My colleagues in Category Management recently collaborated for the cover story on ISM (Institute for Supply Management). Their article outlined the 5 Best Practices for Category Management and gave some great advice that companies either already follow or should. The fifth and final tip - coping with globalization & the total cost of ownership - [more]

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It has been a very rough year already for transportation. First we had the floods in the Midwest that shut down rail, highway and barge traffic. Then the oil spill near New Orleans that ground Mississippi freight to a halt. And now, hurricane season is upon us and Fay is battering Florida (and it’s moronic [more]

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Last week’s webinar by Jim Polak, PPG’s Director of General Purchasing, didn’t disappoint. If you didn’t catch the webinar (replay available here) or read the preview on Spend Matters, Jim is a procurement visionary - and I’m not using that term lightly. He went from 0 to 60mph (well really more like 0 to $7.5 [more]

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I have received a lot of questions from coworkers and clients about the situation in Georgia. Obviously during a conflict, the hope of nearly everyone is that the fighting will cease and a peaceful resolution will be reached quickly. But from a business perspective, companies in EMEA, the US and around the globe want to [more]

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Occasionally, a sourcing team finds itself in a sole source situation with minimum leverage. Despite hard work, good intentions and an initial list with several potential suppliers, the team filters the non-qualified sources…and winds up with only one supplier left. In that scenario, you still want to find competitive cost reduction, but you’ll have no [more]

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