As I was writing about professionalism last week, there were some interesting thoughts circulating about our industry's love of numbers and some questions about the accuracy of such numbers.Coming from a background where accuracy was something to be proud of and having a sister who continues to teach me about how to think correctly about numbers and their interpretation, this is a fascinating subject.
I wasn't overwhelmed with responses to my previous blog about professionalism in the sourcing industry, so I thought I would offer a few of my own thoughts at least.I definitely think we need an increase in professionalism in sourcing, given this is clearly an emerging management discipline as a result of the continued expansion of external sourcing.
Last week during our TPI conferences in Asia-Pacific, I found myself discussing the concept of professionalism of sourcing with a number of people. The main things that I noticed were that people were aware of the relatively short history of sourcing as a key management tool yet were also adamant that there is a growing need to create a concept of professional sourcing.
Last week, I offered a short historical perspective on the use of benchmarking in sourcing projects. The net conclusion was that currently, neither clients nor service providers are fully satisfied with the effectiveness of benchmarking.
Benchmarking is quite a hotly discussed topic in the sourcing industry, so perhaps it is timely to look at it firstly from a historical perspective, and later from a 'where-to-from-here' perspective.Historically, benchmarking started in its early days in contracts as one means to realign contract pricing with significant market pricing shifts.
In my job, I get to spend a lot of time with both clients and service providers, and often find myself discussing the topics of "fast", "competitive" and "structured". Generally, there is a lot of confusion over how these terms relate to each other and some strong misconceptions that they are either interchangeable or conflicting.
The topic of sourcing advisors has been a regular one in this blog, and with all the recent news in terms of "ranking" sourcing advisors as well as tracking the use of sourcing advisors, it seems pertinent to once again revisit this topic. Whenever I turn to this topic, I always declare that I work for the leading global sourcing advisory firmTPI.
This has been a hot topic this week with many postings on the subject, including the one at Consider the Source. For me, the report Restructuring Outsourcing Agreements: An Indication of Failure, or a Tool to Increase Value offers some interesting insights into this topic.
Sitting in a meeting last week listening to someone describe some of their sourcing challenges, I started to reflect on the impact to our industry of inexperienced practitioners.As with any growing industry, there will be a shortage of experienced people that will persist for a number of years.
After returning from a long break, during which the dust has settled with regards to market data from 2006, it seems useful to review last year's Asia-Pacific sourcing market.Overall, 2006 was the "best" in the last five years in terms of TCV (total contract value) and number of new contracts.
Should you or shouldn't you--the topic of gainsharing in an outsourcing context can bring out heated emotions in people, often for very unnecessary reasons. While it's beyond the scope of this blog to cover all the issues related to gainsharing, perhaps we can focus on a few key points to stir up some thinking.
Predictions are always risky but there's something about the New Year that sees people engage in such rashness, and I figure I will join that group.Looking forward to the sourcing market in 2007, what are some things that we can reasonably expect to see?
If we analyse the global sourcing market on a geographic basis, one key trend stands out significantly, as shown in the diagram below.%IMAGE=Picture_2.
I need to declare upfront that I work for the largest global sourcing advisory firm (TPI) but I don't think that leads to inherent bias in considering this question.Years ago, when I was setting up a subsidiary company, I had some tax and legal questions to resolve.
Whenever an unexpected or discontinuous change occurs, we have to be able to step back and revisit how we analyze market data.As I've discussed earlier, there are some significant trends in the market place regarding reduced contract durations and the resulting reduction in TCV.
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