantazis on Unsplash

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News You Can Use: 9/13/2017

  • Good News for Young Strivers: Networking Is Overrated

    It’s true that networking can help you accomplish great things. But this obscures the opposite truth: Accomplishing great things helps you develop a network.

    Look at big breaks in entertainment. For George Lucas, a turning point was when Francis Ford Coppola hired him as a production assistant and went on to mentor him. Mr. Lucas didn’t schmooze his way into the relationship, though. As a film student he’d won first prize at a national festival and a scholarship to be an apprentice on a Warner Bros. film — he picked one of Mr. Coppola’s.

    Also

    And don’t feel pressure to go to networking events. No one really mixes at mixers. Although we plan to meet new people, we usually end up hanging out with old friends. The best networking happens when people gather for a purpose other than networking, to learn from one another or help one another.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/opinion/sunday/networking-connections-business.html?mcubz=0&_r=0

  • To Get Along With Difficult People, Try This Research-Backed Approach

    When coworkers consider how someone is perceived, or how they perceive themselves, they can highlight certain traits to a group that others may or may not be aware of, potentially finding new ways for co-workers to connect and work together.

    Crucially, says Solomon, considering perceptions can give you a special edge, especially in negotiations, possibly helping you be more persuasive. “The person who has greater insight into an opponent’s identity can, of course, leverage that information in various ways to win.”

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/299595

  • The Surprisingly Practical Career Advice From a DJ That You Need to Hear
  • How AI is revolutionizing recruiting and hiring

    “If we’re really trying to find the best candidate, though, then you’re excluding people with those searches. Doing it this way means you’re actually looking only for the best of the easiest candidates to find. And that’s hard to admit, right? But that’s what is happening here,” he says.

    But using AI and machine learning can help unearth candidates missed by traditional screening, sourcing and recruiting methods. Once these “dark matter” candidates are unearthed, recruiters can focus on the human element of the recruiting process and dig deeper; even if a candidate’s résumé doesn’t appear to be relevant, perhaps they have incredible soft skills, leadership experience or other valuable skills your organization needs, Cathey says.

    https://www.cio.com/article/3219857/hiring-and-staffing/how-ai-is-revolutionizing-recruiting-and-hiring.html

  • Hurricane Harvey Demonstrates Progress In Enterprise Risk Management

    Yet even from a logistics point of view, it would appear that Houston’s largest petroleum and chemical companies (America’s largest) had their workarounds well figured, as unaffected ports are now buzzing with re-routed shipments, and with little to no fanfare. Sure, we consumers are bound to experience some fallout (flooded refineries have already impacted gasoline futures), but most shippers and carriers hedge against events like Harvey, so they won’t be the losers.

    Shippers and carriers also successfully safeguard themselves from potential litigation and surcharges resulting from natural disasters. How do they do it? They apply the force majeure protocols of their supply agreements. Simply put, if it’s a contractual claim stemming from missed deadlines, production goals, deliveries, etc., and it’s due to a natural disaster (nowadays, even terrorism), they’ve got it covered.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulmartyn/2017/09/01/hurricane-harvey-exposing-progress-in-enterprise-risk-management/#4aaa2d271949

Photo: Štěpán Vraný

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News You Can Use: 6/7/2017

  • How Amazon hopes to win the cloud by hiring older engineers

    In my own experience, AWS teams have a healthy mix of older and younger employees. Still, AWS leadership isn’t driven by millennials, but rather by graybeards (James Gosling, Adrian Cockcroft, Tim Bray, and Andi Gutmans are just a few people called out by Governor). Management at most companies will tend to skew a bit older, but AWS is notable for how those people are discovered. As Governor noted: “Some other older companies have older distinguished engineers because they grew up with the company. AWS is explicitly bringing that experience in.”

    http://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-amazon-hopes-to-win-the-cloud-by-hiring-older-engineers/

  • Will basic income mean the end of work? Nope.

