Category Archives: About us

Two Hundred and Forty One Thousand Five Hundred and Thirty Four

Two Hundred and Forty One Thousand Five Hundred and Thirty Four words later (including the words herein, but excluding the words in comments), or Four Hundred and twelve posts later (not counting guest posts on other blogs), and Sourcing Innovation turns one. Although not a long time, even in net-time, it is significant in blog-time, especially for a blog that posts daily!

It has been a very good year. Growth has exploded from barely two dozen hits a day to over two thousand, and traffic is still, almost linearly, increasing month over month and week over week. (So for all you nibblers out there, now would be a good time to actually bite and put your logo over on the right hand side.)

But the best is yet to come. Even though this blog has covered the full range of the sourcing cycle, from spend analysis through contract and performance management, with a heavy dose of optimization thrown in, addressed the complementary procurement cycle from end to end as well, and discussed a host of timely issues such as X-Cost Country Sourcing, Global Trade and Supply Chain Finance, and the Talent issue, I can guarantee that we’ve only scratched the surface of Sourcing Innovation.

Sourcing Innovation Comment Rules

The current version of these rules will always be available through the Comment Rules link on the sidebar under “About Sourcing Innovation”.

The purpose of the comment feature is to allow for a multi-way discussion that can enrich the usefulness of the blog. Comments should add or complement the content being presented, not detract from it or steer the user off on unrelated tangents. Although commenting rules of etiquette should be well understood by now, there are always those that seem to forget. As such, these are the commenting rules of Sourcing Innovation.

  1. No spam, where spam is defined as the posting of advertisements, abusive, or unnecessary messages.
    This does not mean that you cannot advertise an article, product, or company in a limited fashion (as I permit in my guest posts), but that you must do so in a tastefully and relevant fashion in a comment that is on the topic of the original post.
  2. No churlish or boorish comments, be civil.
    This does not mean that you are not free to point out negatives with ideas, solutions, etc. discussed on the blog, just that you should maintain a decorum of respect while you do.
  3. No personal attacks on an individual or a vendor.
    This does not mean that you cannot criticize a company or their product, but, as per the previous rule, it must be done fairly.
  4. This also means you cannot attack anyone who posts or guest posts on the blog.
    This does not mean you are not free to disagree with the blogger, including the editor, including a post to the effect that his or her opinions sucks, and that you would not trade a molding loaf of bread for 99% of their outstanding stock, but keep it civil and focus on the issue, not the person.
  5. No impersonations. If you want to post anonymously, that’s fine, but don’t break any of the rules.

The editor reserves the right to change or update these rules at any time as well as the right to edit or delete comments if they are determined to be spam, disrespectful, or purely speculative without substantiated evidence or evidence of an honest effort to discover evidence to back them up.

Access Problems?

Some of my southern colleagues have indicated that they have been having problems accessing my blog lately.  I myself have had problems at times, since I host on a remote server, but given the nature of the internet, and the bad weather we’ve had around North America lately, brief outages are to be expected for any site without vast financial resources to pay for replication services.

If you ever have trouble with this blog, or another blog, here is a workaround that might help you (especially if its just a routing issue).  Try accessing the blog (be it Sourcing Innovation, Spend Matters, eSourcing Forum, or Supply Excellence, for example) through Technorati or ProcureIQ – since they both pick up our blog posts regularly.

[Remember, this post is from January 20, 2007, and, as such, it should be no surprise that neither Technorati nor ProcureIQ (no longer in existence) pick up these blogs anymore, especially since only this blog and Spend Matters remain from the original Procurement(-related) blogs.]

Welcome

Welcome to the unofficial launch of Sourcing Innovation (on June 9, 2006), a new blog about … sourcing innovation.  On launch, this blog was designed to complement other leading supply chain blogs on the internet, including Spend Matters (http://www.spendmatters.com/) by Jason Busch, E-Sourcing Forum (defunct, see the archives on the WayBackMachine) by David Bush, and Procurement Central (defunct) by Dave Stephens by focusing on innovation from the perspective of a former developer and architect of sourcing and supply chain software.

 

My name is Michael G. Lamoureux, and I am a CS PhD who spent most of the first part of the noughts working on supply chain and sourcing applications and most of the late nineties working in the more general e-commerce space.  (Before that, I was in the academic realm, which included some teaching and research post-graduate degrees.)  I have deep expertise in data structures, computational geometry, optimization, and modeling (mathematical and data), but I have heard the call of Strategic Sourcing and now believe that Procurement will be the center of the next phase of organizational transformation.  Hence this blog and my newfound focus on SCM (Supply Chain Management) and SCM consulting.

Whereas, in my view, Spend Matters was your leading source for breaking supply chain news, E Sourcing Forum was your leading source for best practices and interesting tidbits you won’t find anywhere else, and Procurement Central was your leading source for insightful technology management principles and insights from the mind of a former sourcing project manager, the goal is for this blog was to focus more on innovative processes and technologies that you can use to evolutionize your sourcing organization.  This doesn’t mean that there won’t be a strong overlap of topics between this blog and the ones herein mentioned, and I sincerely hope there is not only an overlap but regular debates so that you get the full story, but that my topics and viewpoints will be approaching sourcing from a problem solving and innovation angle first and a more traditional sourcing angle second.  I also intend to broach more side issues to give you an overview of the larger business space in which sourcing exists and the technology that exists, or will soon exist, to help you solve your problems.

