Back to School (Training)

In the course of any year, there are a few unique windows that present themselves for planning and reflection. We’ve talked about spring cleaning as a time to get your procurement house in order and course correct as needed. We’ve also talked about the dog days of summer as a time to take advantage of [...]

ePayables Primer (6) – The Summary

We’ve dedicated quite a few of our August articles to accounts payable automation or ePayables and we hope that you’ve found them to be helpful. (For those of you looking for more in the way of sourcing and procurement, fear not – next time, school’s back in!) This article is intended to summarize the series. [...]

An ePayables Primer (5) – Other Key Metrics

I did not forget about ePayables. I did not forget about accounts payable (“AP”). It’s not like I’m your typical F-1000 CFO or Treasurer (most of whom have forgotten about AP) or anything like that. Nope, I did not forget about this Primer series, it’s just that the dog days, the procurement fraud controversy at Apple, [...]

Fraud Prevention (2) – CPO Strategies

Today, we follow up on our last article, which discussed procurement fraud and Apple’s bad apple, Paul Shin Devine, who has been accused of taking more than $1 million in illegal kickbacks from the suppliers of the iPod and iPhone categories he oversaw in his role as a global supply manager. It stands to reason [...]

Fraud Prevention (1) – Avoiding the Bad Apples

Proverb: One bad apple spoils the barrel Scientific Fact: One bad apple spoils the barrel Organizational Behavior Research: A bad apple (at work) can spoil the barrel Bad Apples – every enterprise has them. The challenge for Chief Procurement Officers and other supply management executives is to identify, quarantine, and expel them before the barrel becomes [...]

Acquisti & Sostenibilità – Sustainable Procurement, Italian Style

In our two most recent articles, we have introduced Luca Guzzabocca, one of the leading statesmen for Italian procurement and the Director of Procurement, Logistics, HSE, Security Management (or “Chief Procurement Officer”) at Banca Monte Dei Paschi Di Siena (“Banca MPS”). The first article shared Luca’s story as a leader “rising to become CPO;” while [...]

Luca Guzzabocca – Banking on Procurement (Part 2)

In our last article, we introduced you to “friend of the site,” Luca Guzzabocca, the Director of Procurement, Logistics, HSE, Security Management (or “Chief Procurement Officer”) at Banca Monte Dei Paschi Di Siena (“Banca MPS”) and traced his path to his current CPO role. In this article we will focus on the procurement operations within [...]

Luca Guzzabocca: Banking on Procurement (Part 1)

There are certain people who come to epitomize their community while also being active participants in it. Sometimes they become statesmen, like Warren Buffet, who’s played that role for the investor community for 40 or 50 years. Sometimes they evade (Kurt Cobain – Seattle Grunge Rock; J.D. Salinger – American 20th Novelists), but by doing [...]

ePayables Primer (4) – The Main Metric

Part Four of our ePayables Primer starts right in with a discussion of the key AP performance metric that can be used to build a case for investment in ePayables. You may select the ePayables tag to see all of our articles in the Primer series and on the topic in general. ePayables Primer 4 – [...]

Déjà vu: Summer Supply Constraints

The dreaded dog days of summer can hit anyone. From the buy side to the supply side, we know they’re coming and yet, many enterprises keep getting hit, from the blind side. Supply disruptions are in the news again. That the trade pubs, industry and enterprise blogs, and other media sites like this one focused on [...]

The Dog Days

With apologies to our growing contingent of Chief Procurement Officers and other readers based in the southern hemisphere who are hip-deep into winter – please set a reminder in your calendar and bookmark this article for use in February. For the rest of us, the dog days of summer are here, (literally for many, figuratively for [...]

An ePayables Primer – (3) The Approach

We continue to build out our ePayables Primer with this article focused on how to begin a push for AP transformation, The Approach. The first two articles are found here: The Challenges and here: The Opportunities. You can also select the ePayables tag to see all of our articles on the topic. As a reminder [...]

