Procure to Pay

Aug 18, 2022  |  Director's Blog

Cogniture Procurement Technologies will Change Your World

Today I spent an hour speaking with Zycus CEO Richard Waugh and expert Purvee Kondal, discussing key insights from my recent book “Cognitive Procurement:  Discover How to Embark on your AI Journey“.  In this webinar, I pulled some recent excerpts […]

May 4, 2022  |  Director's Blog

Rising Interest Rates: Maybe It’s Time to Bring Back the Forgotten Art of Price Analysis

Price analysis is a subject that is often overlooked in supply chain education, (although it is certainly a big part of our chapter on Strategic Cost Management in Purchasing and Supply Chain Management).  This is perhaps a “forgotten art” that […]

Feb 5, 2020  |  Director's Blog

American Red Cross Uses Amazon to Manage Tail Spend

“Tail spend” – the dreaded word that strikes fear into every procurement executive’s heart..for the uninitiated, this refers to the long “tail” in a Pareto chart, that includes the large number of suppliers that are small volume purchases, often for […]

Jan 30, 2020  |  Articles

Supply Chain Financing: Liquid Inventory That Keeps Things Moving

I had an opportunity to interview Craig Weeks, one of our faculty advisors for the Supply Chain Resource Cooperative this week, at the NC State Football Stadium recording studio.  Craig is a wealth of information on this topic, and we […]

Nov 2, 2019  |  Director's Blog

Pierre Mitchell of Spend Matters: Delivering Value in the Face of VUCA

Variability, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA) – these are the conditions of the “new normal” set of operating conditions faced by most firms today in their value chains.  When one layers on top of this the challenges of navigating one’s […]

Sep 22, 2019  |  Director's Blog

Data Quality Is Critical To The Supply Chain Function – Did Someone Forget To Ask?

This blog post is co-written by my colleague Joseph Yacura, who came up with the brilliant idea when we were chatting yesterday! Data quality and governance has always been “important” to the supply chain function, but today it is “critical”.  […]

Jul 5, 2019  |  Director's Blog

The expanding scope of procurement analytics: Some initial thoughts

Procurement analytics, which supports decision making in procurement management, typically handles problems and decisions that are related to cost reduction, supplier management, cost modeling, procurement-led innovation, market strategies, supply chain risk, and stakeholder value improvement (Handfield, Jeong, and Choi 2019). […]

Oct 8, 2018

Procurement AI: From Promise To Realization

I had the pleasure of being on a great webinar with Jon Hansen, Jack Shaw, and Sally Hughes last week, hosted by Zycus and EBG Network. The session focused on Procurement AI, and it was great to listen to Sally, […]

May 17, 2018  |  Articles

Master Data System Enables Quick Wins Through Component Standardization

Having a robust master part and master supplier list can yield many low hanging fruit for organizations in the early stages of their procurement transformation.  Many of these opportunities can be driven by looking at redundant part numbers, contracts that […]

Apr 10, 2018  |  Articles

Strategic Roles in Procurement Haven’t Changed Much

A recent post on Public Spend Forum asked the following question: What are the key 4-6 roles (e.g. Buyer, Commodity Manager, etc …) common to all public procurement organizations that help you align the “right skills” with the “right roles”, to achieve […]