Earlier this week, Tim, Jason Busch and I penned an open letter to President Obama asking when he’ll deliver his spend management plan. It’s a valid question given the vacancies in 2 out of 3 top procurement spots. However, as Procurement Leaders pointed out yesterday, some improvements in US Government procurement may still be moving [...]

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The Shared Services & Outsourcing Network (SSON) has asked me to present the “Top Categories to Source Now” in a webinar next week (details & registration here). As those of you who have seen other iterations of this presentation know, the categories themselves and strategies for approaching them change as market conditions shift. The big [...]

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During the Strategic Sourcing and Contracting roundtable at Ariba LIVE in Chicago today, an audience members posed a great question to the panel, which consisted of Fiserv, Health Care Service Corporation, and McDonald’s procurement and contract management pros. He asked about contracts, specifically, whose “paper” they should be on.
John Busch, the Senior Director of Corporate Contract [...]

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What do you get when you cross tight capital markets and reduced demand with high unemployment rates and competitive suppliers vying for market share? Serious buying opportunities. And nowhere are such opportunities more ripe than IT services and hardware.
In January, the U.S. unemployment rate rose to 7.6%, a level that hasn’t been achieved since December [...]

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We’ve posted a great deal of analysis on the buyer’s market conditions that currently exist in direct and indirect spend categories. This Thursday, members of our category management team will host a webinar where they’ll identify the top sourcing opportunities and strategies for each of them. You can register for the Top 5 Categories to [...]

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