The End of Competitive Advantage by Columbia Business School Professor Rita Gunther McGrath provides a perspective on the way businesses should develop and maintain their strategy to remain competitive. Gone are the days when companies could achieve a leadership position in a market and then continue to dominate for decades without significant chan...

The idea of being green is certainly not new to corporations or to purchasing professionals for that matter. That does not mean that the effort is easy, or that the path to sustainable purchasing is clear. ‘Green Purchasing & Sustainability’, written by purchasing professional, author, speaker, trainer and consultant Robert Menard, is a practic...

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. I’ve read ‘Managing Indir...

Two years ago, we posted our review of ‘Common Sense Purchasing’ by Dr. Tom DePaoli. In September 2012 he published a new book that reflects a broader perspective on his experience and our profession. By taking a step up – or back – however you chose to see the difference between purchasing and supply management, Dr. Tom takes a new look at the cha...

Earlier this year, we reviewed ‘Vested Outsourcing’, the first book in what has become a series of publications by Kate Vitasek and her colleagues on the evolving potential of mutually beneficial relationships between companies and their suppliers. ‘Vested Outsourcing’ was followed by ‘The Vested Way’, and ‘The Vested Outsourcing Manual’. Kate’s la...

One idea plus one idea equals three ideas or more. You have a cow, I have a bull, together we have a business. When the output is greater than the sum of the inputs, this is value creation and it is this that has driven the whole progress of the human species. -- Simon Horton, Negotiation Mastery   Negotiation Mastery by Simon Horton, an exper...

 A cardinal principle of Total Quality escapes too many managers: you cannot continuously improve interdependent systems and processes until you progressively perfect interdependent, interpersonal relationships. – Stephen Covey (1932 – 2012)   On July 16th, the world lost one of its most recognized self-improvement writers and speakers in...

I can tell you that windsurfing is very easy – except for the wind. The wind makes it tricky, of course. It’s not particularly difficult to find and rent great equipment, and the techniques are fairly straightforward. What messes the whole plan up is that the wind is unpredictable. It’ll change exactly when you don’t want it to. The same thing is t...

We often talk about how procurement and supply management professionals need to focus less on negotiating savings and more on creating value. But the actually process we are supposed to follow to accomplish that can be unclear. The first challenge is how to go about creating value, and the second is how to make sure the value created is recognized ...

The preface to The Procurement Game Plan by Charles Dominick and Soheila Lunney starts with the question, “Why another procurement/supply management book?” Good question.   For a constantly evolving discipline like procurement, there will always be an opportunity to connect with your audience through a fresh take. In my opinion, the primary st...

Written by the co-chairmen of the Deloitte Center for the Edge, an organization that helps senior executives make sense of and profit from emerging opportunities on the edge of business and technology.  John Hagel the third, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison authored ‘The Power of Pull’ to talk about a shift in dynamics based on accurate...

At Buyers Meeting Point, we often have opportunities to recommend the publications we have read, reviewed and endorsed to our supply management colleagues. Vested Outsourcing by Kate Vitasek is one of the easiest books to recommend, not because it is excellently written – although it is, but because questions constantly arise in discussio...

When I am reading the books that may end up on the Buyers Meeting Point Endorsed Publications list (in the Procurement Library), I often find that they are missing a certain… something? Now I know what it is – cartoon illustrations! All joking aside, I am now in a position to recommend a book that contains solid procurement advice and pictures. Rea...

Recent disasters, whether earthquakes, tsunamis, or tornadoes, have threatened business continuity for many industries. As has been pointed out in many recent procurement webinars, this presents an opportunity for us to step up and prove our strategic value to the organization. We cannot, however, rely solely upon the stories in the news.  We ...

I spent the last couple of weeks reading The Contract Negotiation Handbook by Stephen R. Guth Esq., and despite how it may initially sound, I came away with one critical realization: I am a pop tart. Not in the breakfast-on-the-go sense, of course.  Guth dedicates a significant portion of his book to outlining common supplier tactics for manip...