Supply Chain

05 Jun

Posted at 06:48h in e-invoicing, e-Procurement, Electronic Invoicing, Financial Supply Chain Management, Purchase to Pay, Purchase to Pay Process, Purchasing Card, Supply Chain by
1 Like
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?

26 May

Posted at 05:20h in Procurement Software, Supply Chain by
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This is the second article in the series reflecting on how we got here. In the facebook age, when the digital natives – those who don’t remember a time before the internet – are emerging as the new generation of business leaders, thinkers and politicians, it can be easy to forget how today’s business technology evolved. And it’s easy to dismiss it. But knowing a little more than best practice and understanding why we do stuff the way we do is enlightening and helps inform us about the future evolution of business technology.

24 May

Posted at 09:03h in e-Procurement, e-Procurement Software, Procurement Best Practices, Procurement Software, Supply Chain by
1 Like
In the facebook age, when the digital natives - those who don't remember a time before the internet - are emerging as the new generation of business leaders, thinkers and politicians, it can be easy to forget how today's business technology evolved. And it's easy to dismiss it. But knowing a little more than best practice and understanding why we do stuff the way we do is enlightening and helps inform us about the future evolution of business technology.

08 May

Posted at 04:14h in Financial Supply Chain Management, Supply Chain by
0 Likes
I'm one of the worst culprits and I hate myself for it. Finding yourself wrapping up in pretentious management consultant speak is an occupational hazard. I wouldn't talk about "leveraging my core competencies" or "disintermediating my financial supply chain" in an informal conversation with friends and family. And it would raise an eyebrow at home, to say the least, if I mentioned that we'd been "sweating our assets" at work. So why do I do it?

16 Mar

Posted at 04:37h in Procurement Best Practices, Procurement Process, Supply Chain, The Rest by
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I despair sometimes. There's been a couple of threads in the purchasing and supply chain media recently that seek to justify the role of procurement. There was Peter Smith's recent spirited defence, (here), of the procurement profession in response to David Cameron's naive attack calling purchasing professionals the "enemies of enterprise". And then there was the article in Supply Management "CFO focus on savings ‘does procurement a huge disservice" which high-lighted some research by Ardent Partners revealing a misperception of the role of procurement by most CFOs:

04 Nov

Posted at 20:07h in Insights, Purchase to Pay, Supply Chain by
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Standards in B2B are a waste of time. They are a waste of energy, intellectual capacity and money. They have no place in the business world in 21st century. For as long as I can remember, the great and good in the B2B world have espoused the use of standards as a fundamental component of business communication in the technology enabled world - yet they have simultaneously complained abut the number of standards that are out there. Surely its about time that we all realized and accepted that further attempts to evangelize and impose standards will not work. They’ve never worked in the past. If they had, there would not be so many standards today (not to mention the numerous standards bodies). We normally learn from our mistakes - once bitten, twice shy. In the B2B world - once bitten, twice bitten.