GEP

Reorganizing for Success: A Playbook for Transforming Procurement in Utilities 

Let’s face it: Procurement’s value to utilities is too often overlooked, with this critical function relegated to a supporting role — even though it’s essential to your organization’s success.

So, what’s holding procurement back? How can procurement take its rightful place and help transform utilities amid changing market dynamics, pricing pressure and an overreliance on legacy systems?

GEP’s new paper — Reorganizing for Success: A Playbook for Transforming Procurement in Utilities — tells you exactly how.

Our experts take you step by step through what you need to do to harness these three foundational components of every utility’s long-term success: people strategy, governance and technology innovation.

What’s Inside:

• Detailed ideas for attracting and retaining the best talent

• Concrete steps for boosting savings by eliminating governance gaps

• A road map for data-driven resilience

Utilities leaders need to read this important paper now to learn how to unleash procurement’s potential and make it an indispensable business partner.

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5 Best Practices for Selecting Procurement Software 

You’re a procurement expert. You’ve helped everyone in the enterprise choose the right software.

So picking new software — or an upgrade — for your own team should be easy, right?

Until you start your search.

But don’t be disillusioned. Here’s something to get you going.

A new guide from IT Central Station and CIO.com — Best Practices for Selecting Procurement Software — based on real user reviews, breaks down the critical elements you should look for while selecting a new procurement software for your team.

What’s Inside:

• Best practices to help you zero in on the right software for your needs

• Practical, unbiased advice from recent (and happy) buyers

• What separates great software from the good

If you’re looking for new software (or an upgrade) for sourcing, contracting, supplier management, or procure-to-pay — don’t finalize anything until you’ve read this guide.

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Reimagining the Supply Chain Control Tower 

Supply chain control towers have been around for a few decades. And they did serve some purpose at that time.

But not anymore.

Today’s complex, global supply chains require much greater visibility and control than what legacy control towers can offer.

A new white paper from GEP —  Reimagining the Supply Chain Control Tower: New World, New Needs, New Capabilities —  breaks down how supply chain control towers must evolve to help enterprises stay agile and resilient in the new normal.

What’s Inside:

• Why and how modern control towers differ from legacy solutions

• The essentials of a next-gen control tower — and why they’re important

• What best-in-class companies are doing to thrive in the new digital economy

It’s a must-read for business leaders looking for greater visibility and control over their supply chains.

Download the report

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What's Budget to Pay™ and Why You Need It Now 

Huge savings are hiding in plain sight. You just need to know where to look.

A good place to start is with your suppliers.

Procurement has the power to drive 55% higher savings when it’s brought into the budgeting process at the outset rather than during supplier negotiations, according to the Institute for Supply Management.

The latest Spend Matters paper, What's Budget To Pay™ and Why You Need It Now, lays out GEP’s exclusive, innovative data and software approach to closing the finance and procurement divide. If you want guaranteed savings and accuracy in annual planning, it pays to capitalize on existing opportunities in your enterprise.

What’s Inside:

• How Budget to Pay™ eliminates dysfunctional use-it-or-lose-it budgeting

• Why you need to link supplier spend processes to finance-led cost planning

• How to tie procurement-driven cost savings to financial statements

The paper is a must-read for procurement and finance leaders keen to achieve more savings.

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CPO Study 2021: Digital Transformation Takes Center Stage

Procurement leaders experienced many teachable moments last year.

Can you learn from them? If you’ve ever wanted to pick the brain of a CPO, read CPO Study 2021: Digital Transformation Takes Center Stage, the new paper from ProcureCon. The annual industry-leading report unveils detailed findings with the benchmarks you need on the most meaningful and important issues facing procurement today.

You’ll learn that 80% of procurement leaders surveyed said up to half of their sourcing processes were automated, while 50% said indirect sourcing had slowed significantly. Download the report to see seven other key findings and even more CPO survey responses.

