Yearly Archives: 2006

• Measuring the performance of a procurement department

  Posted on December 8, 2006 by hudgeon in VendorManagement

  I’ve recently put together a list of measurable procurement team activities and a suggested metric for each activity. It’s by no means revolutionary but you may find it useful in your organisation. Listed below are the activities and metrics. Note that your team’s metrics will differ from those listed below based on the behaviour you [...]

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• Five leadership behaviours correlated to performance

  Posted on September 23, 2006 by hudgeon in VendorManagement

  A recent study at Harvard Business School identifies 5 leadership behaviours that are correlated with increased motivation, creativity and performance of team members. There’s nothing ground-breaking or even surprising in the results, but it serves as a useful validation of the importance of day-to-day management activities. “The team leader’s behavior is critical. I found that [...]

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• Rogers and Hammerstein: The Future of Sourcing

  Posted on August 26, 2006 by hudgeon in VendorManagement

  Last week, Michael Lamoureux asked Dave Stephens, Dave Bush, Jason Busch, Tim Minahan and I to post on the future of sourcing. I’ve found their responses fascinating and informative. I’m regularly astonished at the insights I get from this group of guys (Why no women?) and how narrowly my expertise is focused. But, going with [...]

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• Consolidation and the Long Tail

  Posted on August 19, 2006 by hudgeon in VendorManagement

  A typical spend reduction initiative starts by convincing your C-Level executives to mandate the consolidation of spend throughout your company. Through such consolidation, you ensure your suppliers can reduce their margins yet still make enough to service the payments on their salespeople’s Beemers. If you cannot consolidate your spend, you must find other ways to [...]

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• Debbie Wilson asks “Why?”

  Posted on June 23, 2006 by hudgeon in VendorManagement

  Debbie Wilson, author of Cool Tools for Purchasing, declares 2006 to be the "Year of the Blog". For those of you not familiar with her site, Debbie, amongst other things, publishes periodic commentary on procurement issues. Her opinions are poignant and I read her stuff as soon as it hits my in-box. Jason Busch calls [...]

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• Buzzword Lifecycle Management (BLM) and Procurement

  Posted on June 22, 2006 by hudgeon in VendorManagement

  Here's a little ditty from the e-INSIDER newsletter that brought a wry smile to my face. BLM—Buzzword Lifecycle Management The information technology (IT) industry is alive with buzzwords (BW). The management of BW represents a significant area for improvement for both the BW users (BU) (for example, vendors, analysts, and consultants), BW consumers (BC) (mostly [...]

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• HireVue responds to my Prescriptive RFT post

  Posted on June 14, 2006 by hudgeon in VendorManagement

  A few weeks ago, I used HireVue, a software vendor producing a video interviewing system, as an example of an overly-prescriptive vendor/candidate selection mechanism. Because my knowledge of the system comes from Vinnie Mirchandani's blog rather than first-hand use, I lead my post with the following paragraph: "I'm going to gloss over many of the [...]

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• 

  Dave Stephens’ new venture

  Posted on June 13, 2006 by hudgeon in VendorManagement

  Dave Stephens' new venture has been greeted skeptically by Jason Busch. Jason writes "I wish Dave the best of luck in his new gig, but I have more questions at this point than anything else, as I'm sure anyone would reading their rather spartan landing site and Dave's short announcement at Procurement Central. … there's [...]

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• Mundane management advice and clear thinking on economies of scale

  Posted on June 10, 2006 by hudgeon in VendorManagement

  Bill Waddell in Evolving Excellence links to a great article out of Stanford titled "Management Advice: Which 90% is crap?". It's well worth a read, as is Bill's blog. His post, A Stake in the Heart of Economies of Scale, is an example of blogging at its best.

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• Your second most valuable asset … apparently not

  Posted on June 9, 2006 by hudgeon in VendorManagement

  My previous post discussed the importance of maintaining your reputation as a credible purchasing organisation. I would also rank highly the importance of maintaining your reputation as a credible contracting organisation, but I would, apparently, be wrong. The State Government of New South Wales (Australia's most populous state) is currently embroiled in a dispute with [...]

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