The Point

Eighty percent of your business is done with twenty percent of your suppliers. Pareto's rule in action.

As we celebrate Mother’s Day this weekend, there are many learnings that are gained in childhood that carry us through to our adult lives – both personal and professional.

This book is Life’s Lessons from Mom by Patrick Flaherty. Looking at this through the eyes of a career for procurement, there are several that hit home for sure.

You’re never too busy or too old to have fun.

• We spend a great deal of time at the office. Are you too busy or do you see humor and laugh? How do you enjoy those you work with?

Never fear your competition.

• Your competition makes you stronger and better. Playing against someone faster or better than you makes you improve your skills too. Also, there will always be someone better, faster, richer than you. The competition is against yourself and to improve YOU.

Take care of your equipment.

• As a child, we were told to put our bikes in the garage at the end of the day. So easy to just leave them out on the grass or in the driveway. Well, we did put them away and they lasted longer and had a better resale value as we outgrew them. Same thing applies with your equipment and tools at the office. It will make a big difference with your effectiveness.

Make your bed and clean your room

• Everyone has heard this one many, many times. Perhaps you have now had the opportunity to use it on YOUR children. It is amazing that we can hear our parent’s words coming out of our mouths about very similar issues. Well, this one is for order and discipline. As you learn those skills, it helps with application in your professional life as well. So much time can be lost looking for the appropriate document or misplacing that phone number. So go ahead and “make your bed and clean your room”!!

There are so many other good reflections. What did you learned that has helped you going forward? Any words of wisdom from Mom to share on this special weekend? If not, how about:

Thanks Mom!

This week’s featured webinar was hosted by ISM, sponsored by Hubwoo and presented by Spend Matters. ‘Doing More with Less in Procurement: a punch list of 25 items to improve your productivity’ was based on a snap poll taken to help participants benchmark themselves relative to their peers in this area. As you might expect, prioritization is key, and we will hear more in the ongoing discussion of tactical versus strategic efforts and how to keep the machine cranking efficiently.

The world is changing.

Today’s eSourcing Wiki-Wednesday topic is Aligning SPM to your Firm's Goals.

The esourcing wiki articles are focusing on Supplier Management. With good reason – it is becoming more and more important to make sure this activity is part of the process with your procurement team.

This article from HRteam.com makes the point of how things have changed. Individuals are no longer just managing an internal team but often very complex external team members as well. They could be suppliers or outsourced functions being performed by service providers.

This discussion focuses on FAQ’s but more importantly what skills do your associates need in order to perform this function well. Do they need training and how do they get that? Here are some common concerns for your team:

• How do I get share of mind? We are not their only customers.
• How do I make sure that they deliver against the standards that are agreed?
• What happens if they do not perform against the KPIs? How do I escalate the issue?
• We do not want to get to the point of waving a piece of paper, shouting "breach of contract"
• How much time do I need to spend measuring their performance?
• How do I make supplier reviews an effective forum?
• How much time do I invest in developing the relationship?
• Do I want a supplier or a partner relationship?
• They are critical to our business, who has got the greatest leverage?

The message here is to make sure your staff has the proper tools in the toolkit to build the relationship to become a true collaborative partnership.

Have you found any training materials that are helpful for Supplier Management? What was the most useful tool and what would you recommend?  

Negotiation is a core skill for procurement professionals. Actually, it is really something everyone does every day. When you really look at it – EVERYTHING IS NEGOTIABLE. Some if it is so minor, you don’t even notice it like where to have dinner tonight.

So you want to run (AKA negotiate) with the big dogs? The ones who have succeeded? What can we learn from them and adopt to our own situations?

This article from CEO.com 9 Negotiation Tactics from Famous CEO’s offers interesting approaches that proved very effective. They may not all fit your style but there are a few here that could be beneficial in your toolbox. Here are a few that were discussed.

Make everyone else look lousy

In other words, make your proposal so compelling, the others fall by the wayside. Steven Jobs bid for the company that was to become iTunes was 8 times more than the next bidder. That got their attention as you can imagine.

If cooperation isn’t on the table, overthrow the whole thing

Teamwork is critical in business today. Individuals have to be bought in to the broader goal, not just their own personal agendas. At Twitter, when the team was not focused, the CEO took action and that behavior changed.

Take a look at the article and see if there is anything that strikes a cord with you. Some of them may not appeal to your style but it is certainly food for thought.

Have you had an opportunity to run with the big dogs? What did you do differently and did you learn how to negotiate in a different manner?

