Category Archives: Blogologue

A New Year Will Soon Be Upon Us? Are You Ready for The Coming Changes?

Where Procurement is concerned, the more things change, the more things stay the same is one thing you can count on. Very little changes year-over-year, and that’s probably why the futurists keep pushing the same trends year after year, including those trends old enough to be in many historian’s ancient history books. (We’re not joking. Take globalization, governmental regulations, and supply chain risk for example. These have been issues and trends since “global” trade began between Egypt and Mesopotamia, which occurred over 5,000 years ago. What’s “future” about that?)

Moreover, a best practice, even if its only been adopted by the leading organizations, is not a future trend. It is an ongoing trend if it started a few years ago, but if the leading organizations adopted the practice ten years ago, then it is not even an ongoing trend. It is a past trend that, either due to lack of maturity, resources, or relevance, didn’t cross the chasm. A current, ongoing, trend is something that just in the last few years and is just reaching the point where it will cross the chasm and a future trend is one that has only recently been identified and still in the process of being adopted by the early adopters, which, in Procurement, would be the Hackett Group top 8%.

However, while the changes may be small and few and far between, they do happen, and over time they accumulate and occasionally lead to big breakthroughs which launch new trends. These trends, in the early stages, are the ones you care about. Not trends that were forming ten years ago, because everyone already knows about them, including every competitor you have, and not possible trends ten years out, because, in the interim, the future could diverge significantly from the future required for that trend to materialize. Trends that are in the early stages of formation today. Trends that, if you start preparing for them, put you in the Procurement Leaders camp and keep you there.

Those trends, and only those trends that make you a leader, are the trends that Sourcing Innovation talks about in its latest white-paper on Top Ten Trends for Supply Management Value Generation in 2015 (registration required). Two years ago, SI told you about the top ten things that an organization could do to reign in rapidly rising costs before hyperinflation in key categories put its profitability at risk in its white paper on The top Ten Things to Do in 2013 to Control Costs (registration required). Then, one year ago, SI told you how to mine the goldmine of savings potential an untapped organization is sitting on through the proper application of The Top Ten Technologies for Supply Management Savings Today (registration required).
Now that your organization has its costs are under control and a proper technology infrastructure in place for leading-edge Supply Management, it’s ready to tackle Top Ten Trends for Supply Management Value Generation in 2015 and get processes and programs in place to capitalize on opportunities before the competition.

To find out what the Top Ten Trends for Supply Management Value Generation in 2015 are and what to do about it, download this new Sourcing Innovation white paper, sponsored by BravoSolution, today!

Tired of Historical Viewpoints? Want Insight into Real Trends?

Then you need to download Sourcing Innovation’s latest white-paper on Top Ten Trends for Supply Management Value Generation in 2015 (registration required).

If you’re like the doctor, then you’re tired of reading about the same old “trends” year after year that were tired old trends twenty years ago. Not only does it show a lack of insight on the part of the trend promoter, but it shows a lack of forward thinking on the part of the receiver to keep on listening.

Sourcing Innovation and the doctor are so tired of these futurists who are stuck in the past, and the fact that they have everyone convinced they should be asking for trend updates on a semi-annual basis, that in September, SI published a series on The Future of Procurement that specifically focussed on we shouldn’t be talking about the future of Procurement after all. First of all, as clearly illustrated in the series, thirty of the thirty-three trends that are commonly being promoted as future trends are not future trends at all. Secondly, some of these trends are so old, they weren’t even future trends of your forefathers. Thirdly, and most importantly, trends which are entirely in the future don’t help you when you’re still struggling to prepare for next year.

The trends you need to know about are the trends that are at the leading edge that are relevant to your business now, not ten years ago, and not ten years ahead in one possible future. So, for those of you who want to cut to the chase and get a bead on the real trends that will help you today and tomorrow, and not a tangent into the obvious or an excursion into the dark ages, download Sourcing Innovation’s latest white-paper on Top Ten Trends for Supply Management Value Generation in 2015 (registration required), sponsored by BravoSolution.

Talented Professional, Train Thyself!

Earlier this month, in our Procurement Key Issue 2013 post, we noted that CXO’s still don’t get the disconnect and that the average CFO, COO, and CEO still does not understand the value of the Procurement Organization. Furthermore, despite the ever increasing need for Procurement Training, from what we’re seeing, for the fifth year in a row, as part of the continued drop in operating budgets for the Procurement function, Procurement training budgets are (again) being slashed, if they exist at all!

