Research carried out by Procurement Leaders in April this year into the number of procurement professionals that command a board seat in the world’s largest companies painted a picture of our profession growing in stature and influence said PL’s David Rae.
According to their research, the number of Euro-500 companies which have procurement at board level increased by 32% on 2007. And, despite this stellar rise, Europe still lags behind the US where 14.4% of the largest 500 companies have procurement represented at board level, compared to 11.6% in Europe.
Former Bush Procurement Official Convicted
While former President George W. Bush has said numerous times that’s it’s good to be out of the spotlight, his former administration aides keep dragging the 43rd President back into the spotlight — and not in a good way.
Former General Services Administration (GSA) Chief of Staff David H. Safavian, the most senior procurement official in Bush’s administration, was sentenced to one year in prison for obstruction of justice and making false statements in connection with the investigation into the activities of former Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Get Ready for the Export Boom
Spend Matters outstanding blogger Jason Busch opines that the fall of the dollar and how US deficit spending might, ironically, become a savior of the overall US economy if our loose monetary policy and free spending ways lead to a continued slide of the currency, making exports more attractive. Jason offers a few quick tips on how companies should consider gearing up from a Spend Management perspective for increasing export volumes.
If you are multinational company managing multiple vendors across the globe, is there any benefit to creating your own department to manage the supply chain or is it better to outsource the management? I’m consulting for a client now and keep going up against this question but have found some interesting perspectives on this http://global-serve.com/SOLUTI.....fault.aspx
I don’t think there’s any question that creating a department to manage procurement and the supply chain will ultimately bring costs down and make that chain more efficient. But the question is how much time and money will be spent in terms of ramp up? That’s why outscoring makes a lot of sense. It costs less to implement and you’re up and running a lot faster.
Here’s a couple of good links for you: The first is our Procure to Pay brief. It give you some idea of the benefits of Outscoring.
http://www.quadrem.com/Portals.....Screen.pdf
The second is an pretty good piece on recommendations for minimizing supply chain risks from offshore outsourcing arrangements. While it has a bit of an IT or business-process outsourcing slant, it’s an interesting guideline for general product outsourcing as well:
http://www.scdigest.com/ASSETS.....pe=content
Found an interesting view of IT Lifecycle management – software management is being lumped in with break/fix and help desk needs. I always thought of them in separate worlds but apparently some companies are using a new methodology – http://global-serve.com/Soluti.....fault.aspx