So far the steel industry trends to watch next year have been extensions or acceleration of current conditions - Industry Consolidation and Vertical Integration. Both are extremely important for buyers to monitor since they have short and long term impacts on steel price and supply. But our third trend to watch in 2009, Steel Futures, [more]

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Following close on the heels of the first 2009 trend to watch - Steel Industry Consolidation - is the continuing move towards Vertical Integration. Historically, many of the challenges steel mills faced in the past were due to their lack of control of supplies of raw materials. For example in the early 90’s, when raw [more]

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I know we’re a little early for 2009 prediction posts, which usually come sometime between Thanksgiving gluttony and sloppy Auld Lang Syn sing-alongs. But I wanted to get these off my chest for a couple of reasons. First, the steel markets are extremely volatile, so it pays for buyers to stay out in front of [more]

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SpendMatters blogger and all around industry guru Jason Busch is back with another round of Category Chatter podcasts. In case you’re not familiar with the series, the podcasts feature Jason interviewing various Ariba Category Managers on hot topics of the day. If the area of spend they’re covering is of interest to you, Jason’s probing [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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