Data Driven

The world is becoming more and more data driven. As you surf the web today, many of the sites that you visit will utilize ad serving technology that will determine, based upon any number of unique data factors about you, the surfer (i.e. where you are physically, where you’ve been virtually, etc.), what ads you will [...]

CPO Shop Talk – More Webinar Q&A

This edition of Chief Procurement Officer Shop Talk is part two of the Q&A portion of a webinar that I delivered on July 7th for Zycus – an archive of the webinar is now available at this site (free, registration). Q1: Can you discuss recent trends in solution selection for supply management technology? Answer: One recent trend [...]

An ePayables Primer – (2) The Opportunities

ePayables Primer Part 2 – The Opportunities We started building this ePayables Primer last week with a look at some (but, not all) of the key challenges facing the average accounts payable organization and the industry as a whole. Part one is found here. Today we continue with a look at some of the largest opportunities [...]

CPO Rising – Site Navigation and Design

We started CPO Rising because we felt that there was an opportunity to reach/develop/expand an underserved market with interesting articles that provide fresh insight and progressive approaches while also informing, educating, challenging, and even entertaining the reader. Our perspective is progressive, our focus is supply management, and our intended audience is the international community of [...]

CPO Shop Talk: Webinar Q&A

This edition of Chief Procurement Officer Shop Talk comes directly from the Q&A portion of the webinar that I delivered on July 7th for Zycus. I describe the webinar here and an archive of the webinar will be available at this site (free, registration). Q1: Do you see a trend and benefit to the use of [...]

An ePayables Primer – (1) The Challenges

Right around the time I left Ariba to enter the analyst ranks in mid-2006, Ariba began making a big push into accounts payable automation which surprised me given my context and background (at that time) which been squarely focused on strategic sourcing and to a somewhat lesser degree, on procurement. But Ariba was on to [...]

Ardent Partners – Open for Business (Summer Version)

July 14 is a day of revolution for one proud nation. As I write this article, I am in the town where many Patriots awoke 234 years ago, rode a few miles down the road, and fired a collective shot heard round the world which set in motion the revolution for this proud nation. For me, [...]

Enel: Making the Case for Spend Analysis (Part 2B)

We’ll hop right into today’s article which follows this article (link) chronologically as part of an extended series where we have gotten to know Mario Mosca (amico del sito) and taken a deep dive into procurement operations at Enel. Deployment Scope and Plan The team decided to start the project by focusing on three large business units [...]

Enel: Making the Case for Spend Analysis (Part 2A)

We continue today with Part 2A of our case study of how Enel, Europe’s second largest utility company with annual revenue exceeding 64 billion €, made its case for an investment in Spend Analysis. Part One is found here. In June, we laid the foundation for this case study by introducing you to Mario Mosca, [...]

CPO Shop Talk: (1) Meetings to Make Decisions (2) On Winning

Meetings to Make Decisions I recently caught up with a Chief Procurement Officer who finds himself in the early part of a procurement transformation journey. He’s not a career procurement pro, but rather, a seasoned “Ops” (operations) guy and a well-respected (and tenured) company man who has led many high-profile, internal projects across a host of [...]

Enel: Making the Case for Spend Analysis

Last week we introduced you to the procurement operations at Europe’s second largest utility company, Enel and its procurement executive in charge of the technology infrastructure and the company processes that are mapped to them, Mario Mosca, Enel’s Head of Procurement, Processes and Systems based in Rome (their global operations are shown in orange on [...]

People Get Ready, the Visibility Train is Coming

Dateline: Sunday June 27 – FIFA World Cup Round of 16: Germany 4 England 1 Full Story on Lampard’s goal that never was. Replay of Lampard’s goal that never was. Dateline: Monday June 28 – “FIFA president Sepp Blatter has long been on record as against using video replay to review calls. ‘We obviously will not [...]

