12 things you need to know this week
What’s been top of the news agenda?
Facebook, Tesla, John Lewis, and the Renault-Nissan alliance have all made headlines, so we’ve gathered all you need to know into one handy weekly news digest. We’re useful like that…
Crowdsourcing (UK)
- One of the UK’s biggest organisations is considering using crowdsourcing for indirect procurement to help drive innovation from suppliers
- The John Lewis Partnership believes that crowdsourcing can help to identify a very specific problem, issue or opportunity and gives a platform to offer a prize for the best solution
Read more on Supply Management
Top Procurement Challenges
- An Ardent Partners report has highlighted that the biggest challenge for Chief Procurement Officers in the coming year is staff or talent
- 57% of CPOs believe that flat headcount, stagnant skills capabilities, and / or greater staff responsibility represent their greatest challenge in 2014
Read more on CPO Rising
Australian Industry Changes
- A study by IBISWorld has revealed the expected industry patterns for the coming financial year
- Industries expected to rise over the year include Online Education, Building Societies and Mortgages; industries expected to fall over the year include Grain-sheep or grain-beef cattle farming, Automotive electrical component manufacturing and Petroleum refining and petroleum fuel manufacturing
Read more on IBISWorld
Procurement Relationships (UK)
- The new CPO of Fujitsu for UK and Ireland, Clive Rees, has stated that the focus of Procurement shouldn’t just be on cost reduction, but on relationship management too
- He has encouraged his team to be seen at stakeholder meetings, change the way the Procurement function is viewed internally and get more value from internal and external relationships
Global Fraud Survey (UK)
- EY’s Global Fraud Survey has found that more than one in 10 firms globally have experienced a “significant fraud” in the past two years
- However, when surveyed, 46 per cent of respondents in the UK said offering entertainment to customers to win or retain business was acceptable
Procurement Alliances (Europe)
- The procurement function of the Renault-Nissan alliance has reported savings of €1.036 billion (£824 million; US$1.4bn) savings in 2013
- The Alliance is looking for further synergies in future, but Purchasing was the biggest contributor for cost reductions, cost avoidance and revenue increases last year
Automotive Industry
- Tesla are set to become one of the major players in the US automotive industry, according to Morgan Stanley
- Four states are vying for the right to be home to the company’s US $5bn factory and General Motors have even begun to look at Tesla’s culture and success to see if they can replicate it
Read more at Sourcing Guy Blog
Supply Chain Data
- An article on Supply Chain 24/7 has assessed how to turn Supply Chain data into actionable information
- According to the article, there are three main ways to use the data – Reporting, Scorecarding and Benchmarking, each providing different levels of information for the organisation to use
Read more at Supply Chain 24/7
Questioning in Leadership
- Asking the right questions is a valuable skill for leaders to have, but just as critical is how the questions are asked
- Asking questions in the right way can engage and motivate people, but equally asking them in the wrong way can create a negative mood or blame culture
- HBR gives an insight into five questions that leaders shouldn’t ask, and the way that they can phrase these questions to get the best answers
Read more at Harvard Business Review
Business Breakdown
- Coles has admitted to threatening suppliers with sanction if they refused to pay to take part in a new supply chain program
- The Federal Trade Commission has accused T-Mobile of illegally earning hundreds of millions of dollars by overbilling customers
- Europe’s privacy regulators are investigating whether Facebook broke local privacy laws when it conducted a highly criticised social experiment in January 2012
Read more at Spend Matters
