For anyone in the Atlanta, GA area who wants to meet an amazing group of procurement professionals, you’ll want to check out the ProcuremenTalks event this Wednesday from 6-8:30pm: Procurement Nightmares, Trainwrecks & Meltdowns: Tales of Lessons Learned.

If you are planning your webinar schedule further ahead, I recommend “Southwest Airlines Gets Jiffy With Automation: An Underdog RPA Tale Driven By Cultural Fit And Ease Of Use” from HfS Research and Jiffy.ai on February 20^th at 11am ET.

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In addition to the webinars listed below, this is the first week of the month – meaning all of the economic reports come out. The ISM Manufacturing Report on Business comes out today, followed by the Non-Manufacturing Report on Business on Wednesday. ISM-New York’s Report on Business is in between on Tuesday, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) monthly jobs report will be out on Friday. 

If you are planning your webinar schedule further ahead, I recommend Supply Chain Now’s Interactive Global Forum on March 25th at 3pm ET. They are holding an open-door session to discuss the key trends and developments taking place across the global end-to-end supply chain community.

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One commonality that I’ve noticed in webinars, blog posts and discussions recently is that digital transformation is getting REAL this year. No more nonsense. We’re over the hype, past the buzz and bored by the generalized razzle dazzle (jazz hands!). Expect to see more of this in 2020… as procurement gets smarter, service and solution providers will have to overcome our skepticism and critical thinking, focusing on the reality of digital transformation and the hard work required to make it successful.

If you are planning your webinar schedule further ahead, I recommend ‘Supporting C-Level Digital Initiatives with Business Spend Management’ from Coupa and Mickey North Rizza, IDC’s Vice President of Enterprise Applications Research.

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In addition to the virtual events listed below, I added a big ‘IRL’ event to the calendar this week. The Atlanta Supply Chain Awards are being hosted in part by our friends at the Supply Chain Now podcast. They are now taking registrations as well as nominations for multiple award categories. Click here to learn more.

If you are planning your webinar schedule further ahead, I recommend ‘Trends and Innovations in Print’ from Sarah Scudder and the team at Procurement Foundry on February 5th at 1pm ET.

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Happy new year everyone! We’re officially back after a holiday break that was far busier than I would have expected. Not only are there quite a few events listed for January, I’ve already been adding events to February.

If you are planning your webinar schedule further ahead, I recommend ‘Managing Risk in the Next Decade’from riskmethods’ General Manager of North America Bill DeMartino on January 21st.

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Well, believe it or not, this is the final set of weekly webinar recommendations of 2019. We listed 239 webinars on the calendar, which – if there would be 1 per day – would cover 65% of the days of the year, and 92% of the weekdays. As of right now, I believe my first recommendations of 2020 will be released on Monday, January 13^th. 

This is an incredibly busy week – 10 webinars in four days. Looks like 2019 is going to go out with a bang! So put on your cozy socks and dig out your mug Snuggie (see how I did that, tying everything into the image above?) and settle in for a webinar by a warm fire.

The first 2020 events are starting to go up as well, so don’t hesitate to keep an eye on January. Speaking of which, if you are planning your webinar schedule beyond this week, I recommend “The dos and don’ts of stakeholder engagement & collaboration” from Proactis and Peter Smith on January 21^st.

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Procurement isn’t leaving anything on the table as we wind down the year. I added 8 new webinars to the calendar this week and all of them take place between now and the third week of December. If you’re planning your webinar schedule a little further out, I recommend “5 Key Procurement Trends to Embrace in 2020” on December 11th at 5am ET (10am GMT) from riskmethods and Sievo.

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The pace of the year will really pick up from here… I won’t have any recommendations next week because of the Thanksgiving holiday in the US, and then there are just three weeks of events left in the year. December is starting to fill in, so take a look ahead – there are some great events up already.

In particular, I recommend “The Psychology of Change” being hosted by The Myers-Briggs organization on December 5^th. While it isn’t specifically for a procurement audience, it is a great opportunity to think about change management from a group and individual personality perspective.

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In addition to this week’s webinar recommendations, the Supply Chain Next conference is taking place in Chicago, IL on Monday and Tuesday. If you are looking for a longer term webinar recommendation, I suggest Planning for 2020: Executive Outlook from Supply & Demand Chain Executive and BSI on December 10th.

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I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but it is officially November. Knowing that there are only 8 weeks left in the year – even before serious cutouts for holidays – is much scarier than anything we saw last week for Halloween.

