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This great real case of strategic procurement in action is from my colleague Richard May. For many years Richard ran PMMS’s operations in Honk Hong. He is now based in New Zealand and a director of ArcBlue Consulting – the brand PMMS uses in that region. This example is from his time in Hong Kong working with a construction company.
Many people talk about Strategic Purchasing but we find few able to deliver the sustainable benefits that this offers. After all, Strategic Purchasing is not easy to implement. It is in the zone of discomfort for most. It requires time, patience, perseverance and commitment, all of which are internal and natural barriers to success. This is a story about a successful Strategic Purchasing experience. It illustrates some of the barriers to success with promise of delivering “big time” in terms of bottom line contribution and in securing for the company a strong position relative to their competitors. Read more…
A recent debate on one of the largest LinkedIn procurement groups, Strategic Sourcing & Procurement, was about “What is Strategic Sourcing”. Some interesting comments, though no consensus. Strategic is perhaps one of the most abused words in management speak. Our CEO Simon Steele said to me recently that he hears a lot of people link strategic to “important” and as a consequence everyone wants to believe that what they do is “strategic”. I would say that tactical is just as important. A future blog article will discuss why strategies and tactics should always be seen as two interlocking elements and not distinct entities.
Another observation is that the word strategic is used to mean “done well”! For example one article I saw said non-strategic procurement focused on price whereas strategic sourcing looks at broader business needs. Well I’m sorry, but procurement that only looks at price when that isn’t the most important thing to their organisation is just bad procurement. Surely there is more to being strategic than just getting it right?
To us Strategic Sourcing/Purchasing is about the processes you use, and a Sourcing/Purchasing Strategy is the plan that ensures you do Strategic Sourcing/Procurement Read more…
Our sister-blog, on our Profitable Projects method has just published a great example of “Demand Management” in action – 25% savings (tens of millions of dollars), not through squeezing unit price and assuming that will pressurise suppliers into becoming more efficient, but by changing how they work, and in doing so reducing their volumes dramatically….
Large ERP system implementation projects are renowned for over-runs and having to go way over budget on order to try and recover. But it doesn’t have to be so. Giant Japanese company Daiwa House had a project that was running over 30% late 12 months in. They switched to CCPM half way through, and bought the project in on time – with work packages using 26-28% fewer consultant hours than budgeted!
How did they do it?
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We have produced a short brochure describing PMMS Middle East – what we do for our clients and some information on the Group.
PMMS Middle East MD Ian Heptinstall has been asked to speak at the 5th Project Management Congress in Sharjah on 25 June, on our innovative approach to procuring and managing major projects – Profitable Projects.
An earlier post mentioned our input at the Oil & Gas Forum in Abu Dhabi in May. It went well, but as always when you present it is hard to really know how it went from the viewpoint of the people listening.
Praxis Global – the organiser sent us some fantastic feedback recently.
PMMS, in collaboration with CIPS and BUiD, will be running a one day workshop in the Middle East on 26 June 2013.
Attendees will learn how to bring significant savings in cost and time to major capital projects, without compromising on scope and quality. For the first time in the region we will share our ideas with a small number of delegates. We will share our analysis of the issues and opportunities with the current common approaches to project management. Attendees will discover the significant value they and their organisations can achieve through adopting our methods, and will learn the key elements of the approach.
Our Profitable Projects approach is designed to be used in project environments where the majority of the work is carried out by other companies with whom the client contracts. We believe it is a unique application of leading-edge methods that have been proven in…
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On 16-17 June we have Developing a Category Strategy – a follow on to the successful 1 day Introduction to Category Management we ran in February. On the 18th we have a single day Introduction to Purchasing.
PMMS Middle East 