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AI is reshaping the way organizations source, manage suppliers, and drive value today. As supply chains become more interconnected and risks more dynamic, traditional procurement tools fall short. AI agents offer a smarter, faster way to manage sourcing, risk, and spend across the entire procurement lifecycle.
AI is reshaping the way organizations source, manage suppliers, and drive value today. As supply chains become more interconnected and risks more dynamic, traditional procurement tools fall short. AI agents offer a smarter, faster way to manage sourcing, risk, and spend across the entire procurement lifecycle.
Strategic sourcing and innovative solutions are often viewed as two distinct procurement tools, but they should not be seen in isolation. Think of them as apples and gearseach essential and effective on its own, yet when combined; they create a formidable mechanism for achieving procurement excellence.
Enterprise procurement teams face growing pressure to deliver strategic value – managing supplier risk, ensuring compliance, and supporting sustainability – all without sacrificing speed or control. This blog explores the most common challenges in digital procurement and the capabilities that matter most.
Enterprise procurement leaders are under more pressure than ever—juggling cost control, compliance, supplier risk, and internal complexity, all while trying to modernize outdated systems. AI, automation, and generative tools are redefining efficiency, allowing procurement teams to move from reactive to proactive decision-making.
Proactively adopting cleaner energy sources ensures alignment with these evolving regulations. The industry’s dependency on traditional energy sources necessitates an urgent shift toward cleaner alternatives. Companies like DHL and Amazon are already setting benchmarks by integrating EVs into their logistics operations.
If you’re evaluating procurement technology or exploring ways to drive more value from existing systems, chances are you’re looking beyond tactical fixes – you want a smarter, scalable strategy. Misaligned priorities across finance, legal, and procurement create friction that delays decision-making and reduces impact.
Optimizing fulfillment requires a series of steps to get a shipment from its source to the end customer. These steps include sourcing and receiving inventory, storing inventory, order processing, picking and packing an order, shipping the order, and returns management. The ability to meet fulfillment goals is impeded by several issues.
GEP and the North Carolina State University (NCSU) Supply Chain Resource Cooperative surveyed supply chain, procurement and IT professionals across a range of industries to gain insight into their priorities and strategies regarding supply chain resilience and optimization. Alex Zhong, Director Product Marketing at GEP.
In a previous post , I made a case for how the Chief Supply Chain Officer (CSCO) and Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) are smarter together. Accordingly Supply Chain and Procurement will need continuous collaboration. Such sourcing events can be in the context of direct materials or logistics capacity.
At each company, there is a relationship between the metrics of growth, margin, inventory, customer service, and asset strategy. For the purpose of this article, I will use Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) as the proxy metric to discuss asset utilization.) Understanding this relationship requires modeling. (A A Case Study.
In May 2025, one in seven home-purchase agreements fell through resulting in the cancellation of 56,000 purchase contracts. Supply chain was defined in 1982 as interoperability between source, make and deliver. Ask a procurement or transportation professional if they have a good demand signal and expect a laugh.
Introduction Gardner, (1954) and Huntzinger, (2007) define Purchase price variance (PPV) as a metric used to measure the effectiveness of cost-saving efforts by calculating the difference between the planned cost (standard pricing) allocated for purchasing activities and the actual cost incurred.
Analytics and business intelligence (BI) are no longer optionaltheyre essential. They need visibility across multiple internal systemslike ERP, CRM, and financial platformsand even external sources shared with suppliers, partners, and customers. Think of it as the central nervous system of your analytics ecosystem.
Digital commerce efficiently requires the digitalization of many customer-facing operations and sourcing and procurement. Supply chain planning involves interaction with different types of information based on internal and external data sources. This includes internal and external data sources.
In the realm of efficient procurement management, understanding the various types of procurementreports becomes paramount. These reports serve as navigational tools, offering insights into different facets of the procurement process.
What is procurement? In simple terms business procurement is the process of locating and acquiring goods and services from external sources for the business to use. Procurement activities include planning, sourcing, and negotiation, along with risk management, legal and value analysis.
The landscape of public sector procurement has undergone significant transformation in recent years, driven by advancements in technology, evolving regulatory frameworks, and an increasing emphasis on sustainability. Predictiveanalytics powered by ML helps organizations anticipate procurement trends and identify potential risks.
Businesses often use it in retail and purchasing. Category management isn’t just another procurement trend. It’s a way for companies to group similar goods or services (like IT infrastructure, facilities, or raw materials) and manage them holistically instead of handling every purchase in isolation.
This month, we continue our Procurement Basics series and would like to introduce our readers to yet another set of often misused business terminology. As both sourcing and procurement are related to obtaining supplies for the organization, confusing these two terms is easy. Procurement. What Is Procurement Process?
Sure, supply chain cost reduction is important in reducing the cost of goods sold (COGS) and increasing profit, but there are other measurements which should not be forgotten. 3 Key Metrics for Measuring Supply Chain Performance Beyond Cost Reduction. Cost reduction is still very important. Read more. .
Small companies may also lack the resources to create a dedicated procurement team for proper sourcing and supplier vetting. Group purchasing organizations can be the perfect way for these companies to increase cost savings. Keep reading to learn: What is a group purchasing organization?
