The Blog - Part 33

When is prompt payment not prompt payment

06 Nov 2013 Posted by Pete Loughlin in Prompt Payments

There’s a particular moral standard that simply doesn’t stack up in my view. It’s the standard that claims that if it’s legal, it’s OK. If it’s within the rules, it’s fair. We see it all the time. Employees who feel they are unfairly treated are…

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Strangely Strange but Oddly Normal

31 Oct 2013 Posted by Ian Burdon in P2P Europe, Procurement Best Practices, Public Sector Procurement

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…

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Procurement related fraud increases by more than 50%

28 Oct 2013 Posted by Pete Loughlin in Procurement Best Practices, Procurement Process, Purchase to Pay, Purchase to Pay Process

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%…

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Just in time finance – how to deal with the need for short term finance

22 Oct 2013 Posted by Pete Loughlin in Financial Supply Chain Management, Supply Chain Finance, Working Capital Management

A couple of weeks ago, I sat down with Tony Duggan, CEO of Crossflow Payments, an organisation looking at alternative ways to bring together suppliers and corporate buyers and strengthen supply chains. Supply Chain Finance is a bit of a buzzword at the moment. The…

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Hackers are hungry – the dangers of storing credit cards locally

21 Oct 2013 Posted by Rick Ricker in AP Automation, Purchasing Card

The amount of sensitive data on the servers of mid-to-large enterprises can be quite shocking. Included in the data could be credit card numbers. Locally storing your customer’s credit card data can be a risky proposition as your company could fall victim to a costly…

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The Prompt Payment Code – time for the government to get tough

13 Oct 2013 Posted by Pete Loughlin in AP Automation, The Rest, Working Capital Management

The BBC reports today the the Prompt Payment Code – a UK government backed initiative to encourage big business to pay on time – isn’t working. In other news, the sun came up this morning and it is expected to get dark sometime tonight. The…

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Once is unusual, twice is a trend

11 Oct 2013 Posted by Ian Burdon in Procurement Process, Public Sector Procurement

A couple of months ago I was looking at a pre-qualification questionnaire (PQQ) issued by a London Borough. It contained something that I had not seen before – a mandatory requirement for two references to be sent directly to the authority, by the referees, as…

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