G20 FAILS TO AGREE CLIMATE CHANGE PACKAGE - RISK OF EXTREME WEATHER CONTINUES TO RISE
Procurement With Purpose
July 27, 2021
Reminders of what climate change means to the earth have been coming thick and fast in recent weeks, particularly in terms of our weather. The people of Northern Ireland – usually one of the wettest parts of the United Kingdom – saw its temperature record beaten three in a week, with 31.4°C on July 22nd.
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Tags: Procurement, Climate Change
CONSULTING FIRM PROXIMA MOVES INTO THE SUSTAINABLE PROCUREMENT SPACE
Procurement With Purpose
July 19, 2021
It feels like procurement consulting firm Proxima has been around forever, but actually it is “only” some 25 years or so. The firm morphed from an initial cost reduction focus to an outsourced service model, but in more recent years, the business has become one of the leading international consulting firms working across the procurement space.
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Tags: Sustainability, Supply Chain, Procurement
PROCUREMENT AND DIVERSITY - GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS
Procurement With Purpose
July 11, 2021
Whilst issues around climate change and carbon tend to dominate the “sustainable procurement” agenda, we have always positioned “procurement with purpose” in the broadest possible way to incorporate issues around social and economic wider value as well as the critical environmental areas.
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Tags: Procurement, Climate Change, Diversity and Inclusion
CAN THE UK HIT ITS EMISSIONS TARGETS?
Procurement With Purpose
June 29, 2021
The UK government has committed to reducing emissions in the country by two thirds by 2030. But is there any chance of that target being hit?
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Tags: Sustainability, Procurement, Climate Change
BUYING SOCIAL - A VALUABLE AND INSIGHTFUL NEW GUIDE FROM THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION (COPY)
Procurement With Purpose
June 03, 2021
In many countries, public sector buyers are now looking to achieve more than just a “good product at a fair price”. Driven by central government as well as local politicians, the aim is to use public procurement to drive wider “social value”. That definition can cover issues from global concerns such as emissions or modern slavery, to much more local challenges - supporting employment in a town or city, or encouraging minority-owned businesses to bid for work in their locality.
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Tags: Sustainability, Procurement
May 26, 2021 AN INSPIRING SPORTING SUSTAINABILITY STORY
Procurement With Purpose
May 26, 2021
Here are two good pub quiz sports questions.
· Which professional football team is the most environmentally conscious in the UK (and quite possibly the world)?
· And which team in the four English top divisions represents the smallest settlement (town, city or similar)?
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Tags: Sustainability, Procurement
THE KEY STAKEHOLDERS FOR SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
Procurement With Purpose
May 17, 2021
Virtually all the senior procurement leaders we have interviewed for articles here have stressed the importance of working successfully with key stakeholders to develop successful procurement with purpose (PwP) programmes.
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Tags: Sustainability, Procurement
LOANHOOD – CAN FASHION AND SUSTAINABILITY BE COMPATIBLE?
Procurement With Purpose
May 06, 2021
“How did you first get interested in business purpose and sustainability?” That is a question we’ve asked everyone interviewed for this website. Jade McSorley gave perhaps the most unusual answer.
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Tags: Sustainability, Procurement
NINIAN WILSON – STANDING TALL WITH VODAFONE’S THREE PILLARS (PART 1)
Procurement With Purpose
April 21, 2021
Ninian Wilson is a well-known leader in the procurement world, a regular in the CIPS “Procurement Power List” and held senior roles from an early age at British Gas, Cable & Wireless, and the Royal Mail. He joined Vodafone back in 2009 and is now the Group Procurement Director and is also the CEO of the firm’s procurement company, so “I’m in the fortunate position that everyone in supply chain management in Vodafone reports into us in Luxembourg”.