In addition to this week’s webinar recommendations, CFO Summit XXXVIII is taking place the 7^ththrough the 9^thin Irving Texas.

If you are looking for a longer term webinar recommendation, I have two for you. The first is an update: the AOP Live session scheduled for October 29^thhad to be rescheduled because the primary speaker, Joseph Yacura, and his family were evacuated from their home in California due to the massive wildfires out there. The Current State of Digital Readiness: Mastering the Supply Chain Data Challengewill now take place on November 20th. 

And we have a new AOP Live on the calendar, From Isolated Zero to Enterprise Hero: Best Practices for Managing Holistic Procurement Performance with Pierre Lapree and Jason Trieda will take place on November 12^th. Both events are live, broadcast with video and likely to lead to highly engaged discussions.

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In addition to this week’s webinar recommendations, ProcureCon MRO is taking place in Atlanta, GA on the 28th and 29th.

If you are looking for a longer term webinar recommendation, check out “Mission Critical for 2020: Touchless Supplier Management” from Spend Matters and APEX Analytix and featuring a case study on JetBlue, November 12th at 11am ET.

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If you are looking for a longer term webinar recommendation, check out “Using Digital Transformation to Unlock Working Capital in Your Supply Chain” from Tradeshift on November 5th.

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Happy Thanksgiving to all of our Canadian friends: Stephany Lapierre and the team at Tealbook, Rod Sherkin at the ProPurchaser team, Negotiations Ninja’s Mark Raffan and Procurement Insights' Jon Hansen!

If you are looking for a longer term recommendation, the next AOP Live session has just been scheduled: The Current State of Digital Readiness: Mastering the Supply Chain Data Challenge on October 29th at 11am ET. This 45-Minute Live Q&A with Philip Ideson and Joseph Yacura will interpret and comment on the results of the 3rd annual Data Quality and Governance Study. 

There are also two live events taking place this week, ProcureCon EU in Barcelona, Spain and the 7th Annual Procurement Strategy Summit in Dubai, UAE.

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The New England Supply Chain Conference and Exposition (or NESCON) is taking place on Monday of this week in Marlborough, MA – outside of Boston. I’ll be there in person along with some familiar faces, so please reach out if you plan to be onsite! If you can’t be there on person, watch the BMP Twitter feed for updates throughout the day.

If you are looking for a longer term recommendation, check out “Power your Source-to-Pay with insightful and predictive analytics” from basware on October 24th.

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Although I added 7 new events to the calendar this week, nearly all of them are in the second week of October. If you are planning your webinar schedule further out than this week, take a look at “The 2020 Digital Procurement Mandate: 8 Ways to Optimize Sourcing While Avoiding Production Risks“ from ScoutBee, a team I’ve gotten to know over the last few months.

Finally, a reminder that The New England Supply Chain Conference and Exposition (or NESCON) is taking place Monday, October 7th in Marlborough, MA – outside of Boston. I’ll be there in person along with some familiar faces, so please reach out if you plan to be onsite!

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As long as the summer seemed, September is now racing to a close. In fact, this week’s long term recommendation looks out to the end of October! On Oct. 24th, Zycus and Jon Hansen (Procurement Insights) are running a webinar titled “Procurement Stalwarts Discuss An AI-Powered Transformation of P2P” with panelists David Loseby, Norman Katz and Richard Pennington.

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If you are planning your event schedule beyond this week – especially if you live or work in the Boston area – I encourage you to check out NESCON 2019: The New England Supply Chain Conference & Exhibition taking place on October 7th. If you have any questions or if you make the decision to attend, please let me know. I’m always happy to connect in person!

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Now that the summer is finally winding to a close, we should be able to get back to business as usual with webinar recommendations. In fact, I wasn’t expecting to be able to do a post this week (with the Labor Day holiday in the US), but voila! Webinars to attend!

If you are planning your webinar schedule beyond this week, I recommend “World-Class Procurement: Redefining Performance in a Digital Era”, hosted by Coupa and featuring The Hackett Group’s Amy Fong on September 25^th.

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This week we are running a “2 for 1” special with our weekly coverage of procurement industry webinars. The following events take place in the last 2 weeks of August. If you happen to be planning a little further out, I’m going to be onsite at NESCON (the New England Supply Chain Conference & Exhibition) on October 7^th – so look for more about that event in the coming weeks. If you’re planning to attend, let me know so we can connect!

If you are planning your webinar schedule beyond this week, I recommend “Virtual Procurement and the C-Level CPO” from Tradeshift’s Roy Anderson on September 10th.

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