The Sourcing Garden

Capgemini Launches Innovative On-Demand,
Procurement-as-a-Service Solution through Acquisition of IBX
Capgemini acquires purchasing solutions provider IBX to deliver industry’s first end-to-end
solution for managing global sourcing strategies
PARIS and STOCKHOLM, February 2, 2010 – Capgemini Group today announced its acquisition of ondemand
purchasing solutions provider IBX and with it, the availability of the industry’s first global endto-
end, Procurement-as-a-Service offering. Having [...]

I was in a client meeting last week , we had a great session on the “BPO Procurement Value Proposition” all was going well until I was asked the following “What differentiates you from your competitors?”  At first I thought I would respond with the usual “Global Delivery, Great on-site teams, Sourcing Insight, Category expertise and [...]

The Facilities Management (FM) services industry is highly competitive with few barriers to entry. Companies from all service tiers often compete against one another, with larger companies emphasizing breadth and sophistication of service offerings, and small, owner-operated companies competing on the basis of price or historical relationship.
There are five key competitive factors and company differentiators [...]

BPO Procurement will continue to Tip focus on the US and then elements of Europe
Real Time will start to become a key demand for Procurement Providers
New Business Models will evolve (Read Free)
Technology costs need to reviewed  (Moores Law still rules)
Sourcing will become more digitalized,  as platforms become cheaper and more effective,
The five forces are Strong in this segment; [...]

The Sourcing Garden is an environment designed for todays modern Procurement professional, who needs support and up to the minute insight, into todays Sourcing Strategies . The site has been designed by Procurement Architects to  provide deep Market knowledge across key Sourcing categories.
Like a garden the site has been set up to grow organically, the aim is plant seeds of information and have are gardening teams enrich [...]

I was surprised to hear a Sales Manager, tell me that they had refused to bid on a piece of work, because the client wanted to use “eSourcing” as a method for supplier selection. I asked the person in question “was this not a normal practice?” It turned out that the person in question was “Old School” and could not see the opportunity, using digital skills amd techniques in reality he avoided the conflict of eSourcing because he was a relashionship guy. I became intrigued by the issue, as a Procurement professional I have been using eSourcing as a tool, methodology and discipline for over eight years. I very much believe that e Sourcing is a “end to end” process and has a dominant role within the sourcing cycle. The issue that is been infuriating me now , for months is this idea that eSourcing is only useful for buying “Products” it does not work for buying services. This is not the case and anew model is emerging that enables the value to be captured from eSourcing while driving the relationship model to new dimensions

Facility management is an interdisciplinary field primarily devoted to the maintenance and care of commercial or institutional buildings,such as hotels, resorts, schools, office complexes, sports arenas or convention centers. Duties may include the care of air conditioning, electric power, plumbing and lighting systems; cleaning; decoration; groundskeeping andsecurity. Some or all of these duties can be assisted by computer programs. These duties can be thought of as non-core or support [...]

It seems that category management has become the default solution for procurement these days. In discussion I am often asked what tweaks should be made to this model and more essentially how it could be improved