Tag: supply chain

Posted on

News You Can Use: 12/28/2016

  • CEOs still don’t ‘get’ what their procurement teams do

    “While a stagnant economy proved a fertile breeding ground for successful cost reduction strategies, the function needs to adapt to the new environment and demonstrate its versatility if it is to always be seated at the board table. For example, highlight how the department’s risk management programmes minimise the potential impact that a disaster could have on the business bottom line or the added value it can bring to the company’s corporate social responsibility programme and show how procurement is driving innovation within the supply chain, giving the company that competitive edge.”

    http://www.supplychaindigital.com/procurement/4571/CEOs-still-dont-get-what-their-procurement-teams-do

  • Open source and the software supply chain

    You have two basic choices: either build your own internal means of vetting the code and applying product management processes, or rely on an intermediary to perform that function. You can make an argument for creating the processes for pulling down source code, determining legal compliance, applying patches, and getting it ready for production yourself, but it is expensive from a human resources point of view. You should base your decision whether or not to self-direct the process on its strategic importance to the company and some ROI analysis: If you build a team to manage that process for some software components, will you see a sufficient return on that investment?

    https://opensource.com/article/16/12/open-source-software-supply-chain

  • Kartik Gada: “The ATOM: The New Economics of Technical Disruption”

    Kartik Gada joined Google to talk about his e-book the ATOM. The book examines the new economics of technological disruption, and its impact on governments, businesses, and society. The Atom is a 14-chapter e-book that contains novel concepts, research, and policy

  • Follow-up to last week: Trump to tech CEOs: We’re there for you

    “We want you to keep going with the incredible innovation,” Trump said. “There’s nobody like you in the world, in the world, there’s nobody like anyone in this room. And anything we can do to help this go along, and we’re going to be there for you.”

    Among the issues the tech CEOs might discuss with Trump is his proposed curbs to immigration. Silicon Valley relies on bringing in large numbers of immigrants every year or keeping them in the U.S. after college. Making immigration more difficult or restricting the number of H-1B high-skill visas available could cause tech companies problems.

    http://www.cio.com/article/3150604/regulation/trump-to-tech-ceos-were-there-for-you.html

  • Procurement: Four opportunities ahead in 2017

    In 2017 we will see supplier relationship management (SRM) come of age. Sitting in a unique position between the supply base and the business, procurement has a real opportunity to leverage that position to bring new innovations into the business. Capitalizing on their supplier management role, we will see more procurement teams using insight and market intelligence to seek out new suppliers and different ways of working to leapfrog endless iterations of ‘business as usual’ to really drive change. Moving away from reacting to the business or finding a cheaper way of working, the more challenging business environment will see procurement teams looking externally for innovative suppliers that can revolutionize the existing business and make a significant impact on the bottom line.

    http://www.procurementleaders.com/blog/my-blog–guest-blog/four-opportunities-ahead-in-2017-657764

Posted on

News You Can Use: 12/21/2016

  • Why Trump and the Tech Industry Are on a Collision Course

    During the campaign, Trump in turn lashed Apple for manufacturing too many of its products overseas. Stephen Bannon, the former chief executive of Breitbart—who has emerged as the ideological synthesizer of Trump’s worldview—has touted Democrats’ courtship of the technology industry as evidence the party had abandoned heartland workers for coastal elites. As Bannon recently told The Hollywood Reporter, “They were talking to these people with companies with a $9 billion market cap employing nine people. It’s not reality. They lost sight of what the world is about.”

    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/trump-silicon-valley-tech/510584/?utm_source=feed

  • What Does It Mean to be “Strategic” in Supply Chain, Anyway?

