Toyota is well-known for its manufacturing prowess and strong supplier ties. That's exactly why this week's news about the accelerator problems for over 2 million vehicles came as a shock to so many of us. The impact of this episode will be long-term, far-reaching, and very expensive.

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You don’t just initiate one of Silicon Valley’s most ambitious and high-profile acquisitions of recent years without a plan. Oracle will have seen Sun Microsystems, a leading software provider that has been struggling in recent years, and recognised the problem it has had in managing its supply chain as something that it could turn to its advantage.

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While not quite on the scale of Kraft Foods' acquisition of Cadbury, news that Capgemini is to acquire Swedish procurement technology company IBX is, in its own way, a fascinating development which points to interesting times ahead for the procurement outsourcing space.

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A high court ruling this week on a long running, high profile IT services dispute will have been watched closely by IT contractors and users of outsourcing services alike. This kind of litigation and the values at stake should give even the strongest outsourcing relationships cause to pause.

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Talent. It’s cropped up plenty in recent weeks, in looking at marketing procurement and leadership, for example. It feeds into everything else and procurement managers are often expected to have plenty of tools in their belt. So where are these renaissance men and women supposed to come from?

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A catch up with KPMG partners Richard Nixon and Adeep Dhallai recently led to an interesting discussion about the capabilities of procurement professionals and the gaps that sometimes exist in their expertise. It led us on to discuss cash management and how procurement must better understand the implications of their decisions on the cash position of their organisation.

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News that the Dr Daniel Vasella, chief executive of Novartis, is to stand down to concentrate on his chairmanship role is an interesting development for more than one reason. True, as this story in the UK's Financial Times suggests, the move will go down well with corporate governance lobbyists who have long complained that Dr Vasella should not be carrying out both roles.

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80% of all telecoms sourcing projects are not as efficient as they should be and large organisations globally are feeling the effect to the tune of £12bn globally. Which is a lot of money that could and probably should be saved, I think you'll agree.

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Procurement Leaders' senior staff writer Steve Hall has just written an article on how procurement executives can best influence marketing folk. He spoke to the marketing director for Premier Foods in Ireland, Ciara Dilley, who talks about the difficulty in finding good-quality marketing procurement folk - a point which is backed up by RD Squared co-founder Rosie Doggett.

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For Swiss-based travel operator, Kuoni, working in Swiss francs has always made sense. But at a time when the currencies of its biggest markets – namely, the UK, Sweden and India – were hit hard, the group has suffered massively. According to its CEO Peter Rothwell, who was speaking to the Financial Times, the currency volatility was responsible for wiping out a third of its revenues.

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