(1) An Adoption Roundtrip
Over a home-cooked team dinner (asian fusion) at one Chief Procurement Officer’s house this week, I fell into a discussion with a Director of Direct regarding the eSourcing solution that the company had adopted five years ago. “We started so strong in that first year – great energy and a huge head of steam behind us. In our second year, we ran 211 eSourcing projects. Last year, we ran 5,” he said wistfully. There were several reasons given for the sharp decline – the usual suspects – which we may address another time without referencing this company. But, it must be particularly frustrating to know that an organization has the ability to go from “0 to 60” with only a slight push and little resistance and just as easily slip back to where it had started. Are the tools in place a “sunk cost” or can this company revamp its eSourcing program? I’d bet on this CPO, but only time will tell.
(2) Webinar November 1 at 1 pm
Next Tuesday November 1st at 1 pm ET, I will be answering any and all questions in an interactive webinar entitled: Strategic Imperatives of Procurement: People, Process & Technology. Here’s how it is described:
For procurement to accelerate its movement up the corporate ladder and act strategically, streamlining procurement processes needs to be the key focus area of procurement professionals. Organizations today are expecting procurement to drive competitive performance in strategic areas. For procurement to deliver on the strategic areas like profitability, value creation, risk mitigation etc., it needs to equip itself with the right skill sets and technology which will enable them to manage the new processes and meet the challenges arising both internally and externally. Procurement professionals also need to align their objectives in line with that of the corporate objectives to understand and act on the crucial areas which will have an impact on organizational success. Scope of the discussion: (1) Addressing the skill gap of procurement professionals with respect to the use of advanced procurement technology (2) Managing supplier relationships and winning supplier buy-in for procurement automation technology (3) Use of technology to streamline procurement processes.
Speaker Andrew Bartolini, Ardent Partners and CPO Rising
Moderated by: Susan Avery, Editor in Chief, My Purchasing Center
Sponsored by: Zycus
To attend, register here
(3) Market Alert – Voulez-vous eInvoice?
Last week Ariba acquired a b-process, a privately-held French eInvoicing and network solution provider. The acquisition will add an annual transactional volume of 40 million invoices and an estimated value of $80 billion to the Ariba network which will bring total network transactions to more than $270 billion. For those that are interested, Vishal Patel offers his analysis of the deal here (free).