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Tags: Sustainability, Procurement, Diversity and Inclusion
BEWARE THE GREENWASH! MARK CARNEY UNDER FIRE FOR EMISSIONS CLAIM
Procurement With Purpose
April 15, 2021
Greenwash (v)- “the process of conveying a false impression or providing misleading information about how a company's products, process or practices are more environmentally sound than they really are. To make people believe that your company is doing more to protect the environment than it really is”. (Investopedia)
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Tags: Sustainability, Procurement, Renewable Energy
April 6, 2021 WORKING WITH CHINA - PURPOSEFUL BUSINESS ISN'T ALWAYS EASY
Procurement With Purpose
April 06, 2021
This “purposeful business” thing isn’t as easy as it looks, as many large businesses are finding. The latest challenge comes as China is increasingly the subject of international criticism for its alleged treatment of the Muslim Uighur population in the “autonomous” north-western region of Xinjiang.
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Tags: Procurement
TESCO, HSBC AND DANONE IN THE PURPOSEFUL BUSINESS SPOTLIGHT
Procurement With Purpose
March 25, 2021
One of the core beliefs of this website and our “procurement with purpose” initiative generally is that business can and should be a force for positive change in terms of wider environmental, social and economic issues. That’s where we differ from themore extreme campaigners in areas such as climate change or evenmodern slavery.
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Tags: Sustainability, Procurement, Climate Change
ARE THE UNITED NATIONS SDGS ACTUALLY APPROPRIATE?
Procurement With Purpose
March 19, 2021
The United Nations has considered issues such as the environment as part of its brief for fifty years or so, going back to the 1972 UN Conference on Human Environment (the Stockholm Conference), which was called to tackle the pollution caused by global industrialisation during the 1960s and 70s. In more recent years, as the world tries to address these tough issues, the organisation has increased its efforts in terms of greater scope and more activity.
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Tags: Sustainability, Procurement
RUNNING TOWARDS NET ZERO WITH MARK SMITH OF BP
Procurement With Purpose
March 03, 2021
Deciding the right things to do from a sustainability or procurement with purpose viewpoint isn’t necessarily a hard task in itself. However, in the world of energy companies – particularly oil and gas – it is somewhat harder to excel when you’re dealing with exploration, extraction, processing and distribution.
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Tags: Sustainability, Procurement, Renewable Energy
THE POWER OF PROCUREMENT WITH PURPOSE
Procurement With Purpose
February 23, 2021
It is possible and desirable for organisations to act within their own four walls in the spirit of sustainable and purposeful business. If they use natural resources, they can do so in a sustainable fashion. They should treat staff properly, and ensure that modern slavery, discrimination or human rights abuses are not taking place internally. They can look to recruit from disadvantaged or minority groups.
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Tags: Sustainability, Supply Chain, Procurement
THE ECONOMICS OF BIODIVERSITY – CAN WE PUT A VALUE ON AN ELEPHANT?
Procurement With Purpose
February 15, 2021
Earlier this month, the Dasgupta Review was published. “The Economics of Biodiversity” is an independent review representing “a landmark contribution to our understanding of the relationship between nature and our economy”, according to Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England.
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Tags: Sustainability, Procurement, Diversity and Inclusion
Top Five 2021 Key Procurement and Supply Chain Trends
LinkedIn
January 25, 2021
For many, the reality of our climate emergency was brought into sharp focus in 2020, as a result of, and even prior to, the escalation of the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, the worldwide financial sector understands that the investment risk of global warming is real and even before the pandemic, they had started to adjust their behaviour accordingly. This means that Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) frameworks have gone beyond a simple tick-box exercise.
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Tags: Supply Chain, Procurement, COVID19
POSITIVE IMPACT COMMERCE – AIMING TO SET STANDARDS FOR SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
Procurement With Purpose
January 20, 2021
Let’s face it, there weren’t many positive aspects to 2020. But I did get the chance to meet and interview some really interesting, passionate, and smart people who care about various elements of the Procurement with Purpose agenda. Unfortunately, since February that has been online rather than over a beer or coffee, but you can’t have everything.
