Contract Management helps you to know “Who, What, Where, When and Why”

Authored by Usama Shahid

For every Procurement Department, Contract Management plays a vital role. After the issuance of Purchase Order, it helps procurement team to accomplish the agreed deliverables mentioned in the Purchase Order. It also acts as a bridge between the Legal and Supply Chain Department to operate as single entity.

Last weekend, we had a wonderful gathering with the bunch of folks from Legal and Supply Chain Departments. They randomly started discussing about connection of Legal Department with Procurement Contracts. They have mentioned some interesting points about the importance of Contract Management to help legal department in Procurement Contracts.

Eid Mubarak from Strategicsourcing.pk!

In this holy month, an expected number of three plus million Muslims have travelled to the valley of Arafat to complete the main corner of their Hajj pilgrimage. The first day of Eid Al Adha, whereby all Muslims around the world celebrate this holy event with prayers, sacrifices and family gatherings.

At StrategicSourcing.pk we sincerely wish each and every one of our readers a happy Eid and and wish them all success and prosperity in this coming year Insha’Allah.

Have a blessed Eid Al Adha everyone!

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Excel - The Public ERP

Authored by Sara Omer

For many Procurement and Supply Chain professionals Excel is perceived to be ‘a life saver’ or more elaborately put, the ‘unspoken ERP module’. Even professionals with years of experience tend to put the tool squarely in their comfort zones but in fact, for those professionals Excel in reality only acts as a bridge to close those analytical gaps within their operating ERP’s and as Forbes describes it, ‘the most dangerous software on the planet’.

Worlds Collide – Sourcing, Social, Information, Mobile and Cloud

Authored by Mickey North Rizza

The cloud, social, access to information and mobile are driving market forces, and to remain effective, competitive and relevant companies need to embrace them. That particularly rings true for sourcing managers.

Gartner released a report on the impact these forces will have on strategic sourcing in 2013, and in it Frank Ridder, research vice president at Gartner, says that sourcing managers need to better understand “wider IT service market trends” to more effectively do their jobs.

Emergency Procurement and Procedures as a Purchasing Policy (Part 2)

Authored by Azra Sultan

Previously we discussed the term emergency procurement and the methods for acquiring goods and services during this process. The key aspect now is to understand how to plan individual emergency procurement. Whether man-made or natural, preplanning can always minimize the risk factors involved in an emergency procurement. There are some pre and post emergency methods which may help the procurement department respond to situations proficiently.

Emergency Procurement and Procedures as a Purchasing Policy (Part 1)

Authored by Azra Sultan

Any organization’s general concern, especially from any service industry, is to cater for emergency requirements. During the course of consulting it is often observed that in order to achieve this, procurement departments find it difficult to operate through normal procurement policies. Contracts from existing contractors often stand ineffective based on immediate needs and depending on the severity of a disaster incident. It is therefore important to establish an emergency procurement and purchasing policy prior to emergence of such situations to ensure that the cost spent on such commodities is reasonable and procedures are well followed. While establishing a procurement policy, it is also essential to clearly define the criteria for situations requiring prompt and immediate action to limit or avoid damage to person, property or service standard of the organization.

 

Reaping the Spend Benefit

Authored by Usama Shahid

What is your spend opportunity? When you take into account that supplier spend can represent from 40-80% of revenue (dependent upon industry and organization), and that indirect spend is a large portion of supplier spend (at least 55% for non-manufacturing companies and as high as 50% for manufacturing organizations), the opportunity for Strategic Sourcing Centers of Excellence to capitalize on all types of spend is extreme. And for those looking for quick win, a laser focus on only indirect spend can bring vast rewards.

Welcome to the Tejari Industry Briefing series!

Authored by Tahniat Naveed

Tejari is delighted to be hosting a series of free web based briefings over the next three months. The briefings will be streamed from a virtual briefing room, so there's no need to venture out into the hot summer sun as you can access these briefings from the comfort of your office!

So what can you expect?

	3 Online Briefings
	Procurement and Supply Management Professionals
	The first briefing, Running Successful eAuctions, will go live on the 1st July 2013 and will cover: What is an eAuction, how you go about planning an eAuction, how to execute an eAuction, and what results you can expect from running an eAuction.  The next briefing, Best Practices in Programme and Process Management for procurement opens in August, and the season ends in September with The True Picture: Visibility through Contract Management.

Pre-register to join the briefings here 

Once you've registered, you'll immediately enter the virtual briefing room and the first briefing will go live on 1st July 2013. We'll make sure we let all registered attendees know as soon as the briefing is live.

We hope you can join the briefings and please do let us know if you'd like to see any further briefing topics covered in 2013.

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The CFO’s Number 1 Concern in 2013: Rising Costs (Part 2)

Authored by Asif Khan

Rising costs will always worry CFOs, but what other risks are on their minds? 

• Supplier compliance. This encompasses elements of supplier relationship management – from delivering what the company needs when it’s needed, at the agreed upon price, to complying with ethical standards. Supplier compliance has dominated recent headlines, especially regarding Wal-Mart’s stronger regulations on unauthorised subcontracting.

• Economic risks. While there are signs that the economy is improving, companies are closely watching for any wavering indicators of regression that could affect customer spending, currency values and global growth.

The CFO’s Number 1 Concern in 2013: Rising Costs (Part 1)

Authored by Asif Khan

Although it’s rather obvious that CFOs always have money on the mind, the CFO Survey 2013, published by 4C Associates, highlights that rising prices are a growing worry for procurement’s finance colleagues: 65 per cent of participants listed ‘price risk’ as their top concern – up more than 15 per cent since last year.

What is a Supply Chain?

Authored by Mickey North Rizza

I was with my husband at a recent event and an old friend of his asked what I did in the business world. I told him and then he said, “Wow, is what you do related to what some call Supply Chain?” I of course told him yes, and then this highly educated man said to me, “What’s a Supply Chain?” I laughed and proceeded to tell him the following:

Spend Analysis - It's Important to your Bottom Line

Authored by Shayda Sharfaei

Spend Analysis is a topic that is almost on every procurement professional's mind these days and this is why organizations are dedicating more time and effort to spend management, in which the spending patterns are identified and the organizations can point out the bottlenecks and increase opportunities for long-term savings.

However, organizations are often intimidated as they all know it's not an easy task. It involves a lot of data that may come from multiple sources, determining a classification system and classifying each piece of data which is usually linked to a financial transaction. But before even beginning to decide where to extract the data from, you need to consider a few factors such as what you are spending and where you're spending on and this will actually be your starting point!