As my recent post discussed, the key to successfully utilizing Central & Eastern Europe (CEE) as a low-cost sourcing region is finding the “sweet spot” - the location where costs, distance to market and capacity all add up to provide the optimum sourcing opportunity. Clearly, there are lots of moving parts and variables in this [more]

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After covering #5 Direct Materials, #4 Travel & Expenses and #3 Transportation, we’re down to the silver medalist in our countdown: Temporary Labor. Like the other categories, Temp Labor has been impacted by the fluctuations in the US and global economies. But unlike the others, the impact of rising fuel and commodity prices is not [more]

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The technology sector is full of upgrade and implementation horror stories. Who could forget the pain of early 90s ERP installs? Or the struggles with an overzealous IT department’s anti-virus settings that pretty much prevented you from doing any work online? The latest batch of problems making headlines are largely around consumer applications and software. [more]

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Companies are constantly looking for new and better ways to gain efficiencies and improve effectiveness, all while lowering costs. It’s the ‘holy trinity’ of business. And in the race to find this mystical balance, many have turned to outsourcing even core functions of their business to low-cost countries. However, the reality is that the perfect [more]

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At Ariba LIVE in Las Vegas two weeks ago, I was a panelist in the Retail/CPG breakout session. Although we had every intention of discussing the results of a recent Retail/CPG survey, the session quickly evolved into a very interesting discussion involving everyone - from panelists to audience members - in the room. Although the [more]

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