    A study in Supply Chain Quarterly provides six models or “styles” of Supply Chain strategy, each suited to a different kind of industry: “efficient” Supply Chains, “fast” Supply Chains, “continuous-flow” Supply Chains, “agile” Supply Chains, “custom-configured” Supply Chains, and “flexible” Supply Chains. These names might seem like different terms for the same thing – and these words often get thrown around as buzzwords all over the industry. But the study’s author, Hernan David Perez, goes into deep detail about the differences in each strategic approach that shows the depth and complexity inherent in developing a truly strategic Supply Chain.

    https://blog.kinaxis.com/2016/12/mean-strategic-supply-chain-anyway/

  • Tech industry sees new talent pool in people with autism
    This isn’t new (but it is good)… SAP has been recruiting people on the spectrum for the last 4 or 5 years. 

    There’s no job interview, and differences in ability are taken into consideration during the application process. Once on the job, specialist staff help support the participants.

    http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/12/09/tech-industry-sees-new-talent-pool-people-autism

  • Words Of Advice From Millennials In Supply Chain Management

    Khan explains how she appreciates management that challenges her and suggests that employers need to recognize that not all millennials are the same – despite what the stereotypes might imply. The solution: get to know your millennial talent individually and take the time to understand their goals to help them reach their full potential. As the most educated generation, millennials are eager to apply their degrees in their work and they are driven to advance. However, that drive doesn’t necessarily mean they are willing to “job-hop”. Employers should strive to challenge millennials by rewarding performance with new responsibilities and opportunities to grow.

    http://www.strategicsourceror.com/2016/12/words-of-advice-from-millennials-in_8.html

  • To fix federal procurement, dump the DUNS number

    But one outdated technology still stands in the way of transparency: the DUNS Number.

    Twenty years ago, the federal government entered into an agreement with Dun & Bradstreet, Inc., to provide a numbering system to track contractors. In order to do business with the government, companies must pay Dun & Bradstreet to be issued a DUNS Number.

    Dun & Bradstreet continues to own every DUNS Number. That means anyone who wants to download or analyze the government’s public procurement data must buy a D&B license.

    http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-budget/308993-to-fix-federal-procurement-dump-the-duns-number

Photo: Jonatan Pie

Posted on

News You Can Use: 11/23/2016

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  • Are Women In Procurement Still Earning Less Than Men? It Seems So

    A female CPO, for example, can expect to earn around 94% of a male colleague’s salary. For regional category managers, women have been found to earn only 69% of a man’s wage.

    This tends to get compounded by the ‘glass-ceiling effect’, in which women find it difficult to break through into the higher levels of an organisation. Only 14% of our CPO sample last year were women.

    http://www.procurementleaders.com/blog/my-blog–jonathan-webb/are-women-in-procurement-still-earning-less-than-men-it-seems-so-649336

  • 7 Ways to Politely Shut Down a Conversation
    This one is my favorite…

    5. The ‘pass off.’
    When you are trapped in a rambling conversation, pull in another person to join you if possible. Introduce the topic to the new person, and once the other two get a conversation going, politely excuse yourself and don’t look back.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/284492
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  • DOD in ‘knife fight’ over supply chain, security chief says

    Department of Defense (DOD) officials increasingly view the Pentagon’s supply chain as a key vulnerability within the defense enterprise, with bad actors seeking to affect systems and steal innovative technologies. This risk extends beyond prime contractors, which have extensive resources to invest in security to medium and small contractors, which in turn may not have those resources.

    The Pentagon’s emphasis on affordability often pushes suppliers to use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) items, said Frank Kendall, the DOD’s undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics.

    “All of this presents an opportunity for somebody with a nefarious purpose to get at our products,” Kendall said. “The thing that makes me most nervous is a high-end adversary who finds a way to hide something in our weapons systems and lets it sit there until it can be activated at the worst possible time.”

    https://about.bgov.com/blog/dod-knife-fight-supply-chain-security-chief-says/

  • Hang in there (from Seth Godin)

    Showing up day after day, week after week, sometimes for years, as your movement slowly gains steam, as your organization hits speed bumps, as the news goes from bad to worse…

    Showing up, it turns out, is the hardest part of making a difference.

    Make a list of the organizations and voices and movements that have made a difference. How old are they? How long have they been at it?

