Author Archives: Jason Busch
Cyprus and the EU: Procurement, Politics, and Economics
(From the editor – after our piece on Monday, here’s a great perspective on the Cyprus disaster from outside Europe – courtesy of my US colleague, Jason Busch.) As a procurement organization, how would you like to meet all of your goals only to have them raised by another 30% in the final month of the fiscal year? Or to be told you had to accomplish the same results for the next quarter with an immediate 20% reduction in headcount? These are the types of unreasonable expectations that occasionally permeate organizations without a strong grasp of the capabilities, requirements, responsibilities [...]
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Procurement Transformation Webinar: Separating Out Transformational Leaders
On Thursday of this week (March 28th) at 11:00 AM EDT, I’ll be participating in a webinar with Emptoris/IBM that is tackling the topic of the future of procurement transformation. One topic that I’ll be addressing is what sets transformational leaders apart from the rest of the pack. Here are five traits: A rigorous focus on data, analytics and managing active performance An emphasis on supplier management and engagement that goes beyond focusing on spend management and compliance A focus on information discovery and managing knowledge with suppliers and internally – not only process rigor (e.g., strategic sourcing alone) The importance of [...]
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Category Scorecards – get on the same page with BravoSolution
BravoSolution recently partnered with Ardent’s Andrew Bartolini to develop a simple, Excel-based category scorecard. The goal is to help companies identify optimal sourcing and related opportunities through comparative category opportunity analysis beyond just looking at the numbers. In explaining the scorecard approach he’s taken, Andrew notes that “the category sourcing scorecard was designed to rank a wide range of direct, indirect and service categories … the responses given must be viewed in the context of a specific sourcing team and group of categories.” Our observation is that the thing is a cleverly simple tool – only 22 questions long – [...]
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Spend Matters welcomes Pierre Mitchell, procurement analyst extraordinaire
(I’m delighted to welcome Pierre Mitchell into the Spend Matters family. Pierre is principally working with my US colleagues, but I’m sure we’ll be featuring his wisdom here regularly. Here’s Jason Busch to introduce him properly… Peter Smith) We’re absolutely thrilled to announce that Pierre Mitchell has joined Azul Partners as a Managing Director and Chief Research Officer of Spend Matters. Pierre will be leading procurement research activities and also has broader solution development responsibilities for intellectual property creation and firm strategy. This includes spearheading efforts to build new types of interactive and social communities, including overseeing the evolution of [...]
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DOJ and UK Fair Trading Office Clear SAP Acquisition of Ariba
(This article was first published yesterday on Spend Matters US). Over the weekend, the US department of Justice (DOJ) cleared SAP’s announced acquisition of Ariba, a move that represents the last major hurdle that SAP had to overcome to close the deal. This follows news from earlier last week that the U.K. Office of Fair Trading also approved SAP’s announced acquisition of Ariba. The DOJ clearance was something we predicted on Spend Matters PRO (and Spend Matters), but the announcement was by no means certain. In fact, as we referenced previously this summer, once proposed acquisitions receive a second request, [...]
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TradingPartners Bankruptcy Confirmed – Exploring Customer “Full-Service” E-Sourcing Alternatives
(Editor’s Note: Here’s a post from Jason Busch, my US colleague, published on Spend Matters US yesterday) Earlier this morning (Tuesday), Chirag Shah, a former CEO and founder of TradingPartners, posted a comment on Spend Matters confirming our report last week that Trading Partners was bankrupt. Here is what he had to say: I’m sorry to confirm that TradingPartners is bankrupt after all. As a former CEO of the company and now running a competing company called MarketMaker4, I had attempted to contact the Board of Directors in recent months to explore an acquisition of the business but to no [...]
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Jason Busch on SAP & Ariba: Customer and Prospect Implications – E-Invoicing (Part 1)
Editor’s Note – this was first published last week on Spend Matters US, but I thought it would be interesting to show the sort of material we’re providing on our new Spend Matters PRO subscription service. (Peter Smith) We’ve received many queries lately about Spend Matters PRO content: What is it? How is it different from regular Spend Matters coverage? For the next couple weeks we’ll feature a full article that has appeared on Spend Matters PRO. Keep in mind: this is the stuff that appears on Spend Matters PRO every single day. This content is bigger, more in-depth, and [...]
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Jason Busch hits the ISM Conference
Jason Busch from Spend Matters US was at the ISM conference last week and he posted this summary of what was going on –I thought it was really useful, so in case you didn’t see it on our US site, I thought I’d feature it here. (Peter Smith) It’s been a busy few days at ISM. Between catching up with old faces and new, I’ve spent quite a bit of time in sessions, looking at quick software demonstrations and talking to speakers. There are a number of trends and topics getting more attention this year than before. Moreover, some providers [...]
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Spend Matters Next Step: Let the Countdown Begin!
