Next Level Purchasing Association Podcast

Procurement technology helps accelerate business improvements. The key to convincing senior management to invest in procurement technology is showing them a return on investment.

Because of the differences between domestic and global strategic sourcing, you need the right skills, knowledge, and tools to successfully source globally. This podcast discusses some of the most important global strategic sourcing tools.

Green procurement is quickly becoming a bigger focus in purchasing. Purchasing departments are looking for better green procurement processes in order to reduce their company's carbon footprint.

Many times, the cost savings estimated at the beginning of a contract exceeds the amount that you actually save. This failure to achieve cost savings potential is called "leakage" and poses a threat to the credibility of purchasing professionals and departments.

One of the keys to maximizing the positive impact of a supplier relationship is "getting your own house in order." In other words, if your own systems, processes, and people are not up to par, you can adversely affect the supplier's performance.

Your resume (or CV) can either help you greatly increase your salary or hinder your career advancement. Here's how to achieve the former with your resume.

Conducting Market Intelligence can reduce risk, increase savings, improve decision-making, discover new suppliers, new capabilities of existing suppliers, and countries where capable suppliers can be found. Hargraves says it can also help you gather data on supplier financial viability and business continuity, build cost models for use in negotiations, and find early warnings for supply market changes.

Small suppliers do have certain advantages such as fewer channels to go through to get responses and sometimes even lower cost due to less overhead. But you also need to understand that small suppliers can cause big problems when they perform poorly. Three precautions I recommend taking with a new, small supplier are: investigate the supplier's history, evaluate the supplier's capacity, and don't pay 100% up front.

Socially responsible purchasing is a hot trend these days but there's one topic that's been sorely missing from every set of socially responsible purchasing guidelines I've seen. I'll break new ground and give you a glimpse into the future of socially responsible purchasing by addressing the missing topic of animal welfare.

When you encounter situations with lots of constraints and complexities, it becomes quite challenging to figure out the best supplier selection. For these types of situations, some purchasing departments utilize supply chain optimization technology to support their decisions.