Author Archives: Peter Smith
Down the procurement pub – David Shields, Mars and a job in Papua New Guinea!
So there’s lots to talk about next week – more on the Procurement Leaders Awards and World Congress, and our latest BravoSolution Real World Sourcing briefing, on Supplier Relationship Management. And the gossip (even at the Awards dinner which wasn’t heavily populated by public sector types), included much speculation about the departure of David Shields from the Government Procurement service. No-one seems to have seen it coming – even a well-connected Whitehall CPO I spoke to had no idea it was on the cards. So we’ll have some further wild speculation about that next week, and thoughts on what it [...]
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Spend Matters Pays its Taxes
There have been malicious reports in certain newspapers that Spend Matters UK might be engaged in tax avoidance activities. This has obviously been a hot topic recently with firms taken to task in front of UK parliamentary committees and the like, accused of not paying their fair share (whatever that means and however you might define such a nebulous concept). There have also been further calls for such firms to be banned from winning government contracts. Anyway, these are scurrilous rumours about us and we‘re pleased to re-assure you that unlike certain major global household names, we have never engaged [...]
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US concern over UK military outsource – and chair procurement lands teacher in trouble
A couple of UK public sector procurement stories caught my eye over the last few days. The Times reported that: Bernard Gray, chief of defence materiel at the Ministry of Defence, told staff he will issue a contract notice for a private partner to run Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S), the body in charge of buying military equipment. An “invitation to negotiate” will be issued to bidders in the summer. But the US Department of Defense is expressing some doubts about the plan for a GoCo (government owned, contractor operated) organisation to take over the work of DE&S. There’s a [...]
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Procurement Leaders Awards – the winners!
Last night saw the Procurement Leaders Awards dinner at the Hilton Hotel in London’s Park Lane. It was not quite packed but there were some 700 people there – much the same as the CIPS dinner actually. Not bad considering we have the longer established CIPS Supply Management Awards, as well as an increasing number of similar events in other connected industries – so for example, consulting firms might these days go to the Management Consultancy Association Awards rather than taking a table at a procurement event. The audience was very largely private sector, although the inclusion of a public [...]
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Supplier networks and the Purchasing Insight fee calculator
Continuing our supplier networks theme this week, Pete Loughlin at Purchasing Insight (who is always worth reading and incredibly knowledgeable on P2P and e-invoicing stuff) has had the brilliant idea of creating a network fee calculator. This allows you to consider the likely cost to your supply base of using the Ariba supplier network, almost certainly the biggest in the world (on some measures at least). This idea has also resonated with my colleague Jason Busch from Spend Matters US, and he has been covering it this week. He’s also got an interview with Loughlin – I’ve failed there, given [...]
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The SAP / Ariba vision – Pierre Mitchell takes a look
This week we’re focusing heavily on supplier networks, a bit of a technical subject for me, but if you’re a SAP or Ariba user, or interested in P2P or networks generally, I urge you to read this article by my Spend Matters US colleague Pierre Mitchell here. It starts with a really excellent in its analysis of why SAP bought Ariba, and where they’re going. “And what is the Ariba Network? It’s a set of electronically-enabled commerce services focused on discovery, connectivity, and collaboration. The first two are straightforward and haven’t really changed since Ariba acquired Tradex nearly 15 years [...]
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The Southwest One story (part 2) – from hubris to High Court (almost) –
(Dave Orr, retired public servant, IT and project management professional and campaigner for truth continues his story of Southwest One with the procurement errors made in letting the contract. Part 1 is here). The year is 2005 and Project ISiS (Improving Services in Somerset) is underway, led by Somerset County Council from their 4*+ HQ in Taunton… Were strategic errors in procurement baked into Project ISiS from the outset in 2005, leading to an inevitable partnership breakdown in 2013? Yes, they were. ISiS only set high-level, aspirational requirements: for example to help modernise and transform the overall workings of the [...]
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David Shields to leave GPS (the UK Government Procurement Service)
David Shields, who runs the operational side of Government Procurement Service, is leaving at the end of June, it was announced yesterday. There was no Cabinet Office main website news, just a page on the GPS website. It also didn’t say anything about where he’s going – the wording certainly suggest it is his decision to leave, but I haven’t spoken to him yet. Indeed, I haven’t seen him since late 2012, so I have no inside information, but it is not a complete surprise. He’s been doing the job for over 2 years, it is a very challenging and [...]