(Here’s yesterday’s Spend Matters US announcement from Jason Busch about exciting developments in our organisation – I’ll insert the occasional Euro-centric comment as appropriate! Peter Smith) Spend Matters is nearly eight years old (UK/Europe is one and a half) – and we’re about to change in quite a serious way. In the next few weeks, we’ll be unveiling a premium content and membership service (on both sides of the Atlantic) that will shake things up in this sector. We hope to be somewhat – OK, very – disruptive. This new offering is targeted toward practitioners and providers, albeit with slightly different value propositions for each. We see an important [...]
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A brief history of Spend Matters- where we are today, where we might go tomorrow (Part 1)
Jason Busch and Sheena Moore of Spend Matters US are visiting this week, so in their honour, we’re featuring this post Jason published last week on the US site. It gives some of the background to Spend Matters – I found it interesting and hope you do too (Peter Smith). It’s approaching the end of the year, and I’m tired. It’s been a long slog on the road this year, recruiting and managing an awesome team, speaking at over a dozen conferences and client events, visiting sponsors, advising a handful of remaining consulting clients, and drinking in a combination of [...]
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Avoiding Jetlag and Beyond – Travel Tips for the Mature Global Sourcing Globetrotter
As this gets published, I should be coming into land at Heathrow. So I thought we’d share a post Jason wrote recently – he’s a much more experienced business traveller than me, so I certainly found it interesting and useful (Peter Smith). When I got out of consulting as my primary profession, I was actually more excited to give up my top tier status on airlines than I was to earn it in the first place. For those of us who have spent at least part of our career in jobs where we’re more out of the office than in, [...]
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Worse Than Drugs, Booze, Nicotine – Why Can’t Procurement Shake the Excel Addiction? (Part 1)
If you’re not a regular reader of Jason Busch at Spend Matters US, here’s a post that sums up why you should. Engaging, witty, but with a serious underlying business purpose… (Peter Smith) We all have our vices here in the Spend Matters office. Sheena will barely say hello before she’s ingested at least two cups of coffee. I personally drink (daily) more green tea than probably a small town in Japan does. And the whole office has a penchant for wandering into the fridge every Friday afternoon to see what the beer of the month club has delivered. There [...]
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The Japanese Earthquake and Tsunamis – Supplier management and preparing for supply chain disruption
(Here are the first couple of paragraphs of the post Jason Busch has published today regarding the events in Japan. If you have any interest in the implications from a supply chain point of view I urge you to read the whole piece here. It is a pretty definitive analysis). … After the death toll is counted in Japan and potentially other countries from the massive 8.9 Richter Scale magnitude earthquake that hit this morning and the subsequent Pacific Ocean Tsunamis, today is likely to be extremely tragic as measured by any geological standards — historic or modern. The only [...]
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Comparing and Contrasting US and UK/European Procurement Product Innovation
One thing I’ve been struck by over the years is the different types of vendor and product innovation coming out of the US and European markets. As a general rule, I’ve found European vendors and solutions providers to have a greater focus on delivering specialized solutions that either extend or enhance existing product areas. This would include, for example, the many UK and European spend analysis providers that offer essentially the same services as their Western counterparts, but often with a slightly unique twist (e.g., focus on public sector needs, VAT expertise/reporting, etc.). And it also includes folks who do [...]
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A Procurement Innocent Heads Abroad – See You Next Week
I’ll be joining Peter in the UK for a few days next week to plot our social media procurement European domination strategy (and also to hit a few good pubs and get some curry in the process). Peter’s cooked up what promises to be a spirited – in more ways than one – procurement debate on Monday night. I must say, I find my UK/European business partner and blogger-in-crime to have a bit of a nasty humor streak pitting me in a debate style that I’m not familiar with against one of the world’s top academics in procurement only eight [...]
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Is European Middle Market Sourcing Different than in the US?
Over the years, I’ve spent quite a bit of time examining sourcing trends in the middle market (you can read a recent post on the subject here). Recently, I’ve actually been giving some thought to what separates US and European procurement practices within this demographic, especially when it comes to groups like Germany’s Mittelstand (Check out this recent Economist article that summarizes the plight and success of Mittlestand). I believe that a handful of different operating assumptions/philosophies have impacted middle market companies differently in terms of sourcing on both sides of the Atlantic. For example, I think that historically, European [...]
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- Francis Maude speaks – is the Minister for Procurement an enemy of procurement ? : Doug forbes said: You have to ask why he thinks that? it is consistent with the Civil Service Reform plan wh... more
- Francis Maude speaks – is the Minister for Procurement an enemy of procurement ? : Sam Unkim said: I always thought it was odd, how heavily, the NHS "Call for Evidence" targetted commission... more
- Francis Maude speaks – is the Minister for Procurement an enemy of procurement ? : Final Furlong said: Bill, I think the answer to your question lies in one of your previous comments. "In the ... more
- Francis Maude speaks – is the Minister for Procurement an enemy of procurement ? : Dave Orr said: "Commissioning" is the new cuddly word for "privatisation" or "outsourcing". A few fig... more
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