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Your SAP user community might be lying to you, but only because you let them

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It is not unusual to find the procurement departments inside SAP-driven companies at loggerheads with their internal customers. In extreme cases sales, production planning, maintenance and procurement staff are on the verge of conflict – the common enemy being procurement. The typical symptom is accusations of dismal service countered by allegations of poor or […]

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Case study: e-procurement and procure-to-pay effectiveness at Mondi

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A recent study conducted across international divisions of Mondi Ltd found that the South African-listed pulp and paper giant does not fully utilise, compared with best practice, enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions and electronic procurement (e-procurement). In fact, Mondi South African Division meets only 11 out of the 28 recommended best practice requirements (41%)

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The Kraljic Model can identify expenditure fit for P-cards

Leave a Comment / Procurement Cards, Spend Analysis, Technology, Tools, Top Stories / Editor

Ad hoc expenditure is a big headache for any organisation and procurement division: these low-value, high-volume purchases can erode budgets if processed through traditional P2P. While the solution is to introduce a purchasing card (P-card) programme, how does one determine which expenditure to put on a P-card? A simple and effective way of segmenting

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Technology’s role in improving the supply chain

Leave a Comment / Supply Chain Management SCM, Technology, Tools / Editor

Technology drives innovation and can mitigate risk in the supply chain. In recent years the integration and globalisation of supply chains has improved efficiency, but has driven complexity and vulnerability to the point of disruption. Advances in SCM technology offer a solution, Tech-Pro Personnel tells SmartProcurement. Technology has revolutionised supply chain management: from the advent

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Government could police spending cuts with a P-card system

Leave a Comment / Procurement Cards, Spend Analysis, Tools / Editor

Scepticism around government’s severe cuts to perks and expenditure, and whether these will really work, has been further fuelled by recent instances where members of public office have not adhered to the Finance Minister’s spirit of cost-cutting. With the public’s patience wearing thin, government should consider a procurement card programme to curb expenditure, and

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Driving visibility within African supply chains

Leave a Comment / Benchmarking, Procurement Strategy, Spend Analysis, Technology, Tools / Editor

As supply chain management becomes increasingly central to business strategy, so the need for visibility within the supply chain becomes paramount. Greater end-to-end visibility improves revenue and reduces costs, while allowing for better management of disruption, complexity, opposition and growing customer expectation, Tech-Pro tells SmartProcurement. Image: Erik Kriek, Supply Chain Movement 2013 Supply chain

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Reducing transaction costs – the end of the firm?

Leave a Comment / e-Procurement, Procurement Strategy, Supplier Partnerships, Supplier Relationship Management Systems, Technology, Tools / Editor

The man who introduced the concept of transaction costs recently passed away at the age of 102. Interestingly, his 70-year-old theory explains organisations’ vertical integration in the first half of the 20th century and their contradictory aggressive outsourcing more recently. But how is the lower transaction cost offered by the Internet revising the theory?

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4 major supply chain trends in 2014

Leave a Comment / Procurement Strategy, Spend Analysis, Supply Chain Management SCM, Tools, Top Stories / Editor

In recent years, the on-going quest for efficiency and flexibility and the impact of emerging technologies, innovation and ever-changing customer demand, has seen the South African supply chain mature from a corporate function into an enabler of growth and a strategic weapon, providing value for customers’¹, Tech-Pro Personnel tells SmartProcurement. Highlighting the increasing importance

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Millennials’ tech expectations empower the other 6 billion (Part 2)

Leave a Comment / Change, e-Procurement, Technology, Tools, Top Stories / Editor

Millennials in the developed world are driving the adoption of technologies that facilitate commerce in the supply chains of the developing world. As developed nations mobilise their workforce and embrace new models of business, such as The Networked Economy, developing nations are benefiting from the wave of simple, streamlined and mobile solutions, for which

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The ‘Millennials’ workforce will change the supply chain (Part 1)

Leave a Comment / Change, e-Procurement, Information technology, Sourcing Strategy, Technology, Tools / Editor

While on a search around the web, Richard Downs, Director, Solutions Marketing – EMEA, Ariba, an SAP Company, came across a statistic which made him ponder how traditional business challenges will change in the future: 75% of the workforce in 2025 will be ‘Millennials’. In part one of two, Downs wonders how traditional procurement

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