Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Two Hundred and Twenty Five Years Ago Today

The first United States census was authorized. The census is important to the United States not just because it gives us a much more accurate count of how many residents and citizens there are (as opposed to interim projections) but because the resulting counts are used to set the number of members from each state in the House of Representatives and, by extension, in the Electoral College.

It also influences how more than $400 Billion per year in federal and state funding is allocated with respect to neighbourhood improvement projects, public health programs, education programs, and transportation. So, while it might be annoying to have to answer those questions every ten years and reaffirm your Pastafarianism or Jediism, it is necessary.

Shubenacadie Sam, For Your Own Good, Stay in Hiding!

Two weeks ago, we told Shubenacadie Sam to be afraid because LOLCat was waiting to have a few choice words with him.

Let’s just say LOLCats across the province, who are still trying to find his hidey-hole, are still not very pleased with Shubenacadie Sam. Case in point:


 

While most of Atlantic Canada has not reached record setting levels of snowfall yet (unlike Halifax’s good friend Boston), LOLCats across the Atlantic Provinces are having to dig their way out of the house like poor Rudiger (and they are not happy about it).


Nova Scotia is the Greatest Nearshore Location of All and Halifax is Still the Best Place to Do International Business in North America

And if you haven’t caught on to this profitable little secret yet, you should!

What is the doctor referring to?

Way back (but no so far back that one requires the wayback machine) in the beginning, the doctor penned a post informing you that the best place to do international business in Canada is Halifax, Nova Scotia (which he remind you of six years later). The reasons for this were many and included (compared to other major Canadian cities) low operating cost, low cost of living index, low crime rate, low unemployment, an award winning international airport, the Port of Halifax, a perfect time-zone (4 hours ahead of Los Angeles and 4 hours behind London), a lot of culture, even more education, and a plethora of leading and innovating companies to help you get to where you want to go. Moreover, a study a few years ago found that Halifax offers a company the cheapest headquarters location in North America in addition to all of these other benefits (with an average cost 8% below the US low point in the Indianapolis-Carmel-Fishers area and 30% less than one of the the US high points in New York City).

But now it seems that the secret is coming out of the bag, as per this recent post over on the industry leading outsourcing blog Horses for Sources (HfS) that recently publicized that Nova Scotia is the greatest nearshore location of all. (Which means that you’re running out of time to act ahead of your peers and take advantage of all of Halifax has to offer at incredible savings that will go straight to your company’s bottom line.)

According to HfS’ post, Halifax, which exists in a region with 10 universities and 13 community college campuses producing over 10,000 graduates a year, presents a great opportunity for outsourced IT and BPO services (and that’s why IBM hosts its service centre, specializing in data analytics, in Halifax). (And despite the comment, you don’t need a canoe to get around. We have a good transportation infrastructure, but you can keep the canoe if you really want to.)

For cost reductions and efficiency improvements across the board, maybe you should look to the North.

Infographics 101

There are a lot of different ideas out there on what makes a good infographic. However, regardless of what philosophy you ascribe too, there are a few key points that should always be kept in mind if the goal of the infographic is to sell something.

1) Focus on the core points you want to make

The goal of an inforgraphic is to distill a significant amount of information into a simple visual that allows the viewer to quickly understand your intent and the key takeaway of your message without having to do a lot of reading.

2) Include distinctive information

If the goal of the infographic is to convince the reader that the idea or solution being sold is better than the alternative, then make sure the infographic calls out whatever is distinctive about your idea or solution. Otherwise, why should a viewer give it a second chance?

3) Make it clear to a reader of average education

If one looks at the 2009 Census Data, 85% of adults in the United States have at least a high school diploma or GED and 28% have at least a bachelor’s degree, 32% have an associates degree and approximately 60% have 1 or more years of college education without a degree. This says that if the goal is the population at large, you at least want it understandable by someone with only some college, and if the target audience is a professional in the workplace, you may not be safe in assuming your audience will have at least an associate’s degree, depending on the type of professional you are seeking. (If you are targeting doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, etc., then you can probably safely assume at least an associate’s degree, but if you are targeting sales, marketing, procurement or operations personnel, where a decade in the trenches is often more valuable than a degree at many companies, you may not be able to make such an assumption.)

In addition to these key points, Sourcing Innovation would also argue that, if you are trying to sell something, then an organization should be careful that they

4) Do Not Oversell the Idea or the Solution

Case in point, here in the great white north, Nova Scotia Business Inc. just released an infographic trying to promote our 360-degree defence and military expertise and our unique ability to support research and development for land, air, and sea projects — being home to 40% of all Canada’s military assets, 65 boat building yards and 26 regional ports (including the Port of Halifax which is situated in the second largest natural harbour in the world and capable of expanding to handle more capacity than any East Coast port if the demand is there), and over 80 defence and aerospace firms including 6 of the top industry leaders.

All of this is true, and Halifax offers, in not just Sourcing Innovation’s view*, an average company the greatest logistics potential of any city in North America right now (especially with CN putting in direct lines to a number of North East and Central US distribution hubs with transit times of only 2 to 3 days) as well as the greatest potential for building new commercial and defence products that capitalize on our world leading expertise in sonar, hydrodynamics, and navigation technology. However, instead of focussing on the huge, untapped potential sitting in the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) right now, Nova Scotia Business Inc. in their latest infographic decided to focus front-and-center on the fact that our defence sector generates $1.5 Billion a Year in revenue. So what? The GDP of Canada is about 1.8 Trillion. This means our defence sector contributes less than a paltry 0.1% to the economy from a GDP perspective while the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) area across all sectors contributes about 20% of Canada’s GDP which means that, using industry averages**, it’s defence sector contributes at least 1.2% of Canada’s GDP. In other words, not only would the GTA defence sector contribution break into the full percentile range, but it would be more than ten times Halifax’s contribution. In this light, the HRM looks pretty shoddy, even though it likely represents the greatest potential in all of North America for may of your Supply Chain projects. There’s a reason that Horses for Sources just called Nova Scotia the greatest nearshore location of all.

* More in our next post!

** Overall defence sector in Canada accounts for about 6% of GDP as per a recent AIAC study.

All Hail the CPO. Wait, what?

You want to be a CPO. But do you know what are the requirements for the job? Especially when the number of companies with CPO positions is still few and far between? (Recent stats from a CapGemini study found that only 9% of Procurement organizations have a CPO that sits at the C-Suite table. In SI’s view, unless the head of Procurement sits at the C-Suite table, it’s not a real CPO position.)

Chances are you don’t, especially since a search for CPO job descriptions yields few and not all are consistent (since each organization has their own view on what a CPO is and what the CPO needs to do during the first year or so). But more importantly, chances are you don’t know what is required to fulfill both the written, and more importantly, the unwritten requirements of the job.

But you don’t need to be in the dark. the doctor and the maverick, in their latest collaboration, have assembled a typical CPO job description and a multi-part series explaining the written and unwritten requirements, in detail, so that you, an aspiring Procurement professional, know exactly what is required to be a CPO. The first four parts of this series are now online on the new Spend Matters CPO site (in addition to the first parts of the Agenda series and the Lean / Six Sigma series). Check them out! They will be worth your time. (Part I: The Job Description and Part II: Examining the Job Description, Part I, Examining the Job Description, Part II, and Examining the Job Description, Part III.)