The past decade of unprecedented economic growth has firmly put the spotlight on the world economy’s most important asset, namely Human Resources (HR). This has brought about massive globalisation which has tempted many of our talented professionals to greener pastures, and this, in turn, has highlighted the value of recruitment agencies. SmartProcurement, in conjunction with […]
The Procurement of HR and Skills in the Spotlight Read More »
“The world-wide trend in commodity spend management is to either appoint speciality managers internally, or to outsource the spend to a credible third party service provider”, Gary Davies, Managing Director of Print Outsource International (POINT), told SmartProcurement in a recent interview. In the industry, this specialist outsourced service is neatly captioned “Print Management”. Furthermore,
Outsourcing Management of Print can lead to 30% cost savings Read More »
In a recent roundtable think-tank between UK members from Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply (CIPS) and the Management Consultancies Association (MCA), it was suggested that procurement should become more involved in the delivery, and not only the purchase, of management consultancy deals. Hugo Were, a partner at Accenture, and president of the MCA, said
Procurement vs Management Consultants and other Professional Services: Round 1 Read More »
One of the papers from the recent IPSA / CIPS Pan African Conference, in Johannesburg, sheds essential light on the subject of sourcing goods and services in the vast global marketplace that has so conveniently opened up to African organisations. In his presentation “Low Cost Economy Sourcing – Competitive Advantage or Threat”, David Noble, Group
Low Cost Country Sourcing a “Huge commercial incentive”. China vs India Read More »
The commodity group, generically termed “Facilities Management Services” (FMS) represents a high total cost of ownership (TCO) for most organisations. This commodity group has even been defined as ‘a mainstream tool for improving performance and increasing productivity over the entire period of an alliance‘. It plays a cardinal role in optimising processes, expanding capabilities and
The item on the left seems like a pretty straightforward thing to source but the challenge in getting it 100% correct from a specification and quality perspective plus getting it on time led a Pharmaceutical company to use a procurement specialist service to source the medicine bottle-caps shown here. These services are proving ever more
Using a third party specialists to source hard to find ‘widgets’ Read More »
Are travel management companies causing increased travel costs? One of the measures used for benchmarking Corporate Air travel is the average savings achieved against the published fares and, while organisations recognise that this savings methodology is not necessarily the best, it has been applied consistently and is useful to track savings over time. The
Savings for Corporate Domestic Air Travel vs published prices on downward slide Read More »
“Many large companies consider the continent of Africa (excluding South Africa) as an enigma. Historically, these organisations have resigned to the fact that operating in Africa will be relatively inefficient in terms of their procurement, and sometimes other activities.” Greg Buckley of Volition tells Smart Procurement that “The justification for this has traditionally been
Pan African Procurement – A view from the Flight Tower Read More »
RS Components South Africa, a well-known global distributor of industrial products have successfully undertaken the task of upgrading their e-Procurement website to streamline the sourcing process for more than 300 000 MRO items. New technological advancements enable users to quickly find the product searched for and take advantage of price competitive product promotions. The
New Web technology speeds up and simplifies sourcing of MRO requirements Read More »
"No government department has ever asked for a Broad Based BEE certificate, and it may be some time before they do" Wade van Rooyen of Iquad Verification Services tells SmartProcurement. . The answer to the question of why government has not asked for certificates is based on conflicting legislation which may have a serious impact
BBBEE Compliance vs Government Procurement Practices – a Contradiction in terms? Read More »
