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Guide to Dubai for the Female Professional
Before I went to Dubai on a business trip last week, I went hunting for a “woman professional’s guide to Dubai” and turned up short. So after networking with a friend of a friend who had been to Dubai before the pandemic and gathering my own data, I decided to write...
Stuck in Supplier Diversity Limbo? Get Real Results
Many supply chain teams have supplier diversity initiatives, targets, and goals. These are typically not even new programs, as many of them have been on the agenda for ten, thirty, or even fifty years. They have survived multiple supply chain leaders, multiple CEOs,...
Hidden Tax Trap: How Shipping Costs Are Costing Your Business Money
Sometimes in the supply chain we need quick wins. One potential source of a quick win is in paying sales taxes on shipments. While this may seem to be the responsibility of the tax department, how the supply chain structures agreements and invoices has a big impact on...
Navigating Supply Chain Worries: Turn Concerns into Action
The award for “most eye-catching headline of the week” in my news feed goes to sponsored content from GS1. The headline was “Stop doom-scrolling your supply chain” and (as sponsored content) is advocating for increasing visibility tools. The article cites three main...
Robots vs. Relationships: Will AI Wipe Out Supply Chain Jobs?
A Visual Capitalist article on the impact of artificial intelligence on various job categories wandered across my news feed a couple weeks ago, and I’ve been pondering it ever since. Following the data trail, this data was a visualization of a white paper by the World...
Mastering the Supply Chain Triad: Delivering Excellence in Delivery, Savings, and Efficiency
“You can have it fast, you can have it good, you can have it cheap: pick two” is a very old phrase for any purchase, and is a central tenet of supply chain work. While in a previous supply chain leadership role, my company had a major shake-up in senior leadership. As...
The Power of Brevity: Crafting Impactful Executive Summaries for Supply Chain Success
One of my clients had a communication problem. It wasn’t the usual “not enough” problem that so often comes up, it was an executive summary problem. The supply chain leader was doing beautiful, in-depth bid analyses with long spreadsheets and each supplier’s column in...
Understanding the Significance of Perfect Orders in Supply Chain Excellence
What is a perfect order? And why is it relevant? Of all supply chain metrics, the pinnacle metric is the perfect order. It serves as a comprehensive measure, encompassing critical components that lay the groundwork for supply chain efficiency. A perfect order is an...
Unveiling the Dynamics of the Supply Chain Cycle: Enhancing Delivery Assurance and Performance Assessment
Unveiling the Dynamics of the Supply Chain Cycle: Enhancing Delivery Assurance and Performance Assessment In the intricate dance of the supply chain cycle, the pivotal roles of delivery assurance and performance assessment come into focus. While often discussed as the...
Unveiling the Dynamics of the Supply Chain Cycle: Order Generation and Fulfillment
The “order generation” and “order fulfillment” links in the supply chain are where most companies are strongest in the supply chain cycle. This is where the supply chain team cuts purchase orders, commits to purchases with suppliers, and coordinates inbound logistics....
Unveiling the Dynamics of the Supply Chain Cycle: From Demand Planning to Supply Planning
In this segment of our comprehensive series exploring the entire supply chain cycle, we delve into the central aspect of the planning function: demand and supply planning. In larger or more mature supply chain teams, these planning functions often form integral parts...
Unveiling the Dynamics of the Supply Chain Cycle: From Contracts to Business Planning
Embarking on the first installment of our comprehensive series delving into the intricacies of the full supply chain cycle, we kick off by exploring the critical junctures of contracts, sourcing, and business planning. While we could start anywhere in this cycle,...
Elevating Negotiation Mastery: Strategies for Success Beyond the Basics
In our ongoing exploration of negotiation dynamics, it’s high time we delve into fundamental aspects: the basic parameters and rules that underpin successful negotiations. Gone are the days of fixating on the physical placement at a negotiation table—our current era...
Strategic Negotiations: Building Value Beyond the Bottom Line
Now that you’ve used data to find market rates to negotiate great pricing and you’ve changed the rules to create win-win scenarios with suppliers, where else can you find value in a negotiation? In non-price parameters. As supply chain or procurement professionals,...
Unlocking Value: Change the Negotiation Rules to Achieve Win-Win Outcomes
In negotiations, achieving a win-win often involves rule adjustments, not to deceive the other party but to enhance value for both sides. Let’s explore a couple of strategies that can transform the negotiation landscape. Quantity Discounts and Bundling: Boosting value...
Negotiate Smarter, Not Harder: A Deep Dive into Data-Powered Procurement Methods
The last time I searched for an image depicting negotiation, all I found were variations of two shaking hands – unmistakably two white men in suits. This time, as you can see, there were more diverse options. In today’s business landscape, negotiations rarely play out...
Strategic Scoping: Maximizing Value and Minimizing Risk in Procurement
One of the often overlooked benefits of an e-Auction program is the improvement in scopes of work. This is because when any qualified supplier who can provide the scope of work can participate in the e-Auction, suddenly the answer “my incumbent knows what we need”...
Rethinking Value: e-Auctions as Catalysts for Remarkable Lead Time Reductions
As I was on a call with a supply chain leader last week, they brought up all the common objections to e-Auctions: Too impersonal. Too transactional. Don’t like them. So I asked what they were struggling with. “Lead times are still horrible on our key commodities” was...
Busting six e-Auction Myths
E-Auctions–specifically reverse English auctions–have a bad reputation. They had a rise and fall in the early 2000s, and have now largely settled into small impact materials bids or logistic shipping lanes. Why have they gained this reputation and been relegated to...
What is an e-Auction?
This very reasonable question almost always comes first when I mention e-Auctions. My first answer is usually that it’s like eBay backwards. An e-Auction, specifically here a reverse English auction, is an online negotiation tool where multiple suppliers bid to sell a...