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While this probably doesn’t include you, how certain can you be that your 3rd party vendors do not fall into this category? It is this question that is resulting in the back-office world of procurement coming closer to the front, leading the way to ensure that your company gets the best possible deal from the safest possible vendor, without falling foul of Mr Regulator.

ProcureCon Financial Services met up with Alan McQuade, EMEA Supply Chain Management Executive at Bank of America Merrill Lynch to take a look at the ways they tackle this complex, but essential issue…

Regulation has a significant impact on all business sectors, but the financial services industry is one in particular where organisations need to be constantly aware of incoming rules. This is obvious when looking at trading, accounts and the like, but this filters down to all areas of the industry, including procurement.

The conventional wisdom, according to almost every business and marketing textbook, is that when recession hits, companies need to market their way out of trouble. This white paper aims to demonstrate the systems needed to be put in place for successful outsourcing or marketing.

Click on the link above to read this white paper in full

With a lack of growth, tougher regulatory controls, changing customer demands and the financial markets contracting and consolidating, banking, investment management and insurance companies are increasingly looking at their procurement teams to improve efficiencies, reduce costs and promote innovation to create a point of differentiation and competitive advantage.

No, this isn’t a sales pitch! We at TheValueChain.net got in touch with a pallet-full of indirect procurement leaders to ask them all what they’re working on, their key challenges in 2012 and what they’re doing to overcome them.

Read the 16 responses here...

Indirect procurement leaders have to face a number of changes in the industry ‐ many as a result of globalisation ‐ that are forcing them to quickly adapt to increased complexity in supply chains. Part of this, a new report has suggested, is the growing middle class, particularly in emerging markets.

As the indirect procurement industry has been forced to respond to many changes over the past few years, from the recession to globalisation, recruiting the right kind of employee can be crucial to a business' ability to adapt to change.

As buying organisations get smarter with their supplier base, regular tender exercises and subsequent negotiations can yield significant cash benefits. Whether the results can be sustained in the long run depends on a buyer’s ability to understand their costs and its constituents and keep them under tight control.

The growth of supply chain financing (SCF) has accelerated in response to continued credit and liquidity challenges in today's market. As more companies adopt SCF programs, the dialog has moved from conceptual solution to fast and practical implementation, and SCF is beginning to be acknowledged as a process that is delivered through a robust technology platform resulting in an enhancement of operating efficiency. But how important is it?

What you may not know is that they also have an entire division that offers procurement solutions as a service. To tell us more about what they do and how they cope with the challenges of client and supplier demands on a global scale, we caught up with Jean Godde, APJ/EMEA Agency Contrator & Contact Center in HP Global Procurement...

Throughout its almost 70 year history, the group has been through massive changes, developing and acquiring many different brands and enterprises along the way. The result of this means a massive challenge coordinating the indirect procurement efforts across these brands in harmony. To tell us more about how they manage it, we spoke to Rob Douglas, Retail Support Purchasing Director at Dixons Retail Plc...

For those in North America, Big Lots is a household name, but to those outside the United States the name may be a bit less familiar. A Fortune 500 company with annual revenues of over $4bn, Big Lots' 1,400+ department stores and website biglots.com focus mainly on selling closeout and overstock merchandise in everything from gadgets to groceries, creating both a huge supply chain challenge, but also immense opportunities to leverage supply chain finance for the benefit of the entire chain.

To find out how they do it we caught up with Jared Poff, Treasurer and Vice President at Big Lots...

In order to approach this process with the utmost awareness and preparation, risk researcher and specialist, MacDonnell Ulsch, CEO, ZeroPoint Risk Research, has devised a strategy that will help businesses feel more secure as they form outside partnerships. Watch him outline these topics in this video and understand why every procurement organization needs to assess risk before starting a third party relationship.

Ensuring Inflation Management Becomes Embedded in the Day-to-Day Work of Procurement

eSourcing: Maximize Spend Under Management

Angela Porter, Group Procurement Director, shares her views on maximising value through supplier relationship management.

Consolidating meetings activities is no easy task for a $35 billion global technology and multiindustry
conglomerate that has four strategic business groups plus its corporate group where
the meetings department resides. The diverse business groups have varying profiles of meeting
activity, business cultures, leadership styles, and policies. It can be challenging to break
through silos and provide cross-business processes and management, especially when each
entity manages its own payment processes/systems, general ledger codes, and policies.