As Tim pointed out the other day, Telefonica has some impressive numbers to show for their e-sourcing efforts. But I think the truly amazing thing is that they’ve had such success while managing €25.2 billion in spend for the 4th largest telecom company on the planet, which operates across 21 countries. And given that they’ve [more]

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Sonoco’s Supply Systems Manager, Jennifer Roberts, gave an interesting talk on their Supplier Performance Management (SPM) efforts at Ariba LIVE in Brussels last week. Her team has led Sonoco’s efforts to move off of static Excel spreadsheets and to a more automated and far reaching approach. Ultimately, they want to bring every “critical” supplier into [more]

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Compared to North American firms, European procurement organizations have been reluctant to embrace online sourcing approaches. Their long-time reticence has stemmed from resistance to e-sourcing methods both internally and from suppliers, as well as from a general misunderstanding that e-sourcing = e-auctions. (It doesn’t.)
Yet, private conversations and public presentations at Ariba LIVE Brussels offered hope [more]

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Give them a little taste, get them hooked…and soon the addicts will coming back for more.
Is that an anti-drug commercial script from the 1980s? Or a description of online auction events? Apparently, the answer is both.
In the Attack on Mediocrity breakout session, Doncaster CPO Dr. Clive Thomas said once he “gets people to sit in [more]

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The glass half full side of me was hoping that the weak US dollar is blunting the impact of high commodity prices for EMEA businesses. But that optimism was squashed pretty quickly here. Everyone is hurting. And although there are some options for companies looking to trim spend on things like transport and metals, savvy [more]

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