We are marking so many important events this week. Monday, March 31st is Memorial Day in the U.S., a day set aside to honor the men and women who gave their lives while serving in the military. If you...

As sometimes happens, this week’s webinars are all on the same day and take place within a three-hour span. So, if you’re planning to attend an event, think quick! This week also marks the release of ...

In today’s competitive market landscape, simply having a centralized procurement organization is only the first step to better managed supplier relationships and spend. Leading organizations are quick...

As I mentioned in Achieving World-Class Procurement Part 1, today’s increasingly competitive market landscape is driving organizations to reinvest in their procurement and strategic sourcing departmen...

When working with transformation advisory clients, we often talk about the role of procurement and the need to change how they are perceived within the organization. Changing stakeholder perceptions i...

I have read and reviewed a number of business publications, most of them directly related to supply management, but The CPO is truly a unique creation. This book captures the adventure of procurement ...

“By 2020, procurement’s role will have become even more important for sustaining constant supply, best cost, reduced volatility, faster and improved innovation, and clean corporate-brand image.” (p. 1...

“Companies that dominated the national market for decades are suddenly confronted with new competitors that are redefining entire industries and hence restricting the incumbents’ strategic freedom to ...

“This should be a very sobering thought for anyone in business. The company that you toil and work so hard to make succeed is statistically unlikely to exist in a decade.” (p. 5) Building Digital Cult...

This content is also available as a podcast on BMP Radio. Kelly: Hello, and thank you for joining us today. This is Kelly Barner, Managing Director of Buyers Meeting Point. Today I welcome Dr. Carsten...

This week I attended the Procurement Leaders / Emptoris webinar on procurement transformation featuring BP Lubricants.  They don't have the archived recording posted yet, but click here for a pag...

Talk to any procurement leader in an international company and you’ll hear some common issues being raised. The lure of technology (especially big data and AI) and dangled carrots of opportunity to digitally transform the whole procurement function are all great but hard facts are getting in the way.

This week’s featured event was presented by Sourcing Interests Group and Emptoris (an IBM Company). The main speaker, Mitch Plaat, is Con-way’s VP of Procurement and CPO and has been with the company for 22 years. He has overseen quite a transformation, starting six years ago with the decision to engage Emptoris for help in the form of solutions and services.

This week’s featured webinar was a joint effort between ISM, Zycus, and Ardent Partners. It was presented in advance of a two part research series that will be published later this month. The research was “designed to help procurement organizations develop a transformation "blueprint" — a holistic view of the source-to-settle process and the underlying architecture required to support sustainable business process improvement.” (ISM event description).

This week’s webinar notes are from an event presented by Bertrand Maltaverne, Senior Business Consultant at Pool4Tool, and hosted by Procurify. You can view the webinar on demand here. In the meantime, you may enjoy listening to a recent BMP Radio podcast with Bertrand and “Sourcing Doctor” Michael Lamoureax. Bertrand also has a great blog on Medium: check it out here. 

While the strategic vision of an organization is usually consistent across departments, each function’s strategies to achieve that vision do not always align.  Just as legal and HR are there to e...

Over the past two decades, procurement has made great strides in transitioning from a transactional, back-office function to a strategic, value-adding organization. However, the hard work is far from over. Procurement has fought to get a seat at the table with c-level executives, but now it’s time for procurement to prove that it deserves that seat and can keep it.

Procurement’s role in an organization touches across many departments, suppliers, countries, and competitors. This situation requires that procurement professionals possess excellent communication skills and the ability to quickly adapt to different cultures, perspectives and crises. 

This summer has brought a procurement webinar drought. I’m taking it one week at a time… I have some recommendations for this week and for next week and then we’ll see if anything is listed for the last week of August.

If you are planning your webinar schedule beyond this week, I recommend “The Strategic CFO is Thriving with Risk” from Coupa and Levvel Research on September 5th. I appreciate the opportunity to hear about the top Finance officer’s risk priorities and challenges – especially since Coupa is putting up their own CFO as a speaker during the event.

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This summer's webinar schedule seems to be feast or famine. There was only one event last week, while this week offers eight in three days.

If you are planning your webinar schedule beyond this week, I recommend “How Procurement Can Win the Hearts and Minds of Marketers” from Real Sourcing Network CEO Sandy Kane and a panel of marketing experts on September 26th. I realize that seems exceptionally far away, but as we trudge through the height of the summer heat, it is so appealing to think about attending an event in a lightweight sweater and while drinking a pumpkin spice latte.

BTW: If you haven’t already, sign up for our mailing list to be sure you get my weekly recommendations in your Inbox each Monday.