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Tags: Sustainability, Procurement, CSR
SOCIAL VALUE AND PUBLIC PROCUREMENT - WARNING NOTES PART 2
Procurement With Purpose
January 12, 2021
We talked in part 1 about the risk that selecting suppliers based to a large extent on their “social value” offer might lead to less-then-competent firms winning public sector work. That is true even without considering the spectre of fraud and corruption, which is my second area of concern.
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Tags: Sustainability, Procurement, CSR
Supplier Diversity Will Be A Primary Goal for CPOs in 2021
LinkedIn
January 09, 2021
This year, COVID-19 has disrupted businesses and global economies in extraordinary ways, unmasking a lack of resilience in our global supply chains. In fact, supply chains are being severely tested as they respond to the disruption of the pandemic, which has shone a light on under-investment in supply chain tools, technology, processes and people.
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Tags: Sustainability, Procurement, COVID19
Why Procurement with Purpose is Set to be the ‘New Normal’
LinkedIn
December 28, 2020
The shock of COVID-19 has been felt all around the world, and it is having a disruptive impact on global supply chains. To this point, consulting and advisory firm Deloitte has questioned whether COVID-19 will become a “black swan” event that forces companies, and industries, to rethink and transform their supply chain model.
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Tags: Supply Chain, Procurement, COVID19
OLIVER HURREY – DRIVING COLLABORATION IN SUSTAINABLE PROCUREMENT
Procurement With Purpose
December 09, 2020
For many of us, awareness of environmental and sustainability issues in a business context has come relatively recently. But for Oliver Hurrey, it has been at the centre of pretty much his entire 20-year working life.
He got into the field first of all by organising events for the sustainability industry, then worked for 2degrees in various roles for some 10 years. 2degrees helps businesses work together through digital platforms and events, all aimed at driving sustainable business. He worked with huge firms such as Asda, Unilever and GSK, helping them “communicate sustainability goals to their supply chains”, he says.
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Tags: Sustainability, Procurement
A VEGAN FEAST ANYONE? GAUTHIER POINTS THE WAY
Procurement With Purpose
December 01, 2020
Some positives have emerged from the Covid pandemic. Whole new markets have been created from nothing, and organisations have shown commendable creativity and resilience in finding ways to survive and continue to trade. Those positive qualities will be needed for some time to come as we look to recover from the economic shocks we’ve seen in 2020, driven by lockdowns and restrictions on movement and activity.
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Tags: Sustainability, Procurement, Business Continuity
CONSERVATION AND TECHNOLOGY ALIGNED – AN INTERVIEW WITH ALISON SMITH
Procurement With Purpose
November 24, 2020
Alison Smith’s interest in and commitment to conservation issues was sparked by a lifetime of international travel (her parents served with the UK Air Force in various countries) and a love of ocean diving. Visiting wonderful locations such as the Galapagos and Madagascar made her realise how fragile elements of our natural world really are. “You see it with island ecologies – they are a barometer for our effect on nature. They are particularly vulnerable to the way in which humans can change the ecosystem, and they will be amongst the first hit by rising sea levels”.
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Tags: AI, Emerging Technology, Sustainability, Supply Chain
ANIMAL WELFARE ISSUES - AND WHO KNEW ABOUT DENMARK'S FUR FARMS?
Procurement With Purpose
November 17, 2020
The Covid pandemic has taught us many things, but one of the most surprising emerged last week with the news that mink kept on farms in Denmark have developed a new and potentially very dangerous type of “mutant coronavirus”, which has spread to humans. (Perhaps the animals really are trying to wipe out humankind?) That has led to restrictions on people from that country travelling to the UK, and other precautions are being taken with similar outbreaks reported in the Netherlands, Denmark, Spain, Sweden, Italy and the US.
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Tags: Supply Chain, Procurement, COVID19
UK WATER FIRMS CRITICISED FOR WORSENING PERFORMANCE – A WARNING TO “WILD SWIMMERS”!
