“What pressures are coming to bear now, or in the foreseeable future, that may impact your supply chain and the ultimate sale of your products or services? Gathering market intelligence should include an understanding of what is happening in the economies of both your consumer’s as well as your supplier’s locations. This market intelligence can be used to both react to conditions and to take advantage of potential cost savings opportunities.”

--‘Understanding Market Pressures’ Managing Indirect Spend, Joe Payne and Bill Dorn

Gypsum was the first category I was asked to do research for – truthfully, it was very early in my career and I think my manager was trying to productively keep me busy. But the process was a good learning experience and I think I added real value to the team. For lack of a reason to pick any other product or service, I’ll start with gypsum here too.

Gypsum is used to make plaster and plasterboard – basically drywall. So if you are sourcing in the construction category, and your General Contractor is not responsible for materials costs/purchases, you might find yourself bidding this out.

This week I attended a webinar by Genpact, a business process management, operations, and analytics firm that was formerly part of GE Capital Finance. The webinar was on managing the volatility of the inputs to the products and services your company may produce.

Effective this month, Buyers Meeting Point will start covering the release of the ISM Non-Manufacturing Report on Business. The report is released the first week of every month for the previous month. This month’s report can be found here.

If you have never read the report, it can take some adjustment. We are going to boil each report down to the basic and most useable components. I also recommend reading the ISM Report on Business Brochure.