Contract Management

Dec 16, 2013

Handfield's Supply Chain Analytics Predictions for 2014

2013 has certainly been an interesting year!   I’ve had the good fortune to be presented with opportunities for compelling discussions with a significant group of leading thinkers, senior executives… 

Sep 19, 2013

Boston Procurement Leaders part 3: Talent Management Challenges

One of the most interesting panels from the Boston Procurement Leaders conference was focused on Talent Management.  We heard from a number of speakers on the subject of how the… 

Sep 18, 2013

Procurement Leaders Forum Part 2: Procurement's Role in Open Innovation

Steve Baggott, the leader of Procter and Gamble’s Connect+Develop open innovation program spoke at Procurement Leaders this morning, and shared the importance of changing views of working with suppliers. Steve… 

Sep 11, 2013

Auditing, visibility and collaboration: The keys to a socially responsible supply chain

In the September issue of the Supply Chain Management Review, Andreas Wieland from Berlin Technical University and I have published a thoughtpiece on the application of social responsible criteria to… 

Apr 27, 2013

Random thoughts on "close-to-home-shoring" based on my travels last week…

Last week I had the opportunity to travel first to New York and then Monterrey, Mexico, and speak with a number of people to explore perspectives on the current economic… 

Apr 10, 2013

Patrick Hopkins at Coupa: Coca Cola’s four truths of procurement to pay in action

At the Coupa INSPIRE procurement conference in San Francisco this week, the Chief Procurement Officer of Coca Cola Consolidated, Patrick Hopkins, shared his views on the “4 Truths of Procurement”,… 

Mar 29, 2013

Do We Need More Lawyers in Procurement? Or Do Lawyers Need More Procurement Managers?

As I’ve continued with my research on the future faces of procurement, a consistent theme that has come up again and again is the need for increased interaction between the… 

Feb 22, 2013

Procurement: Getting Back to the Basics

I’ve been speaking to a number of procurement executives lately, leading to some interesting discussions around risk, category management, shared services, and a lot of other high level concepts that… 

Sep 25, 2012

The Father of Collaborative Relationship Management Passes Away

Unless you happened to be reading the NY Times obituary columns this week, you wouldn’t have noticed that one of the great supply chain innovators of the 20th century, Gerard… 

Apr 3, 2012

What Will the Role of the CIO Look Like In the Next Five Years?

I recently spoke with Todd Taylor from Apptivo, who is writing a book on IT technology management.  Apptivo provides IT business technology management, and is focused on transparency of IT…