BIG Trends

In business circles, supply management is the new black. Next week, I will be discussing some of the BIG Trends that I see shaping spend (or supply) management in the decade ahead when I participate as the featured speaker in a webinar (free registration). The trends I will be discussing are (1) Executive engagement (2) Collaboration within [...]

Mario Mosca – Energizing Procurement at Enel (Part 2)

Today, Part Two of our CPO Case Study with Mario Mosca, Head of Procurement, Processes and Systems, for Enel Energy in Rome will look at the supply management solutions and procurement platform in place at Enel. A few things to reiterate from Part One, which introduced Mario, his team, his company, and his approach to process [...]

Mario Mosca – Energizing Procurement at Enel (Part 1)

Two speaking engagements in Northern Italy in the last two months and each time I have had the pleasure of preceding Mario Mosca, Head of Procurement, Processes and Systems, Business Unit, Enel Energy in Rome onto the stage. Mario’s very sharp and energetic. He’s also an experienced hand when it comes to aligning systems and [...]

Savings Goals

Through no fault of our own, sometimes the same level of effort results in widely different results (Denmark 1-0-1). Sometimes external factors (US 2 Slovenia 2) play a bigger role in our results than anything we may or may not do. Sometimes the results are exactly as predicted (Brazil 2 N. Korea 1) or modeled. [...]

Universal Challenge: Aligning Processes and Systems (Part 2)

The tough, tough loss by the Celtics last night against a tough, tough defense of the Lakers had two sure results – (1) my start to writing today’s article would be very late (2) Pat Riley, the former NBA coach and trademark owner of the term/slogan “Three-peat” will make millions of dollars in licensing fees [...]

Universal Challenge: Aligning Processes and Systems (Part 1)

I’m sitting in on a panel discussion today with two long-standing industry pros (consultants, not CPO-types) at an all-hands procurement department meeting for a large company. The panel is broken down into 3 sections followed by a Q&A – I’m looking forward to it. Many of the questions the moderator is planning to ask are [...]

Leverage – Procurement’s Big Impact on Profits

We’ve spent the past few articles (here and here) looking at the impact that a procurement department’s net contribution can have on profitability and placed that impact in the relative context of the actual enterprise/business/industry that a specific procurement department is supporting by analyzing net profit margins. When times are tough and top-line growth is hard [...]

…Is a Nickel, Dime, or Quarter Earned

After a sly rambling preamble about the acidic rain of costly pennies from heaven, our discussion last time, A Penny Saved, turned to the extraordinary impact that ordinary procurement results can have on a company’s profitability. I refer to this phenomenon as procurement leverage. Our analysis today focuses on net profit margin and how the large [...]

A Penny Saved…

Riddle 1: When is a door not a door? When it’s ajar. Riddle 2: When is a penny not a penny? Since 2006. 2006 is the year when the cost to produce and deliver a penny exceeded its face value. Last year it cost the US mint 1.62 cents to produce and ship a penny. Talk about [...]

Hawk Those Legal Eagles

This past weekend, I caught up with a bunch of friends on a visit to Mt. St. James. One friend is now a partner in the corporate section of the business services group of a large law firm based on the west coast of the US. He specializes in counseling corporate clients on a wide [...]

CPO Shop Talk from Ariba LIVE: (1) Clouds (2) P2P Enablement (3) WCO

The eSourcing 2.0 campaign is underway and over the next few months we’ll be taking the campaign to the streets. I’ve already been invited by several procurement leaders to speak to their teams at their annual/quarterly gatherings and I welcome the opportunity to schedule one or two more of these “town-hall” meetings during the “Primary [...]

Search & Engage: Ron Carcamo, Yahoo!’s CPO (Pt. 2)

Last week, we provided a discussion on embedding procurement within the business. Yesterday, in Part One of this CPO Case Study, we introduced a CPO who’s gone and done it (and, as you’ll see, done it well) – Ron Carcamo, Yahoo! Inc.’s Chief Procurement Officer (and friend of the site) – we also provided some [...]

