It’s always exciting to be involved in something unique and, with that in mind, it’s little surprise that there’s a real buzz at ELP this afternoon.

ProcureTech Live 2007 – the first procurement conference delivered 100 percent online – appears to have captured the imagination of the procurement community and this afternoon’s ‘live’ presentations certainly appear to have given everyone involved in this ground-breaking event some food for thought.

I’m not sure if it was because everyone was either safely tucked away in their offices, or perched by their laptop at home, but there appeared to be a genuine sense of excitement as I made my way from the Conference Hall to the Lounge – a journey which took longer than anticipated due to the juggling of four real-time conversations.

“Intriguing” was a word, which cropped up again and again in the early stages of the event, and it was this curiosity that appeared to draw people into the kind of conference that few had ever experienced.

Now, as the presentations go on, the chat continues, and the lounge fills up with leading figures from across the procurement and supply chain world, it seems that the format is one that could be here to stay.

Are we witnessing the conference of future? Log on and find out.

After a weekend in which the gloomiest picture of climate change yet painted was published, there’s little doubt that big business is going to come under even more pressure to up its game when it comes to reducing carbon emissions.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) has warned – in no uncertain terms – that if the environment isn’t given top priority by governments around the world, then “catastrophe” could await.

Which makes the findings of a recent study by McKinsey all the more interesting. According to the US-based consultancy, environmental issues are now more likely than any other factor to impact on shareholder value. In all, 48 percent of the 2,600 global executives questioned in the study ranked climate change the number one threat, above data security, healthcare benefits, political influence and job losses from offshoring.

However, despite the globalisation of business, it seems that priorities still vary widely from country-to-country and continent-to-continent.

As one of the world’s biggest polluters, the IPPC will be warmed to know that environmental concerns topped the list in China – as it did in Europe. In India data security worries, with 34 percent, came out on top but, perhaps more worryingly, issues concerning healthcare and employee benefits comfortably outstripped the furrowed brows caused by global warming on the faces of CEO ’s in North America.

An indicator of how the environment has risen up the corporate agenda can though, be seen in the fact that just two years ago job losses from offshoring were thought to be the chief threat to shareholder value – a worry that appears to be rescinding.

Responding to the IPCC ’s fourth report in 20 years, the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, said: “I come to see you humbled after seeing some of the most precious treasures of our planet threatened by humanity’s own hand. All humanity must assume responsibility for these treasures.”

And big business has to assume more responsibility than most.

Could 2008 be the year that companies finally start looking towards Africa as a desirable location for offshoring?

Well, if the latest findings of a World Bank study are anything to go by it’s not beyond the realms of possibility. According to the report’s findings, the continent has enjoyed an economic growth rate of 5.4 percent over the past decade – a figure that comfortably matches that seen elsewhere in the world.

But it isn’t just these figures that are making some of Africa’s economic capitals seem a far more appealing place to do business. The last ten years have seen massive improvements in the infrastructure in many of the continents most under-developed countries.

In April, for example, Kenya, Madagascar and Burundi secured funding of over $150m from the World Bank to roll-out a series of high speed internet networks.

The then World Bank president, Paul Wolfowitz, commented at the time: “Improving broadband connectivity will add tremendous public value for Africa. Low-cost, high-quality communications is essential for economic competitiveness."

Although the impact of broadband technology will hardly be felt by the vast majority of ordinary Africans – the World Bank study suggests that just 90 people out of every 1000 have access to a telephone – the effect on businesses cannot be overstated.

The World Banks chief economist for Africa, John Page, has said he believes the new figures offer optimism for the future. Although whether the findings are enough to lure businesses away from Asia and encourage significant investment in a region that is still often seen as volatile and unpredictable, only time will tell.

I would like to doff my increasingly tired-looking hat to Jason Busch at Spend Matters . His blog, billed as ‘The Business Blog for Spend Management’, has once again unearthed some valuable data relating to the most ‘trafficked’ US and European sites in the procurement and supply chain sector.

And ‘Who Has Got the Eyeballs? Spend Management Traffic’ makes for interesting reading.

According to Spend Matters’ research sourced through, which ranked companies according to their three-month overall web traffic, the European Leaders In Procurement Network (http://www.europeanleaders.net/) continues to lead the way on this side of the Atlantic .

US based Purchasing.com and Spend Matters top the list, but ELP’s seventh position – our ranking of 1,318,947 puts us comfortably ahead of other online procurement and supply management resources - seems to suggest that when it comes to European procurement and supply chain management, it’s ELP that CPO’s are increasingly looking to when it comes to seeking out the news and views that truly matter.

Google, Microsoft, Oracle – all big names, all big players. But how did they get to where they are? And is their path still the one to follow if you seek business success? Some might say yes – the current global credit crunch could be seen as merely a blip on the overall landscape – and companies that wish to grow and expand can still look to aggressive M&A activities (as these companies have done) as the sure-fire way to achieve a higher level of growth. Others might be less confident.

