Author Archives: Peter Smith
Down the procurement pub – CIPS, the cost of risk management and the big UK / EU debate
So got my latest copy of Supply Management yesterday. I haven’t read all the articles yet, but there is content in this edition that all CIPS members should read. (Some of it is on-line as well of course. ) That includes a description of the new Congress, the body chaired by Melinda Johnson that represents members’ interests to the Institute. I was pleased to see that all the elected Congress delegates have got their email addresses on the CIPS website so members can contact them, although it has been left fairly loose in terms of how exactly that contact might [...]
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UK Government procurement – the anti-centralisation fightback starts!
After our Yes Minister homage earlier this week (here and here), covering the further centralisation of procurement in UK Government, it was interesting to see yesterday what might be the beginnings of a fight back by the departments against the increasingly ambitious and controlling Cabinet Office. Someone – or several someones – has obviously fed Sue Cameron at the Telegraph with some juicy titbits of anti-Cabinet Office information / propaganda (take your pick, depending with whom your sympathies lie). This is not surprising after the incredibly one-sided Times feature recently, that gave two pages over to what I can only [...]
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Indirect Category Sourcing Savings: Fact or Fiction?
We told you the other day about our new research paper available for download here (free on registration). It is titled: Indirect Category Sourcing Savings : Fact or Fiction? Delivering Credible Benefits from Sourcing and Category Management Programmes I’ve co-authored it with Ed Cross, Managing Director of Xchanging Procurement Services, and in our two previous posts on the Paper, available here and here, we looked at the issue of savings credibility, then how procurement and sourcing programmes benefit from a strong focus on what we call programme and delivery management. The final section of the Paper looks at how Xchanging [...]
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Demand elasticity and variable pricing as illustrated by the Rolling Stones
To someone with a deep interest in both music and procurement, the news that the Rolling Stones have had problems selling tickets for their latest US tour was exciting, giving us a chance to combine both here! Here’s the NME: “On Friday (May 3) it was reported that the band had failed to sell-out the allocation of their high priced tickets ($600) for their opening night at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. They also released more $85 (£55) tickets to fill out the arena”. This takes us back to some interesting aspects of economic theory. The economic ideal for [...]
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QinetiQ Commerce Decisions – CloudStore brings MOD sunshine!
The UK Government’s G-Cloud CloudStore seems to be reaching a critical mass and proving itself to be a success after a probably inevitably slow start. The new “G-Cloud III” list of suppliers goes live this week, but what is more impressive is that sales in March were £7M, compared to around £10M over the previous year or so since the initiative was first launched. And now with Francis Maude announcing a “cloud first” policy last week, that growth is likely to accelerate. All central government departments in the UK will now have to prioritise cloud services when buying IT. It’s [...]
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Yes Minister – Three Cheers for the Complex Transactions Group!
(Part 2 of our latest homage to the brilliant Yes Minster and Yes Prime Minister series, written by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn. Part 1 is here). So Minister, you raised the new Cabinet Office Complex Transactions Group. This is the team who are going to help us with complex IT projects. I understand they were going to call themselves the “Big Deal” team until someone pointed out this sounded a little too much like a TV game show for comfort. - So are you against that idea, Humphrey? More interference from Cabinet Office. and this time it isn’t just [...]
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Basware Analytics – new product joins the portfolio
Basware have today announced a significant addition to their product range, with the launch of Basware Analytics, a spend analysis product that integrates with their existing suite. The business, which is head-quartered in Helsinki, is the largest P2P and e-invoicing firm in the world outside the mega-ERP providers, with revenue of around 130 million Euros. They’ve moved further into the purchase to pay space over the years, having started really in the invoicing area, and this latest addition takes them more firmly into positioning as a genuinely broad e-Procurement solutions provider. I had a quick look at the new product [...]
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Supplier Management – David Atkinson asks what you might be giving away to suppliers
We looked last week at the general thrust of the excellent article from David Atkinson’s Four Pillars website . Today, let’s look in more detail at his core argument. As we said last time, he started with the example of staff from the large accounting firms working for Government on tax issues. Does this give them an advantage when they return to their firms – and do they have in effect a conflict of interest when they are working for the Government? But he then extends the argument into the private sector environment. If we’re engaged in a suppler relationship [...]
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A Spend Matters Book Club?
Should we start a Spend Matters Book Club? What do you think – is there an appetite for that? I’m not suggesting we go off and read Hilary Mantel or the latest hilarious exploits of a single mum trying to cope with… you know the sort of thing. We’d stick to procurement related books, maybe extending it to business or other factual books that have some relevance to our area. We could choose a book, maybe every couple of months, and then we could review it here (with the ability for anyone to contribute to the review). Perhaps we arrange [...]