Search & Engage: Ron Carcamo, Yahoo!’s CPO (Pt. 1)

Two months after our formal launch at CPO Rising and things are really starting to heat up. (1) Thank you for your time and interest in support of the site; it honestly means a great deal to me to have gotten such a welcoming reception from you. More than anything, the numerous comments and offline [...]

eSourcing 2.0: Campaign Kickoff

Good morning. We are here today to announce our campaign for eSourcing 2.0 as the policy of choice for procurement departments great and small around the globe. We all made this journey today for a reason. It’s humbling, but in my heart I know you didn’t come to CPO Rising for the pictures, you came here [...]

Embedded

At several of the events that I have spoken at in April and May, my presentation theme has paralleled one of the 10 or 2010 articles written to kick off the year, “Ideas for the New Year.”  For those of you that are new to CPO Rising, I highly recommend that you investigate the 10 [...]

Opportunity-to-Order: The Value of Contract Management

Buy-Sell, Sell-Buy. Tomorrow, and for perhaps the last time ever (not definitive), I will be presenting research that I performed for my last employer, Aberdeen Group. In a strange twist of fate, I will be presenting this research for a different former employer, Ariba, at the Ariba Live 2010 event being held this week in [...]

The eSourcing 2.0 Campaign Trail

Like any good successful politician (good politician = oxymoron), I am trying to stay on message with the eSourcing 2.0 campaign (Source, Baby, Source!). It’s a grass-roots movement and we need your help. And with eSourcing solutions in place at roughly 60% of companies and usage (for those companies with the solution) hitting less than [...]

Send a Lieutenant

Ok, Vista sucks. That little fact spawned a cottage industry and helped juice many a blog’s traffic stats along the way (Please note: if you’re some random Vista-hating surfer, this article is not about Vista). I became a user when I confiscated secured my wife’s laptop when I made the move to go solo. Except [...]

Bring a Lieutenant

I caught up with a top Chief Procurement Officer and friend the other day. In our chat, we touched upon a whole host of topics and he’s now checking with his internal PR folks to determine what can officially be shared on the pages of CPO Rising (Sidebar: I’m not averse to anonymous case studies [...]

eSourcing 2.0: Use of Auction Policy (Part 2)

Last Friday, we presented the current Use of Auctions policy in place at the company of one CPO Rising’s reader’s. Today, I’ll offer some in-line commentary. About CompanyName’s Use of Auctions It is great to see a World Class sourcing organization put pen to paper and author a clear policy on its use of auctions. It [...]

Executive Engagement: The CEO

If procurement warrants a C-level role within the enterprise (and by the title of this site you know that we think it does), the Chief Procurement Officer should begin to develop a direct relationship with the CEO. That doesn’t have to mean Thursday squash and mutual family vacations; a formal meeting at some regular interval [...]

CPO Shop Talk: (1) Procurement Outsourcing (2) Getting Started

Shop Talk. Sharp Talk. CPO Shop Talk. From time to time I will attempt to share some of the less-formal conversations that I have with Chief Procurement Officers and CPO-types through the course of my research, travels, and (forthcoming) analyst/advisory business on the pages of CPO Rising. CPO Shop Talk is not intended to be [...]

eSourcing 2.0: Use of Auction Policy

As you recall, the case for eSourcing 2.0 is one of compliance, visibility, knowledge capture, and efficiency, not necessarily one of negotiation strategy (i.e. If you want to run a competitive bid? Great! If not, use the system for final requirements and final bid capture). That said, eSourcing 2.0 while not mandating a certain type of [...]

Cross Pollination

I had an interesting call on Monday with two recent grads from a top-tier Supply Chain program that are now both part of a global supply chain rotation program at a large company that puts new hires onto a Supply Chain/Management fast track by exposing them to the variety of roles across the breadth of [...]

