Has your procurement organisation recently looked at the ratio of different age generations that it is made of? Recent research by Procurement Leaders (The 2015 Trend Report ) reveals that succession planning is a real challenge for today’s CPOs ...read more

Johannesburg - Sibanye Gold, the biggest producer of the metal in South Africa, intends to become energy-independent “over the next few years” as Eskom struggles to supply the economy with enough power. ...read more

When we as procurement people look internally and attempt to analyse the performance and effectiveness of our own function – ‘spend under management’ is normally the metric we turn to and I’m not convinced this is a smart move ...read more

THE AILING SA Post Office (Sapo) faces new looming challenges that would be another blow to business and jobs in South Africa. Efforts to stabilise the entity could be derailed by the latest threats and demands by the Communication Workers Union (CWU ...read more

STATE-owned power company Eskom added "strategic considerations" in the last stage of the negotiation process for its R4.3bn nuclear power tender, which were not in the original bid criteria, US-Japanese nuclear company Westinghouse told the ...read more

- The Communication Workers Union will embark on mass action against Telkom's imminent retrenchments, it said on Wednesday. "We shall use anything at our disposal, including but not limited to unleashing the organised might of our members through ...read more

South African Airways (SAA) confirmed on Monday that some R600-million in yearly savings would arise as a direct result of a decision to cull lossmaking services to Beijing, China, and Mumbai, India, as from the end of March. The cessation of the long ...read more

Ian Ballentine, procurement director at Heathrow Airport, was offered a seat on the executive committee if he could “reshape” the function within a year of joining the firm. Ballentine told SM about the deal, struck with the then chief executive ...read more

If you’re one of the many managers out there who must negotiate with companies in China — the world’s largest emerging economy — you probably need to change your approach. What worked a year or two ago is no longer effective, because the competitive and ...read more

INDEPENDENT power producers are eagerly waiting for national and local governments to issue tenders to build power stations to help alleviate the country’s electricity crisis, South African Independent Power Producers Association chairman Sisa Njikelana ...read more

In today's globalised world, the adoption of technology is increasingly essential for companies to be highly competitive and to prosper. The technological readiness pillar of the South Africa's National Development Plan (NDP) measures the agility ...read more

The first—and arguably most overlooked—opportunity to improve procurement decisions is to take the time to understand and challenge what the business needs. As a category manager, this may seem obvious to you, but I invite you to step back ...read more

CPOs are contributing real value to the organization. Is this really true? If a new CPO study from IBM’s Institute for Business Value is to be believed, it’s actually starting to happen. The firm surveyed just over 1,000 companies – ...read more

There are a lot of NGOs, social enterprises and start-ups looking to create products that people living in slums and townships will find useful. Many of them seem to have a good, rational logic but just don't take off, either because they lack distribution ...read more

The sad fact is that many web projects will fail because of the website procurement process. The problem lies in the way we commission these projects. Many tender documents are the result of internal politics. They are also written with little understanding ...read more

Johannesburg - The new face of South Africa’s government tender process goes live on April 1 and is an overhaul of the much-abused and derided system, a report in the City Press explains. Some tenders likely to be centralised with chief procurement ...read more

Four South African banking heavyweights, Standard Bank, First National Bank (FNB), Absa and Nedbank, are contesting for the tender to manage banking transactions of the Gauteng government, with a 2015 budget estimated at more than R90-billion, Gauteng ...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

Now is a good time to be a procurement professional. Anna Scott explains why the recruitment market for buyers is booming. During the recession, the inevitable focus on cost cutting gave procurement the spotlight in many organisations. As the economy ...read more

Noting that the South African public sector spent an “enormous” R500-billion on goods and services and construction works in the 2013/14 fiscal period, National Treasury has called for various reforms of government’s strategic sourcing, procurement and ...read more

Zimbabwean entrepreneur Vuyo Sakala has always dreamed big and wanted to develop and provide great products and services for Africa. After studying Architecture in Australia, and noticing the lack of information he had access to about what was happening ...read more

Recently, McDonald’s, the world’s iconic largest food service provider, has been (forgive the cliché) through the grinder. Poor performance has led to the departure of its CEO and plenty of critical attention in the business pages. ...read more

When it comes to the management of spare parts used for maintenance and operations support, the procurement team is often treated as an outsider, a service provider, rather than a partner in ensuring that the objective of maintaining operational capacity ...read more

In a timely new white paper, Crude Oil: Impact, Opportunities and Strategies for Procurement, GEP’s commodity and category experts discuss the impact of lower crude oil prices on procurement and supply chain, and the savings opportunities they offer ...read more

It's clear that CEOs recognise the strength of their CIO and are giving them responsibility in other areas of the business. Corporate procurement - There has been a steady rise in the percentage of CIOs that take responsibility for procurement and ...read more