How contract management improves supplier relationships | by Rose Lee According to Gallup, supplier relationships are among the most overlooked but most important connections a business can have. Being a “customer of choice” can help ...read more

INADEQUATE foreign currency hedging in a contract for locomotives could have forced the Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa) to pay almost R5bn instead of R3.5bn. The lack of hedging also means that the state agency will only procure 70 instead of the ...read more

In mid May, IQNavigator, the Denver-based provider of non-employee Vendor Management Systems (VMS), announced that it has updated its offering, which will now feature configurable dashboards and automated workflows for on-boarding and off-boarding contingent ...read more

Every audience that I ask agrees that change is occurring at an ever-faster pace. Yet when it comes to the impact of change, most tend to see it in terms of greater complexity, additional workload or confused priorities. There are few who can express ...read more

The upcoming contract management event – organised by Bespoke and the International Association of Contract and Commercial Management (IACCM) – promises to deliver international leading practice knowledge on contract management and supplier ...read more

Do you negotiate in the same way at work as you do at home? Many of us often forget the tactics and strategies we employ in our personal lives when we get to the office. This was the view put forward by Susanna Mason, director general (commercial) at ...read more

The National Treasury is set to roll out electronic procurement in July this year as part of efforts to automate and streamline Government financial management processes and procedures. ...read more

Despite having formal procurement processes, some organizations have staff members who engage in maverick purchasing—circumventing standard procedures to procure items individually. According to APQC’s Open Standards Benchmarking in procurement ...read more

Think locking in long contracts in anticipation of rising prices makes logical sense? You might be in the minority. Procurement Leaders is about to publish its Category Planning Guide, which overviews all indirect categories in 2014. Interestingly, we ...read more

The rise in contract management and the outsourcing of goods and services has created an increase in procurement fraud. Here are 12 red flags that can help you save millions. Repeated awards to the same entity, Competitive bidder complaints and protests ...read more

A common failing in many organizations is the lack of a clear senior owner for contract management, often true at both the individual contract level and across the overall picture. It is a truism that initiatives and activities rarely succeed without ...read more

Congrats on landing the big customer! After all the hard work, all-nighters, uncertainty and setbacks, you’re finally experiencing the sweet success of claiming big brand name customers as yours. You can’t wait to work with them, be able to ...read more

Using technology to handle contract management can save 17 per cent and boost compliance with contract terms. Speaking at the CIPS Annual Conference 2012 Ioana Canescu, a contract management expert and former head of global contracts and business management ...read more

We're bigger fans of prose here than fancy-schmancy consulting graphics. Even though many of us have had past careers as consultants, sometimes we think that people use pictures to tell words because they'd rather hide behind visual takeaways ...read more

Investors and companies doing business in the member states of the European Union remain concerned about the consequences of one, some or all of the eurozone countries returning to their old national currencies. According to law firms, which behind ...read more

This comprehensive guide aims to provide a ‘cradle to grave’ approach to contracting, highlighting the dos and don’ts. It is aimed at contract managers, but remains neutral on which area performs the relevant tasks to allow for each ...read more

Many companies partner with specialized advisors to lead them through the outsourcing process, including RFP development, service provider selection, contract negotiation and governance design. These advisors have in-depth knowledge of the outsourcing ...read more

If you read the media and analyst headlines surrounding services procurement, it appears that statement-of-work (SOW) and project-based services spending program management has done more than capture the imagination of the profession -- it has become ...read more