“The supply of Personal Computers (PCs) remains a competitive market, particularly as sales volumes in South Africa may hold up better in 2009 than in other parts of the world, such as Europe and America. One can therefore expect suppliers to be particularly keen to increase market share in this sector. Purchasing Index (PI) continues […]
PC pricing – New opportunities Read More »
One of the first organisations to benchmark in the modern business world was Rank Xerox, who in the 1980s formed a dedicated team to find out how other organisations outside of the photocopying industry managed functions, such as transport. The results provided Xerox with invaluable insights into how to spend money more effectively and, in
Why should Procurement organisations benchmark? Read More »
It seems as though climate change and recent economic upheavals may have more in common than one might expect. It isn’t so much that the weather is getting notably worse, but that short-term changes seem to be becoming more extreme. Recent fatal storms in KwaZulu-Natal this holiday season and flash floods in the Cape last
Valuable spend information so important in the current economy Read More »
Some of the trauma associated with the current global crisis has been due to the speed with which the markets have changed. Twelve weeks ago Platinum was trading at $2,300 an ounce, today it is at $840 – a drop of almost two thirds. With the precipitous decline in global stock markets organisational management are
Cost reductions needed NOW! Read More »
63% of organisations researched by The Aberdeen Group placed ‘reduced cost of processing purchase orders and cheque payments’ as their primary goal for implementing a Purchase Card Program”, Julian Curtiss, Managing Director of Transaction Technology Solutions, told SmartProcurement. Figure 1: Top Pressures Driving Purchasing Card Initiatives A further 56% of organisations, as researched in the
New home grown procurement technology changes the rules of the game Read More »
This, the first in a series of 4 articles on the topic of generating and tracking output savings, with particular focus on the Managed Print Solutions (MPS) category. This series of articles will cover the 4 legs of a proven procurement-driven strategy respectively. These legs are: Benchmarks that need to be applied (as based on
“Courier Services is a surprisingly complex spend category to manage as the devil (and delivery of savings!) is in the detail,” benchmarker Purchasing Index (PI) MD Alan Low, told SmartProcurement. ” We regularly benchmarks domestic courier rates across organisations from a variety of industry sectors… and Rates from courier companies vary dramatically.” The charts
Courier Services Benchmarking Shows Up Rate Discrepancies Read More »
The following two graphs (left: automotive lubricants; right: engineering lubricants) depict the basket indexes of automotive and engineering lubricants for the past two years. “It reflects the inexorable rise of lubricant prices paid by larger SA organisations on the back of the increasing oil price. On closer inspection, however, it is interesting to note that
Automotive & Engineering Lubricants prices follow oil , but not to the same extent Read More »
Featured on the left (click to enlarge), is the Purchasing Index for steel showing the rate of increase in a basket of steel bought by the RSA Mining Industry. The graph shows that the basket prices have risen on average by 50% over that last two years with a major spike recently. . “The sudden
Steel Prices in SA will continue to rise…Perhaps through 2009 Read More »
Economic theory states that where supply is low, demand will be high. The underlying premise is that a higher premium is paid for those high demand commodities where supply is low. For the last couple of years, we have seen this trend play itself out time and time again when it comes to salaries paid
Supply and Demand Theory back-firing on Human Resources in Procurement Read More »