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Zycus focus on suppliers – a broad solution and a growing global prescence
Zycus have been an Associate Sponsor of ours for a while, (thanks!), but I’m ashamed to admit I only got round to looking properly at their solution, or some of it at least, quite recently. The firm started out and built their reputation on the back of one of the strongest spend classification and analytics platforms in the market, but they have expanded with some speed over the last few years into a range of other areas. With more than 600 employees, and strength in APAC, Europe and North America, they are also one of the most genuinely international solution [...]
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Yes Minister – Sir Humphrey raises his glass to centralised government Procurement
(Especially for the UK Bank Holiday – our latest homage to the brilliant Yes Minster and Yes Prime Minister series, written by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn). - Humphrey, do come in. Thank you Minister. I’ve brought Colin with me. Colin is our Commercial Director. - Really? I have a Commercial Director? Yes, we used to call him Head of Purchasing but we thought Commercial sounded more… dynamic and twenty-first century somehow. - Well it’s nice to meet you Colin. Now, this is all about the new Cabinet Office plans for greater centralisation of procurement isn’t it? Francis Maude, master [...]
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Bank Holiday new music from Rilo Kiley, Temples and Laura Stevenson
As it’s a public holiday weekend in the UK – and sunny with it – here are three musical treats for you. The first is a recommendation from a personal, professional and musical friend who saw this band supporting the Vaccines at the O2 last week and declared them “excellent”. The psychedelic revival continues with Temples, from Kettering not LA, but very fine they sound too on their new single, Shelter Song. Then we have Laura Stevenson. Regular readers of our music reviews know I have a soft spot for female folk / country / Americana singer songwriters, and [...]
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Liam Maxwell and the Eton connection – Spend Matters ahead of the news again!
A bit of politics – with a slight procurement connection – for this Bank Holiday weekend! There’s a fuss in the UK press after the elections last week around whether David Cameron is surrounding himself with too many old Etonians – chaps from his school like recent appointees Jo Johnson and Jesse Norman. Now the press have got hold of the fact that the Government’s Chief Technology Office, Liam Maxwell, was Head of IT at Eton School. The London Evening Standard yesterday reported this and said: But how has Maxwell’s Etonian connection slipped by so unnoticed? Sorry, it certainly wasn’t [...]
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Down the Procurement Pub – ISM, German PMIs, Balfour Beatty and Happy Vappu!
My US colleagues, Jason Busch and Pierre Mitchell, have been at the Institute of Supply Management’s 98th annual conference in Dallas this week. You can read a good overview here. What’s obvious is just how much more of a big thing the event is compared to the CIPS conference in the UK. OK, the US is a bigger country, but CIPS has in some ways been the more successful Institute over the last ten years. So why has CIPS never got to the position where someone like Condoleezza Rice – the keynote speaker this week at ISM – could be engaged? [...]
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Procurement: To Protect and Serve
(It’s almost two weeks since the Boston Marathon bombing – here’s another brilliant article from my Spend Matters US colleague, Pierre Mitchell. Read him regularly at Spend Matters US and on our subscription site, Spend Matters PRO). As a runner and Boston-area resident (many of those years living in Watertown) who has been emotionally affected by the recent bombing like everyone here, I’ve struggled with how to deal with the event. Our vocational lives and our emotional lives are inextricably linked, but although I have written dozens of blog posts in my head on the topic, it just hasn’t felt [...]
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NHS Supply Chain – committed spend drives better value
We talked about the general progress and issues around the NHS Supply Chain operation, run by DHL, in part 1 here. Today we’ll dig into a couple of more specific initiatives. One successful idea has been the “capital trading fund”. This idea, developed by the Department of Health and DHL, saw DH providing initial funding so that DHL could go to the market with commitment and actually buy outright health capital equipment – items that they knew their customers were going to need, but for which they didn’t necessarily have firm orders. The results demonstrated what we probably would have [...]
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- Dark Procurement – ethics and moral dilemmas : Gordon Murray said: Excuse the poor English in the previous reply, that should have been: Can you just confirm... more
- Dark Procurement – ethics and moral dilemmas : Gordon Murray said: Hi, B&T, can you just confirm that you would pay an additional £1m for something the ... more
- From Hubris to High Court (almost) – The Story of Southwest One (Part 1) : James Garrett said: That the wheels came off Southwest One was never a surprise to those who followed its shak... more
- From Hubris to High Court (almost) – The Story of Southwest One (Part 1) : Prof Dexter Whitfield said: I find the idea that the Conservatives 'sabotaged' the contract as fanciful and plainly in... more
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