Last week, the NYTimes reported on the growing trend of companies trimming labor expenses - in the form of salaries, benefits, forced furloughs, 4 day work weeks, etc - rather than slashing headcount.
“Companies taking nips and tucks to their work force say this economy plunged so quickly in October that they do not want to [...]

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Jason Busch recently penned a post on the use of Web 2.0 tools in procurement and lamented the absence of a killer app that has become an indispensable site professionals use on a daily basis (although he did tease us with a possible solution in early 2009). Point taken. After all, even the “bright spots” [...]

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Last Friday, the Huffington Post published the results of their small business survey and the news was grim. With around 600 responses, crunching the numbers revealed:
“Just about a third of the businesses that responded have had layoffs already, and almost half have reduced hours. Overall, they say layoffs are about equal to 15% of the [...]

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Last week, Mike Petro outlined the opportunities presented by direct materials. On a similar note today, regular Supply Excellence contributor Rachel Rutkoski explains buyer’s market conditions for indirect spend and identifies several hot categories, including:

Labor - Rising unemployment means “buyers should evaluate any category where labor is a main cost component.” There is a glut [...]

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Metals Category Manager Mike Petro makes the case for why “right now is the time to source direct materials”…

If you’d like a closer look at the facts and figures Mike cited - as well as information on other categories that provide immediate strategic opportunities - you can find them in the mid-quarter SupplyWatch update here. [...]

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