“Simply put, business happens. Things change, including the underlying deal covered by the contract.”  - Contracting in the New Economy, p. 46   I’ve read most of the Vested books, so I came...

Are you subscribed to This Week in Procurement, the Art of Procurement newsletter? Sign up to receive news about upcoming events, new whitepapers, and – of course – the #1 podcast in procurement each ...

The term supplier is banded around with such ease, yet has it devalued the relationship and removed the individual, resulting in generic and stale business relationships? The supplier The associated b...

And… we’re back! After a week (mostly) without events due to the holiday weekend, we once again have a slate of webinars to recommend. 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 principle of a North/South divide has been around for as long as mankind has organized itself into societies. It is a term often used within politics to define the ‘North of the country from the S...

This content was published on the MyComplianceOffice blog on June 30, 2020 “Most corporate purchasing is slow, opaque, and downright onerous—fueled by a broader objective to control spending.” A....

This content was published on the Fairmarkit blog on April 20, 2020 If there is one thing you get used to when you work in procurement, it is that no one outside of the field has any idea what we do f...

Companies spend millions developing and implementing new technology and processes to enable more effective MRO supply chain management practices. The goal is to better manage the flow of spare parts w...

Author: Joe Payne, SVP Source-to-Pay at Corcentric Editor’s note: This article is part of the MyPurchasingCenter content archive. It was originally published in 2015 and appears here with minor t...

Supplier Relationship Management (Kogan Page, available Oct. 28, 2014) is the third book I have reviewed by Jonathan O’Brien, a Director and co-owner of Positive Purchasing with over 20 years experien...

Scenario 1: The supplier contacts you in writing to state they have submitted the wrong pricing in the bid…what is your first response?  - Tough luck you submitted it   - That’s typical...

After last week’s deluge of supply chain disruption-focused events, this week is both quieter and more varied. That will give you plenty of time to read the ISM-New York Report on Business commentary ...

This week’s featured event was presented by Procurian, the new name for ICG Commerce. They officially changed their name in February of this year, at the same time as they launched a philosophy the call “New Procurement”. New Procurement is based on six principles, ranging from leveraging market intelligence to identifying and fueling new sources of growth.

Click here to view the event on demand.

This week’s featured webinar was presented by ISM, Ariba, and CFO Research Services. It was based on a recent study of 263 finance executives from North America, Europe and Asia about their perceptions of procurement. The study was originally conducted in 2007, so this can also be considered a five-year revisit.  If you are interested in reading the full report, you can download it for free (without registration) from CFO.com.

These webinar notes are based on a June 17^th event hosted by Puridiom and presented by Andrew Bartolini from Ardent Partners. If you are interested in viewing the full event on demand, you can do so here after a quick registration.

Based on Ardent Partners’ CPO Rising 2015 Report (which you can read more about here) this event focused in on the CPO’s agenda around collaboration, which is arguably one of the highest priorities for everyone in procurement. Even more interesting are the observations we can make when you look at the relationship between collaboration and influence.

These notes are from an event that originally ran on July 28^th. If you are interested in viewing the entire webinar on demand, it is available on the Proxima Group’s site here. The panelists were Mark Simester, Marketing Director at Warburtons, Charles Ping, Chief Executive at Fuel, and John Butcher, Marketing Specialist at Proxima and the moderator was Jonathan Cooper-Bagnall, Proxima’s Commercial Director.

While the focus of this event was how procurement can play a role in better managing digital marketing spend, the insights shared during the panel discussion provided plenty of insight about how procurement can improve our dealings with marketing in general. Since marketing is often one of the last hold out functions, we can use all the advice we can get.

Suzuki and Volkswagen have finally completed their ‘divorce’ or the breakup of their 2009 partnership that was supposed to bring market, manufacturing, and technical expertise together for the benefit of both parties. This true story sadly illustrates the dark side of collaborative business relationships – and that is the fallout for all parties if and when they fail.

For my podcast on the topic, including guest audio on the story from Reuters, visit Blog Talk Radio or Sound Cloud.

As sad as the state of the relations between these two companies is today, the partnership started with high expectations on both sides. In 2010, VW purchased a 20% stake in Suzuki, worth approximately $2B US, indicating that this deal was no informal initiative.

Unfortunately, it also started with ulterior – or at least secondary motives – that may have doomed the effort from the outset.

This week our audio comes from Acquire Procurement Services, a consultancy based in Australia specializing in establishing and re-negotiating contracts across sectors. Their video is titled 'Why do we treat employees and suppliers differently?' and is available on their YouTube channel. In it, they draw a contrast between the information companies share with their employees and how they handle sharing with suppliers who might perform the same or similar functions on their behalf.

You can listen to the podcast on the PI Window on Business Blog Talk Radio channel or on our Sound Cloud page.

This week's guest audio comes from a panel discussion moderated by Code for America. They create open source solutions and facilitate a collaborative community around their use. Code for America also hosts an annual summit that brings together public sector innovators and the organizations that collaborate with them – and that is where this particular recording was made: at a 2014 summit panel on public sector procurement.

In this exchange, the panel responds to an audience question about the politics of procurement and facilitating cross-functional communication for the sake of gaining buy in.

The full video – Procurement for the 21st Century - is available on their YouTube channel. You can listen to the podcast on Blog Talk Radio or on our Sound Cloud page.

This week I attended a webinar by Ariba and ISM on collaborative sourcing. And in this case, the collaboration ended up being not with the competition or others in the supply chain, but with between procurement and internal stakeholders. Not what I had thought (thanks a lot, Google. We'll talk later...) but still a valid topic and just as tricky.

The following are some of my notes on the webinar. Click here to connect to the archive.