CFO-CPO Relations: A Work in Progress
As someone who has worked for many years in both finance and supply management, I have always found the relationship between the CPO and the CFO (and their departments) to…
Fail-safe
When things don’t go according to plans, the unprepared are often forced to just grin and bear it and hope that no one notices or that the total impact of…
Five Forces in Business Travel
The Masters Program in partnership with The National Business Travel Association, was held last month in Washington D.C., and by my estimation delivered on its promise to deliver an event…
Proof: eAuctions are NOT Evil
Hypothesis: eAuctions (and eSourcing) are not evil. Proof: I. Google’s Code of Conduct states in its Preface: "Don't be evil." Googlers generally apply those words to how we serve our…
The Gold Standard
Over the course of my career in supply management, I have had the great fortune to work with a large number of highly successful CPOs and procurement organizations that have…
Concur Fusion 2010
Concur Fusion was held last week (Feb. 1-4) at the Boca Raton Resort and Club. Concur Technologies is the largest provider of what it refers to as “Employee Spend Management”…
10 for 2010: Strategies to Improve Accounts Payable
I have a good feeling about Accounts Payable (AP) in this decade. In recent years, there has been increasing momentum within the marketplace for AP transformation. Not the kind of…
10 for 2010: eSourcing Myths (and How to Deconstruct Them)
eSourcing Manifesto eSourcing 2.0: Every negotiation that results in an executed contract should use an eSourcing solution. The eSourcing manifesto code that I introduced in 2009 via research[i] and other…
10 for 2010: Categories to Source in 2010
Change is constant. “Change is inevitable (except from a vending machine).”* But in this new year, this new decade, we find that many things have not changed. We are still…
European CPOs: Capitalising on the Best Opportunities
Once again, we interrupt the “10 for 2010” series to highlight a webinar (free registration) that I will be participating in tomorrow that looks at the top opportunities for European…