Category Archives: humour

S&DC Executive on The Future of Work

Supply & Demand Chain Executive recently ran an article on “10 Changes in the World of Work in the Next 10 Years” (which is based on trends identified by Gartner) that scares me. According to the article, in the future, we will all work like the Borg. Specifically, we will

  • work in swarms,
  • do so with the collective,
  • while we are hyper-connected.

I don’t know about you, but that scares the daylights and the night lights out of me. That’s not the creative knowledge-driven future we’ve been promised, but a routine, repetitive-task based future reminiscent of the first production lines. If that’s our future, teach me Hindi, pack me up, and ship me off to India because at least they are being creative and entrepreneurial!

What Is With This New Fangled Procurement Technology?

I say, what is with this new fangled procurement technology?

Back in my day we used a ledger

and a calculator

and we were able to track our costs just fine.

When it came time to negotiations, we offered incentive carrots

like free meals at fine upscale restaurants

and free trips to exotic locales like Aruba and Cancun.

If that didn’t work we brought out the big stick

and threatened to take our business to the supplier down the street

or to expose all the kickbacks the supplier rep took from the last deal.

We didn’t need any new fangled e-Sourcing technology to conduct our negotiations

or marketplace technology to handle our invoices

or e-Payment systems to pay our bills.

When we received the goods at our warehouse

we just handed over a big wad of cash

and everyone was happy.

Now get off my lawn!