Procurement With Purpose
November 11, 2020
One of my close friends, along with her family and others, regularly swims in the Thames – her partner is a serious triathlete and trains on the Henley to Maidenhead stretch. I’ve never been tempted to join them, being a poor swimmer and not fond of freezing water, but there are other dangers as well, as you might guess.
In October, the UK’s Environment Agency (EA) issued its annual assessment of the nine privatised water and sewerage companies, and its Chair, Emma Howard Boyd, said their performance continued to be unacceptable. Water companies in England were responsible for their worst levels of environmental pollution for five years in 2019, so matters appear to be getting worse rather than better.
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Tags: Sustainability, Procurement
CIPS PANEL DEBATES PROCUREMENT WITH PURPOSE – COLLABORATION OR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE?
Procurement With Purpose
November 06, 2020
CIPS (the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply) held its annual conference last week – virtually, of course, and free for members. 4000 people registered and whilst not that many tuned in on the day, it does highlight a major positive of virtual rather than live events – the opportunity for more people to enjoy high quality content without paying a large fee!
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Tags: Supply Chain, Procurement
MARS SIMPLIFIES PALM OIL SUPPLY CHAIN - GOOD NEWS FOR THE ORANGUTANS?
Procurement With Purpose
October 20, 2020
Earlier this month, confectionery giant Mars announced that as part of its “Palm Positive Plan” it will reduce its number of palm oil suppliers, removing from the supply chain those that do not meet the required sustainability criteria. The firm is simplifying its supply chain, reducing the number of mills it uses from 1500 to fewer than 100 by 2021, and then aiming to halve that again in 2022.
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Tags: Sustainability, Supply Chain, Procurement
AVOCADO FARMING AND HUMAN RIGHTS HIT THE HEADLINES
Procurement With Purpose
October 13, 2020
Personally, I really don’t like avocados and my wife is actually allergic to the strange green fruit. But they have become de rigeur for the Millennial generation, with crushed avocado on toast apparently the equivalent of my generation’s cheese and pickle sandwich.
But these days there appears to be a dark side to pretty much anything we buy, and an investigation by the Sunday Times takes us into avocado-related procurement with purpose territory.
Actually, this case is an example of my two personal interests overlapping in terms of procurement practice and behaviour. As well as the purpose and sustainable procurement agenda, I have been focusing on things that go wrong in the procurement world, with my book Bad Buying — How Organisations Waste Billions Through Failures, Frauds, and F*ck-ups published last week by Penguin Business. And this avocado case study shows how procurement with purpose issues can flip into “bad buying” in a very real sense.
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Tags: Procurement
UK GOVERNMENT EMPHASISES SOCIAL VALUE IN PROCUREMENT
Procurement With Purpose
October 07, 2020
With many of the public sector procurement stories in the UK recently featuring apparently strange pandemic-related supplier selection decisions and allegations of nepotism, it is good to be able to report a positive story from Whitehall.
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Tags: Supply Chain, Procurement, COVID19
REGISTER NOW FOR VIZIBL COLLABORATE & OUR PROCUREMENT WITH PURPOSE ROUNDTABLE
Procurement whit Purpose
September 27, 2020
On Wednesday this week (September 30th, 2020), the two founders of the Procurement with Purpose website (and movement), Mark Perera and Peter Smith, are participating in a session on the topic during the Vizibl Collaborate 2020 virtual conference.
Vizibl is the software firm founded and run by Mark, previously one of the founders of Procurement Leaders, and the line-up for the event is very impressive, with big name speakers such as Marcel Vollmer (ex SAP CPO and now a partner at BCG), Clive Heal, Detlef Schultz from Vodafone and many others from academia, the consulting and solution provider worlds plus top procurement execs.
