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Posted Mar 9, 2010
In Part One I gave my view as to who should buy travel within a corporation. To recap, I pointed out that no one person should do it. Instead an alliance of procurement and operational management was required pulled together by the influence and gravitas of a hands-on board sponsor.
Posted Mar 5, 2010
This week I was in Charlotte, N.C., attending ProcureCon Indirect, a conference for executives who manage procurement of indirect spend, such as travel and meetings services. It was a great opportunity to meet and network with these folks (About 100 procurement executives came from over 44 companies!) and learn what kinds of challenges they face in reaping system-wide efficiencies and savings from procurement.
Posted Feb 25, 2010
This debate has rumbled on for a very long time and I expect it will continue particularly at this time of financial and strategic difficulty. Suppliers have to earn more and corporations have to pay less to achieve their recovery strategy so it has never been more important that the function in the middle of the pricing debate gets it right. If they don’t we will end up either with less products or fewer customers or perhaps both. The key reason for there being an impasse in this debate is there is no right answer for all the stakeholders. It very much depends on the flexibility, specialist knowledge and skills of individuals concerned.
Posted Dec 16, 2009
Forget about those frequent flier miles. Frequent flier miles add cost to the airfares your firm buys. And yes, firms have tried to cut those costs by stripping miles out of corporate fares, or by capturing employee-earned miles.
But it doesn’t work, for two reasons:
Posted Dec 11, 2009
Bulk buying makes sense for many commodities, but not airfares. Why? Because it’s complex and expensive.
Posted Dec 9, 2009
Given that air travel is typically a large spend item for most companies, it makes sense for procurement folks to attack it with extra energy and creativity. Here are three ideas that often come up:
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