A blog I wrote yesterday about how Taiwan Semiconductor Company has established a formal Open Innovation Platform with its customers has had me thinking all night (dangerous, I know). While the cynical could legitimately argue that there's nothing new here - rather, it's a formalised version of relationships that have existed for some time - the problem comes when you try to analyse the ownership of the work that is being done in these loosely organised "networks".

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Well, perhaps not quite the big screen, but a recent appearance by Mark Perera, CEO of the newly-launched Procurement Intelligence Unit proves that this profession is now firmly in the business spotlight.

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And so to a fascinating little story in The Times newspaper (apologies, I can't link to it as I'm reading it in the print edition on the train...). The article reports on how mining giant Rio Tinto is trying to reduce it's annual £60m legal bill by 20% by sending much of it's work to India.

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I received a call the other day from the CPO of one of Europe's largest, and best-known companies. He was calling to talk through a blog I had previously written about supply chain finance (Is supply chain finance the elephant in the room).

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There's an excellent article over on the US' Advertising Age about aligning the incentives between advertising agencies and procurement functions. It's one of the more grown-up commentaries about the challenges that undeniably exist in a relationship which, historically, hasn't always seen eye to eye.

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If you read The London Times yesterday you would be forgiven for waking up this morning firmly of the belief that reverse auctions are an evil invention best consigned to the history books. In an article which looked into the supply of medical care to the elderly, it reported that:

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There is an excellent press release (which you can read here) released by Cypress Semiconductor Corporation about its approach to reverse auctions. It's a simple approach, but one that many would probably agree with. The company has, in short, refused to get involved in any. Period.

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I had an interesting meeting with Steve Muddiman, global head of marketing at BasWare, yesterday. Muddiman joined the Finnish technology company just seven months ago and has been tasked with expanding the company into a global powerhouse.

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I was invited along to a roundtable discussion the other day (organised and chaired by 4C at the Procurement Leaders Forum). Although brief, the discussion covered a lot of ground - not least, talent. (It seems whatever forum or seminar you attend, the subject of talent soon rears its head.)

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To most organisations the cost of human capital - whether full time or interim employees, or the infrastructure needed to support them - is the biggest cost they have to bear, so it's perhaps not particularly ground breaking to suggest that procurement must work more closely with HR to reduce costs.

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