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Buyer’s Market Opportunity (video): Indirect Spend

December 22nd, 2008 · by Justin Fogarty · 4 Comments · Services Procurement, best practices, sourcing, supply management, supply market dynamics

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 of capacity in temporary labor, while janitorial services and call-centers are seeing prices drop as much as 40-50%.
  • Office Equipment - Supplier inventories are high, leaving buyers “in firm control of any price negotiations.”
  • Transportation - Rail, truckload and bulk-ocean-freight have seen demand and prices drop in recent months.

More of Rachel’s data and analysis on indirect categories are available in the mid-quarter SupplyWatch update here. Rachel will also be one of five Category Managers hosting a “Top 5 Categories to Source Now” webcast January 15th (register here).

Justin Fogarty is Managing Editor of Supply Excellence. For any questions or feedback on the blog or its contributors, Justin can be reached at jfogarty[at]ariba.com.

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4 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Mark Perera // Jan 9, 2009 at 1:38 pm

    Justin I like the video’s how often are you going to publish these?

  • 2 Mark Perera // Jan 9, 2009 at 1:38 pm

    Justin I like the video’s how often are you going to publish these?

  • 3 Justin Fogarty // Jan 12, 2009 at 4:21 pm

    Mark,
    Planning to use video more regularly. I think it’s a great way to share the information and analysis of our category managers with the world.
    Stay tuned…
    Justin

  • 4 Supply Excellence — Myths & Realities of Services Procurement (Part 1) // May 27, 2009 at 1:01 am

    [...] Temp labor is a good place to start, but achieving total spend management requires all services to be managed using a standardized [...]

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