About Our Sponsors

The Smart Cube

The Smart Cube is a global research firm that specializes in providing customised procurement and supply chain research and analysis to global corporations and management consulting firms. Our research capabilities tap into extensive knowledge sources including a global network of primary experts, and cover the entire sourcing and category management spectrum including critical business areas such as sustainability, commodity risk analytics, low cost country sourcing and cost modeling/ forecasting.

Through our global delivery model, The Smart Cube is able to deliver high value, insightful research and analytics at a fraction of the cost of local equivalents. The Smart Cube has won numerous awards for its work, including being named in The Black Book of Outsourcing's prestigious 2010 "Top 3 Best Managed Global Outsourcing Vendors” and #1 KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing) vendor globally, as well as Supply & Demand Chain Executive’s 2010 Pros to Know and SDC Executive 100. Headquartered in London, the firm has offices in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Zurich, Timisoara and New Delhi.

For more information, visit http://www.thesmartcube.com.

Cap Gemini

Capgemini, one of the world's foremost providers of consulting, technology and outsourcing services, enables its clients to transform and perform through technologies. Capgemini provides its clients with insights and capabilities that boost their freedom to achieve superior results through a unique way of working, the Collaborative Business Experience^TM. The Group relies on its global delivery model called Rightshore^®, which aims to get the right balance of the best talent from multiple locations, working as one team to create and deliver the optimum solution for clients.

Present in 40 countries, Capgemini reported 2010 global revenues of EUR 8.7 billion and employs around 110,000 people worldwide.

More information is available at www.capgemini.com.

GEP

GEP ® (Global eProcure) is a leading procurement services company dedicated to helping enterprises add value and reduce costs through procurement and supply chain transformation. With a comprehensive portfolio of services and solutions GEP helps many of the world’s largest organisations uncover savings opportunities, and deliver these savings to the bottom line. We have managed over $50 billion of spend on behalf of these clients, across industry sectors and geographies. Our blended model combines management consulting, strategic sourcing support, implementation and outsourcing services with a full suite of best-in-class procurement tools and technology solutions.

Our global footprint allows us to deliver these services wherever our clients need them using the right people with the right skills in the right locations. Headquartered in New Jersey, USA, we have offices in London (UK), Prague (Czech Republic), Mumbai & Hyderabad (India), Shanghai (China), Sao Paolo (Brazil) and Willoughby (Australia).

For more information, please visit www.gep.com.

Barclaycard

Barclaycard Commercial is at the forefront of developments in the commercial card industry, with a proud 40 year track record of innovation. As a leading provider of Visa Commercial Cards in Europe we have brought to market a significant number of payment innovations, and in recent years, moved away from the concept of plastic cards towards payment solutions that fully integrate into the end-to-end value chain.

We have adopted a Fresh Thinking approach to business-to-business payments, extending our solution set to cover both new categories of spend and addressing the specific requirements of new segments within our customers’ overall expenditure.

Our portfolio of solutions includes plastic purchasing cards as well as embedded and virtual cards, rendering many manual invoice settlements, credit checks and other time consuming processes redundant, reducing your administration costs.

Our solutions are supported by our online platforms, Online Services and our new system -Barclaycard Spend Management - which offers card administration, expense workflow management and sophisticated reporting in 15 languages.

Mckinsey & Company

McKinsey & Company is a management consulting firm that helps leading corporations and organisations make distinctive, lasting and substantial improvements in their performance. Over the past eight decades, the Firm’s primary objective has remained constant: to serve as an organisation’s most trusted external advisor on critical issues facing senior management. With consultants deployed from 90 offices in more than 50 countries, McKinsey advises companies on strategic, operational, organisational and technological issues. The Firm has extensive experience in all major industry sectors and primary functional areas.

McKinsey's Purchasing and Supply Management Practice brings deep functional and industry expertise to its clients, based on 1,400 purchasing engagements over the past five years. A team of over 80 partners and 400 consultants leads its purchasing work internationally. With an approach based on its proprietary tools and databases, McKinsey enables its clients to become world-class purchasing leaders, ensuring sustainability through a full performance transformation.