As Strategic Sourcing professionals we are constantly called upon to help solve problems for both our internal business partners as well as our external business partners (suppliers). A number of Procurement / Sourcing / Category Management organizations rely on Finance for those skills which I…
If you have followed us for any length of time, you know that being a Strategic Consultant to our stakeholders is something we think is absolutely critical if we have any interest in moving from a tactical cost cutter to a business partner role. As…
Cost Savings, cost savings, cost savings – if we focus on cost savings at the expense (no pun intended 😊) of what is most important to our “customer” then we Fail. Period. Herein, lies the single biggest difference between Strategic Souring and Category Management –…
I was asked to present at a supply chain conference held by a major university in Chicago and I titled my presentation “Going from Competitive to Collaborative Supply Chain Models” and I was quite surprised by the reaction as I thought this was not such…
Those of us that are Supply Chain junkies have heard all the stories about Walmart. Back in the day (and maybe even today) Walmart was notorious for their somewhat aggressive, even brutal Strategic Sourcing tactics. They could and did “make” many Suppliers wealthy AND they…