Tag Archives: CIPS

Down the procurement pub – CIPS, the cost of risk management and the big UK / EU debate

Peter Smith - May 10, 2013 9:31 AM | Categories: Current affairs and general interest

Greene king 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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Down the Procurement Pub – CIPS Surrey, a Times hagiography , and better UK GDP numbers

Peter Smith - April 26, 2013 9:31 AM | Categories: Current affairs and general interest

hog-shop Thanks to everyone who came to the YMCA Guildford (all together now, “Y M C A – ay”) last night for my presentation to the CIPS Surrey Branch It was a beautiful evening, so I fully expected a dropout rate of around 90% but actually it wasn’t a bad turnout, with around 30 people turning up – thanks to all of them.  We discussed deep issues around supplier management and supplier life cycle approaches to procurement, and less deep around horsemeat, green potatoes and dodgy management consultants! We’ll come back next week to some of the interesting discussion about the [...]

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CIPS and Seal Software – Peter Smith live and kicking!

Peter Smith - April 23, 2013 12:00 PM | Categories: Procurement Commentary

Two quick reminders for you. On Thursday I’m speaking at the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply Surrey Branch meeting, in Guildford.  the extravaganza starts at 6pm, refreshment included, details here – there are still places available, must be booked today, all free of charge! The topic is “Horses for Courses” and I’ll be covering a range of issues round how you can really understand your suppliers and make sure that what you get from them is what you expect.  I’ve got a few slides but I hope we can get into some genuine debate as well. I’ll be asking, [...]

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Supply Business – a review of the new CIPS / Redactive magazine

Peter Smith - April 19, 2013 4:31 AM | Categories: Reviews

We wrote the obituary for the CIPS supported CPO Agenda magazine a few months back here. It has been replaced by Supply Business, and the first issue of that new quarterly journal came out a little while ago. It’s published, like Supply Management magazine, by Redactive, in conjunction with CIPS (the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply). The difference from  CPO Agenda is in the positioning. CPO Agenda was aimed squarely at the senior procurement audience, and started out with aspirations to be the Harvard Business Review of the procurement world, with serious thought leadership type articles.  But for reasons [...]

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CIPS Surrey Branch, April 25th, Horses for Courses – see you there

Peter Smith - April 15, 2013 4:31 AM | Categories: Procurement good practice

Good grief, is it that time already! I have only just realised that we’re less than two weeks away from my session at the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply (CIPS) Surrey Branch meeting. Surrey is my “home” CIPS branch, and I understand that the branch network has been going through something of a renaissance, so I hope we will get a decent attendance. The event is titled “Horses for Courses” (spot the topical supply chain reference…) and is being held next Thursday, 25th April, 6.30 – 8pm, at in the YMCA in Guildford, which is handily located just across [...]

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Spend Matters in Dubai – CIPS growing in MENA

Peter Smith - April 10, 2013 4:22 AM | Categories: Procurement Commentary

Dubai event 2 v2 Following our Real World Sourcing event in Dubai last week, we talked on Monday about Tejari, the BravoSolution JV in Dubai and the region. Our event was also sponsored and supported by CIPS (the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply). They now have a MENA ( Middle East and North Africa) operation, with a couple of staff based in the region. Chris Gallagher is one of them – he’s been a CIPS Director for years, since my time as President!  He’s worked internationally for many years, and is driving CIPS’ effort  in the region. In general terms, procurement is a [...]

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Managing conflicts of interest in UK health commissioning

Peter Smith - April 9, 2013 12:31 PM | Categories: Procurement Commentary

We’ve got a very interesting guest post from Dr Gordon Murray coming this week on the UK’s health sector. But before that, we wanted to return to a point we’ve made before and that seems to be coming back into the news again. We wrote recently about the new health regulations and what they might mean for private sector involvement. But the issue of conflicts of interest amongst the Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs),  who are making contracting decisions and awarding business to various providers both public and private sector,  was picked up by the Sunday Times the other week.  A [...]

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The CIPS Dinner – darling, it was wonderful!

Peter Smith - March 14, 2013 10:31 AM | Categories: Procurement Commentary

From our Society Correspondent, Eddie Fortescue-Marlbury The CIPS Annual Dinner was held last night at the simply lovely Hilton Hotel, Park Lane. Quite literally several hundred beautiful procurement professionals celebrated another stunning year for the profession, in a whirl of champagne, diamonds, lobsters and intrigue – sweeties, it was simply marvelous! ! Of course, the after-show parties are where it’s really at!! Whilst the dinner itself is moderately restrained, except for the odd young spend analyst dropping his trousers to win a small wager from his chums, it is after hours things really start hotting up when the serious players [...]