For AFFLINK's partners and affiliates navigating complex procurement environments, ESG integration reshapes how supply chains are built, evaluated, and optimized. With consumers and investors alike expecting higher accountability, ESG compliance has become a key differentiator in global procurement.
Rising costs, supply chain chaos, and economic swings put businesses under enormous pressure to protect their margins. According to McKinsey & Company, procurement accounts for 50% to 80% of a company’s cost base. That’s why organizations zero in on strategies to achieve procurementcost reduction.
To enhance their competitive edge, companies across industries are adopting a key tactic: strategic sourcing. Strategic sourcing is a holistic approach to supply chain management that includes tactics for optimizing the total cost of ownership, improving supplier relationships, and ensuring long-term value creation.
Here are key strategies to take you there: Utilizing technology platforms : Next-generation source-to-pay (S2P) platforms should offer integrated—not isolated or siloed—supplier management capabilities to make supplier information available across all business functions.
Organizations then convert those demand forecasts to the associated quantities of raw materials to purchase, goods to be manufactured, or finished products to ship. It is important to benchmark forecast accuracy and similar supply chain metrics against your peers. forecasting product sales at 10,000 stores.
It is critical to monitor inventory effectiveness using five key metrics: Expedited orders, inventory turns, obsolete inventory, safety stock and stockouts. Whether you measure purchase orders or customer orders—and you should do both—high numbers indicate problems in your inventory planning and flow.
Digital Procurement article, and permission to publish here, provided by Sam Jenks at kodiakrating.com. Navigating the complexity of the global supply chain as a procurement professional can sometimes feel like taking a walk through the Amazon without a compass, or entering into outer space without an oxygen tank. Benchmarking.
Using KPIs for performance measurement ensures that you are continuously evaluating your business activity against a static benchmark. Another powerful use of KPIs is in the benchmarking of your companys performance against that of your competitors and industry peers. Why Are KPIs Important?
Suppliers are facing increasing pressure from the buyers of their goods and services to report their environmental, social, and governance data. Increasingly, companies will take sustainability criteria into account in their purchasing decisions. The data, which is reported on the EcoVadis platform, highlights the supplier’s emissions.
Procurement has never played such an important role in the increasingly globalised economy. Has procurement fundamentally changed itself in the past 10 years? Strategic Procurement can mean totally different things in different industries and sectors. The time when Procurement was almost a synonym to Purchasing has long gone.
Featuring Our 12 Best Procurement Articles! Purchase Price Variance, or PPV, is a common term in the realm of Purchasing/Procurement and Finance. For some, PPV is a mechanical metric only, measured and reported on but without any further attention paid to it. What is Purchase Price Variance (PPV)?
Category management is a procurement strategy that involves grouping similar products or services together into categories and managing them as a single unit. This approach can help organizations streamline their procurement processes, negotiate better deals with suppliers, and ultimately save money.
A good KPI will be measurable against some benchmark or criteria. Phone * Company * Job Title * Zip Code * Source Asset Source Download ID. 2 Identify and get access to the right data sources. More advanced ones can structure and clean the data before dumping it into a format for reporting. 3 Get the metrics right.
I have learned that supply chain systems are more complex than I originally thought, and that the relationships between supply chain metrics are nonlinear. These tools allow us to look at sell, source, make, and deliver together. These tools allow us to look at sell, source, make, and deliver together.
Striking the perfect balance between available stock and cost efficiency is key. By leveraging analytics and key performance indicators (KPIs), manufacturers can optimize inventory, reduce waste, and boost profitability. Benchmark against your industry average for best insight. Thats where data-driven decision-making comes in!
With the digitization of the source-to-pay process being a key initiative for many chief procurement officers, to the inherent automation which promises to accelerate innovations such as artificial intelligence (AI), digitization is growing. However, it is fundamental to empowering procurement success in the modern age.
From artificial intelligence to refocusing on procurement, the state of supply chain continued to explode throughout 2016, and you need to understand why. A 2016 Accenture survey, reports RF Gen , explained how more companies are taking advantage of AI benefits through linked supply chains. The State of Supply Chain 2016 Trends.
Supply chain leaders were slow to adopt advances in Big Data Analytics. In parallel, PE/venture capitalists purchased/consolidated network solutions, slashing R&D and delaying investment, reducing industry capabilities. – The Myopic Focus on Cost Reduces Effectiveness. – Technology Evolution Outpaced Adoption.
According to the latest American Shipper benchmark survey, transportation spending increased in 2012 – according to 75 percent of respondents – remaining unscathed by budget cuts. Shockingly, though, companies are failing to invest in the necessary procurement tools to manage spend and optimize their transportation networks.
To monitor supply chain performance, stakeholders of successful companies typically define supply chain metrics that are relevant to the given business and track these KPIs regularly. By setting benchmarks for metrics, analysts can recognize unsettling trends and take preventive measures on time.
Procurement Leaders Webinar. With mounting pressure for organizations to make tangible contributions to Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives, the procurement function must strategize to implement and report their collective efforts. Speakers: Arnaud Malardé, Ivalua | Hélène Vermont, Michelin Group.
Many organizations are focused on driving analytics as a foundation for competitive advantage. Often overlooked in this discussion is the importance of establishing a foundation for analytics through the process of data readiness and data cleansing. First, the user is contacted and the “raw” data is collected from different sources.
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