Check back regularly for postings and, of course, for the official launch.  Also check Spend Matters and E Sourcing Forum where I have been known, and hopefully will continue, to make comments and maybe, just maybe, the occasional guest post (if I get lucky).  (And I truly hope that if this blog takes off, Jason, David, Dave, and other leading bloggers will accept my forthcoming invitations to guest post as well.)

Feel free to comment or email at the contact information in the FAQ!

Live the evolution!

About Sourcing Innovation

Sourcing Innovation is a resource for sourcing, procurement, and supply chain professionals who are interested in improving themselves and the overall performance of their organizations. Sourcing Innovation is education about, in-depth analysis of, and subjective opinion on technologies and approaches that can have a profound impact on the way you do business. The editor believes that the more you know, the better your chances of success.

That’s why Sourcing Innovation brings you in-depth technology and vendor analyses, reviews and analysis of some of the more important articles and white-papers that pop-up from time to time, as well as best practices and deep dives into specific solution areas. Sourcing Innovation also explores key issues that you need to be aware of as a sourcing professional.

However, use of this blog and any content on means that you accept all of the editorial disclaimers, licenses, and copyright requirements associated with this blog.  You also accept this is a free resource for personal, non-commercial, use for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only!  No warranties, express or implied, are provided on the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information and Sourcing Innovation shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof.

You also accept that while Sourcing Innovation will cover, and provide opinions on, companies, solutions, platforms, and/or products, Sourcing Innovation is NOT making a recommendation for or against any specific company, solution, platform, and/or product.  It is merely providing one data point that may be used in your consideration, at your own risk, and any recommendations it provides are for situations in which it would consider or not consider the company, solution, platform, and/or product for a shortlist.  (i.e. it would include, or not include, the company, solution, platform, and/or product based on a specific scenario)

Sourcing Innovation, was started in June of 2006 to dive deeper into technology, processes and core issues than the average blogger and analyst (who tends to come from a business background in marketing, management, solutions consulting, or system implementation, and is therefore unable to comment as credibly on underlying technology) than other sites that existed at the time.

A second primary goal of this blog tis o raise awareness of innovative best practices and technologies that are relatively unknown but that could be used by a large number of organizations to elevate their performance as a whole. When one combines the impending talent crunch with the rapid rise of developing nations like China and India, innovation takes on a whole new importance, since it might be the only way North America, Western Europe, and other developed nations will be able to compete in the coming decades. When this blog was started in 2006, we were seeing rapid rise in energy and raw material prices globally which was followed by the rapid fall of the US dollar in 2007 and the 2007-2008 financial crisis; and while the situation improved, there were still many bumps along the way from 2009 through 2019 and then 2020 saw the world shut down when China shut down during COVID, and just as supply chains started to normalize we saw Panamanian droughts and conflict in the Red Sea, continuing the global sourcing nightmares which have now been ongoing for over 4 years (as of July, 2024). In other words, every time global business resolves a fork in the road, yet another one appears, and only the organizations that continually innovate will be able to find the path that leads to continued success.

Sourcing Innovation was designed to be one of the focal points for the sourcing community with steady technology and process coverage. A large number of blogs have come and gone over the last couple of decades, and at any given time it’s hard to know who’s blogging, on what topic, and where the thought leaders have gone.In the past, Sourcing Innovation regularly organized cross-blog posting series that focused on important, key topics and regularly invited the thought leaders to guest post.  (To date, Sourcing Innovation has successfully tackled The Future of Sourcing, The Top Three, and Sustainability and has brought together between one dozen and two dozen leading bloggers and thinkers on each topic as well as attracting around 100 of the space’s thought leaders to its virtual pages.) Today, it updates its blog list at least annually and occasionally invites leading experts to contribute.

Sourcing Innovation also injects a sense of humour, usually lyrical in nature, on topics of interest.

Finally, as mentioned above, Sourcing Innovation is not afraid to express an opinion (purely subjective and should not be taken as fact) and rant on a topic.  (But please note rants are on topics, processes, industry directions, class of entities, solution types, etc. and other generalities.  Rants are not on specific vendors or people.  If you believe otherwise, you are wrong.  As mentioned above, regardless of the view expressed on a company or solution, Sourcing Innovation is not providing a recommendation for or against, as every situation is unique and Sourcing Innovation never knows all of your specific details.)

For more information on Sourcing Innovation, please check out the posts in the About Category. You might also want to check out Where Is My Market Going?.

For more information on the doctor, you might want to check out What Does the doctor Do? and What Does the doctor Do? For Executives.

For more information on becoming a corporate sponsor, and influencing the influencers, you should check out Why I’m Going To Sponsor SI! and The SI Open Pricing Model.

To contact the doctor, see the contact information in the FAQ.

( spam@sourcinginnovation.com)