This week has seen the Chinese welcome in the New Year, President Obama talk about onshoring and Europeans (the Swiss, to be precise) welcome the crème-de-la- crème of the business world for the World Economic Forum. For procurement, there’s been plenty to watch, especially from a global sourcing perspective.

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If you haven’t seen already, and I'm sure you have, election season in the US has begun. Republican candidates are battling it out to become the presidential nominee and take on current president Barack Obama during this year’s election. But what role will outsourcing play?

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Keeping sustainability in sight isn’t always easy, it’s often regarded as one of those ‘nice-to-have’ aspects of business that can fall away when the going gets tough. I believe that exaggerated commodity volatility isn’t going to go away any time soon, and if that’s true, perhaps there’s a danger that sustainability goals suffer in a climate of risk. Companies aren’t powerless to react to these obvious long term issues, but it needs a different way of thinking.

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Did you make a New Year’s resolution? This time of year usually brings a focus on self-improvement with it. From our experience, when it comes to improvements in the procurement function, this is predominantly driven by the people in the function, their motivation and their skill set. Better processes and tools are helpful, but if the skills of the people using them don’t match up, very little progress can be achieved. As with New Year’s resolutions, moving the needle on skills requires setting a clear goal, dedication and some investment of time and resources.

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The World Economic Forum; a summit for anxious people to talk about an anxious world. So while we’re at it let’s indulge in a little bit more doom and gloom. Some of the messages coming from Davos pertain to procurement, but make no mistake, no one is talking about what a good job everyone is doing – more that businesses need to do more in tackling risk in the supply chain.

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I recently read an article about tin producers in Indonesia and the problems they have faced over the past few months because of falling prices. An aspect of this story got me thinking about procurement's relationship with key suppliers and what happens during a difficult patch - the likes of which many industries will be familiar with at the moment.

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Welcome to the Year of the Dragon. If you’re a global company, or likely even if you’re not, you can’t ignore the immense influence that the Chinese economy will have this year. But it’s certainly a complex picture and there are various trends which will merit real attention for those wanting to stay ahead of events in the Far East.

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We look at shifts in orange juice, live cattle, natural gas and more in this week's update on shifts in the commodity markets.

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The most frequently heard four-letter word in the US today is JOBS! Voters polled during this election year say jobs are their most important concern, since so many of them and their fellow citizens are out of work. The much-watched unemployment rate is at 8.5%. And so, Democrats and Republicans are offering differing approaches to bring that rate down. Insourcing manufacturing, naturally, is part of the discussion.

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You have to be very lucky or just live in the cave not to have heard at least some measure of the economic crisis (crises?) plaguing Europe and the US. But sometimes the various alarming headlines tell one story, whereas what’s really happening on the ground can be quite different. That’s been something of a theme this week: the truth vs. the headlines.

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