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Spend Matters

Friday Rant: Supply & Demand? -- The Consumer Fuel Price Conundrum

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:34:00 -0800

As we all know, daily life can be trying and difficult for a plethora of reasons. It's also why we should all do our best to not sweat the small stuff. I try, for instance, to not go crazy over the cost of gasoline, but my patience is running on emp...

"Why Should I Attend Commodity Edge?" We Thought You'd Never Ask...

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:46:00 -0800

UPDATED Speaker Page Event Breakdown REGISTER HERE...

Spend Matters Friday Latte

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:18:00 -0800

They may have lost Dear Leader, but North Koreans still have a-ha. (via The Daily What) Getting your vitamins. The Cost of Getting in Shape: Am I Getting Enough Protein/Iron/Zinc/Vitamin E??? -- WELL. I had NO IDEA that my personal eating habits...

Friday Rant: Workin' in a Chinese coal mine -- Goin' Down Down Down…

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:18:00 -0800

Spend Matters welcomes a rant from lead analyst Thomas Kase. Even though Apple gets the most press about poor working conditions in China these days, we'd argue there's something else much larger, nefarious and cultural lurking beneath the timecar...

Spend Matters Spring/Summer Vendor Briefings: Combining Work and Play at Wrigley -- An Invitation

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 04:29:00 -0800

When I moved to Chicago ten years ago, one of the first things I did was register with the Chicago Cubs to get on the waitlist for season tickets. Having been a huge baseball fan and player when growing up in Philadelphia (and even on the "unofficial...

How Else Can I Help my Providers Help Me?

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:29:00 -0800

Spend Matters would like to welcome a guest post from Vantage Partners. See previous posts in this series here: Part 1 and Part 2 Buyers can enable providers to help them reach their goals in a number of ways. In this third part, we explore two ad...

Spend Matters Afternoon Coffee

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:36:00 -0800

Welcome, BravoSolution! Spend Matters and MetalMiner are pleased to welcome BravoSolution as a Bronze Level sponsor of Commodity Edge: Sourcing Intelligence for the New Normal. Click here to register, here for a full event breakdown, and here to che...

Apple, Social Responsibility and Procurement: More CSR Pesticides or Going Organic? (Part 2)

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:06:00 -0800

Click here to read the first post in this series. Based on Apple's 2012 Supplier Sustainability report, both in absolute and percentage terms, the largest increase in Apple's auditing programs appears in the "repeat audit" areas. This should not be ...

The White House Talks Supply Chain: When Supply Risk Becomes a National Security Issue (Part 1)

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 06:56:00 -0800

For someone who has been researching and covering supply chain risk for a decade, it's extremely refreshing to see what once were esoteric topics become mainstream, albeit due to avoidable -- and unavoidable, in certain cases -- tragedies that disrup...

A Simplified P2P Maturity Model: Stage Zero --- You Have to Start Somewhere (Technology/Systems)

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:34:00 -0800

Click here for the first post in this series. And if you're looking for a broader primer on purchase-to-pay systems, tips and organizational maturity models, you can download our recent Compass research brief on the subject, A Foundational Look at P2...

Hypervisor Pricing Wars -- Get Ready

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:12:00 -0800

Spend Matters welcomes another guest post from NPI, a spend management consultancy, focused on delivering savings in the areas of IT, telecom, transportation and energy. I recently came across an interesting article on a war being waged between VM...

Spend Matters Afternoon Coffee

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:42:00 -0800

Talking bout some evoluuuuttiooonnn woooaahhh.... The evolution of the supply chain business model -- With the recent revelation of a strategy for America's national supply chain, President Obama highlighted the vulnerabilities of the supply chain m...

IBM Closes Emptoris Deal: New Chapter/Technology Outlook for Venerable Spend Management Player

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:31:00 -0800

Earlier today, IBM announced it had completed its acquisition of Emptoris (for Spend Matters initial coverage of the acquisition announcement, click here, here, and here). Curiously, IBM appears to have closed the deal more quickly than DemandTec, a ...

Getting Creative with Spend Analysis Datasets (Part 2)

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 06:35:00 -0800

Please click here for the first post in this series. This series of articles is based on insights from the following Spend Matters Perspective: Spend Analysis -- Making Quantum Leaps: Exploring the Realm of Possibility and Untapped Savings with Three...

New Research: Supplier Information Management Technology Fundamentals -- An Insider’s Look

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 02:44:00 -0800

If you want to appear as boring as possible to the pretty little thing sitting next to you at a cocktail party, tell her (or him) that you're in the vendor management field. Trust me, nothing kills social conversation more with a procurement outsider...