‘Strategic sourcing is dead!!’ yells a guest post on Sourcing Innovation blog by Dalip Raheja, President and CEO of the MPower Group. The argument, if I have it right, roughly follows that in a transformation process, strategic sourcing doesn’t include working with stakeholders and ends up as simply ‘supplier-bashing’. Ring of truth?

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Like turning over a new leaf, it’s all well and good having the intentions to be a better organisation, but how do you actually make it happen? And how do you embed that change deeply within the business? I got some interesting answers this week from talking to the procurement team at UK supermarket chain Sainsbury’s.

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Over the past few years, Procurement Leaders has worked with State of Flux to produce research on procurements advance in gaining board level representation – and this year’s results continue to paint a very encouraging picture.

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Speak to procurement executives about the relative merits of different structures and at some point you’ll come across the answer: “it’s what works best for you”. On the other end of that answer is another puzzle – how do you know that the mix you have is right?

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Some of the world's most prestigious brands including Johnson and Johnson, AstraZeneca, Munich Re, Tata Steel and Vodafone are represented on this year's Procurement Leaders Awards shortlist, announced today.

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Sure, there may be reasons to look at Heinz’s report of 14% growth in operating income with scepticism, or attribute it to any number of factors. But the fact remains, its procurement function has made a consistent show of the transformation it has been undergoing and you’d be hard-pressed to say it isn’t paying off.

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The UK's public sector is a funny old beast. With departments like the NHS, the Department of Justice and the MoD having budgets that put much private-sector expenditure in the shade, one would have thought that procurement would be as good as you would find anywhere.

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There's a great article over on Advertising Age about how media buying agency Omnicom, one of the largest media and advertising companies in the world, is looking to procurement for help during the downturn - despite spending years complaining how procurement has harmed creativity.

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Last night, around 400 senior procurement professionals gathered at Banqueting House, London for the most eagerly-awaited bash in the procurement calendar... And what a night it was. Sharing a table with the CPOs of Nokia, IBM, Reed Elsevier, Deutsche Post DHL, Daimler, Shell and Novartis proved illuminating! More of that later...

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This afternoon's session at the Procurement Leaders Network Members' Day focused on the subject of demand management - it was a lively session with huge amounts of value gained all round.

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