Searching and evaluating the right Procure-to-Pay (P2P) software can be a daunting and sometimes frustrating task. Whether you are an experienced procurement professional with years of category expertise and have spent long hours within your ERP and P2P platform, or you are scouting for the right platform for your company for the first time, knowing what you need is vital.
For years, experts have urged business leaders to prepare for the coming AI disruption. Realizing the amazing potential of these emerging technologies, they argued, would require businesses to overhaul how they manage data. Yet with the economy booming, many found it easier to push tricky data questions into the future.
The concept behind a circular economy is simple: minimize waste by reusing, sharing and repairing goods that are already in use. That allows items to remain in the economic system, preventing the need for as many new products to be introduced.
This results in a closed loop. New resources aren’t being used, so energy is conserved.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of the global supply chain. Precisely when the capabilities of international, interconnected trade mechanisms were supposed to kick into high gear, producers found themselves desperate for supplies while store shelves lacked essential goods. The global supply chain didn’t rise to the occasion. Now, it’s important to examine why.
In late 2020, Robert Wilson and Paul Milgrom were awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for breakthrough work on structuring auctions to deliver the best results for both the seller and buyer. Google, for instance, reinvented the advertising industry, which was based on face-to-face, closed-doors deal-making, with its programmatic, automated, real-time, largely auction-based digital platform. In doing so, Google grew exponentially by providing millions of small businesses with the ability to advertise cost-effectively.
Twenty-five years ago, the internet was in its dial-up infancy, businesses still relied on fax machines and procurement was considered solely a back-office, cost-cutting function that controlled the organization’s purse strings.
Agile 4 Step Procurement Methodology, developed through decades of experience, delivers practical and sustainable results. It is a method our clients find valuable and one we use internally for our projects, too. Practice what you preach!
Imagine you have a competitive bid to run. You have completed your planning and research, gathered your requirements, performed a marketplace assessment and determined your sourcing strategy. You are ready to move forward with the competitive bid. With so much to do, how do you stay organized and what are the next steps?
Finance departments use GL codes to track spend. We’re looking at items like office supplies, marketing or maybe a specific project within the business. However, what finance are looking for and what procurement are looking for can be two quite different things.
Firstly, if you're only using your general ledger codes, I can almost guarantee they are wrong! In my experience working with GL codes, I would say 90% of them are unreliable. You'll almost always find something classified under a GL that shouldn't be there.
The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified the level of uncertainty in an already volatile time for markets and supply chains.
At the time of writing this piece, I am just one of five million people emerging from the world’s longest coronavirus-related lockdown, in Melbourne, Australia. For nearly two months, I was only allowed to leave the house once a day for essential items and required to stay within three miles of my home. From takeaway meals to IT support, to doctor’s appointments, most of the goods and services I've needed have been ordered virtually. Since COVID-19 hit, I’m amazed at how quickly the world went virtual.
Procurement’s role within an organization has changed dramatically over the past few decades.
Future of Sourcing Digital is excited to continue our popular series “Women in Global Sourcing.” This series highlights, celebrates, and acknowledges women who are pioneers and leaders in the industry and who have been influential in moving the industry forward. It is our pleasure to feature Aditi Pany this week.
It’s long been acknowledged that both hard and soft skills are needed in most jobs. They are no less crucial within procurement.
While hard skills include the teachable, quantifiable abilities you need to do the job and will be reflected in your qualifications, soft skills are, of course, slightly more difficult to measure. These can include teamwork, communication, conflict resolution and problem-solving abilities.
This summer, the World Federation of Advertisers published an illuminating report about the current state of marketing procurement and how the function needs to evolve to realize its full potential. The report is part of an ongoing initiative led by the WFA Global Sourcing Board. The initiative, Project Spring, is “designed to transform the value proposition of marketing procurement.”
We all think we know what dirty data is, but it can mean very different things to different people. At it’s most basic level, dirty data is anything that’s incorrect.
Within procurement, it could be misspelt vendors, incorrect invoice descriptions, missing product codes, a lack of standard units of measure (e.g., ltr, l, litres), currency issues, duplicate invoices or incorrect/partially classified data.
