Technology offerings for supply management are changing rapidly. To outpace the competition, today's firms must be able to understand and implement the latest advances. This book explains how to incorporate the use of supply management technology into advanced sourcing practices to produce significant competitive advantage. On-Demand Supply Management offers new tools and advice to facilitate the internal technology debate between procurement, IT and finance executives to enable faster adoption of the correct strategies and tools to lower procurement costs and improve bottom-line results. It also provides a practitioner's view of decision-making processes and adoption challenges that come with constantly evolving technologies. The authors examine IT investment (including make or buy), training, supplier relationship management, corporate governance issues (including Sarbanes-Oxley) and which metrics must be in place for success. This book is a must read for anyone involved in procurement and supply management, and for executives in finance, information technology, manufacturing and R&D.
About the Author: Douglas A. Smock is Editorial Director of GlobalCPO.com, an online source of procurement analysis and best-in-class practices. Previously, Doug was Editor-in-Chief of Purchasing Magazine. During his tenure, the magazine received five national awards for editorial excellence from the American Society of Business Press Editors. No other publication in this field had ever won even one of these awards. During his career, he also served as chief editor of Plastics World, Associate Publisher of Modern Mold and Tooling at McGraw-Hill, and staff writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He founded and produced the Urethanes Report and High-Tech Molding newsletters and has won or supervised staffs that earned three Jesse Neal awards - one of the most prized awards in the industry that recognizes editorial excellence in independent business publications. He is co-author of the supply management best-seller Straight to the Bottom Line. Robert A. Rudzki is President of Greybeard Advisors LLC, a firm that assists enterprises improve their financial performance. He is also a director of a privacy and security software company, and is an Advisory Board member of several companies. Previously, Bob was Senior Vice President and Chief Procurement Officer at Bayer Corp., where he led a nationally recognized transformation effort. Prior to that he was an executive of Bethlehem Steel Corp., which he led to recognition from Purchasing Magazine as a Best Places to Work, and a top-quartile ranking in a best practices survey of 160 global corporations. In the course of his career, he has held various executive management positions, which included finance, accounting, procurement and logistics, business development and P&L responsibility. He is co-author of the supply management best-seller Straight to the Bottom Line. Stephen C. Rogers is currently a Senior Consultant with The Cincinnati Consulting Consortium where he specializes in purchasing and supplier management. He is also the Program Director of The Conference Board's annual SRM Conference and an adjunct professor at Xavier University. During his 30 years at Procter & Gamble, Steve had functional roles in Purchasing, Manufacturing, and Marketing with both domestic and global responsibilities, including development and expansion of global sourcing efforts, redesign of the Folgers Coffee supply chain and leadership of P&G's worldwide Purchasing training system. He was awarded a career Sourcing Award, recognizing his role as P&G's father of strategic sourcing and in delivering in excess of $1 billion of hard savings during his time there. He has written several articles and spoken at a number of forums on supply related topics and is on the advisory board of a software company.