The final submission in The 100 Greatest Supply Management Tips of All Time! contest revisits an old-school technique to uncovering your supplier’s hidden secrets — both good and bad:

Make house calls: Have your sourcing team visit key suppliers’ headquarters, factories, plants, or showrooms on a regularly scheduled basis. Suppliers will give you insight into the [...]

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If you listen to purchasing blogs like this one, it would seem that supply management improvements are impossible without the use of advanced software. And why not? There is ample evidence from industry benchmarks (such as those from Aberdeen Group, Hackett Group, and CAPS) that use of strategic sourcing and supplier management software is a [...]

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In case you missed it, the automotive sector went back to the future last week, when the world’s largest automakers announced plans to share more parts and assemblies in an effort to hold down cost and improve quality.
On paper, the move could provide much-needed cost and product stability. However, the auto sector has a dubious track [...]

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Hidden between the The 100 Greatest Supply Tips of All Time! contest entries last week was a post on a new investigation into how globalization is affecting supply and contract management approaches and performance. Run by Supply and Demand Chain Executive, the study aims to better understand the key challenges global expansion and competition are [...]

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The final days of the The 100 Greatest Supply Management Tips of All Time! contest turns us to a tip that reaffirms the dangers of myopically focusing on reducing spend (i.e., what some call “spend management). The head of global sourcing at one of the world’s largest software companies offers up this lesson learned:

Don’t Penalize [...]

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