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Fleet: Key Considerations

Have you ever wondered what other company’s fleets look like? How other companies source their fleet units, parts, and services? What information is needed to begin? The first thing to know, is that n...

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Time to Renew Your Office 365 Deal – Where Should You Place Your Bet?

Sourcing managers with a Microsoft enterprise agreement (EA) that is about to expire face an important decision and may have many questions. Should they renew their next EA along the same lines as the...

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Bot Technology: A Procurement Experts Thoughts

The ‘app boom’ is widely recognized to be slowing as we approach the half way mark of 2017. Success stories such as Snapchat and Uber remain (in terms of continued, steep growth), but the aggregate gr...

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3D Printing: Disrupting Manufacturing and MRO Procurement

3D printing and its applications are evolving rapidly, although most manufacturing businesses are at least five years away from mainstream adoption of the technology. It has a long way to go before be...

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Contingent Workforce Management: Advantages of an Integrated Managed Services Program and Vendor Management Software Model

Organizations that are not leveraging a managed service provider (MSP) and vendor management system (VMS) may be paying too much for contingent talent and are at risk of noncompliance with various lab...

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No Leverage? No Problem: Tips for turning a lack of negotiating leverage into a winning strategy

 “We take a buck, we shoot it full of steroids and we call it leverage.” -Gordon Gecko (Wall Street 2)   Leverage - a word that has such meaning it could be used to define itself. When it co...

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Sourcing Custom and Secondary Packaging: Considerations for Optimal Results

Each purchasing category, whether indirect or direct, has a unique set of parameters that can be optimized to take full advantage the savings opportunities in the market. The packaging category is no ...

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Design, Defined

Design – a term that dates back to the 14th century - has become mainstream over the last decade. Design has done well operating on the fringes of organizations and people are now seeing the value tha...

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Achieving World-Class Procurement Part 2: Taking a Deep Look at Your Current Operations

As I mentioned in Achieving World-Class Procurement Part 1, today’s increasingly competitive market landscape is driving organizations to reinvest in their procurement and strategic sourcing departmen...

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Why telecom companies don’t want CPOs to know about TEM

Mobile devices are now part of the modern business uniform. Mobile phones created a culture of always available, but mobile devices enable constant connectivity. What telecom companies don’t want CPOs...

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Groundbreaking action that truly drives the greatest change for women

Editor’s note: March 8, 2017 has been designated International Women’s Day. This year’s theme: #BeBoldforChange is a call to women in all walks of life to push boundaries and recognize the inspiring w...

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Achieving World-Class Procurement: The Steps Leading Companies are Taking to Optimize their Procurement Teams

In today’s competitive market landscape, simply having a centralized procurement organization is only the first step to better managed supplier relationships and spend. Leading organizations are quick...

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The Importance of Vision, Messaging, and Alignment

Editor’s note: Scott Jancy is a multi-faceted professional, with experience as a historian, an architect, a Naval Officer, a planner, and a consultant. He blogs often on innovation, leadership, and de...

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Making an Informed Decision about Contingent Workforce Management Advice

Non-employee talent is getting more and more attention in the executive suite, as contractors, freelancers, and other knowledge-based contingent workers become increasingly important in achieving comp...

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Tips for Effective Light Fleet Sourcing

Fleet operations can absolutely be an overwhelming category to manage. Between deciding on the right vehicle manufacturer, understanding the ever-changing vehicle features, selecting the appropriate m...

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Making the Case for Self-Sourced Talent Pools

As organizations continue to expand the use of contingent talent to supplement their full-time workforce, they are also seeking ways to optimize their contingent workforce programs to generate additio...

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Risk Management in Supply Chain and Procurement: Preparing for the Storm

Although we’re a few weeks past the Hanjin Shipping bankruptcy now, the shake up left experts, businessmen, companies, and customers alike wondering what other events could potentially jeopardize thei...

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Optimizing the Value of Trilateral Manufacturer Distributor Purchasing Relationships

When you just look at a purchase from a pricing perspective, it would be reasonable to think that purchasing products directly from the manufacturer be an effective way to reduce unnecessary overhead ...

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Displacing Incumbent Suppliers

You’ve invested a lot of time and money. You may even have staked your reputation on backing a supplier. So when is it time to replace them? At a recent executive meeting, the subject of incumbent sup...

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Can Real Human Beings Be Good at Procurement?

This guest post is part of The Procurement Revolution. To share your thoughts or join the conversation, use #ProcureRev on Twitter or use the comment functionality below.   I'm Ovidiu Slimac and ...

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