Contract Management

What Procurement Teams Can Learn from “The Wisdom of Crowds”

Posted: 07/14/2022 - 09:00
Author: Edmund Zagorin
Helpful tips to leverage the collective wisdom your various business teams have accumulated over the years.

Today’s procurement systems are not as sophisticated as they should be, as they fail to incorporate basic tenets of human psychology.

What do we mean by this?

As of now, the primary means of surfacing suppliers in the course of a search selection remains very arbitrary – qualify the suppliers then pick the lowest price. This process does very little to ensure the quality of the supplier and does not reflect what other business teams’ experience with the supplier might have been.

5 Benefits to Adding Sustainability Measures in Your Contracts (and How to Get Started)

Posted: 09/24/2021 - 09:00
Author: Jane Zhang
5 Benefits to Adding Sustainability Measures in Your Contracts

Jane Zhang and Naz Rahman, ETCH Sourcing

The value creation challenges we faced decades ago are the same that organizations still grapple with today. The main difference, however, is that the rate of innovation is accelerating daily. So, although studying the past should be a part of your strategy, we need to be careful it does not become a comfortable crutch. We cannot chart a path forward by looking backwards.

How Energy Performance Contracting Eliminates Wasteful Spending

Posted: 09/08/2020 - 22:05
Author: Jason Anderson
Through the Energy Performance Contracting Program and ongoing preventive maintenance of the new facility equipment, Turner County officials will be able to realize these savings, while benefitting from enhanced infrastructure, for years to come.

When municipal and county governments need significant facility and infrastructure updates, but don’t have the funds available, they must identify new and creative ways to cut costs.

For example, Turner County, Georgia, needed to control expenses and upgrade its facilities and infrastructure to ensure its residents receive vital services. They began by analyzing the county’s energy and operational costs.

Procurement’s Calling is to Protect the Business in Times of Crisis

Posted: 06/19/2020 - 05:22
Author: Michael Roesch
Procurement crisis

The coronavirus outbreak is having a profound impact on every business’ supply chain. The U.S. manufacturing PMI indicated the worst contraction in production, new orders, and employment since the 2008 recession. Nearly 75% of companies report supply chain disruptions in March, a number most expect to rise further.

7 Steps to Build and Execute your Sustainable Procurement Initiative

Posted: 04/20/2020 - 05:26
Author: Anne Riihimäki
Sustainable procurement

Identify Your Sustainability Priorities

To build a sustainable procurement process that complements your company’s core mission, the next step to take after conducting a thorough spend analysis is to identify the blend of environmental, social and economic sustainability goals your organization both prioritizes and is able to make real impact by addressing.

Libby Weber: The Importance of Framing Your Contracts

Posted: 03/23/2020 - 01:48
Author: Kate Vitasek
Preventive Contract Framing

Libby Weber - Associate Professor of Strategy at The Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine - promotes a way of thinking about contracts beyond their traditional “preventive” role of avoiding risk, preventing breaches or opportunistic behavior.

Her premise? Why not use contracts to promote cooperation, flexibility, and creativity?

“People-First” Approach is Key to IT Managed Services Transition Success

Posted: 10/17/2018 - 08:51
Author: Bilal Shahabuddin
Successful IT managed services (ITMS) transitions require an equal amount of due diligence and effort from the enterprise as well as the new service provider. Most of today’s market leading service providers bring tools, templates and processes that are very similar on paper and are table stakes for competing in the industry.

Re-engineering a Corporate Real Estate Service Organization: Strategic Sourcing

Posted: 10/06/2018 - 00:38
Author: Ingrid M. Fenn
In Part I: Operational Review, the team identified what needed to be done and determined the optimal delivery model. In Part II: Strategic Sourcing, we will examine the strategic sourcing process, including: 
 
  1. Supplier Pre-Qualification
  2. Bid Strategy
  3. Request for Proposal/Solution/Partner Development

Right place, right time: the growth of the cloud contact centre market

Posted: 04/02/2016 - 02:35
Author: Keiron Dalton

Cloud-based contact centres have taken off in a big way. With business process outsourcers (BPOs) needing flexibility and scalability to respond quickly to changing conditions, the cloud is best placed to enable these desires.

The latest research from the Cloud Industry Forum has found that 46 per cent of UK-based organisations use cloud-based contact centres today, a figure that is expected to increase to 68 per cent over the next few years. These results confirm the value of cloud-based contact centres and their ability to transform customer service and engagement.

Jean Tirole: The science of taming powerful firms

Posted: 12/22/2014 - 09:07
Author: Kate Vitasek

Jean Tirole, the French professor of economics who recently received the Nobel Prize, is one of the most influential modern economists for his extensive theories and rigorous mathematic analysis of strategic behaviour and information economics in what is known as “Industrial Organisation” (IO).

As part of his research, he studied firms and markets where a firm had “power” to dominate the market and perhaps abuse that power.

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