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Tags: Supply Chain, Procurement
FRANK OMARE – DRIVING VALUE FROM SUSTAINABLE PROCUREMENT
Procurement with Purpose
September 22, 2020
Frank Omare wants to make it clear that unlike many people who just fell into the profession, “I found procurement. I saw it as an exciting and interesting place to be”. As a qualified chemical engineer, he worked in that discipline, then moved into manufacturing management roles in the food industry, before seeing that procurement and supply chain was where he wanted to focus his attention.
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Tags: Sustainability, Procurement
HERVÉ LE FAOU OF HEINEKEN - A REAL SENSE OF PURPOSE
Procurement with Purpose
September 15, 2020
Moving from the vision back to current activities, Le Faou is one of the co-leads of Heineken’s sustainability programme. The firm has cut carbon emissions from its breweries almost in half since 2008 and has committed to using 70% renewable energy within ten years. “Regenerative agriculture” is another priority, which in areas such as barley cultivation looks to improve the soil, develop healthier water systems and increased biodiversity, as well as improving the lot of farmers. Heineken also is working to make logistics and cooling greener too, which matters as the firm has no less than 150,000 of its green fridges out in the marketplace!
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Tags: Innovation, Sustainability
A VIRTUOUS REVOLUTION
Procurement with Purpose
September 11, 2020
Remember the days before Coronavirus when climate change was the great threat to humanity? With our eyes now firmly fixed on the unfolding impacts of the pandemic it is easy to overlook, but it hasn’t gone away, and urgent change is needed.
If COVID-19 has done any good, it is that a number of sacred cows have been killed regarding what is possible in how we live and work, such as the need for 9-5 office attendance, ad hoc convenience shopping and the need to use cars constantly - all debunked and the air cleaner for it. But these effects only go part way to achieving sustainability goals, even if we did retain those lockdown habits. Is there a better way?
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Tags: Sustainability, COVID19
PAUL POLIZZOTTO – ENTREPRENEUR AND SOCIAL BENEFIT VISIONARY
Procurement with Purpose
June 20, 2020
Paul Polizzotto isn’t talking about the coronavirus, but about less specific yet very real threats. “People are getting angry, about climate change, about healthcare, inequality”, so time is short to address these challenges. “Rome is burning”, he claims.
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Tags: Procurement, Supply Chain, Sustainability
NANDINI BASUTHAKUR - LEADING WITH PROCUREMENT LEADERS
Procurement with Purpose
June 17, 2020
Nandini Basuthakur is arguably the best-connected individual in the global procurement world. She has personally worked in many countries, and held some significant jobs, including her current role as Chief Executive Officer of Procurement Leaders (PL).
Nandini was finding the constraints of social distancing challenging when we spoke to her for this interview. “I’m a sociable person”, she said. At PL, the world’s largest procurement networking and intelligence platform, she is used to constant face to face contact with colleagues, as well as PL’s unrivalled network of global CPOs and their senior teams.
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Tags: Procurement, Supply Chain, Sustainability
What is Innovation?
LinkedIn
October 01, 2019
I saw this quote from Bill Gates and it really resonated with me. It’s something that one of the best business minds in the world identified a long time ago, and yet we still struggle so much with understanding what innovation entails.
And this led me to think of why is it that when it comes to the word innovation, it conjures up a world of complication along with feelings of confusion and frustration. Do we over complicate things? Do we miss the fundamental aspects of what innovation should involve? Do we even know what we mean when we utilise the word innovation?
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Tags: Innovation
Procurement Leaders
Procurement Leaders
April 25, 2019
Founding Editor of Procurement Leaders Magazine 2005-2008.
Procurement Leaders Quarterly (PLQ) and Monitor are publications designed to inspire, inform and educate procurement chiefs and their teams on the latest trends shaping the function.
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Tags: Procurement
Why & How to Run Your 1st Supplier Day: Pearson's Story
linkedin
December 20, 2018
Ask any supplier what they want most and the majority will probably give you the same answer – namely, being involved earlier in the decision-making process and also, crucially, given a true understanding of what it is that a company is trying to achieve
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Tags: Supply Chain, Procurement
Where I see Procurement in 2025
LinkedIn
June 28, 2018
Organisations need two things to thrive. Growth and speed. Miss these and you will miss the boat. Today I want to look at how technological advances will enable procurement teams to automate and augment their current transactional workload and allow them to deliver measurable growth and speed.
