The White House Talks Supply Chain: When Supply Risk Becomes a National Security Issue (Part 2)
In the first post in this series we covered and quoted many of the announcement factoids and underpinnings of the new National Strategy for Global Supply Chain Security announced by the White House last week. We’ll continue to share so…
The White House Talks Supply Chain: When Supply Risk Becomes a National Security Issue (Part 1)
For someone who has been researching and covering supply chain risk for a decade, it’s extremely refreshing to see what once were esoteric topics become mainstream, albeit due to avoidable — and unavoidable, in certain cases — traged…
IBM Closes Emptoris Deal: New Chapter/Technology Outlook for Venerable Spend Management Player
Earlier today, IBM announced it had completed its acquisition of Emptoris (for Spend Matters initial coverage of the acquisition announcement, click here, here, and here). Curiously, IBM appears to have closed the deal more quickly tha…
Apple, Social Responsibility and Procurement: More CSR Pesticides or Going Organic? (Part 1)
Apple is the Bill Clinton of the high tech industry. On one hand, the bigger-than-life tech giant is put on a pedestal of excellence; a representative example of what is possible when innovation and supply chain brilliance come togethe…
Basware Acquires First Businesspost: Supplier Network Consolidation Continues
Last week, Basware announced it had acquired First Businesspost, GmbH (1stbp) , a German e-invoicing supplier network operator and software provider. Peter Smith initially covered the news over on Spend Matters UK/Europe, including cal…
New Research: Stop Waiting for a Supplier Network Revolution — P2P, Supplier Management and Beyond
Spend Matters is excited to announce the publication of our latest Perspective: Getting Past the Existential Connectivity Funk: Stop Waiting for the Supplier Network Revolution. Here at Spend Matters, most of our research titles are q…
A Simplified Purchase-to-Pay Maturity Model: A Short Rant and Context (Before the Good Stuff)
As a former consultant, I’ve spent more than my fair share of time coming up with maturity models for this and that. I’ve found over the years that in many functional areas as well as the technologies that support them, the nuance between one step and another in a various maturity framework might seem small, [...]
Friday Rant: The Personal Benefits of Writing
I write a lot. Probably more than 99% of people I know. For a while, I thought a lot of my output had to do with really enjoying the intellectual and analytical exercise of putting thoughts on paper. From casual blogs, essays and rants…
20 Ways the Falling Euro May Impact Sourcing, Procurement and Supply Chain Strategies (Part 3)
Please click here for Part 1 and Part 2 of this series.
As our analysis of 20 ways in which the falling Euro and Eurozone volatility might impact sourcing, procurement and supply chain strategies continues, we’ll turn our attention to…
Adding the Eurozone Crisis to the Reasons Why Local Sourcing Makes Economic Sense
Before the New Year, the FT ran an article titled Supply chain: Inflation encourages trend to ‘near-source’ production. The piece does a decent job of summarizing some of the major reasons that organizations are evaluating local sourci…


