I have long been a student of global sourcing strategies, actively tracking moves by some of the largest U.S. companies to identify and develop suppliers in emerging regions with attractive labor arbitrage benefits, such as China, Malaysia, India, and Eastern Europe. However, there are early indications that a sluggish domestic economy, rising energy prices, and [...]

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Recognizing that new market challenges are forcing supply management executives to upskill their teams, Supply Excellence has proffered advice on recruiting and developing talent. A new study from Denali Consulting and SupplyStaff examines an even greater labor challenge: how to retain your best people.
As noted in previous posts, talent poaching has reached new heights in the [...]

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Last week, Procurement Central attempted to incite a new war over On Demand and Software as a Service (SaaS). ERP executive-turned-blogger-turned-open source evangelist Dave Stephens used the release of Aberdeen Group’s latest On Demand Supply Management Benchmark report to try to minimize the significance of On Demand and SaaS as merely a new flavor of application [...]

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Last month’s posting on Julie Murphree’s interview with the CEO of the National Corn Growers Association uncovered concerns that ethanol’s growth as a primary energy source could be stunted due to insufficient feedstock and refinery capacity, and high production costs. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal suggests that these issues could be resolved within the [...]

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Following on the heels of Aberdeen Group’s latest report, The Spend Intelligence Benchmark, Spend Matters champion Jason Busch took issue with the title. While aptly applauding Aberdeen’s continued research in this area, Jason took Aberdeen to task for using, in his words, Orwellian double-speak by introducing yet another name for spending analysis. Jason called the term spend intelligence [...]

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