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Spend Matters and Zycus Webinar – Putting the Supplier at the Heart of Procurement
A reminder that you can register now for a free webinar on June 5th featuring not just me but also my US colleague Jason Busch, (who forgets every day before breakfast more about procurement technology than I‘ve ever known in my life), and Richard Waugh of Zycus. It’s titled “Putting the Supplier at the Heart of Procurement” and it is being held at on June 5th at 5pm UK time (that’s 6pm in continental western Europe, and 12 noon on the East Coast of the US). We’re going to be talking about why category management is being challenged by supplier [...]
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Speaking the language of Finance – EBITDA
In the first of our irregular series on financial terminology, we looked at earnings and PE ratios. Very much linked to that, today we’ll look at EBITDA and some related acronyms. EBITDA stands for earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization. So it is fundamentally an earnings or profit number, but taking out those elements that might be considered to be one-offs or variable factors – the interest the firm pays on any debt, the corporate tax charge, the depreciation charge related to capital investment, and amortization, which applies to writing off intangible assets such as goodwill or intellectual property, [...]
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High-speed rail – the National Audit Office lays into the programme
The National Audit Office has published one of the most critical reports I’ve seen in a long time, covering HS2, the high-speed rail programme to connect London with “the north”. They talk about a lack of clarity around objectives; a weak business case with limited evidence that HS2 will generate regional growth; errors in cost-benefit analysis; issues with programme management and oversight; a funding gap of £3 billion; and an over-ambitious timetable. (Apart from that, its fine…!) It really is a nicely written, but surgically precise hatchet job from the NAO. Politicians immediately began fighting back using hard evidence such [...]
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Supplier networks and the battle against monopolies
Procurement people hate monopolies and being in a situation where an overly dominant supplier can exploit that position commercially. When I first moved into procurement, my boss sat me down and said something like this. (I’ve somewhat anonymised this story, but the essence is absolutely true). “Right. You have two main objectives. In dairy products, break the virtual monopoly that xxxx has over the supply of zzz in the UK. And in terms of H******powder, find another supplier so we can stop getting ripped off by the b***** at H******”! Yet there’s one area where procurement has been helpless to [...]
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Better procurement – a simple tip
Here is a cast iron tip to improve procurement process and performance. I guarantee (or your money back) this will work. And please note – it may seem obvious but my feeling is this doesn’t happen as often as it should. Before you send out an tender, RFx, PQQ or similar document, electronic or otherwise, to potential suppliers, get someone who isn’t in procurement, or involved with the specific procurement, to have a look at it. They need to be a sensible and reasonably smart business person, but they don’t need to be in procurement or sales for that matter. [...]
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Francis Maude speaks – is the Minister for Procurement an enemy of procurement ?
The UK parliament Public Administration select Committee last week quizzed Francis Maude, Minister with responsibility for public sector procurement. I was going to do the same as in part 1 (here) and give a detailed commentary, but then we got onto the question of procurement skills in central government, and Maude made a statement that stopped me in my tracks. I listened several times to get his words exactly right. “Commissioning is about much more than procurement, it is about knowing the market of potential suppliers. Procurement is the relatively narrow and should be very short technical part in the [...]
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Supplier networks – a lively webinar promised tomorrow!
We probably don’t write as much as we should about the giants of the procurement software world, such as SAP / Ariba or Oracle. That’s partly because we tend to get more excited about exciting, new, innovative firms (not that those mentioned can’t be just as innovative). There’s also an element of those giants not being quite so concerned about getting a mention here perhaps compared to a start-up that can’t afford to sponsor Formula One or a golf tournament to get some exposure! But this week we’re covering SAP / Ariba following their recent customer events. And we’re going [...]
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Down the Procurement Pub – with Basware, Coupa, Procurement Leaders and Icona Pop
Actually, I spent some of last night down the procurement pub – a pleasant 90 minutes with an old friend and fellow ex CPO who wanted to pick my brains on procurement software in return for 2 pints of the very pleasant Hogsback Brewery T.E.A. (The brewery, just a few miles down the road from here, is pictured). I could only offer a fraction of what he would have got out of Jason Busch, Pierre Mitchell or Thomas Case from Spend Matters US but maybe I’ll share my very impressionistic and high level view of the “meta trends” in that [...]
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- Procurement Leaders Awards – the winners! : Robert Beveridge said: You procurement get a lot of fun don't you? Good to see Mars winning an award . They are p... more
- Francis Maude speaks – is the Minister for Procurement an enemy of procurement ? : life said: Spot on process flow Dan. All I'd add is a decision point at 1.5 for both - "Decide to go... more
- Francis Maude speaks – is the Minister for Procurement an enemy of procurement ? : Thieves Like Us said: I agree!... more
- Francis Maude speaks – is the Minister for Procurement an enemy of procurement ? : Dan said: How procurement used to be: 1. Client department writes specification. 2. Client dep... more
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