    In fact, some of this rhetoric could be missing the mark. The evidence from many trials of unconditional cash transfers, including basic income plans, finds little evidence that work (or the desire to work) disappears in conditions of free money. In almost all cases, giving people regular payments hasn’t dampened their thirst for employment. In fact, UBI is a bit like the lottery, says Ioana Marinescu, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, author of a recent paper looking at the relationship between cash transfers and behavior. We may imagine that lottery winners all decamp to Florida (or similar) and sit by the pool all day. Actually, most lottery winners keep clocking in (though presumably less despairingly than before).

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40423154/will-a-basic-income-mean-the-end-of-work-dont-get-too-excited

  • AI Can Now Self-Reproduce—Should Humans Be Worried?
  • Aecom and IBM create “scorecard” to help cities prepare for disasters

    The scorecard is structured around the UN’s 10 Essentials of Disaster Resilience, a list that enables city administrations to identify priorities for investment and to track progress over time. The goal is to guide cities towards optimal resilience by providing a set of assessments that cover the policy and planning, engineering, organisational, financial, social and environmental aspects of disaster resilience.

    http://www.globalconstructionreview.com/news/aecom-and-ibm-create-scorec7ard-he7lp-ci7es/

  • I just want to say one word to you: Data

    You need a strategy: Tom Choi, executive director of CAPS Research, said that as procurement managers are tasked with looking downstream for ways to add value to their customers, a digitized ecosystem is crucial for business success. At the same time, the upsurge of Big Data and analytics technology (there are something like 163 platforms that an organization could subscribe to for data) has been rapid and radical, especially the increase in unstructured data from social and media outlets that does not easily fit in a box. Choi’s advice: Create an analytics team; convert your data into a form you can use; and then launch small projects that work or fail quickly. Use those learnings to start again.

    http://www.scmr.com/article/i_just_want_to_say_one_word_to_you_data#When:14:30:00Z

Photo: Tony Lam Hoang

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News You Can Use: 3/1/2017

  • Rough Day at Work? Exercise and Sleep Are the Best Ways to Shake It Off.

    They found that participants who took a daily average of 10,900 steps were less likely to take out their frustrations on their loved ones than those who took an average of less than 7,000 steps a day.

    The study also found that burning about 587 calories can translate to shaking off a tough day and stop an individual from bringing work issues home with them. The authors recommended activities such as walking and swimming.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/289127

  • The Millennial CPO: How Will the New Generation Transform the Supply Chain Profession?

    “I envision the field to become more and more tech-centric,” says Jennifer Wolff, senior manager of material planning at Masco Cabinetry. “I continue to be disappointed by the systems that exist for our field.” It is safe to say that technology has embedded itself into the average millennial’s personal and work life. According to Nielsen, more than 85% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 own a smartphone, and a quarter of them ranked “technology use” as the defining characteristic of their generation.

    http://spendmatters.com/2017/02/15/millennial-cpo-will-new-generation-transform-supply-chain-profession/

  • How a Math Algorithm Could Educate the Whole World — for Free
  • 5 Steps to Develop a Supply Chain Risk Assessment Process
    1. Define stakeholder concerns
    2. Identify points of risk
    3. Develop a risk mitigation strategy
    4. Partner with third-party auditors and data collection agencies
    5. Simulate outcomes

    http://www.satprnews.com/2017/02/14/5-steps-to-develop-a-supply-chain-risk-assessment-process/

  • Oracle launches four apps for supply chain automation

    Nainani said Oracle’s supply chain and transport customers have “found it hard to adopt our IoT cloud components because they were uncertain how much investment was needed up front and how it would pay off for them.” In response, Oracle designed the new suite of tools to produce quick results in applications that clients are already using, Nainani said. The applications are in such areas as manufacturing, maintenance, customer service, and transportation management, he said.

    http://www.dcvelocity.com/articles/20170214-oracle-launches-four-apps-for-supply-chain-automation/

Photo: Alexander Mils