With an extensive background in purchasing excellence and market analysis for chemicals and plastics (see bio below), I am convinced that any purchasing personnel dealing with a strategic product must perform a strategic sourcing market analysis. To demonstrate past and future demand and growth rates, I have aggregated chemicals and plastics (C&P) data from U.S. […]
Year after year, research studies by universities, consultants, and purchasing associations have shown cost reduction as one of a company’s three most important goals for the year. Although innovation and collaboration among business stakeholders and suppliers (SRM) continue to be part of the agenda in most of the companies, cost reduction remains a key part […]
Diversity within an organization is seen as positive through many lenses: Diversity of ideas, of culture, of ethnicity, so why not also supplier diversity? Corporations have already embraced diversity within the workforce and noticed benefits from it. Many of these benefits are outlined in the excellent book, Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations […]
In Sales and Marketing, companies use Customer Satisfaction Surveys to provide indicators of consumer purchase intentions and loyalty. According to Wikipedia, “Customer satisfaction data are among the most frequently collected indicators of market perceptions.” It emphasizes that “[a]lthough sales or market share can indicate how well a firm is performing currently, satisfaction is perhaps the best […]
I was recently interviewed by Dustin Mattison, Publisher at TheFutureofSupplyChains.com, where you can also hear the recording of the interview. We talked about Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) and the preliminary results of a recent SRM benchmark study. Below is a transcript of the interview. 1. Please give us a brief background about yourself. I worked […]
Over time, most companies have made changes in the procurement function. Each starts with just Purchasing, evolves to Strategic Sourcing, and eventually adds Supplier Relationship Management (SRM). Because professionals in the field may have slightly different understandings of these terms, let me clarify what is meant by each. Purchasing Still today we can find companies […]
Common wisdom says that any price forecast is already wrong the moment it is published. I can only smile and agree with this. If people were able to predict the price of anything, they would be billionaires and very well known by now. I’d like to hold this thought about price forecasts for a moment […]
The market typically uses “client” or “customer” to designate recipients of goods or services in return for compensation. Today I’d like you to start to see your invisible clients, those recipients of Purchasing services inside your company. The Purchasing function provides services to internal businesses and functions as well as to other companies. Based on a recent […]
Do raw materials have a major impact on your company costs? If so, any of your business colleagues worth their salt will want to know ASAP when their raw materials undergo a price increase. Of course, for raw materials with big spend dollars and high variable-cost impact, purchasing usually informs its internal clients about changes […]
Several articles and white papers have been written about spend management and spend analytics. Let’s use Wikipedia to define each one: Spend analysis is the process of collecting, cleansing, classifying and analyzing expenditure data. Spend management is the way in which companies control and optimize the money they spend. Companies have invested money and resources in spend […]