Spring Cleaning

I’d like to start by thanking everyone who visited CPO Rising during its first month (since our official launch), read our articles, sent notes and emails of encouragement, linked to an article or forwarded a link to a colleague, posted comments and engaged in a dialogue with me and the other readers. When I began this [...]

Debate: Mandate or Sell? Implementing eSourcing 2.0

Quiz: How should a Chief Procurement Officer implement eSourcing 2.0? (WWCPOD?) (Answer found at bottom of page) Our ongoing discussion of eSourcing 2.0 picks up from last Friday’s article which made the argument that there should be an enterprise-level system of record that captures the key elements of the discussion with suppliers that result in [...]

Are You Experienced?

Have you ever been experienced? Well, I have…. Actually I haven’t. Wait, now I’m not sure, what are we talking about again? Like most other days at CPO Rising, today we’re talking about supply (or spend) management. I have some experience, but I’m always looking for more. For example, I had a great call yesterday with [...]

Meet me in…. Chicago… and San Francisco…

May is shaping up to be a busy month. To start, it is ‘events season’ for many of the solution providers in the supply management space and I will be taking to the road several times next month in support of a few companies and their events. Secondly, but not necessarily secondarily, I plan to ’soft-launch’ [...]

eSourcing 2.0: Making the Case

Now that I’ve made it home, I’m going to spend the next few Fridays drilling down into the concept of eSourcing 2.0 which was introduced on the site earlier this year. For more than a decade, strategic sourcing consultants, professionals, and solution providers have been working with enterprises to drive greater spend volumes onto their [...]

A Walk in the Clouds

As I write this, I wish I was in the clouds, literally. But I am not, still grounded in Italy by the volcanic ash clouds of Eyjafjallajökull (what a nice ring). My two+ day Italian adventure has extended to seven and I am reliant upon an unknown agent to prioritize my navigation home. Without my [...]

Planes, Trains, and (Auto)-Mobility

After the breakup of The Sugarcubes, I was pretty sure that nothing that ever happened in Iceland would have a big impact on my life. I was wrong. Curses, Eyjafjallajökull!!! What a mouthful. The volcano under the Eyjafjallajökull (site in French but great links to many English sites including webcams) glacier in Iceland that began erupting [...]

Spend Analysis, Italian Style

We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming…. Two of my favorite things: (1) waking up in Italy and (2) talking about spend analysis. Despite my 90-year old Nonna’s wishes, I tend to do much more of number (2) than number (1). But I’m excited because today I get to do both. The location for (1) is [...]

Procurement “Genius” aka April Foolishness

It did not go unnoticed by my two brothers and some readers that I officially launched CPO Rising on April Fool’s Day. I’m not sure what that indicates, but after re-reading this post, I thought I might need an excuse for today’s folly. It’s no surprise to me that the world’s smartest men and women often [...]

Harvesting Supplier Innovation (Part 3)

Today we conclude a series of articles (found here, here, and here) on Supplier Innovation. At the core, competitive advantage is built upon a foundation of enterprise partnerships with customers and suppliers that are innovative (i.e. hard to copy). This advantage is more likely to become sustainable if its costs stay in-line with the market (meaning [...]

Harvesting Supplier Innovation (Part 2)

Earlier this week, I discussed the opportunity to promote innovation by working with smaller suppliers and presented a successful case study of Kellogg’s development of supplier innovation program. Today, I will discuss another real world example of how one very successful supplier innovation program operates. My next article will present general recommendations on developing and [...]

Harvesting Supplier Innovation (Part 1)

On Monday, I made the case that “targeted bets on some smaller suppliers can help enterprises find that next big (or key incremental) innovation.” Today we’ll look at how procurement departments can establish an environment that nurtures supplier innovation before presenting a case study. On Friday, we’ll look at a world-class approach to supplier innovation. [...]

