Category Archives: Miscellaneous

The 2nd NLPA Conference: Tackling Topics that Matter!

On September 15th to 17th, the Next Level Purchasing Association is hosting its 2nd Procurement Conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The agenda is almost final, and the topics being covered in the workshops are important ones. Unlike most conferences, the NLPA conference is focused on education — education that you need to do your job better (which is what conferences should be about, and not full-time speakers blowing their horns or vendors pitching their products, as you’d know what you had to buy without being told with the right education).

The workshops being offered are the following:

There’s No ‘I’ In Team: Collaborative Sourcing in a Decentralized Organization
Procurement success depends on collaboration — because procurement success depends upon consistent category management. Proper needs identification, vendor selection, contract creation, and compliance! Because, without compliance, maverick spend runs rampant — maverick spend with can only be eliminated when everyone is collaborating and on the same page.

Who’s on First? Strategies for Management and People Changes
Sourcing Innovation is always saying it’s technology, talent and transition for a reason. You need good technology to do your jobs effectively, technology that requires trained skill (talent), and technology that requires you to change your ways and transition to a better way of doing things. This is one type of management. But some people will be resistant to change, this is where transition management comes in — because they will need to be guided to the better way of doing things.

Charting Your Path to Victory: How to Successfully Manage Procurement Projects
Procurement is a lot more complicated than the 3-bids and a buy it was in the not-so-good ol’ days. In fact, some projects will require multi-phase vendor identification and pre-selection before you even begin the multi-phase negotiation and analysis that will lead to an award — which is where the real (multi-year) Procurement process begins! Which will have to be executed as plan, or you will have a lot of maverick (and expedited) spend.

Where is the Playbook: Hidden Risks of Terms & Conditions
Terms and conditions are the concealed weapons of the legal world. Concealed weapons that will be pulled on targeted upon you at the worst possible time. For example, Force Majeure, while seeming fair and innocuous, when combined with sole-source requirements, is a Masamune blade guaranteed to cut you every time. While it’s fair for a supplier to not be expected to deliver when a typhoon shuts down their factory, it’s not fair to have a non-breakable sole-source clause for the contract duration which could force you to shut your production line down if you are unable to get your parts in time.

… And 65 Years Ago Today …

George Orwell published 1984.  He was 30 years too soon in his prediction of when technology would reach the point where omnipresent government surveillance, public manipulation, and a perpetual war (on terror) would be possible, but he was dead on in his predictions of what would be possible … 

85 Years Ago today, the smallest sovereign city-state in the world was established.

That’s right, eighty-five years ago today the Lateran Treaty was signed, bringing Vatican City into existence. With only 44 hectares, and 840 citizens and residents, it is the smallest independent state in the world by both area and population with an annual GDP in the magnitude of 20 Million and not Billions or Trillions.

It is more comparable to a mid-size company with 840 employees who live in residence year round and whose every need requires attention in addition to all of the maintenance associated with the business and resident properties, except this company has valued assets over 10 Billion dollars (as that is the estimated foreign investment by the Institute of Religious Works – the Vatican Bank – in the 1990s) and non-valued assets worth billions (upon billions) more on the open market, which include priceless buildings and works of art going back millennia.

The head of Procurement must have one of the most interesting jobs in the world. First of all, that individual would be procuring almost every commercial and consumer item at one point in time or another. Second, deliveries are limited to truck, train, and helicopter. (There is no airport, only one train line, and deliveries can be made to the gates.) Third, while that person would have every pressure to keep costs down for every day items and maintenance, that person would have an almost unlimited budget for works of art and historical artifacts of religious significance desired by the church. Fourth, security would be a concern with every purchase and delivery. And so on.

Relatively speaking, for an average mid-size company, Procurement is fairly straightforward. But how do you effectively management Procurement for the smallest independent city-state in the world?

If you have educated guesses, leave a comment or send the doctor an e-mail!

65 Years Ago Today the Microfilm Revolution Began!

65 years ago today, the first microfilm magazine was offered to subscribers. Newsweek, by offering its publication on microfilm, sparked a microfilm revolution and within a few decades, libraries everywhere were storing large collections of newspapers and magazines on tiny microfilm collections. This allowing libraries to maintain large collections of historical documents in limited space and was the precursor to the current digital revolution, which saw micro-films replaced with (optical) disks, which were soon replaced by storage area networks.

Why Is This Poor Little LOLCat Begging You?

As per our post on April 26, this poor little LOLCat is Begging You to Stop Harper.

Why is this poor little LOLCat begging you to Stop Harper? Because when even the leading academics of China call your prime minister “Canada’s George W. Bush” and a leader who has overseen a sullying of the country’s international reputation, you know things are bad. (This quote is from Nathan Vanderklippe’s article in the Friday, May 16 edition of The Globe and Mail print edition, page A9, in the article headlined Canada’s image in decline, say Chinese.

You have to admit, they do look very much alike in this picture!