CPO News – December 19, 2014
Former Apple Global Supply Manager to Serve Jail Time for Procurement Fraud It has been a long time coming, but we can finally close the book on Paul Shin Devine,…
CPO Serial: Procurement Outsourcing (Episode 2) – A Business Case is Made
Procurement outsourcing has arrived. It may not be beloved by Chief Procurement Officers, but it is certainly on many of their radar screens. It is a topic that many of…
Contract Management: The Third Strategic Sourcing Pillar
Over the past couple of weeks, Ardent Partners has been featuring analysis from The State of Strategic Sourcing 2014: Connecting the Dots, which is now out and available. Interested readers can find…
Technology Round-Up – December 16, 2014
SAP Completes Concur Acquisition for $8.3 Billion On December 4, global software provider SAP AG (NYSE Ticker – SAP) announced that it had completed its $8.3 billion acquisition (or $129 per…
Contract Management Reporting: Trust, but Verify
In the mid-to-late 1980s, U.S. President Ronald Reagan adopted an old Russian proverb, "doveryai no proveryai" (trust, but verify) to emphasize to Soviet Premiere Mikhail Gorbachev the need to ensure…
CPO Serial: Procurement Outsourcing (Episode 1) – It Begins
Many years ago, one very large full-service BPO firm stopped working with me because I told them that procurement outsourcing was not on the radar screen of the average Chief…
Sourcing: The Second Strategic Sourcing Pillar
In case you missed our earlier announcement, Ardent Partners’ The State of Strategic Sourcing 2014: Connecting the Dots has been published and interested readers can find the report here and here. In…
Are You “Dressed to Kill?” Strategies to Mitigate Risk in the Global Cotton Supply Chain
[Publisher's note: Supply risk is a beast that wears many suits. Today, we continue an exclusive three-part series that examines the problem of human trafficking in the global cotton supply…
Spend Analysis: The First Strategic Sourcing Pillar
Ardent Partners’ The State of Strategic Sourcing 2014: Connecting the Dots is now out and available. Interested readers can find the report here and here. This research report analyzes the…
Visibility: What Does it Mean in the Contract Process?
Our short series of articles on the concept of visibility and what it means for Chief Procurement Officers continues this month. The response to this series has been so strong…