For many, web-based trading is the future for public sector procurement. While it seems inevitable in some sense that e-procurement will be more accepted as a way of doing efficient, governable public sector purchasing, the recent recognition by the European Commission signals an important step.

It turns out that living side by side with economic superpowers, emerging or otherwise, causes friction. Though at the moment there's a lot of careful wording being deployed, this week has seen the question of how Europe will respond to perceived protectionism in several key foreign markets blown wide open.

By definition a value chain is the process of adding value to raw materials. Optimising the use of these raw materials in the creation of products and services is central to business strategy.

Would it surprise you to read that only 1 in 4 procurement managers say they would reject a potential supplier based on failure to meet green criteria? Maybe you think that’s even higher than you thought – if the supplier is low visibility, if the industry is one where customers tend to put less weight on sustainability, you’d expect a less enthusiastic attitude.

It was interesting last week to see the NHS National Programme for IT described as "one of the great procurement disasters of all time” by commentators in the press last week. This prompted me to think more broadly about the problems of managing capital programmes of all types.

We all know the saying “Time is Money”, but how often when involved in making procurement decisions is time taken into account? Henry Ford proposed in 1926 that “Time waste is more important than material waste in that there can be no salvage”. In other words if reading this is a complete waste of time to you, your time will never be reimbursed! On the other hand, if you were to print this out, you may be able to recycle the paper and salvage some material!

On the face of it, 5% savings over 12 months isn’t bad, but try telling that to anyone whose money goes towards the British Queen’s £32.1m annual upkeep. HRH may be cutting costs, but perhaps what we need here is spend management.

Andrew Horstead, risk analyst at energy and carbon management specialists Utilyx, looks at energy and carbon management in face of higher energy prices. This blog is his second in a series on managing energy contracts.

A recent NHS Confederation poll found that 63% of its members see cost savings and finances as their biggest challenge. However, there is at least one area where they can take immediate action which will yield savings and increase efficiency and that’s in supply chain management.

Thames Water’s £2.5bn procurement outsourcing deal with Efficio isn’t just significant for its size – it’s also notable for the boldness with which the UK water company has embraced the concept.