In order to achieve the objectives being put before you, which include:

  • the acquisition of game-changing innovation and technology,
  • the increase in purchasing’s scope and influence,
  • the increase in value of the organization’s product and service offerings

and, SI’s favourite,

  • a further decrease in organizational spending

(even though inflationary times are back with a vengeance and the pursuit of cost reductions is a lost cause in this market where food reserves are at an all time low, China has a monopoly on rare earths, oil (and energy) demands are skyrocketing around the world, and metal prices are shooting off of the charts), you need training. The skill sets and knowledge you need to keep up with today’s supply markets is almost overwhelming!

Right now, you’re probably asking why you should front the time and money to train yourself. Especially when it looks like the organization will get all of the benefit. Well, the organization will get a lot of benefit, but so will you. At the end of the day, the fact of the matter is that you will be more skilled and you will be worth more. If you are unable to negotiate a pay raise with your current employer that at least reimburses you for the effort and money that you spent getting yourself trained within three months, then another Procurement organization will be happy to give you a significant raise. The reality is that many companies would rather pay more for already trained talent than pay to train the talent themselves. While the exact amount that training will boost your salary is hard to quantify, some institutes claim that the acquisition of a purchasing management certification can boost your salary by 30% to 40% and Next Level Purchasing knows of at least one case where an individual obtained a 67% salary increase! While increases of this magnitude are atypical, salary increases in the 10% to 20% range are not!

So train thyself. It will be worth it!

Supply Chain Syllabi Suck – But Should You Be Designing One?

It’s an interesting question, and one I have to ask after coming across Adrian Gonzalez’ recent post over on Logistics Viewpoints on A Supply Chain Course Designed by You. While I agree that the average life of a supply chain text is two to three years where case studies are concerned (but not where core principles are concerned as some of the classics by Robert Rudzki and Dick Locke are still holding up eight and seventeen years later), I don’t necessarily agree that syllabi go out of date that fast, or that you are the best person to be designing one.

I also agree that trends do develop every day, that most traditional syllabi are about two decades out of date, and that an instructor should update the syllabus as required before every course delivery, but I’m not sure it should be based solely on student requests. While an instructor should attempt to address as many student questions as possible, they should be restricted to the subject matter of the course. More specifically, if the course is on sourcing and procurement technology, the instructor should not go off on a tangent on proper multi-tier supply network design, which should be a different course.

However, the real reasons that an instructor should not design an entirely student driven course are the following:

  1. Every student will likely have a different problem that he or she believes he or she needs addressed that is
  2. based on a different understanding of what proper supply management for (what) a proper supply chain (is) and
  3. that problem is not necessarily the root problem or representative of the core theory, and practical solutions, that need to be addressed.

If the student knew what she needed to learn, she would not be a student, she would, at the very least, be a mentor, if not a teacher herself. For those of you with a martial arts background, you would not be deshi, you would be yudansha or sensei yourselves. Because you have not gone before, you don’t know the way you need to go. That’s why you need a teacher, a guide, to show you the way and teach you the basics you need to know in a cohesive, relevant framework appropriate to the course. A well-designed course by an instructor who is trained in the theory and experienced in the practice will weave together the foundations with relevant examples in such a way that the student will learn to identify what the root problems are, what solutions might work, and what questions should be raised, and addressed by the instructor — who will have no problems weaving the answers in, on the fly, to the lectures at hand.

In other words, I don’t think the methodology proposed by Adrian is necessarily the right process for designing a course, but I do think it’s a great process for tweaking a course, and, more so, for determining what course(s) a student should be taking. In other words, an organization or institution offering Supply Management and Supply Chain training should, before allowing students to enrol in a course,

  • request that the students fill out a questionaire that outlines their key questions and topics of interest a month or so in advance,
  • analyze the responses and determine potential best fits between the students and the courses being considered, and
  • create pre-course discussion groups, facilitated by the likely instructor, a few weeks in advance and invite the students to participate in the group to gather consensus on key topics, issues, and questions that should be addressed — and figure out if the course is really for them.

Then the provider can let students register, knowing that there will be good fits, and the instructor can tweak the course to be as relevant as possible to the needs and interest of the students, using the most relevant case studies and focussing on the secondary topics of common interest once the core material has been covered.

Of course this is just the doctor‘s opinion (and his only real qualification for this argument is that he has been an Assistant Professor in Academia and an Industry Trainer), and it will be interesting to see the results if 30 (thirty) practitioners take Mr. Gonzalez up on his offer.