Critical components in your supply chain are at risk – and you may not even know it. There are numerous points of failure in today’s complex supply chains and because of the difficulty that upstream suppliers have funding their business from day to day, the risk of a damaging and expensive failure is increasing. And it gets worse. Efforts to cut costs have resulted in leaner, riskier supply chains held together by a network small suppliers. If the risk of financial failure isn’t mitigated it could have disastrous consequences – which is why businesses – especially in Europe – should begin to take supply chain finance more seriously. continue reading…

Startups and young businesses thrive when their people do their jobs because they want to change the world, they want to get rich or they want to do what they love to do. But as they grow, founders execute their exit plans, hopefully happily, and the accountants move in. The business drivers change. The raison d’etre becomes about numbers and regulation. They’re either fixated on quarterly earnings figures or obsessed with compliance. They get third parties in far flung places to run their back office, even core business activities get outsourced and offshored. The business stops being about the hopes, dreams and ambitions of its people. They even outsource them. continue reading…

This month, State of Flux, the London based procurement and supply chain consultancy, has launched its fourth annual Global SRM Survey 2012 which is, for the first time, divided into two areas: a buy-side survey to validate the procurement and supply chain perspective and a sell-side survey that captures the account team perspective of SRM. The new approach should provide one of the fairest reviews to date of both the supplier and the customer experiences of current SRM globally. continue reading…

It’s been my guilty secret for a few years now. I buy Apple stuff. Why the guilt? Because of Apple’s reputation about their supply practices.

The reputation says that Apple products are built in factories in far flung places where working conditions are so poor that overworked and underpaid staff are flinging themselves from the rooftops. But actually, the facts about Apple’s supply chain have been difficult to ascertain because, like their product development, the details have always been a closely guarded secret. Until now that is. continue reading…

I Robot is a collection of short stories by Isaac Asimov Published in 1950. They predict a day when robots will become sophisticated enough to begin to think for themselves and they explore the world where robots have the capability to take over the world.

And I was reminded of this when I wrote about bent bananas recently. continue reading…

Some great things have come out of Australia but leaving Rolf Harris and Skippy aside, passion for procurement doesn’t seem to be one of them. Why is it that Aussies don’t get as passionate as the poms about procurement?

Well I’m not sure that the Europeans do get quite as passionate as Claudine Swiatek believes in her captivating article in her blog The Young Sourcerer about passion. But her point is well made that it’s a shame that procurement isn’t as well respected in some quarters as it should be. continue reading…

The purchasing card is a great business tool. It empowers people to make purchases without the need for a complex and often expensive purchasing process. When a low value item costs less than the cost of the purchasing process itself, it makes sense to cut through the purchase to pay red tape.

But the purchasing card is beginning to show it age.  It hasn’t really kept up with technological change surrounding it. The merchant fees are excessive, in a low interest rate economy the business case makes no sense and as far as reporting goes, purchasing cards have been trumped by electronic invoicing. Is it the end of the road for the purchasing card? continue reading…