Best Procurement and Supply Chain Webinars 4/25 - 29

This is an incredibly busy week for webinars. In three days there are ten events – all of which look promising. I won’t go so far as to ‘self recommend,’ but I am presenting a webinar for the Precision Metalforming Association on Wednesday: Become a Procurement Action Hero with Supply Market Intelligence. Please join us if you can! As to the other events I recommend this week, click on the title of each event below to view the full description in our events calendar and to connect to their registration pages.

The CPO's Agenda for 2016: Tackling Procurement's Key Issues (SIG, Zycus)

April 26^th, 11:00am Eastern

Talking about the agenda of CPOs is coming dangerously close to challenging the future of procurement as the number one most discussed topic in our field. What makes this webinar especially interesting is that the content will be based on the results of annual Hackett Group research. This year, ‘the research identified critical development gaps in four key procurement strategy areas: becoming a better strategic partner to the business; increasing spend influence; improving agility; and tapping supplier innovation.’ It is the topic of increasing spend influence that catches my attention.

Fact or Fiction – You Can Manage All Your Supplier Information, Transactions and Risk in One Place! (riskmethods, Tradeshift)

April 26^th, 11:30am Eastern

The riskmethods/Tradeshift partnership is an interesting one – it brings two companies taking very different approaches to procurement/supply chain automation together in a uniquely powerful combination. (Click here to listen to my BMP Radio interview with both Heiko Schwarz and Christian Lanng.) Information (or, more specifically, intelligence) is the key to understanding, managing, and mitigating risk. In this webinar, riskmethods and Tradeshift will talk about how connecting the information in eProcurement with external risk updates allows procurement to be more effective at managing a wider range of suppliers and transactions. 

Procurement and the “as-a-Service” Movement (NLPA, Puridiom)

April 27^th, 11:30am Eastern

Here’s what so great about Procurement-as-a-Service: it is a movement being driven by demand within the field of procurement. Sometimes terminology becomes semantics, but the shift from ‘outsourcing’ to as-a-Service has signified a meaningful perspective shift within procurement. No one wants their function to be outsourced, and discussions of procurement outsourcing used to cause many of us to shudder. But Procurement-as-a-Service, that’s completely different. It leaves current procurement pros in the driver’s seat, making decisions about what spend they will hire qualified professionals to manage. Will they bring in a high strategy team to address a very specialized category or a larger group to manage high volume, lower risk spend? The decision is ours. In this event, the Puridiom team will share their thoughts on this subject, including program design recommendations and how it needs to work once the program is established.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL EVENTS CALENDAR