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Supply chain management demands more than just operational efficiency; it requires trust.
Establishing reliable partnerships within your supply chain optimizes operations and ensures resilience against potential disruptions. This article delves into practical vetting techniques that enhance trust and reliability with your supply chain partners.
Continue reading “Building Trust in Your Supply Chain: Effective Vetting Techniques for Reliable Partners!”The foundations of any Digital Supply Chain is the real time, end-to-end electronic connectivity of every node and aspect of your Supply Chain. Unless your company is entirely self-sufficient this connectivity requires extensive and exhaustive Supplier Onboarding.
And this onboarding is not restricted to the first tier suppliers with whom you have direct contact. You must connect with second, third, and fourth tier suppliers, many of which you will often never have even heard of before.
And that is an enormous challenge, to say the very least.
Continue reading “The Digital Supply Chain Journey: Step 4 – Supplier Onboarding!”The Coronavirus Pandemic has quickly and severely disrupted Supply Chains of every kind around the world. Lockdowns have resulted in the temporary closure of Manufacturing and Distribution facilities and discontinuation of Logistics and transportation modes.
Additionally dramatically higher demand for household supplies (eg. toilet paper) and medical personal protective equipment have resulted in stockouts and shortages.
In many cases the use of single sourcing, or sole sourcing, Procurement strategies has limited the ability for Supply Chains to access alternate sources of supply and more rapidly support higher than normal demand levels.
As we progress through and past the pandemic, is it time for Procurement to adopt parallel Supply Chain strategies, such as dual sourcing, and limit or abandon single sourcing and sole sourcing?
Continue reading “Is Single Sourcing, or Sole Sourcing, Dead?”Early in my career I worked in a department that was responsible for the design,testing, sourcing and procurement of packaging materials. It was a great experience and introduction to so many aspects of the Supply Chain.
But one day one of my peers was fired. He was responsible for negotiating with the packaging suppliers. As it turns out he was taking kickbacks. When that was discovered and verified he was summarily dismissed. He went over to the dark side.
I never got the precise details but I don’t believe he could have got more than a few thousand dollars for his illicit efforts. More importantly he got a black mark on his resume, and in his life, that he could never erase.
That was my first lesson on the do’s and don’t of Supplier Relationships.
Continue reading “Procurement Don’t go to the Dark Side!”Supply chain management encompasses an extensive range of tasks, systems, and processes that come together to facilitate the optimum flow of materials, goods, and services from the source to the end consumer.
Despite the technological advancements of the past decades which have brought automation and digitalization to the table, ensuring the efficiency and smooth functioning of supply chains has become more difficult than ever due to their increasing complexity and the ongoing transformations taking place across all sectors and markets.
Continue reading “Raising the Bar: Step Up Your Supply Chain Game by Refining Your Supplier Selection Process!”Strategies for improving Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) are the hallmark of the Modern Procurement Function.
In this article we are providing our list of 10 strategies for effective Supplier Relationship Management and overcoming Supplier management challenges.
Continue reading “Strategies for Improving Supplier Relationship Management (SRM)!”As we’ve chronicled on the Argentus Blog, it’s no secret that the world of Procurement is changing and fast. With automation, big data and burgeoning AI systems removing more and more of the profession’s “tactical” or “clerical” tasks, the Procurement report card is that companies are calling on their Procurement teams to be more strategic, more nimble, and more innovative.
They’re expecting their Procurement functions to deliver not just bottom-line cost-savings, but other sorts of value, adding to organizations’ overall competitiveness.
Procurement, you’ve come a long way, baby!
But a new survey of 200 C-Suite executives from a variety of industries and functions presents a rather dispiriting picture of the Procurement function today – or at least how it’s perceived.
Continue reading “Report Card: Most Executives Think Procurement Isn’t Strategic Enough!”Procurement professionals have the same question looming over their head on a daily basis about Digital Procurement:
“How do you plan on dealing with digitalization?”
Continue reading “The 3 Pillars of Digital Procurement!”A new article in Harvard Business Review has been generating some automation-related controversy in the Supply Chain Community, as well as lots of buzz and interesting conversation. Naturally, we want to weigh in and the end of Supply Chain Management.
Titled, “The Death of Supply Chain Management,” the article discusses the way that automation, AI and big data are transforming the industry.
It raises the alarm that the function will soon cease to exist, only to – as these “X is dead“ articles often end up doing – assert that it will still exist, just in a very different form.
Continue reading “Are We Facing the End of Supply Chain Management?”It’s been a tremendous start to our second year at Supply Chain Game Changer. Our goal has always been to share experiences and expertise, including our 2018 Top 10 list. In the first half of 2018 our readership continued to grow substantially over our first year, 2017. And we were selected as one of the Top 25 Procurement blogs in the world.
In 2018 we added video content and introduced our “Seasoned Leadership in Action” Interview series. For the purpose of this Top 10 List we have excluded all “Seasoned Leadership in Action” articles as we are not trying to promote a popularity contest amongst individuals. That being said the response to the Interview series has been absolutely outstanding.
We also continued to add more and more Guest posts provided by industry leaders. We have 17 new Guest contributors so far in 2018 on top of the outstanding roster of contributors who started with us in 2017.
As we end the first 6 months of 2018 we wanted to publish our Top 10 List, so far.
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So here is our 1st Top 10 List of 2018…
Continue reading “Our 2018 Top 10 List!”Where is procurement, outsourcing, sourcing, supply chain, and purchasing going? What is happening in the marketplace? What are companies thinking at the executive level and what type of actions are they taking?
First off, we will outline a few of our observations about what we are seeing first hand. Secondarily, we will include information from other procurement professionals and procurement firms about their experiences, what they forecast, and what they are seeing.
Continue reading “Procurement Experiences and Trends!”Here we present a series of thought provoking and inspirational Supply Chain quotes.
“If you think of standardization as the best that you know today, but which is to be improved tomorrow; you get somewhere.” ~ Henry Ford, founder Ford Motor Company
“Eighty-five percent of the reasons for failure are deficiencies in the systems and process rather than the employee. The role of management is to change the process rather than badgering individuals to do better.” ~ W. Edwards Deming
Continue reading “Inspirational Supply Chain Quotes”At Supply Chain Game Changer we believe in sharing experiences and expertise from people in every industry and from across the globe. As such we have introduced our “Seasoned Leadership in Action” Interview series at Supply Chain Game Changer. This interview is with Kristie Syndikus, VP of Procurement at Maple Leaf Foods.
Kristie was also recently recognized as one of the Top 100 Canadian Women in Supply Chain.
Continue reading “Seasoned Leadership in Action™ – An Interview with Kristie Syndikus, VP Procurement at Maple Leaf Foods!”At Supply Chain Game Changer we believe in sharing experiences and expertise from people in every industry and from across the globe. As such we have introduced our “Seasoned Leadership in Action™” Interview series. This interview is with Bronwen Hann, President at Argentus.
Continue reading “Seasoned Leadership in Action™ – An Interview with Bronwen Hann, President at Argentus”Procurement is a process that involves obtaining and accepting terms and getting goods or services from an outside source. You achieve the process via tendering and competitive bidding. In other words, procurement is deciding to buy under conditions of less availability.
IT procurement challenges revolve around high costs, complex processes, and increased chances of failure. It’s advisable to understand the challenges and address them to succeed in this IT procurement process. By doing this, you’re preventing future problems from arising while undergoing the process.
Here are some of the challenges encountered in the procurement process. Read through this article to know the obstacles you might experience and how to address them.
Continue reading “Top 10 Challenges in IT Procurement!”
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