Archive for the ‘IM&S’ Category

Commercial Print – How a font change can lower your printing costs

April 9, 2010

The news about the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay changing the default font in their e-mails has become the viral news of choice this past week – at least in the marketing world. And reactions range from the amused to the amazed. But font substitution and development is nothing new to old media; they’ve all been doing it since the days of Johannes Gutenberg, because in the print business – print efficiency is big business. Many news publications use specially designed versions of classic fonts that enable the companies to fit more print onto a single page.

The Guardian quotes the institution saying that it has “reported that the new font requires about 30% less ink, which costs up to $10,000 per gallon”.

Now that’s something to think about for all marketing and commercial print buyers out there. It also makes one muse over the balance of power between stakeholder and procurement when it comes to really saving money.

Posted in Business, IM&S, Marketing, Strategy | 3 Comments »

Easter weekend and belgian cobbled climbs

April 1, 2010

Stateside, belgian cobblestones are something that goes in and out of vogue for home owners who want to add some classisism to their gardens and driveways. For me belgian cobbles carry another type of grandeur.

Because this weekend – apart from being easter – is also the center piece of the northern classics seasons: the Ronde Van Vlaanderen. In it’s 93rd edition, this classic cycling race features 15 brutal climbs with up to 23% grades laid with belgian cobbles to make matters worse. In rainy conditions it’s like trying to ride up a tilted and bumpy ice hockey rink.

Tom Boonen

Many of the climbs; such as the Koppenberg and the Muur-Kapelmuur are so deeply lodged in the mythology of belgian cycling that there have been great protests when municipalities have proposed to pave the roads with asphalt. In recent years, a few of the climbs have been restored as they had become in all aspects unridable. Talk about a one-time sourcing project; restoring a 100 year old cobbled farm road. In one case – the Paterberg – the climb was built specifically for the race by a itself by a jealous farmer who wanted to have the race go through his front yard.

Sourcing belgian cobbles for cycling racing purposes might be a very regional category in terms of procurement but take a look at any indirect materials and services supply chain and you’ll discover a uniqueness and seasonality that often hinders standardization and volume aggregation initiatives. The devil may lie in the details; but the details is also what makes the world of procurement such an exciting arena.

Posted in IM&S, Personal, Sourcing | 1 Comment »

Procurement function focus: Go broad or go deep

March 16, 2010

The past few weeks I’ve been going through the ever-growing pile of reports that amass on my digital desktop and one thing that strikes me when comparing different best practices is that one re-occurring theme is focus; be it for supplier base consolidation or central co-ordination.

As an avid runner and cyclist I’m rather surprised that this still seems to be an issue for many companies. To succeed one has to specialize – your either a sprinter or a long distance runner. It’s quite simple and universal actually, yet when it comes to IM&S procurement many companies are still viewing their task as a pure support function that needs to be able to deal with any and all issues that may arise. To put things bluntly:

How many category managers for office supplies do we really need?

I doubt that they are viewed as strategically important in any industry sector. In a sense I can feel that any IM&S category that can easily be placed into a category tree should be viewed as un-strategic. In our era of focus, as such they should be viewed as a candidate for outsourcing so I believe it’s prime time to do some make/buy homework.

As companies downsize their supplier base – focusing on closer relationships with strategic suppliers (as leaders do for instance according to this Roland Berger report) – it’s due time that purchasing functions take a good look at IM&S outsourcing possibilities; go deep my friends and let others do the more un-strategic work.

Posted in IM&S, Organization, Outsourcing | Leave a Comment »

Unbloating IM&S catalogs

August 17, 2009

Bloated gadgets aside, this recent Economist column entitled “When Less Is More” got me thinking in more than one direction.

Especially the poignant and precise quote from Antoine de Saint Exupéry which sums up the argument: “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

In my mind this is something that all purchasers in the indirect area should take to their hearts. It perfectly sums up why there is no need for unmanaged 5 million SKU catalogs that need to be browsed using a 25 000 node UNSPSC tree and – ultimately – forces the end user to become a maverick.

Next time you’re looking over your indirect contracts – don’t try to find stuff that is missing, try to weed away the stuff that (nearly) no one is buying.

Posted in Change Management, eprocurement, IM&S, procure-to-pay cycle, Procurement, Supplier Management, Supplier Performance | Leave a Comment »

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