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.

Customer Service with a smile, the very least I would expect...

By Jennifer Whelan, Principal Consultant

On Monday last I returned from work to find that the engineer that had come to service the boiler had actually broken it. I entered the kitchen to find this engineer sitting at my kitchen table finishing his paperwork. He greeted me with the words “my dear your boiler is broken” to which I replied, “Well it wasn't this morning, what happened?” He then started to explain that it was working but as soon as he took the cover off to service it, it stopped working. “Oh” was my reply which was obviously the wrong thing to say as he then proceeded to explain that if I needed someone to blame then  it was his fault, he broke it. Followed by “there wasn't enough air getting to the boiler which was impacting the circuit board” and so on... He said he’d be back on Thursday to fix it. I had asked why he couldn't fix it that evening to which he replied “time”.

Soft Skills are Hard

by Sarah Kingdom-Evans, Account Principal

I have read several articles over the past few days recognising that our 'Soft Skills' need to be taken seriously, with skills such as communication, initiative and interaction quoted. Such importance is attributed to these traits that the Development Economics Group has put an £88bn annual value on such qualities in the workforce. However, in our industry where there is a technological reliance, how do we recognise and develop the attitude and characteristics that will enable us to successfully develop our business, with an equal measure of academic qualifications?

The Carrot & The Stick: Part 2

By Thomas Paiva-Pennick

In part 1 I looked at the stick, in part 2 I’ll be focusing on the proverbial carrot.

The Japanese enjoy long and fruitful business relationships without contracts; instead agreements are based on trust and honour with all elements of performance discussed openly in order to achieve an agreement. That seems a long way from where we are in Europe currently and you could argue our cultural differences mean we will never see that form of contracting in the UK.

But there are steps we can take to building trust with our suppliers that don’t require a great leap of faith and agreeing mutual performance without a contract to rely on...

2015 is Easier to Navigate with Gartner

By Mickey North Rizza

As a 2015 present to businesses globally, Gartner has published their 2015 Magic Quadrant for Strategic Sourcing Application Suites. The ‘MQ’ as it is affectionately known, is perfectly timed for executives to find, short list, evaluate and select their Strategic Sourcing Application Suite Technology Provider in early 2015.


In my previous role as Supply Chain Research Director with Gartner, I came to appreciate the time, dedication and sheer hard work that goes into producing the MQ. Months of in-depth vendor interviews and product reviews coupled with endless customer references go into presenting an accurate map of industry leading vendors at that point in time.

The ‘magic’ of the MQ is that it evaluates technology players within a given market, in this case Strategic Sourcing Application Suite providers, by plotting the provider’s “ability to execute” against their “completeness of vision” in a 2x2 matrix positioning them in the leaders, visionaries, challengers or niche players quadrant.

Procurement services in austerity; an unnecessary luxury or the key to savings?

By Scott Farrance, eSourcing Consultant

The events in Greece over the weekend have reminded us just how fragile this economic recovery appears to be. Most people had probably forgotten Greece was bailed out to the tune of 240 Billion Euros, yes 240, a matter of years ago. This came with a lot of conditions and restrictions (unsurprisingly!) but their new PM Alexis Tsipras has made the bold statement that he will be re-negotiating that bail out, seemingly throwing the assistance back in the face of the EU nations, their Central Bank and the IMF. Ok...

Planet Self-Service or Planet of Amateurs?

By Pavel Ollitervo-Murphy, Principal Consultant

Are we a Planet of Self-Service or a Planet of Amateurs?

I have recently read a few articles online that have touched upon this question. We keep hearing this everywhere in the media; ticket offices closing, more airlines moving services online and automated terminal kiosks. Whilst is now common practice to book our hotels online, we still expect to meet a concierge at the reception desk when we arrive. Yet, even these bastions of service are beginning to embrace self-service check-ins and check-outs (even the hotel room door keys are making the move to our mobiles). Banking has been using web for decades now (first terminal based interfaces appeared in the 80’s).

Avoiding Tragedy: Procurement Value in Healthcare Part II

By Scott Pryde, Account Principal, BravoHealth

In part 1 of this series, 'Gilding the Lily', I posed the question, how can procurement add more value in healthcare supply chains? This article focuses upon procurement role in the architecture and management of; co-operation, incentives and information in healthcare supply chains and care pathways.

'Gilding the Lily' - Procurement Value in Healthcare: Part I

by Scott Pryde, Account Principal, BravoHealth

One of the most fascinating aspects of being a Clinical Procurement Specialist is the opportunity to attend hospital procedures. As a layman observing, you can't help but be impressed at the wonders of the human anatomy,the amazing skills of clinical teams and the treatments and technologies that we have invented.

Many of the clinicians, procedures and medical sales reps left a lasting impression on me, but it was that of a young patient suffering from idiopathic scoliosis, and a world-leading spinal surgeon who was performing the surgery that made the deepest one.

The Moray Council - Our Latest Case Study

By Steven Low, Account Principal, BravoSolution UK

 BravoSolution are delighted to release our latest case study on the successes of Moray Council in utilising our tendering solution. 

New Year’s Resolutions

By Mark Walker, Account Development Manager at BravoSolution UK

I’m going to start with a controversial point: I’m a cyclist. Before too many stereotypes spring to mind, I would like to point out that I don’t dress head to toe in Lycra; I don’t run red lights; and I’m not one to shy away from winter weather.