    Creating impact, building something of substance, changing the culture… this is the work of a lifetime, not merely a fun project.

    http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2016/11/hang-in-there.html
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  • Amazon’s logistics venture has yet to make up for costs

    “A full-blown Amazon parcel delivery operation would likely take years to complete, so we believe [FedEx] and UPS would have time to react,” RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahoney previously told Retail Dive. Similarly, although UPS and FedEx have decades of experience, Amazon’s entry to the logistics market comes with a learning curve, particularly when it comes to aircraft operations and regulations.

    The earliest signs of success, however, may come through the cost-to-sales comparison made by Seeking Alpha. If Amazon seeks to compete with UPS and FedEx, the company needs to see a downward trend in the metric, which would indicate the logistics services are driving profit to the company.

    http://www.supplychaindive.com/news/Amazon-logistics-UPS-FedEx-cost/429408/

Photo: Katie Montgomery

Posted on

News You Can Use: 10/19/2016

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  • 6 Ways to Convince Your Boss That Traveling is Important

    The potential ROI gained from the trip is greater than the trip’s cost:
    For anyone who wants his or her boss to approve a business trip, it’s a good idea to map out the specific costs in advance, then estimate the potential ROI that could be garnered if you attended the event.

    Ensuring you keep all your business expenses related to the trip low — though many trips are tax deductible — will help create an optimistic view of the revenue potential and what positive gains could occur that could become the leverage for future business trips.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/282904
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  • Rock ’em Sock ’em Telecom Services

    In telecommunications, acquisitions have strong influences on pricing structures, service offerings, and overall capabilities. The competition for these services continues to boom with more localized suppliers playing against the big wigs. Going for the “popular” name does not always result in the best fit for your company. When choosing a provider whether through a formal sourcing engagement or going to the market direct, you need an unbiased opinion and should focus on the facts versus fiction.

    http://www.strategicsourceror.com/2016/09/rock-em-sock-em-telecom-services.html

  • How To Manage Your Anxiety During Tough Times At Work

    When paranoid thinking creeps into your work life, you tend to look for evidence to prove your thinking right. It’s a cognitive function called“confirmation bias.” When you have a belief, for example, that someone is trying to keep you from getting promoted, you look for evidence that confirms that belief. In this case, you believe your colleague is blocking your promotion. When he doesn’t respond to your email, you see that as evidence of your belief.

    Instead of jumping to this conclusion, ask yourself, “What if the opposite were true?” What if he wasn’t blocking your promotion? What other reasons could there be for not responding to you?

    https://www.fastcompany.com/3063975/work-smart/how-to-manage-your-anxiety-during-tough-times-at-work
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  • How Wells Fargo’s Work Culture May Have Cleared The Way For Scandal

    The key ingredients that foster a hostile work environment, according to Faas, are unreasonable expectations put on employees, an acceptance of questionable practices, and reluctance to complain out of fear of retaliation. “If what we hear in the media about the treatment of whistleblowers is true, Wells Fargo has a much bigger issue than the fraudulent accounts—they have a culture of fear,” he says. “If this is validated, it puts to question the credibility of their leadership’s response.”

    https://www.fastcompany.com/3064175/how-wells-fargos-cross-selling-scandal-grew-out-of-workplace-culture

  • New Ernst & Young Report: Supply Chain Data “Overwhelms” Businesses, Stunting Automation, Efficiency

    Managing the data growth dilemma: The growing tsunami of data is both a boon and bane to businesses in the digital age. Limitless oceans of data, often reflecting customer experience as it happens, have the potential to remake supply chains and business models. These models can and should be more efficient, productive, flexible and responsive. But right now, data is a mess. The current period of hyper data growth leaves most companies in a position where their ability to uncover business insights is effectively hidden within an increasingly complex and often unfathomable amount of data.

    http://www.scmr.com/article/new_ernst_young_report_supply_chain_data_overwhelms_businesses_stunting_aut#When:12:53:00Z

  • Supply Risk and Compliance are Disconnected — That’s a Problem and an Opportunity