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Tags: Innovation, Procurement, Supply Chain
Where I see Procurement in 2025
linkedin
June 26, 2018
Organisations need two things to thrive. Growth and speed. Miss these and you will miss the boat. Today I want to look at how technological advances will enable procurement teams to automate and augment their current transactional workload and allow them to deliver measurable growth and speed.
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Tags: Innovation, Supply Chain, Procurement
Calling Female Tech Founders! €50.000 Startup Prize at the Arch Summit
linkedin
March 08, 2018
Arch Summit’s Women in Technology competition aims to help profile the awesome female-led technology startups with leading corporate innovators & venture capitalist.
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Tags: Innovation, Startups, Procurement
Six Supplier Collaboration Takeaways from Munich.
linkedin
May 19, 2017
I’ve been lucky enough to be the facilitator of Old St Lab’s whistle-stop world tour on supplier collaboration. So far we’ve held executive roundtable sessions in San Francisco (write-up here), London (write-up here) and we’ve just wrapped up another session in Munich.
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Tags: Supply Chain, Procurement
Old St Labs partners with Vodafone to drive ambitious supplier collaboration & innovation agenda
linkedin
March 07, 2017
Hopefully, you’ve seen Old St Lab’s press release announcing our partnership with Vodafone, if you missed it, you can get it here.
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Tags: Innovation, Supply Chain, Procurement
Formula 1 Reinvents Itself Every Year — It’s time for Procurement to Follow Suit
linkedin
June 15, 2016
Last week I attended the Docusign Momentum event in London and was blown away by a presentation former SAP CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe gave entitled “Re-invention from a Position of Strength — Leading through the 4th Industrial Revolution.
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Tags: Procurement, Leadership
The Hard Things About Supplier Relationships
linkedin
April 04, 2016
One of the best books I’ve read in the last few years is The Hard Things About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz the co-founder and General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. In a departure from most management books I’ve come across, Horowitz steers clear of the ‘management made easy’ spiel and instead opts for a far more personal approach to the topic highlighting accounts of his personal challenges in the corporate arena.
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Tags: Supply Chain, Procurement
Memo to the CEO: Suppliers Are Key to Growth
Medium
March 13, 2015
You have no doubt heard the phrase that the customer is the key to a business’s success. Making sure the customer’s happy, providing ways for the customer to interact with sales and customer service staff and the continuance of supplying helpful services and useful products are all parts of this success. However, there’s one key factor that could cause a breakdown in a business’s success regardless of how it treats its customers and that is suppliers. Suppliers are key to growth.
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Tags: Innovation, Procurement, Supply Chain
Engineering a Revolution at Work - Podcast
linkedin
January 16, 2015
Business innovators please take the time to listen to this podcast from Simon Sinofsky, on the evolution of work. Then reflect to tools & approach your team using day to day...... there might be an better way
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Tags: Procurement
Favorite App of 2014 - Slack
linkedin
December 13, 2014
This selection was simple. Slack is simply awesome.
At Old St Labs we don't use email internally. We use Slack. We keep email for our lovely customers & future customers.
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Tags: Procurement
My Favourite Quotes of 2014
linkedin
December 12, 2014
My Favourite Quotes of 2014
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Tags: Procurement, Leadership
NINIAN WILSON – STANDING TALL WITH VODAFONE’S THREE PILLARS (PART 2)
Procurement Leaders
Illuminating The Future: Evolution of Supplier Relationships
Mark Perera - What's the case for Relationship Management?
PROCUREMENT WITH PURPOSE ROUNDTABLE
Sustainability through Supplier Collaboration: From green ideal to commercial imperative
Keynote speaker on the future of procurement
