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Procurement and supply chain management are often used interchangeably—but in practice, the lines between them can blur in ways that create real friction. Misaligned priorities, siloed systems, and unclear ownership can directly impact key performance indicators like cost savings percentage and procurement cycle time.
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.
However, as carbon taxes and emissions reporting requirements continue increasing, supply chain professionals face mounting pressures from inside and outside their organizations to measure and improve performance against new, nebulous sustainability metrics. Sustainability is high on the list of favorite corporate buzzwords.
Simply by searching for a pair of shoes within an intuitive user interface, users are given a seemingly limitless amount of choices each with prices, photos, measurements, and any other metric a shopper could desire. Worse yet, their responsibilities are far more important than purchasing a pair of sporty sneakers.
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.
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.
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.
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. Key spend management suppliers include GEP, Coupa, and Jaggaer.
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.
In today’s dynamic market, procurement is far more than just a buying and purchasing center. Forward-thinking organizations have transformed the department into an untapped gold mine that creates value for the entire end-to-end manufacturing process—from design and sourcing to production and delivery.
Procurement and Supply Chain Management are essential functions that can help companies navigate these challenges, but they are often siloed and operate in separate departments. Their metrics are often misaligned as well – supply chain focuses on service and procurement focuses on the cost of acquiring materials and services.
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.
Manufacturers have always struggled to know their customers. Unfortunately, this means manufacturers face an even greater challenge, as more customers translate into greater use of customer service. But, how do manufacturers turn their focus to the customer experience? Determine What Customers Want Today.
The financial teams, and the Information Technology (IT) groups, did not see alignment gaps, but the supply chain teams felt them and viewed them as a critical performance issue. Layering CRM and SRM on top of ERP made sales and procurement more efficient but less effective in working with trading partners and serving the organization.
Going back to the Industrial Internet of things (IIoT), the use of Internet-connected technology increases risk in manufacturing. billion in 2018 alone, reports Michael Kotelec of Manufacturing.net , and this will bring a strong, robust boost to efficiency and productivity in manufacturing. However, the risk is well worth it.
Data-Driven Decision Making : Using analytics to continuously refine operations. Key Benefits and Business Impact Warehouse optimization offers significant advantages across multiple areas: Cost Reduction: Expect a decrease in operational expenses, lower labor costs, and reduced energy consumption.
Supply chain efficiency is the cornerstone of success and involves the effective management of processes, resources, and technologies from procurement to production, transportation to warehousing. In the automotive sector, manufacturers are simultaneously reducing inventory costs and delivery times.
Ibrahim Al Syed, the director of digital manufacturing at Celanese, was surprisingly forthcoming about how Celanese developed these capabilities at ARC Advisory Groups 29th Annual ARC Industry Leadership Forum. The company has 55 manufacturing sites across the world. We needed to model the data in a way that we can do simple searching.
What Is Strategic Sourcing? A Complete Guide Strategic sourcing is a data-driven approach to securing the best value for your organization from its strategic suppliers. It is called strategic because it replaces traditional ad hoc approaches to sourcing, which were almost entirely focused on cost savings, item by item.
Chances are, if you’re in marketing, sales, or one of the more technical aspects of business, you’ve used predictiveanalytics in some part of your job. But your company doesn’t have to be a retail giant to use predictiveanalytics. using predictiveanalytics? using predictiveanalytics?built
What Contractors Need to Streamline Procurement in 2025 By Ian Summers (pictured) Content Writer 111 Views You’re on-site before dawn, the framing crew’s ready, but the steel shipment’s stuck in limbo, the invoice isn’t approved, and your project management app just pinged you for the fourth time.
Since January, Canadians’ weekly grocery trips have become a real-time indicator for the potential impacts of tariffs as shoppers have responded to threats with a showcase of buying power, prioritizing nationally sourced and manufactured products even before a single tariff was enacted. goods were “ rapidly dropping.”
The perspective of a manufacturing leader is quite different than that of a business leader in logistics. Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values. As shown in Figure 1, the reporting relationships vary.
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.
Ivalua Blog [ivory-search] Weathering Future Disruptions: 8 Steps to Building Supply Chain Resilience February 8, 2023 | | Manufacturing by Doug Keeley In the face of an unprecedented global crisis, Procurement stepped up to become a crucial driving force for business continuity. Work to achieve 100% supply chain visibility.
