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Category Archives: Stategic Sourcing
Delivering Value: Essential Tools to Help Procurement Optimize The Strategic Sourcing Process
The Value Basis for Procurement As the procurement function has become more sophisticated, the perpetual corporate charge-for-growth has pushed the function to identify and deliver value across the organization on a constant basis. To this end, while many tools and … Read More…
Changing Dynamics in the Global Steel Industry – The Trend Towards Short-term, Flexible Contracts
The global steel industry is undergoing a major structural shift in contract structures across its supply chain. This process started in March 2010, when steel manufacturers were forced by iron ore suppliers to move away from a four-decade long practice … Read More…
Technological Convergence: A Snapshot Perspective
The last decade has seen the advent of technological convergence across different platforms, products, and capabilities – reducing the gap between consumer electronics, telecom, and computing industry. Historically, the emphasis had been on stand-alone products – focused on a single … Read More…
Change in the Middle East and North Africa: Implications for Business
The recent civil unrest in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has, for obvious reasons, attracted significant attention globally. With countries across the globe still working to recover in the aftermath of the 2008–09 global economic crisis, the … Read More…
Is the Manufacturing Sourcing Model Changing?
Emerging markets in Southeast Asia, South America, and Eastern Europe have become attractive manufacturing locations for many industries, primarily because of their cheap labor and FDI- friendly environment. Additionally, governments in these fast-growing markets have encouraged the emergence and growth … Read More…
Understanding the Recent Growth in Food Prices
The last year has seen an all too familiar pattern of food price hikes, not dissimilar to what we experienced back in 2007-2008. The 2008 food price hikes were driven by several factors, including high oil prices and the increasing … Read More…
Africa – A Closer Look
Africa is a continent that evokes a wide range of perspectives, from the cultural to the political to the economic. In all of these different, yet interrelated ways, it is clearly a force to be reckoned with. Consider a few … Read More…
Precious Metals – The Outlook for Silver and Gold
“The ultimate asset bubble.” This is how George Soros described gold last year, even as his fund took sizable long positions in the precious metal. Why not take advantage of rising values (so long as the bubble doesn’t burst), particularly … Read More…
Nuclear Energy in Germany
Nuclear energy has been heralded by many as one of the most important solutions to the growing energy demands of the world, particularly given concerns regarding increasing greenhouse gas emissions and the rising price of oil. The popularity of nuclear … Read More…
Understanding the Concept of Market Basket Analysis
Retailing today is nothing if not a hypercompetitive industry. A complex & rapidly changing landscape, stiff competition, and ever more demanding customers are pushing progressive retailers to rethink how they operate. Their responses have included strategies of scale (consolidation, growth, … Read More…
4 Key Trends Influencing Automotive Procurement
Few industries today are as global, interrelated and complex as the automotive sector. (Fewer still have gone through the level of challenge and change that we have seen over the past several years.) As the automotive sector has emerged from … Read More…
Success in Mergers & Acquisitions
Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) activity is par for the course in the corporate world these days. Over the last several decades, there has been a consistent increase in both the number and value of transactions taking place, not only in … Read More…
Is There Any Value in Forecasting? A Manager’s checklist
Year after year, as companies navigate their way through annual business planning cycles, executives and analysts alike work tirelessly to try and predict how the next fiscal year will unfold, making a range of decisions from where best to focus … Read More…
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The Key to Establishing Procurement’s Credibility within the Organization
The last two decades have seen a sea change in the Procurement function’s (and the Procurement executive’s) standing within the organization. No longer the proverbial ‘back water’ department, Procurement now occupies an important seat at the executive table—a development that … Read More…
China and its Influence on the Global Rare Earth Metals Market
“The Middle East has its oil, China has rare earth metals.” —Deng Xiaoping, Chinese President (1992) Take an even a cursory look at any major business media today and China’s influence in the minerals and metals commodity markets is inescapable. … Read More…
Four key challenges for supply chains in 2011 and beyond
These four challenges are highlighted in this article, along with a high level look into the types of informational tools and techniques that can be leveraged to help manage them effectively. If there is a truism in supply chains, it … Read More…
6 Key Actions – Aligning supply chains with corporate strategy.
The supply chain and procurement executive(s) has a ‘seat at the executive table’. To illustrate its potential impact from a pure economic perspective, where else in an organization does one executive have the ability to influence and manage the cost … Read More…