Procurement Best Practices

28 Jul

Posted at 14:50h in Procurement Best Practices, Procurement Process, Purchase to Pay, Purchase to Pay Process by
1 Like
No PO No Pay is often thought of a means to "train" suppliers providing them with a somewhat negative incentive to comply with their customer's purchase to pay processes. "No PO No Pay No Exceptions" - I've said it myself - but in practice not only does it not work, it's directing effort in the wrong direction.

22 Jul

Posted at 19:29h in Procurement Best Practices, Social Media by
0 Likes
As we enter the silly season, here’s a great idea from Ian Burdon. I have pretty much stopped looking at my “business” Twitter feed. This isn’t because of general disaffection with social media - I also have a “civilian” Twitter account full of music and authors and beer that I keep a regular eye on. No, it is because of the endless flood of nonsense relating to procurement and e-procurement that tracks across my screen. I understand why this has happened. There is a marketing mantra that you should issue (x) number of tweets per day or per week, without regard to whether they have any meaningful content. Also blogs and journals need to maintain a steady flow of stories to stay at the forefront of their readers’ minds. The confluence of these and other streams overflows onto the Twitter floodplain and leaves everything soggy and somewhat smelly. And there is the rest: the incessant self-aggrandisement; the business-as-usual presented as if a disruptive triumph of innovation; and the strings of abstract nouns, opaque in their individual meaning, gibberish when strung together like a charm bracelet, that remove rather than enhance communication.

28 Jan

Posted at 15:00h in EU Commission, Procurement Best Practices, Procurement Process, Public Sector Procurement by
2 Likes
MEAT or the Most Economically Advantageous Tender has always been one of the assessment criteria upon which contracts could be awarded under EU procurement law. But no longer – soon it will be the only option. A slightly refined version of old MEAT, new MEAT will encourage evaluation of the bids offering the best price-quality ratio. This change is described by Jennifer Robinson as just one of many changes to EU procurement law that collectively represent a complete overhaul, the biggest change in public procurement law in 10 years.

31 Oct

Posted at 05:27h in P2P Europe, Procurement Best Practices, Public Sector Procurement by
0 Likes
I have been reading the draft of the new Procurement Directive. I had previously dipped into it but have now read all 360-odd pages in sequence. There is a lot in the draft Directive of value, particularly about sustainability, but I found myself musing on the concept of “Abnormally Low Tenders”. The explanatory notes in the draft are quite clear what the concern is: “(44a) Tenders that appear abnormally low in relation to the works, supplies or services might be based on technically, economically or legally unsound assumptions or practices. Where the tenderer cannot provide a sufficient explanation, the contracting authority should be entitled to reject the tender. Rejection should be mandatory in cases where the contracting authority has established that the abnormally low price or costs proposed results from non-compliance with mandatory Union legislation or national law compatible with it in the fields of social, labour or environmental law or international labour law provisions”.

28 Oct

Posted at 13:00h in Procurement Best Practices, Procurement Process, Purchase to Pay, Purchase to Pay Process by
1 Like
It’s astonishing! At a time when we have Sarbanes Oxley and a culture of control, in the climate of transparency and scrutiny and a fetishistic focus on finance – how is it that fraudsters have been able to get away with a more than 50% increase in procurement related theft? But it’s not that astonishing really. A cursory glance at the procurement practices and purchase to pay processes in any organization will reveal opportunities to defraud and while we should never forget that it is the fraudster that’s to blame, the responsibility is shared with the executives who choose to turn a blind eye and underinvest in proper P2P.

08 May

Posted at 10:00h in e-Procurement, e-Procurement Software, Procurement Best Practices, Procurement Process, Procurement Software, Purchase to Pay, Purchase to Pay Process, Purchasing Process, Spend Analysis by
1 Like
There are lots of reasons to do e-procurement but most of the stated reasons are not the real reason at all. Indeed, most of the reasons stated for implementing e-procurement are impossible to deliver. But there is one very good reason to implement e-procurement and oddly, the functionality that delivers it is usually not available from the e-procurement vendors.