PwC reports that almost half of assets under management are held by investment firms committed to decarbonization. Similarly, UPS has strong commitments to sustainability and invests in many options, such as alternative fuel vehicles, e-cycles in dense cities, and carbon offsets for purchase with shipping. Buffering creates waste.
Companies often push aside procurement compliance to focus on more pressing issues. No wonder—procurement often gets tedious and burdened with time-consuming processes. However, ignoring procurement compliance is like ignoring a ticking time bomb. Scroll down to find out: What is procurement compliance?
Supply chain management typically does not fit very well with procurement, which is a challenge at the best of times, and can be a disaster in difficult times. It is now a matter of planning the procurement system and the supply management system outside-in and then look at the true demand to minimize the latency.
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.
Keeping track of all your moving parts in manufacturing is a tall order. That’s where manufacturing inventory management software comes in. We’re talking real-time tracking, automated purchasing, and a whole lot less stress. Its your single source of truth for inventory, constantly updated and readily available.
Experts from North Carolina State University and GEP conducted a survey on supply chain, procurement and IT leaders to determine their challenges and priorities, focusing on examining gaps in the supply chain. The study found that these leaders considered the largest gap to be between supply chain and procurement, citing it as a major issue.
Advances in automation, sensors, analytics, and other technologies have made significant changes in manufacturing. A modern manufacturing ERP system will make use of these technologies so that their benefits can be realized. Two major transformational changes have occurred in manufacturing.
Today, I speak at the North American Manufacturing Association, Manufacturing Leadership Conference, in Nashville on the use of data to improve supply chain resilience. Expand the “FLOW” program for logistics information sharing to forecast transportation flow. The result was restatement. My conclusion?
How MES is Shaping the Future of Manufacturing and Boosting Production Efficiency What is a Manufacturing Execution System (MES)? A manufacturing execution system (MES) is a comprehensive, dynamic software system that monitors, tracks, documents, and controls the process of manufacturing goodsfrom raw materials to finished products.
Automotive distributors play a vital role in the automotive supply chain by procuring parts, warehousing them, and then supplying them to OEMs (original equipment manufacturer), retailers or end consumers. Using a supplier portal, distributors can mitigate these risks by quickly checking where alternative parts can be sourced.
Within this setup, an ERP procurement module helps companies make purchases and manage suppliers. Numbers speak louder: According to Procurement Tactics’ top procurement trends in 2025 , 83% of CPOs prioritize digitization. Keep reading to learn: What Is ERP in Procurement?
Multiple manufacturers, multiple relationships, multiple distribution models, multiple contracts. Manifesting this trend is the terminology and concept of Digital Path to Purchase — the omni-channel, tech-focused approach to supporting and acting on a consumer’s purchase.
Value networks do not interoperate and the business leader trying to track shipments must manually sync multiple data sources to get to answers. Truck drivers report that maintenance issues are a constant nightmare. There is not a one-to-one relationship between a container and a purchase order. of the countries’ GDP.
Source: J.P. Global Manufacturing PMI Global Trade as a Barometer Clearly domestic business activity is much larger than international trade. The United States publishes monthly advance economic indicators that can provide more recent and updated information. ManufacturingPurchasing Managers Indexes The J.P.
In earlier articles in this series on GenAI we have discussed its benefits and how it differs from other forms of artificial intelligence, as well as how in future these will converge to create highly sophisticated solutions, not least in procurement. Procurement, too, is vulnerable. Not the least of these are the cybersecurity risks.
Global supply chain disruptions continue to derail manufacturers in the high-tech, automotive, and renewable energy sectors as they grapple with long lead times, higher prices, and electronic component shortages. To mitigate risks, many companies are incorporating alternate parts into their sourcing strategy.
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. Instead, it should be an information exchange virtual platform.
Below are the individual web links and prime takeaway messages from each of our prior postings: Part One : Michael observed that standard sourcing solutions struggle to support direct materials sourcing because of specific challenges in legacy software design. Data and information flow has the context of outside in and inside out.
The chief procurement officer (CPO) is a senior executive responsible for developing and implementing their organization’s procurement policies, procedures, and strategies. Making sure these purchases are of high quality and compliant with relevant laws and regulations also falls under the CPO’s responsibilities.
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