Blog

Workplace bullying has followed us online to zoom, google hangouts, Microsoft meetings and it is as unpleasant and unproductive as it ever was, so how do we go about disarming the Zoom bullies? I wrote this piece after a coaching session with a client working in a regional SME. She was finding the regular zoom […]

One of the great opportunities in Category Management is the way we can use a well-constructed category strategy, which is thoughtful, insightful, well-founded and socialised across our stakeholders, to understand what might happen if there are changes in the fundamentals on which the strategy is based.    This gives us the ability to pre-plan for […]

Recent news reports have been trying to raise awareness of the long-term environmental effect of the use of plastic, and the impact on oceans, the countryside, and wildlife [1] This reporting and many similar articles over the last few years is slowly changing public perception of the use of plastics in packaging. There has been […]

There is a common thread which exists across organisations of all sizes, and poses a real and serious challenge for the creation of value – this is about how well we understand the organisations strategy, direction, and the purpose of the business. This is an area full of challenge. The very existence of a business or […]

IKEA have used geo-targeting in their marketing mix since 2014 along with ASDA and Morrison with great results – a 32 % to 60% increase in store footfall and 3 times the industry standard for click conversions.  We wanted to explore how geo-targeting could benefit an SME,  helping them to deepen their relationship with a […]

One of the unacknowledged challenges in both buying and selling, in the discussions between sales teams and their counterparts in customer organisations, is the need to achieve consensus.

The NHS is a centrepiece of the U.K. It is a unique, open access healthcare system, roughly free at the point of use. It is also the fifth largest employer in the world (after the us and Chinese military, Indias railway

One of the challenges in business is to make sure that the actions of the various parts of the business align with business strategy. This seems like a really simple area of activity

There’s been a burst of press coverage recently about the achievements of Google and Apple and the way in which they have moved towards carbon neutrality for their major facilities

The quality of the debate – Staying in the EU and Procurement In Procurement circles, there’s a real challenge in making sure at there is high quality analysis of particular categories

Our previous observations on the benefit of having a clear strategy, using Ryanair as an example of clarity and the way that drives choices, had one predictable outcome: a number of comments on individuals perception of the service provided by Ryanair.

Big Pharma (all the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world) and Big Food (all the big brand companies we know and love) have all adopted, in one form or another, an approach to purchasing called category management. This isn’t new but it is very well embedded

No.   Mark Hubbard thinks about Procurement and Sales at www.smartbrowndog.com

Chatting to a friend last week who gets involved in big RFP’s from a sales side raised an interesting point: do sales teams really understand what an RFP is for? At a surface level, there’s a bunch of questions that the procurement team are asking,

Often, when reviewing procurement strategies being developed in businesses, the standout feature common across many is the sheer lack of ambition. There’s often a host of reasons for this, including poor change management, limited time, bad governance

There’s a whole internet meme out there about Killer Apps for different products and different uses. Historically, I can recall Supercalc 4 being the miracle app for PC’s; the Microsoft suite took over at some point; whole sets of word processing software surfed the wave, and fell off.

More than eleven years ago, I was involved in the development of a broad reaching company car strategy for a large business. Previous efforts had focussed on a good deal with the the fleet businesses

Both Procurement and Sales need to have a good grasp of the customers strategy; one side to make sure they are addressing the core needs of their customers strategy, the other to make sure they are servicing the needs of that strategy.

The whole arena of creativity is beset with a central challenge: how do we get better at creativity? This is something which has taxed and challenged a whole series of people for a huge amount of time, and has also delivered polar opposite views in approach.

Tesco has announced a dramatic revision of its financial position, possibly because of its accounting treatment of supplier contribution to promotional campaigns being counted early.

Google has invested $400Million in acquiring a business whose leader is focussed on how artificial intelligence can be evolved in computers, leading to a HAL9000 moment ( from 2001: A Space Odessy).

One of the ongoing challenges in category management is to decide when the category needs to be reinvestigated. The usual approach is to suggest that this is done when indicators seem to suggest that there have been changes in the marketplace.

It’s always interesting to see what businesses which are doing well have in place in their supply chains, and one of the most profitable businesses in the world today is Apple Inc. Although much is well behind closed doors

There’s an excellent piece of experimental music by John Cage called 4’33”, designed for any instrument or combination of instruments. Each instrument needs to make no noise for 4’33”, and the audience gets to experience the ambient noise in the arena.

A recent article in the London Times (http://www.thetimes.co.uk/business/economics/article) suggests that businesses in the UK were starting to look at approaches which shift the balance

Catching up with some baseball last night made me think about the endless use of measurement and statistics in sport, particularly in cricket and baseball. Measures of performance of teams and individuals

The world cup, if you live in England, is a time for sober reflection, boundless hope and the challenge of watching a group of people who, together, earn more than the entire global

One of the ongoing challenges for the delivery of strategic sourcing is to make sure there is a break from the ‘same old same old’ solutions which often are preferred as we drive towards ever shorter delivery targets and cycles.

Stakeholders. If it wasn’t for them, buying would be easy. Divergent views, different and sometimes opposing needs, wilful, unavailable, supportive, enthusiastic, expert, and less so.

Over the last ten years, a whole stream of businesses have developed new sourcing approaches which centre on the development of new supply chains centred on suppliers based in China.

Understanding current trends in economic performance, market behaviour and patterns of activity are fundamental to decision making in business, and political, environments.