By Jason Busch on March 10, 2010
On Tuesday, March 9th, First Index, a supplier-pays marketplace and former direct materials sourcing and supply chain consultancy, closed its doors. First Index had received significant funding from LMS Capital, a UK-based firm, and Bessemer ventures…
Posted in Business | Tagged First Index, Interviews, LMS Capital, Manufacturing, Sourcing, Spend Management, supply chain
By Jason Busch on February 25, 2010
Earlier today, the news broke that government officials in the US, EU and Japan recently searched the offices of a number of Toyota suppliers that may be involved in cartel-like activities. According to The Wall Street Journal?s summary, ?Investigato…
Posted in Business, Featured Posts | Tagged Denso, FBI raid, Japan, keiretsu, Sourcing, Spend Management, Sumitomo, supply risk, Toyota, Yazaki
By Brian Sommer on February 17, 2010
Not every freelancer is one by choice. The economy has thrust millions into the freelance economy. Technology can help some of them but what about the inadvertent freelancer? Who’s helping them?
Posted in Trends & Concepts | Tagged Business Services, Consulting, Current Affairs, Elance, Employment, Freelancer, Marketplaces, oDesk, Professional Services, Selling Professional Services, Sourcing, Think About IT
By Jason Busch on February 12, 2010
The procurement outsourcing industry — like nearly all BPO segments — is founded on big numbers (volume, savings, revenue, headcount, etc.) and somewhat variable margin; sometimes low, sometimes surprisingly high. It’s also an industry with surpris…
Posted in Business | Tagged BPO, business process outsourcing, Outsourcing, procurement, Sourcing
By Jason Busch on February 11, 2010
You’ve got to admire Walmart for its procurement chutzpah. Or, (staying with the Yiddish theme for a minute), perhaps Walmart’s been more of a chazar in its approach. A colleague introduced me to this phrase, which is loosely translated as “a pig ? a…
Posted in Business | Tagged China, Global sourcing, Li & Fung, private label, Sourcing, Wal-Mart
By Jason Busch on February 10, 2010
I found a recent article by Dan Hannon at Purchasing rather insightful in its examination of some of Oracle’s strategy to eke out every ounce of shareholder value possible through its acquisition of Sun. According to Hannon, “On a conference call ? O…
Posted in Business, Featured Posts | Tagged Manufacturing, oracle, Sourcing, Sun, supply chain
By Jason Busch on January 28, 2010
Supply Chain Digest recently ran a feature highlighting
an academic paper that suggests China should let the RMB appreciate
10% relative to the dollar. The story suggests that “if such a move
were to happen, it would effectively increase the…
Posted in Business | Tagged China, currency, exchange rates, Sourcing, trade, yuan
By Jason Busch on January 25, 2010
A recent post over on E-
Sourcing Forum got me thinking that far too few procurement
organizations are willing to insert themselves aggressively into the process of sourcing employee benefits. They would rather leave benefits sourcing to HR, and…
Posted in Business | Tagged Employee benefit, Health insurance, Human resources, pharma plans, Sourcing
By Jason Busch on January 22, 2010
I’ve written about SAP’s Frictionless acquisition countless times on
Spend Matters — what it meant initially, the advantages it provided
SAP, its disadvantages, and how the platform would ultimately become
part of a broader On-Demand strate…
Posted in Software | Tagged erp, Frictionless, frictionless commerce, SaaS, sap, Sourcing
By R "Ray" Wang on January 18, 2010
The Era Of CIO Dictatorships Ends With 2009
Less than 5 years ago, the mighty CIO controlled his or her organization’s destiny by shepherding multi-million dollar projects and ruling with a fist. Business leaders had to pay homage to the IT team and they hated it. The economic crisis, advent of the cloud and SaaS, and [...]
Posted in Featured Posts, Trends & Concepts | Tagged 2010, application development, Architecture, business drivers, Business Models, Business process, change, CIO, Cloud Computing, disruptive, disruptive technologies, enteprise architecture, enterprise applications, enterprise apps, Enterprise apps strategy, Enterprise architecture, Enterprise Business Apps, enterprise software, future of business, information management, Infrastructure, macro conditions, next gen cio, pace of technology adoption, procurement, project management, R "Ray" Wang;, SaaS, security, skill shifts, software as a service, Sourcing, user strategy, vendor management, workplace dynamics
