A recent article over on Industry Week on What [You Need] To Know About Product Safety Challenges in European Business pointed out something very important that U.S. business that want to expand into Europe need to know — U.S. product safety regulations are not enough if you want to sell your wares over in Europe. As per the article, if you want to sell in the 27 member states of the EU, you need to meet the “made in Brussels” European legal regulations (that set an identical standard throughout the entire EU). Before a product can be sold in the EU, it must have a CE mark that verifies that the manufacturer has ensured that the product conforms with the essential requirements of the EC directives. It must also have a declaration of conformity that includes the manufacturer details (name, address, etc.), requisite EC standards and performance data, relevant id number of any notified body, characteristics of compliance, and a legally binding signature. And if the more stringent requirements are not met, your product cannot be sold.
Daily Archives: October 3, 2011
High Definition Adoption Measurement Part VI
Today’s guest post is from John Shaw (Senior Director, Adoption Services) of BravoSolution, a leading provider of spend analysis, (e-)sourcing, supplier performance management (SPM) and healthcare sourcing solutions and a sponsor of Sourcing Innovation (SI). It is the sixth of an eight (8) part series, which, when complete, will form a white-paper that BravoSolution will be releasing to the general populace this Wednesday.
Last Friday’s post (Part V) discussed the importance of the category to High Definition Adoption Measurement (HDAM) and the process required to transition to HDAM given that understanding. HDAM is achieved when adoption measurement and adoption opportunity assessment have been aligned with organizational objectives and category-specific strategies.
Today’s post provides an example of HDAM for an energy company operating in a regulatory environment.
Company B: Measuring Transparency
Our second company is an energy company operating in a European regulatory environment. The organization receives funding from the government and has a legal obligation to follow public sector procurement regulations. These regulations focus heavily on creating a sourcing process that provides equal opportunity to all suppliers.
Whereas the previous private sector manufacturer (Company A) focused their e-sourcing tool on generating supplier value, this organization’s primary focus is:
- Process Compliance:
Specific timeline requirements for public notices and publications must be met. - Equal Treatment of Suppliers:
Communications and Evaluations must be timely and fair. - Auditability:
All supplier interactions must occur in the system.
As in our previous example, we can monitor system activities to understand how user behaviours roll up to this overall business objective.
As we change the focus of the analysis to transparency, the metrics we measure in the system also change.
Now we are looking to understand where system functions tie directly to regulatory compliance. Beyond looking for violations, this data also has the potential to serve a quantitate evidence of fair dealings with suppliers in the event of a supplier challenging an award decision in court.
Here are some examples of the types of data we might monitor and react to:
Part VII will provide an example case study that describes some of the adoption challenges of a national producer of construction materials with respect to sourcing process efficiency.