This week we discussed five sources of sourcing innovation:
- Going Green, which can help you reduce costs, increase market share, help the environment, and keep the tree-huggers happy – all at once!,
- Build-to-Order, which allows you to increase customization, avoid single-sourcing scenarios, and operate using demand-driven best practices,
- Purchase-Order Free Supply Chains which allows you to decrease processing time and divert resources to more strategic activities, reduce inventory, and avoid stock outs,
- Procurement Lead Time Optimization to take your Total Value Management sourcing activities to the next level, and
- Outsourced Innovation that can help you jumpstart your innovation endeavors, manage the process, and even solve challenges that stump your best people.
As time goes on, we will discuss many more. (And fortunately for me, there are many more … otherwise “Sourcing Innovation” would be a very short lived blog!) David and I are planning multiple three-part series on Purchasing Innovation on e- Sourcing Forum as part of the summer series, so be sure to keep a watchful eye on ESF this summer. I’d also like to point out this week’s article on SupplyManagement.com noting that the message of this year’s CIPS Premier conference was “Innovate or fail“. It quotes Ian Pearson, a futurologist at BT, who indicated in his keynote that “The five-year plan is dead. You need agility because your business will not be the same in five years’ time. If you stay doing what you’re doing for five minutes you go out of business, so you have to adapt and innovate continuously.”
Like my colleagues, I love good stories of innovation from the trenches. If you have an innovation story you’d like to share, feel free to post a comment at any time, or, better yet, e-mail me (thedoctor
Tomorrow we will continue our Problem Solving Series and next week we will discuss some innovative best practices to jump-start your sourcing organization.