A lot of Supply Excellence readers are members of the Strategic Sourcing & Procurement Group on LinkedIn and may have seen the lively discussion in December on how the Group can become a more valuable resource in 2010. Out of that discussion, the idea to have regular conference calls to tap into the Group’s collective [...]

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At the Atlanta Spend Management Day yesterday, Kurt Albertson, Director of Advisory Services with The Hackett Group, examined past predictions and gave some new insight into 2010 predictions and beyond.
According to Hackett’s forecasts from July 2008, the 2009  economy was going to create the “perfect storm.” It was a time to secure up supply, highlight [...]

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Last week in Chicago, Jason Busch, of SpendMatters.com & Azul Partners, shared his thoughts on a number of topics, including key take-aways from Ariba LIVE, spend management leaders vs laggards, major trends in ‘09 and predictions for the future. As always, this spend management thought leader didn’t pull any punches…

***The video interviews from the NY [...]

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The Doctor at Sourcing Innovation created another cross-blog series, asking a number of us to give our Seven Grand Challenges for Supply and Spend Management. Some insightful posts have already tackled topics like spend data, currency, trade barriers and supply chain risks. But rather than echoing their lists, which I believe are largely right on [...]

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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, [...]

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