Today, Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is a constituent of every procurement textbook and used by professional category managers as a methodology and philosophy which looks beyond the price of a purchase to include many other costs along the entire life-cycle of a product or service.

A new think-tank has tasked itself to find the answer, starting with some insights into the current structure and, often-misplaced, activity around SRM.

Is this the end of category management? If so, what lies beyond the great legacy of the last 15 years?

The use of information technologies can both free up procurement professionals’ time from transactional activities and, indirectly, can help them recognise the strategic aspects of some procurement activities that feed into strategic sourcing.

Often the pressure to seek innovation from our external supply base comes from senior leadership, often the CEO. A recent request prompted me to ask my colleagues and see if there was common approach to the topic.

In a hit parade of the top procurement issues over the last 5 years supply risk management would be probably #1.

The quest to deliver to the top line means new questions are being asked of suppliers and of procurement functions themselves.

Food companies could and should have used ePurchasing technology to prevent the risk that now threatens their business.

A core element of supply chain management is the axiom that every involved person or department forms part of an end-to-end process, working with business partners on the upstream as well as on the downstream site.

Supply chain agility has received increasing attention over the last decade due to two important developments...