In a recent series of articles I have been examining the reasons why procurement cost-saving initiatives frequently fail to meet expectations, particularly in term of delivering measurable improvements in business profitability. There is undoubtedly a bigger question: where does cost saving sit in Procurement’s scheme of things? Continue reading
Stakeholder engagement is a critical factor in the success of business change, especially business transformations, which may require significant cultural change. Business transformation typically involves people, process and systems changes which need to be delivered in order to produce a step change within the business. The design of effective processes and application of appropriate technology is not enough to ensure success. Insufficient acceptance and adoption of the new processes, arising from inadequate engagement of stakeholders, is a common cause of transformation failures. Continue reading
Few customer-supplier partnerships are equal. Buyers need to be wary of entering into dependent relationships where the supplier will gain a dominant position. This is the second part of a 2-part article which sets out to examine how and why Procurement might consider the supplier’s perspective when selecting suppliers. It is particularly relevant for strategic supplies, where value creation and value capture are key objectives. Continue reading
Few customer-supplier partnerships are equal. Buyers need to be wary of entering into dependent relationships where the supplier will gain a dominant position. This is the first part of a 2-part article which sets out to examine how and why Procurement might consider the supplier’s perspective when selecting suppliers. It is particularly relevant for strategic supplies, where value creation and value capture are key objectives. Continue reading
This is the third in a series of articles which examine the internal and external factors which, when taken into consideration, will indicate the preferred model for procurement within a business. Continue reading
This article is an update to an earlier article – the fifth in a series on how to avoid the pitfalls of centralised procurement.
In the first article I commented on the reasons why, when many large organisations embark on centralised procurement initiatives with the promise of substantial savings, direct increases in profitability fail to materialize within the business units. A discussion to capture the views of other procurement professionals has been running at Procurement Professionals Group on LinkedIn.
This week I re-analyze the comments – 311 at time of writing this article – from 118 contributors, excluding myself. Continue reading
This is the second in a series of articles which examine the internal and external factors which, when taken into consideration, will indicate the preferred model for procurement within a business. Continue reading
This is the sixth in a series of articles on how to implement and enhance a gate process. The series offers advice in the context of consumer products. This article is a summary of the first 5 Articles together with my 7 top tips. Continue reading