A Cinderella Story

Everyone loves an underdog. Tonight at 9:21 pm ET at Lucas Oil Stadium in downtown Indianapolis, Butler University tips off against Duke University in the NCAA Men’s Basketball National Championship Game. The majority of fans (outside of the Research Triangle, anyway) tuning in tonight will, no doubt, be cheering for the Number Five-seeded Bulldogs of [...]

Opening Day – Welcome to CPO Rising!

Welcome to CPO Rising, the first independent site that seeks to chronicle the continuing rise of Chief Procurement Officers (CPOs) and other supply management leaders within the enterprise business ranks. Yesterday’s article brought an end to one chapter in my career, today starts a new one. In fact, today is our opening day! A more formal [...]

Farewell, but Not Goodbye

Today’s article is a copy of the note I published on Aberdeen’s GSM blog earlier today (3/31/10), which was my last day at Aberdeen Group. It is with mixed feelings that I return today to Aberdeen’s Global Supply Management (“GSM”) newsletter/blog, for you see, today is my last day as an Aberdeen employee. For the past [...]

CPOs: Think Globally, Network Locally

The CPOs in the Bay Area have an informal group that gets together from time to time to network and discuss best practices (Sidebar: I dialed into their meeting a few days ago to provide an overview of recent trends in supply management technology and highlight key solution providers in certain segments. I will share [...]

ePayables: The Digital Difference Webinar

A deficient accounts payable function creates problems for procurement and the CPO. AP departments that lack technology, centralization of oversight, and visibility negatively impact procurement processes and performance. A discussion around these challenges (which are common) and how Best-in-Class enterprises tackle them will be a primary focus for the webinar (free registration) that I will [...]

“We have no specific procurement goals.”

The title of this article was the response I received to the question “How does your CFO measure your performance?” that I posed to the director of procurement for a billion dollar plus revenue company at the end of my visit earlier this month with this procurement team to discuss ways to jump-start their new [...]

The “CPO Bump”

While the cost of some marketing programs can be excessive, effective campaigns can pay huge dividends for many years. One of the most challenging aspects in all of marketing is being able to understand why a program succeeds or fails and what the most important factors in achieving the results were. For example, was it [...]

On the Bubble

March Madness is upon us. The NCAA Division I Men’s College Basketball Tournament kicks off this week with a field of the top 64 65 teams taking to the courts over 19 days to play for the National Championship. There is a serious rumor floating around that the NCAA powers that be are seriously considering [...]

And the Winner is…… (Part 2)

Last Friday, I discussed the value of awarding individuals and teams for their performance over the course of a year. On Wednesday, I highlighted the value of an annual Supplier Day in my discussion of what Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) Tom Linton, is doing at LG Electronics. Today, I’ll combine the two. With this Sunday’s Oscars, [...]

Supplier Day, Beautiful Day

I have been tracking the procurement activity at LG Electronics (“LG”) since Tom Linton joined as the first Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) in company history (after a long stint at IBM and few years as the CPO of Freescale Semiconductor, the Motorola spinoff) and was very pleased to have been invited to attend LG Electronics’ [...]

CFO-CPO Relations: A Work in Progress

As someone who has worked for many years in both finance and supply management, I have always found the relationship between the CPO and the CFO (and their departments) to be an intriguing one. In general, we see two departments that are often operating on the same page and towards the same ends, but speaking [...]

And the Winner is……

This Sunday night, tens of millions in the US and many more around the globe will gather around their televisions (and computers?) to watch the 82nd Annual Academy Awards. According to ‘The Academy,’ “The Oscars reward the previous year’s greatest cinema achievements as determined by some of the world’s most accomplished motion picture artists and [...]

Fail-safe

When things don’t go according to plans, the unprepared are often forced to just grin and bear it and hope that no one notices or that the total impact of the issue is not so great. If you’re the producer of the Olympic Opening Ceremonies, it is easy enough to overcome a Stonehenge–like snafu made on [...]

