When I asked the Strategic Sourcing & Procurement LinkedIn group members to suggest topics for upcoming calls, there were a lot of requests pertaining to indirect spend. So, this Friday, the group’s July member conference call will be an open discussion on indirect categories (marketing and consulting will definitely be covered - if you have [...]

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Despite the widespread use and success of reverse auctions, Ellen Terchila, a consultant in the Spend Management Services group at Ariba, says many procurement pros still struggle with when to use them, when not to use them, and what categories to target. So, I asked Ellen to recap the key take-aways from a session she [...]

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Our North American category management team hosted a Top 5 Categories to Source Now webinar last week (replay here). Supply Excellence contributor Pat Furey, set the stage with a discussion of several manufacturing, GDP and consumer indices, as well as a WSJ consensus forecast of economists, that all appear to show that the economy is [...]

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Tim Cummins, President & CEO of IACCM, discussed their organization’s recent survey results, which found a majority in contract/legal roles feel their company does not focus on the right types of risks.

***The video interviews from the NY, Chicago, San Francisco and London Ariba LIVE World Tour events are now in a playlist on YouTube.***
Justin [...]

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I attended SupplyExcellence contributor Drew Hofler’s session today on Strategies for Optimizing Working Capital. Drew went over the business case for why companies should consider working capital management strategies and presented an interesting graph, showing the relationship between DPOs and a sliding scale model of the discount rate. The replay is available now (register required).
Drew [...]

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