What’s Inside:

• Why investments in hyper-responsive software, such as S2C and RPA, are on the rise

• Emerging shifts in leadership and reporting structures

• The benefits of combining digitalization and local sourcing

Download the report

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GEP Outlook Report 2021

It’s 2021 and many enterprises are still reeling from the unprecedented disruption of last year. For supply chain and procurement leaders, there’s a lot more to do. And more questions than answers.

Get a big leg up with the GEP Outlook 2021 Report — featuring eight critical leadership themes that will help you navigate uncertainty and thrive in the new normal.

Published annually, the GEP Outlook Report is a trusted strategic guide for thousands of supply chain and procurement leaders across the world. Read today to inform and shape your strategy for 2021 and beyond.

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Five reasons why supplier management programs fail

More than half of leading global enterprises do not have an effective supplier relationship management (SRM) program in place, studies say.

Why do so many otherwise successful organisations founder on SRM? How can your team avoid the same fate?

In this white paper, Epic Fail: 5 Proven Ways to Botch Your Supplier Relationship Management Program, GEP looks at five key reasons why many enterprise SRM initiatives fizzle out or fade into ignominy.

It doesn’t have to be that way. This paper provides useful strategies to overcome each challenge and succeed where so many others have failed.

Read today for insights into how to avoid pitfalls and build enduring partnerships with your vendors.

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Is your supply management fit for purpose?

The pandemic and the measures taken to combat it have made the marketplace exponentially more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous than it was only this time last year – and that is not likely to change any time soon. If CPOs and supply chain leaders are to build a competitive advantage during the economic downturn, they need to focus on the three Rs: response, rebound and reshape.

In this GEP report we analyse the strategic challenges facing procurement and supply chain leaders at the world’s largest companies in three critical stages.

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The CPO's guide to building an agile procurement organization

If anyone on the planet was still unconvinced about the value of agility in procurement operations — they’re probably convinced now. Greater agility translates to faster decision-making and execution. And organizations that can decide quickly and act quickly can much better manage the impacts of severe disruptions.

A new study from GEP and The Hackett Group takes a deep dive into the subject of procurement agility — its definition, use cases, and how organizations can develop it as a fundamental attribute.

What's inside:

• How greater agility enhances core procurement capabilities, such as risk mitigation

• The role of technology in increasing agility

• Best service-design practices that foster agility in procurement processes 

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Spend Category Outlook 2020: Key Trends, Challenges and Opportunities Amid the Pandemic

The pandemic has changed just about everything you thought you knew about managing your key spend categories. You need to get a handle on the new market dynamics – but you’re also under pressure to control costs while finding opportunities to reinforce supply networks and create growth. Robust supply market intelligence is critical for the achievement of these goals. 

Where have the most significant impacts been felt? What’s changed, and what hasn’t? Is there really a “new normal” across the board, or only for some categories?

In this webinar series, the leaders of GEP’s category advisory groups will present their outlook on the top trends, challenges, and opportunities in 10 key spend categories. The discussions will be set in the context of COVID-19 and the consequences that are beginning to be felt throughout the global business landscape.

On the Agenda:

• Category-specific impacts of COVID-19 across industries and regions
• Changing scenarios in supply, demand and pricing
• Market opportunities for categories and subcategories now, in 3-6 months, and beyond

Watch the webinar

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Debunking Best-of-Breed

Here’s a great idea to solve procurement’s systemic challenges and achieve transformation: Take a hodgepodge of specialized “best-of-breed” software from different vendors, bolt them together with the digital equivalent of duct tape, and announce that the resulting “ecosystem” is the new paradigm for procurement excellence.

That, of course, is hogwash. It’s insupportable and impractical. It will waste enormous amounts of time and money, and leave procurement teams in a much worse position than they started in.

GEP’s new white paper, Debunking Best-of-Breed: Why the Single-Software Strategy Is the Only Way to Transform Procurement, counters the best-of-breed approach by presenting the strong case for a unified system provided by a single vendor. It supports this case by listing seven of procurement’s most critical strategic goals and demonstrating how unified software can keep an organization on track toward these goals.

