(8/29/2011) BMP's Event Picks of the Week
You can view all upcoming events on our site in a weekly listing or on an ongoing basis in our monthly calendar. 
We visit over forty sources to come up with the listing so you can check one central place to see who is hosting webinars, conferences, and more. We don’t help run the events or have any affiliation with the hosts. We see this as a valuable service we can offer to you. One other helpful thing to mention is that if you come to our calendar and click on an event that you are interested in attending, we’ve posted all of the registration links so you can sign up for the event directly from our site.
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At Buyers Meeting Point, every Monday is all about the coming week’s events. This week’s update is a best-case scenario in my opinion. We work with a number of our colleagues on different professional projects, and two of those projects led us to new events at the last minute that we are thrilled to include in the listing, to register for, and to cover for you. Come back to the site on Friday to read our notes.
On Monday, MyPurchasingCenter is presenting “Growing Purchasing Influence on Indirect Spending”. They have two speakers joining them, one from Hewlett Packard and one from Manpower. There are two things about this event that caught my attention. The first is using the word purchasing rather than procurement in the event title, although they do refer to procurement and strategic sourcing in the event description. I’ll be interested to see if they are using the terms interchangeably or if they mean to draw a divide and will clarify the separation of responsibilities in the event. The other hook is a question posted in the description, and here it is: “how exactly do procurement teams get to the point where other departments approach them for help with sourcing such indirect categories as human resources benefits, advertising and marketing and legal?” If they can provide a solid answer to that question, I promise you will hear it from me on our site later this week.
On Tuesday, CapGemini and CPO Agenda are joining forces to present “Quick Wins to Boost This Year’s Savings Total”. With all of the mounting pressure to prove ourselves as supply chain risk super heroes, it’s actually refreshing to hear that someone is going “old school” and pushing the savings tally as a measure of performance. Obviously the credibility of these two organizations speaks for itself. The bad news is that the event is being run at 8am EST, which is pretty early in the morning for critical thought. Don’t worry about me though – I’m glad to take one for the team by attending. Beyond the time of day, I’m interested in the time of year for this event. With the end of Q3 just over the horizon, these must be some really quick, quick wins if the boosts are actually going to hit this calendar year. Not that everyone closes their books on December 31st but I think it is generally the rule.
Also hitting this week is an early bird registration deadline for the Procurement Leaders events in Vienna and Boston.