Five Forces in Business Travel

The Masters Program in partnership with The National Business Travel Association, was held last month in Washington D.C., and by my estimation delivered on its promise to deliver an event that “offers a combination of market insights and executive networking.” This invitation-only event was comprised a 50/50 balance of CEOs and leaders from each segment [...]

Proof: eAuctions are NOT Evil

Hypothesis: eAuctions (and eSourcing) are not evil. Proof: I. Google’s Code of Conduct states in its Preface: “Don’t be evil.” Googlers generally apply those words to how we serve our users. But “Don’t be evil” is much more than that. Yes, it’s about providing our users unbiased access to information, focusing on their needs and giving them [...]

Meadwestvaco’s Total P2P Package

Chris Osen, Vice President of Supply Management at Meadwestvaco (“MWV”) took the presentation baton from me at the NAPP Conference (after I took it from Bill Dempsey) and delivered a presentation entitled “Organizational Management for Success,” which discussed the complete organizational redesign that his team has managed over the past few years, including a shift [...]

E-Payment Networks: A Best-in-Class Solution for Buyers and Suppliers

As I noted in my 10 for 2010: Predictions for the New Decade article, “The supplier and payment networks that quickly adopt Web 2.0 capabilities and lead the way on interoperability will be the ones most likely to thrive and survive the threat from next generation networks.” Longtime e-payments specialist, Bottomline Technologies, leapt into the [...]

The Gold Standard

Over the course of my career in supply management, I have had the great fortune to work with a large number of highly successful CPOs and procurement organizations that have successfully transformed their operations into well-oiled machines that often manage more than 80% and sometimes more than 90% of total enterprise spend. This percentage of enterprise [...]

P2P Tastes Great at MillerCoors

Bill Dempsey, Director of Procurement and Strategic Sourcing at MillerCoors (“MC”) kicked off the 18th Annual NAPP Conference in Marina Del Rey this past Monday with a Keynote Address entitled “Unlocking Hidden Value Levers in the P2P Process” that provided a great look into the P2P (but, primarily procurement) operations at the joint venture that [...]

Accounts Payable Automation: Choose or Lose

Are you striving for accounts payable gold or just looking to compete? If your answer is “yes” to either option then you may be interested in a webinar (free registration) that I will be participating in on Thursday. Here’s the official description of the webinar: While the business case for A/P automation is relatively straightforward, the [...]

Swifter, Higher, Stronger

The 2010 Winter Olympics begin tonight with more than 2,600 athletes from 83 countries traveling to Vancouver to compete in 86 events over the next 17 days. Many Olympians will have dedicated the majority of their lives to participate in an event that amazingly will conclude in minutes, if not seconds. For these Olympians, it [...]

Business Travel Fusion

According to Wikipedia, nuclear fusion “is the process by which multiple like-charged atomic nuclei join together to form a heavier nucleus.” At its aptly named user conference (Concur Fusion) held last week, Concur brought together many like-charged travel, procurement, and accounts payable leaders to join together in Boca Raton. According to Chairman and CEO Steve [...]

Concur Fusion 2010

Concur Fusion was held last week (Feb. 1-4) at the Boca Raton Resort and Club. Concur Technologies is the largest provider of what it refers to as “Employee Spend Management” solutions. These solutions enable the management of the travel and entertainment (T&E) category as well as the expense reporting and accounts payable processes. Fusion 2010 [...]

SciQuest NextLevel 2010

Dateline: A snow-bound Raleigh, North Carolina for NextLevel, SciQuest’s Annual Conference held Feb. 1-3. SciQuest is a SaaS solution provider best known for its P2P prowess and a supplier network that has enabled it to become a category killer in the higher education sector and make strong in-roads in the public sector and environments that [...]

10 for 2010: Strategies to Improve Accounts Payable

I have a good feeling about Accounts Payable (AP) in this decade. In recent years, there has been increasing momentum within the marketplace for AP transformation. Not the kind of broad-based globally-accepted kind of transformation that we have seen in procurement or even in human capital management… not yet, anyway. Although they often lack broad [...]

