Category Management

Jan 24, 2017

Getting Sales and Procurement onto the Same Team

The relationship between sales and procurement has always been a contentious one. The issue at the core of this tension is the concept of value recognition. Sales account managers accuse…

Jan 8, 2017

NC State ranked as a top 25 global supply chain programs at SCM World… and here's why!

Great news this week for NC State as SCM World announced its top 25 supply chain management programs globally. The NC State Supply Chain program was listed as one of the…

Nov 24, 2016

Who Owns Contract Management of Major Projects: Procurement or the Business?

Proponents of integrated supply management propose that successful Contract Management (both pre and post award) requires a collaboration between the business functions (Engineering, Operations, Maintenance) that have the need (demand,…

Oct 5, 2016

Contingent Workforce is a Major Focus for Procurement

The number of workers who are “contingent is growing rapidly. Brian Hoffmeyer from IQ Navigator, a procure to pay solution, spoke today at IBM’s Empower event on this trend, and…

Apr 4, 2016

Outsourcing : Tesla is Bucking the Trend

Debates over outsourcing are appearing with more frequency in the press. Companies have outsourced so many of their processes, through “Business Process Outsourcing”, that many now just sit as marketing…

Dec 9, 2015

Becoming a Valued Business Partner: Procurement Analytics SCRC Meeting Insights

The December 2015 SCRC meeting was held this week in the brand spanking new Talley Student Center, and was a resounding success. We had over 200 people attend the student…

Oct 4, 2015

Five Predictions (About Prediction) that Every Procurement Professional Should Consider

I am speaking at the Zycus Horizons conference this week, being held at the Reynolds Plantation in Georgia. As part of the conference, I’m delivering a talk on five predictions…

Jun 24, 2015

The American Red Cross: A New SCRC Partner Company Engages the Influence Model!

I had the opportunity to visit with the American Red Cross in Charlotte, NC yesterday, and held a negotiation workshop with the supply chain directors and managers. This was at…

Dec 23, 2014

Do You Know How Much Your Company is Spending? A Spend Analytics Checklist

The leading IT magazine, CIO Review, today published a special issue on supply chain transformation, and included an article I wrote on spend management as a core capability. Rather than striving…

Nov 20, 2014

Apple's Sapphire Supplier: A Textbook Example of Supplier Relationships Gone Bad

Today’s breaking Wall Street Journal article provides a great case study on the impacts of not properly managing contractual supplier relationships. First consider the type of supply arrangement this represented.…