    So, you’re stuck in the supply risk swamp and bogged down by compliance regimes. And you know there is waste everywhere and opportunity all around. So, as a supply professional, what should you do? You need to align risk management and compliance management with not just each other but with performance management (including continuous improvement) — and tie them all into your value chain processes. As those processes go upstream and external, this is where procurement and supply chain groups feel this problem — and need for alignment — more than anyone in the enterprise.

    http://spendmatters.com/2016/09/27/supply-risk-compliance-disconnected-thats-problem-opportunity/

Photo: JD Weiher

Posted on

News You Can Use: 9/21/2016

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  • Salesforce announces new role: Chief Equality Officer

    This move, while notable for its diversity efforts, reflects Benioff’s continued contribution to community. TechCrunch noted Salesforce’s 1/1/1 charity program, which has over the years given “over $128 million in grants” and allowed employees to volunteer more than 1.6 million hours in their communities.

    http://www.hrdive.com/news/salesforce-announces-new-role-chief-equality-officer/426278/

  • Is Technology Making Procurement Professionals Lazy?

    More astute procurement professionals may be compelled to move towards more sophisticated technology which may be overly complex for the issue you are trying to solve. If you are trying to get adoption across your organisation versus a subset of power users, then make sure your specification is fit for purpose in order to maximise the impact across the organisation. Broad adoption is highly correlated to ease of use and buying a “spreadsheet on steroids” will likely mean you need an analyst to answer every executive’s question about your procurement spend.

    One of the great challenges procurement leader’s face is that they are often compelled to use procurement tools affiliated with their ERP provider. Most of these tools were born during the days of “Feature Wars” where more and more complexity was added to the tool until it became almost unusable without heroic manual effort. Where leaders have the influence to pull it off, they should explore best of breed, built for purpose tools.

    http://www.procurementleaders.com/blog/my-blog–guest-blog/is-technology-making-procurement-professionals-lazy-639415
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  • How Long Until Hackers Start Faking Leaked Documents?

    Forging thousands—or more—documents is difficult to pull off, but slipping a single forgery in an actual cache is much easier. The attack could be something subtle. Maybe a country that anonymously publishes another country’s diplomatic cables wants to influence yet a third country, so adds some particularly egregious conversations about that third country. Or the next hacker who steals and publishes email from climate change researchers invents a bunch of over-the-top messages to make his political point even stronger. Or it could be personal: someone dumping email from thousands of users making changes in those by a friend, relative, or lover.

    http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/09/hacking-forgeries/499775/?utm_source=feed
    This is a great question, I have to imagine it has already happened. 

  • Why Supply Chain Managers Are Psychopaths

    A study of 261 corporate professionals working in supply chain management found that 21 percent of those individuals had clinically significant levels of psychopathic traits, such as insincerity, lack of empathy or remorse, egocentric behavior, and the ability to be both charming and superficial.

    The study found the supply chain management professionals had similar levels of psychopathic traits to the broad prison population.

    http://www.sdcexec.com/news/12256445/why-supply-chain-managers-are-psychopaths
    Difference Spin on the same study:
    One out of five American CEOs might be a psychopath

    “A really interesting question is whether psychopathy can be a positive thing. Some psychologists would say yes, that there are certain attributes like coolness under pressure, which is sort of a fundamental positive. But Robert Hare would always say no, that in the absence of empathy, which is the definition in psychology of a psychopath, you will always get malevolence,” Ronson told Forbes.

    “Basically, high-scoring psychopaths can be brilliant bosses but only ever for short term,” he added.

    http://www.zmescience.com/science/psychology-science/psychopathic-executives/
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  • Do You Have A F*cking Problem With Swearing At Work?

    But be careful who you swear around. The Wrike study revealed that of the 43% of those who do not use profane language in the workplace, 36% are bothered when others drop the F-bomb, and 20% would consider filling an official complaint in regards to their colleagues’ language. On the other hand, 33% of respondents would not consider a position at a workplace that strictly banned swearing, so you can’t f*cking win either way.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/3063775/do-you-have-a-fcking-problem-with-swearing-at-work?partner=rss

Photo: Ian Schneider