| Talent Management, sometimes called human capital management, refers to the process of developing and integrating new workers, developing and keeping current workers and attracting highly skilled workers to work for your company. Talent managers, who are expected to build and retain world class sourcing talent, need to resolve, recognize, recruit, retain, and retire talent as part of their job function.
Talent managers need to start by resolving a working definition of talent for their company. Definitionally speaking, talent is a special or natural ability or aptitude and a capacity for achievement, but this does not help much when it comes to the identification of supply chain talent. And even though a better definition of talent is the right combination of IQ, EQ, Knowledge, Skills, and Motivation, this is still not a very useful definition to a hiring manager. Thus, a talent management professional needs to start by identifying the skills, experience, and knowledge that define a talented supply chain professional with respect to the needs and goals of the organization. Once talent is resolved, talent managers need to determine how they are going to recognized talent when they see it. For example, if two key components of the organization’s definition of procurement talent are analytics capabilities and negotiating skills, how will they be able to recognize these traits in the individuals. Prior successes? Problem solving questions in an interview? Identification of the tools and methodologies used in a previous position? Once talent has been identified, and the mechanisms for recognizing talent defined, a talent manager has to recruit talent. There are two primary methods for recruiting talent: attraction and solicitation. A company can can focus on trying to make itself an attractive place to work for a potential candidate or attempt to lure qualified professionals away from its competition with an offer of a superior financial compensation package. Once talent has been recruited, and hired, a talent manager needs to focus on retaining that talent over time so that the talent doesn’t get board and leave or defect to a competitor who might be trying to lure the talent away. Finally, when it is time for the talent to move up the ladder, or retire, the talent manager needs to manage the transition and insure that the knowledge acquired by the talent is captured and maintained by the organization. For an in-depth discussion of talent management, see the wiki-paper* on how to build and retain world class sourcing talent and the following blog posts.
* The e-Sourcing Wiki was created and maintained by Iasta, which was acquired by Selectica in 2014 (which renamed itself Determine in 2015). It was retired by Determine (which did not actively maintain it) before Determine was acquired by Corcentric in 2019 |
Category Archives: Glossary
Sustainable Supply Chain
| Sustainability is defined as the ability to maintain a certain process or state. In the supply chain context, it is the management of raw materials, productions, and services in a manner that considers the social, environmental, and economic impacts of a decision with the end goal of of minimizing negative impacts.
Sustainability is sometimes presumed to be synonymous with corporate social responsibility, carbon management, green, or a combination thereof, since all three initiatives often have sustainable goals, even though a more appropriate definition lies somewhere in the intersection of these initiatives and sound economic planning. Sustainability is an elusive concept for which there is still no commonly accepted definition. The only commonality between definitions is that sustainability, which is viewed by some as more of a journey than a destination, is that the end result of a sustainable initiative should be a revised process that simultaneously improves life while reducing negative environmental, social, and economic impacts. Corporate Social Responsibility, also known as corporate responsibility, corporate accountability, corporate ethics, corporate citizenship, and responsible business, can be defined as the continuing commitment by a business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of that of the local community and society at large. It’s an aspect of sustainability that is focussed on responsible production processes, socially responsible employee relations, community involvement, and sustainability. It’s about doing things right. Major areas of concern include, but are not limited to, labour and workers’ rights, health and safety, community and conduct, and environmental stewardship. More information about Corporate Social Responsibility can be found in the wiki-paper* and the blog posts referenced below. Carbon Management refers to the utilization of processes, methodologies, and technologies to reduce a company’s carbon footprint as part of a movement towards a low carbon economy. A carbon footprint is the total GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions that can be directly or indirectly attributed to an organization. More information about carbon management can be found in the wiki-paper and the blog posts referenced below. Green is a neologism for environmentally friendly and refers to goods and services that are considered to inflict minimal or no harm on the environment and to be produced in an environmentally sustainable manner. It is sometimes used to refer to renewable methods of energy production such as geothermal, hydro, wind, and solar power. Green purchasing techniques are discussed in the wiki-paper* and more information about green in the supply chain context can be found in the blog posts referenced below. Corporate Social Responsibility
Carbon Management
Green Supply Chain
Sustainability
* The e-Sourcing Wiki was created and maintained by Iasta, which was acquired by Selectica in 2014 (which renamed itself Determine in 2015). It was retired by Determine (which did not actively maintain it) before Determine was acquired by Corcentric in 2019 |
Supply Management
| Supply Management, which is a sub-function of supply chain management, refers to the methods and processes used by institutional buyers to purchase, and insure the availability of, raw materials, parts, and supplies for production, operations, and sales (to distributors, retailers, or end consumers). Supply Management usually encompasses the strategic sourcing and procurement, inventory management, logistics, risk management, and supplier management functions, as well as all of their component sub-functions, in most organizations.
For more information on supply management, please refer to the referenced glossary entries and numerous Sourcing Innovation blog entries. |
Supply Chain Management
| Supply Chain Management (SCM) is the management of a network of interconnected business processes involved in the ultimate provision of product and service packages required by end customers. Encompassing the strategic, tactical, and operational activities of a business, it spans all activities relating to the acquisition, movement, and storage of goods and related services from the point of origin to the ultimate point of consumption.
Strategic elements include, but are not limited to:
Tactical elements include, but are not limited to:
Operational elements include, but are not limited to:
For more information on these functions, see the appropriate glossary definitions and the thousands of relevant blog entries on the Sourcing Innovation blog. |
Supply Chain Forecasting
| Generically speaking, forecasting is the process of estimation in unknown situations. In a supply chain context, it centers on (customer) demand planning, which is a business-planning process used by sales teams to develop demand forecasts as input to service-planning processes, production, inventory planning, revenue and cash-flow planning.
Supply chain demand forecasting is a challenging problem, but it is generally possible to create good forecasts through an intelligent combination of judgmental and statistical methodologies. Statistical models based on solid historical data that take into account current market intelligence and global economic trends provide a good baseline, which, when tweaked by a seasoned expert who has intelligent insight into expected consumer response to a “one-time” event or environmental change can often deliver extremely reliable results on a continuous basis. For more information on supply chain forecasting, see the following posts. |