The business world is now a different place due to the global credit crunch. Money is too hard to come by, and the risk levels associated with acquisitions are now based on a much higher threshold. Traditional M&A activity is simply less likely to happen unless there is a no-brainer business case.

Those acquisitions that do happen will have to be more collaborative with comprehensive mechanisms to mitigate risk. Mergers may become less defensive and more focussed on achieving economies of scale and improving market share.

All of this will mean an increased focus on organic business growth. For the CEO who has spent the bulk of their business life utilising M&As as mechanism of expansion this could come as a shock, and they will now have to start focusing on how to encourage organic growth, including wiser implementation of procurement strategy, to reach their business goals.

For procurement professionals these new business trends will, in all likelihood, mean having to show greater flexibility in the contracts that are put together with suppliers and an improved understanding of the financial health of the companies with which you choose to do business.

For a company that has long embraced the virtues of global sourcing, Wal-Mart’s decision to cut its global procurement headcount by over 250 has come of something of a surprise.

And with China the region hit most severely by the cuts – reports suggest that more than 100 staff could go in the company’s Shanghai, Putian and Dongguan divisions – the move seems to suggest that the US retail giant is intending to shift its focus away from the far east and could soon be switching its attention to India.

The company’s PR head Jonathan Dong has insisted that the cuts have nothing to do with the China’s new Labour Contract Law, which comes into affect on January 1 2008, but the decision has already brought a chorus of derision from Chinese law experts who claim that the headcount reductions go against existing legislation which states that companies can only implement job cuts once all other avenues have been explored.

Others have claimed that Wal-Mart is cutting jobs to both cut costs and give them an excuse to go to countries where labour prices have not soared to the extent they have in China, something Dong, who pointed out that his company’s direct procurement in the country currently runs at $9bn a year, has strenuously denied.

Wal-Mart insists this week’s decisions have been taken to make the company more competitive in a market that is becoming increasingly crowded with Western competitors. Whether it signals a fundamental shift in procurement policy remains to be seen.

It’s safe to say that October 2007 won’t be a month that BP looks back on with any particular fondness. But despite the huge $60m fine slapped on the company for “violations of federal environmental regulations” in Alaska and Texas, there does appear to be a rather ironic silver lining to the increasingly gloomy skies circling over the company’s headquarters on both sides of the Atlantic.

BP, the world’s second-largest company, has just seen off competition from the likes of Vodafone and Barclays, to be recognised as the most “accountable” big company in the world. And whilst the result will have the nay-sayers shaking their heads in disbelief, the Fortune, AccountAbility and CSR Network rankings gives BP a resounding thumbs up for their approach to corporate responsibility.

According to the study the company’s approach to increasing oil production for the good of consumers’ pockets wins them high marks, as does BP’s commitment for research into the development of wind, solar, and carbon-dioxide sequestration technologies. They also earned extra ranking points for the ruthless way executives involved in the recent scandals were dealt with.

Barclays came in second, thanks in no small part to their stated commitment to responsible lending and their membership of the Equator Principles group – a coalition of banks that discourages lending to projects that could potentially damage or displace communities and ecosystems.

Unsurprisingly for anyone who listened to Detlef Schultz’s passionate appraisal of his company’s corporate responsibility practices at the ELP awards back in May, Vodafone, who last year topped the poll, also found themselves in the top five.

To view the list in full click here. What do you make of the top ten? Tell us your views.

The other day I came across an interesting statistic from the late 90’s.

From 1971 to 1991 the top 500 global companies increased revenues by a factor of seven from $721 billion to $5.2 trillion. During that same period total employment at these firms had remained flat hovering at around 26 million.

How did they squeeze so much output from the same employee base?

Some of this is no doubt due to technological advances, but in hindsight one can see that much of it comes from shifting work to service providers in lower wage countries.

The manufacturing firms were the first to do this because it was natural for them to see their work in terms of discrete projects that could be outsourced. Hence the first wave of globalisation which dates back to the early part of the last century when multinationals set up factories in Asia and other locales - Malaysia’s economic miracle, for example, was triggered in the 1970’s when 17 US semiconductor companies set up final assembly plants in Kuala Lumpur and Penang.  The Japanese semiconductor companies followed.

Other sectors now treat ‘business processes’ in the same way today. Something that can be pulled apart, executed in low wage/low tax locales, and then reassembled for delivery to the customer. Loan applications, tech support, software development, medical transcription, debt collections are just some examples.

The search for better and cheaper ways of doing business seems to be an unstoppable force that drives multinationals to locales that offer the greatest ‘incentives’ – subsidies, low taxes, low wages, easy access to markets.

These locales almost never include the home country whose very success has made it unattractive due to high wages and societal protections such as workers rights and employment laws. For example, Malaysia agreed to ban unions in the electronics industry to protect the US firms when they first came in. The ban continued for 25 years.

And so, globalization blazes its path around the globe looking for the low ground.

The lives of many are improved as low wage economies raise their standards of living. But unskilled workers in high wage economies lose. Companies have become skilled at redeploying the very elements of production that were once local. So now these workers must compete with other unskilled workers around the world...