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CIPS Supply Management Awards now open for entries

Peter Smith - February 14, 2013 12:00 PM | Categories: Procurement Commentary

The CIPS Supply Management Awards are now open for entries, with a deadline of April 12th. It is always an excellent evening, September 11th at the Grosvenor House being the date for the diary. There’s a new headline sponsor this year – Airplus, taking over after several years of BravoSolution being in that role. I think Bravo certainly benefitted from their association with the event, but sponsoring events probably has a natural lifespan – growing up, I never associated cricket’s Gillette Cup with razor blades because it had just always been the Gillette Cup as far as I was concerned [...]

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CIPS syllabus changes – responses from public sector procurement

Peter Smith - February 12, 2013 1:31 PM | Categories: Procurement Commentary

We featured yesterday some of the changes to the CIPS (Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply) education ladder and syllabus. One obvious development is the end of various UK public sector specific modules. I was initially surprised at this, as the UK public sector has been a big source of students for CIPS for many, many years. I also picked up some discontent about this from a couple of senior people in public procurement, so we asked CIPS for more background to the decision, which they provided very quickly and in some detail – thanks for that! They explained that [...]

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CIPS syllabus changes – global focus moves away from public sector

Peter Smith - February 11, 2013 4:46 AM | Categories: Procurement Commentary

CIPS (the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply) recently announced major changes to their qualification structure and syllabus. These are the most significant for many years, and follow a wide consultation process. The new qualification structure will take effect from March 2013, but there are transitional arrangements in place to ensure no-one currently studying will be disadvantaged. The five levels will be: Professional diploma in procurement and supply Advanced diploma in procurement and supply Diploma in procurement and supply Advanced certificate in procurement and supply operations Certificate in procurement and supply operations There are a number of major changes from [...]

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Steve Bagshaw leaves Supply Management – what is his legacy?

Peter Smith - December 17, 2012 3:58 AM | Categories: People

Hey! No-one told me until last Thursday (when someone told me…) that Steve Bagshaw, Managing Editor of Supply Management / Redactive has resigned. He’s gone to run the European arm of Leading Authorities, a substantial US based speakers bureau who provide famous / successful people for speaking engagements. I understand he has some connection with that business through his partner. Leading Authorities seems like a really interesting business – pretty substantial by the look of their website, and probably an under-developed market this side of the Atlantic. So good luck to Mr Bagshaw with that. It’s hard for me to [...]

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Paula Gildert, new CIPS President and procurement “seats at the top table”

Peter Smith - November 28, 2012 10:30 AM | Categories: People

The current edition of Supply Management has more “worth reading” content than any I’ve seen for a while, and amongst the interesting features is an interview with Paula Gildert, the new President of CIPS, and in her day job the global head of development strategic sourcing for Novartis Pharmaceuticals. She makes some interesting comments (we’ll come back to one later) but I was left a little unclear as to whether she intends to have a definite “theme” for her Presidential year. Supply Management reports: “Gildert’s plan for her CIPS presidential year, which begins this month, is to support the institute’s [...]

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RIP CPO Agenda Magazine – what went wrong?

Peter Smith - November 20, 2012 10:31 AM | Categories: Procurement Commentary

CPO Agenda was launched back in Spring 2005 by CIPS (the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply) in partnership with Redactive Publishing, under editor Geraint John. It was intended to be the “Harvard Business Review” of the procurement world, a quarterly journal that would feature deeper, longer, more academic articles than Supply Management. Looking back at that first issue, there are excellent articles from Professor Andrew Cox; Jon Hughes with a typically content-dense and insightful piece; two articles from partner – level consultants (at AT Kearney and Booz Allen Hamilton); and a thoughtful but pragmatic article from a top practitioner [...]

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Comet in trouble and disappointing CIPS Markit Procurement Manager Indices

Peter Smith - November 8, 2012 10:31 AM | Categories: Current affairs and general interest

It was sad to see Comet, the UK’s second largest electrical retail chain, go into receivership last week.  The events highlighted the critical nature of supply chain for retailers of any sort. One of the final straws was Comet’s inability to get Trade Credit insurance, which guarantees suppliers will be paid in the event the buyer (retailer) has problems paying. Some suppliers then refused to supply, whilst others used an unusual legal provision – retention of title, which meant they could reclaim their stock in the case of problems. Some did, sending lorries into Comet depots to take back their [...]

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Readers’ comments – CIPS 80:20 Vision “future of procurement” report

Peter Smith - November 5, 2012 10:25 AM | Categories: Procurement Commentary

Here’s another in our series featuring recent readers’ comments – let’s go back to our two-parter that looked at the CIPS 80:20 Vision document. It considers the future direction of procurement, and we thought in general it raised some very good points. We had some agreement that the importance of risk management is going to increase, but we were particularly pleased to get a really excellent comment from “DJF” – their first comment ever on the site, we think, and it was a very fine one! Here’s a (substantial) extract from it: I think Procurement is rapidly evolving. I don’t [...]

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