10 for 2010: ROA – Areas to Improve Your Returns

If the US government could collect a dollar for every article, report, or presentation with a “Doing More with Less” theme created in recent times, its deficit issues might be behind it. For many, this is one of the new themes in the ‘New Normal’ economy; but for CPOs and other procurement leaders, this has [...]

10 for 2010: eSourcing Myths (and How to Deconstruct Them)

eSourcing Manifesto eSourcing 2.0: Every negotiation that results in an executed contract should use an eSourcing solution. The eSourcing manifesto code that I introduced in 2009 via research[i] and other presentations builds upon more than a decade of direct involvement developing, packaging, selling, using, and evaluating eSourcing solutions. eSourcing 2.0 makes the case that an eSourcing [...]

10 for 2010: Solution Providers to Discover in 2010

Earlier this month, I provided a list of 10 providers of supply management solutions and then another list of 10 providers of ePayables solutions to watch in 2010. This next list of solution providers will be less familiar to most, based upon their size, primarily, but not their capabilities. These are burgeoning companies that warrant [...]

10 for 2010: Categories to Source in 2010

Change is constant. “Change is inevitable (except from a vending machine).”* But in this new year, this new decade, we find that many things have not changed. We are still in the midst of a global downturn, still rocked by uncertainty, and the credit markets are still relatively tight. Resources are still, and perhaps forever, [...]

European CPOs: Capitalising on the Best Opportunities

Once again, we interrupt the “10 for 2010” series to highlight a webinar (free registration) that I will be participating in tomorrow that looks at the top opportunities for European CPOs in 2010. Here’s the official description taken from a recent PR: It’s a new year and European procurement executives are beginning it with a fresh [...]

Spend Analysis: A Shot in the Arm for BETTER Sourcing

We interrupt the “10 for 2010” series to highlight a webinar (free registration) that I will be participating on Wednesday that looks at best practices in using spend visibility to drive sourcing success. Here’s the official invitation: Enterprise spend data provides the procurement organization with an intelligent look into the core of their expenses and purchases [...]

10 for 2010: ePayables Solution Providers to Watch in 2010

Continuing my 2010 resolution to write more about the subset of solution providers that are making (and/or will make) the greatest impact within the Global 2000 I’ll pick up today’s conversation with another list of 10 solution providers to watch in 2010 – this time, I’ve turned my sights on accounts payable technology. ePayables, is [...]

10 for 2010: Solution Providers to Watch in 2010

As an industry analyst, I have been actively tracking the solution providers in the supply management marketplace for years. Over this time, I have worked directly with more than 200 companies and been briefed by more than 100 others. The breadth of my coverage area and the ongoing market research efforts that I also lead [...]

10 for 2010: Ideas for the New Year

I’ve agreed to make a return appearance and present at NAPP’s Annual Conference in L.A. this February. My presentation will focus on the “Top 10″ ideas for P2P professionals to thrive in the new year (and new decade). This article will serve as the outline for that presentation.  If you are interested in the visuals [...]

10 for 2010: CPOs on the Rise in 2010

As I noted in my previous article, I believe that the leadership and managerial skills found in many of today’s Chief Procurement Officers (including those below) will provide the foundation needed for further advancement up the executive ranks during the next decade. While that promotion process begins to take hold, CPOs will continue doing impressive [...]

10 for 2010: Predictions for the New Decade

For many years now, the arrival of every new calendar sends me into a list-making frenzy that consumes several weeks as I work to develop a set of personal “top 10” lists from the past year (or decade) across various areas of interest, usually media and sports related. But this new blog in a new [...]

What’s Past is Prologue!

When business historians reflect on the first decade of the new millennium, the broad-based transformation that occurred within the average enterprise’s procurement department will be on the list of top trends and highlights. At the start of the decade (and millennium), the B2B revolution was in full effect, with billions of dollars invested in the development [...]

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