Each week I attend two or three webinars. Usually, I pick the most interesting event to share in this Friday webinar notes post. This week, there were two events on procurement transformation: one from Procurement Leaders/CombineNet/Kellogg and another from Sourcing Interests Group/Zycus/Capgemini. Both were good events in their own right, but combining what I heard in the two events provides a rich look at one of the hottest trends in procurement today.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.   Lao-tzu

Last Saturday, Cindy highlighted a blog post by John Maxwell, a leadership coach, on how to fail successfully. There is much to be learned from our failures, and in many cases they are the price of admission to the victory celebration at the end of the journey. Thomas Edison is a fantastic, if complicated, example of success despite setbacks. We all know how many tries to took to make the light bulb a reality, especially because of the quote Cindy used to open her post:

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” - Thomas A. Edison

Notice I did not title this as do you want to SUCCEED like Thomas Edison. Of course we would like to get to the answer on round 1. Most time that does not happen - ever is more like it. If Edison had not taken a chance, and kept at it , would we still be reading by candlelight?

When I read this blog by John Maxwell, Traits of a Successful Failure, I got thinking about procurement applications. How can I take more risks, fail, learn from it and eventually succeed. Perhaps with a different spec, supplier or process.

Maxwell talks about the four traits of a successful failure. I think we can agree that Edison certainly has those characteristics.

1. Optimism. Find the benefit in every bad experience.

2. Responsibility. Change your response to failure by accepting responsibility.

3. Resilience. Say goodbye to yesterday.

4. Initiative. Take action and face your fear.

We do often fall into patterns of work and comfort with various suppliers. However, taking a chance to try something different or offer a new idea is an opportunity to fail like Thomas Edison. And when you succeed, the value and results to you and your organization can be quite significant.

What have you tried differently this month? Did it work? Have you tried a revision and a new approach? Can you describe what your learned?

This week’s featured event was presented by Supply Chain Insights and marks the official launch of the Supply Chain Index. Here is a brief excerpt from their event description:

‘The [Supply Chain] Index is based upon financial performance of companies from 2006 forward. Using market valuations of publically traded companies, we have built a formulaic representation of supply chain excellence using supply chain ratios (E.g. Ratios like Days of Inventory, Operating Margin, Revenue/Employee). … The Supply Chain Index allows companies to better understand the relationship between supply chain ratios and financial performance.”

The reality of today’s 24/7 highly interconnected professional environment is that work follows us home whether we like it or not. We get emails during dinner, invites at the grocery store, phone calls during our kids’ hockey practice and text messages while we’re trying to get from one place to the next. Even when we are successful in the effort to have some kind of personal life away from the pressures of the office, we know they are waiting for us, just across the room, on that addictive little device.

Why should you do supplier performance management? Isn't just scorecards?

One or two days a month I have a day that has 9 meetings. Seriously? How am I supposed to be productive on a day like that? Or even if it is just a few meetings a day, when do we get to do REAL work?

This week’s featured webinar was hosted by Sourcing Interests Group and presented by Neo Group, a services firm focused on gaining efficiencies through low-cost country providers and outsourcing in general. The focus of the event was global sourcing governance, and how, when leveraged appropriately, it can help companies go ‘from good to great’.

A fable is not the same as a myth. A fable has a moral about ethics or behavior and a myth does not.

In this week’s Procurement on YouTube post, we are going to look at one source of supply risk and that is resource scarcity. As procurement professionals, we pride ourselves for our ability to buy quality goods and services at an efficient price. But what if the materials we need to buy are not available? In this video, Edmond Cunningham, a member of PA Consulting Group, gives a brief overview of the approaches companies make take when faced with resource scarcity.

If someone told you that Harrison Ford was not hired for a movie role he wanted, you would find it hard to believe. If that is the case, what hope do the rest of us have?

This week’s featured webinar was a Procurement Leaders Thought Leaders event on the topic of supplier relationship management. Innovation with suppliers is a critical component of competitive advantage, but in order to turn potential into performance procurement needs a plan. In this webinar, we heard from Hubwoo, BMO Harris Bankcorp, and P&G about supplier segmentation, key success factors, and achieving innovation.

I’ve reviewed quite a few books – most of which are on spend management or negotiation. Some have made me laugh, like Negotiation Mastery and Profitable Buying Strategies. A few have made me cry, and those will remain unnamed here. But I don’t think I’ve ever felt compelled to review a single chapter from a book until now.

Deciding to work collaboratively with your suppliers is one thing. Implementing it is something else all together.