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Risk Management in the Supply Chain: Reputational Risk

By Mickey North Rizza

In many organisations, procurement is beginning to see risk as one of their responsibilities, second only to savings. With Risk Management so high on procurement's agenda, we've been taking a look at some differing types of risk and their impact on the organisations in question.

We start today with child labour issues and how they can hurt your reputation and brand.

Primark, an Irish clothing retailer with revenues of approximately £4.3m, is a subsidiary of Associated British Foods. In 2006 Primark joined the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI), a collaborative organisation bringing together businesses, trades unions and Non-Governmental trade Organisations (NGO) to work on labour rights issues in their supply chains. ETI members commit to working towards the implementation of a code of conduct based on the International Labour Organization's core conventions.

New Approaches to Negotiation - The Power of Thought

By Josh Goodman

Knowing your own mind is just as important as knowing your opponent’s. That was the message that I took home from our latest briefing in the Real World Sourcing Series that took place on the 3rd June.

Building Capability in Procurement and Supply Chain

By Erika Hakala

The official kick-off for the collaboration between CIPS and DILF (Danish Purchasing and Logistics Forum) was held in the Tivoli hotel in Copenhagen this week. The speaker at the event was Torben Soll, Manager in the Quality Assurance and Professionalisation unit and Officer-in-Charge of the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Procurement Support Office in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Torben not only spoke about procurement in the UNDP but also about their 6 year partnership with CIPS and how the UNDP uses the CIPS certifications to educate, improve and motivate their staff.

Spend Analysis, The Next Generation: A Blend of Ideas, Innovation and Data

By Josh Goodman

On Wednesday 11^th March, we held our debut briefing in the 2015 Real World Sourcing Series. The event saw Peter Smith, Managing Director of Spend Matters UK/Europe, present a forward-focused briefing to a packed room of procurement professionals from a variety of industries and sectors.

Adoption: Asking the Right Questions

By John Ryan Shaw, Sr. Director, Adoption Services

Quantifying the value of project activities such as communications, training, coaching and building a sponsor network can be difficult. Most professionals intuitively appreciate that these are valuable activities that can help make the implementation of a new process or tool more successful.   

In practice though, many project leaders struggle to determine how important they are and when they should be allocating their limited budgets to those activities. This is natural and understandable because the value of these activities varies from project to project.

Inspirational Role Models for the Procurement Profession

By Sarah Clarke

I was fortunate enough to be invited to join a table at Wednesday night’s CIPS Annual Dinner, and even though I felt a little weary from a fascinating BravoSolution Real World Sourcing Series briefing that I’d attended during the daytime, I’m very pleased that I drank an emergency Red Bull and made my way to the Hilton on Park Lane for the event.