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The Business Case for Budget-to-Pay

It’s a tough time to be a CFO right now. The looming recession — catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic — can stifle enterprise growth for the next few quarters and beyond.

Which means, CFOs need all the cash they can save internally to sustain and enable growth — and a new, more effective approach to reduce costs: Budget-to-Pay (B2P).

In a timely new paper, The Case for Budget-to-Pay: A Win-Win for Procurement and Finance, GEP discusses a new approach to help CFOs achieve rapid cost reduction and save cash. 

It’s a must-read for finance and procurement leaders looking for effective ways to improve cash flow and take out significant costs from business spend.

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Reimagining Direct Procurement Technology: Why It’s Time to Move Beyond ERPs and Legacy Systems

This paper examines the evolution of the role and needs of direct procurement teams over the years, and the disconnect between the current demands of the function and the technologies that commonly support it. The paper also discusses the strategic advantages of using a next-gen, AI-powered, data-driven procurement platform to enable agile and effective decision-making.

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Digital Should-Cost Analysis: How Technology Can Help Optimize Sourcing and Unlock Value

This paper explains how this new digital should-cost model has been made possible by new technologies and why it’s far superior to manual, DIY calculations. The paper also outlines steps for developing a custom-fit should-cost model that will serve as a strategic decision-making tool, enabling better negotiations and better supplier selection.

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Is it time to outsource Direct Spend Categories?

The paper discusses the factors contributing to suboptimal direct spend management and provides a starting point for eneterprises to begin changing their approach to this area of spend. It sheds light on how leveraging external expertise and adopting the latest technology can help them realize the untapped potential in direct procurement.

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Industry Update: Pharmaceuticals and Life Sciences. Key Procurement Trends and Opportunities

This paper discusses the latest macroeconomic trends impacting the pharma and life sciences industries — focusing on primary factors including scientific disruptors, macro-economic trends and performance catalysts — and what they mean for your business and the procurement function.

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Cost Breakdown Analysis:  The Final Frontier in Cost Cutting

This paper discusses a highly effective technique that drives input cost visibility, helping procurement leaders evaluate the competitiveness of current prices and the economic impact of executive decisions. It also cites specific examples to underline the utility and effectiveness of this methodology.

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Case Study: GEP Enables Leading Solar Technology Company to Save Millions on Logistics Procurement

This case study highlights how a $2 billion-plus solar technology company benefitted from GEP’s expertise in logistics category management to identify areas of opportunities and engage with a best-in-class third-party logistics (3PL) provider.

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Case Study: Optimizing Category Sourcing for Savings and Supply Base Consolidation

A Fortune 200 paper and packaging firm with operations the globe identified the need for a strategic relook at supplier relationships. Using Total Cost of Ownership model, GEP helped the firm align client/supplier incentives and consolidate the supply base for rental equipment.

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Case Study: Energy and Utilities - Category Management

Supplier in India of Piped Natural Gas engaged GEP to analyse its supplier relations in a low-volume market. GEP suggested best practices in category management to improve the company's strategic sourcing approach and tendering process.

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Case Study: Category Sourcing - Sourcing Cost Reduction Through Integrated Planning

The client, one of the global leaders in consumer packaged goods, identified packaging as a critical area of concern because of increasing costs and disruption in supplies. GEP, with its category and demand management, market intelligence and vendor performance tracking expertise, helped identify savings opportunities of over 15 percent on packaging and helped improve on-time delivery metrics.

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Whatever happened to digital procurement transformation? - Part 2

The events of 2020 have led to many procurement teams refocussing their attention on hard savings, cost control, and visibility in the supply chain. Impacts have been felt across organisations and companies have had to look hard at capital and strategic programs. What then for digital transformation projects? Are these to be shelved, cancelled or downscaled?

In the conclusion of the two-part series, hosted in partnership with GEP, we examine the following: 

• Where digital procurement transformation projects may have gone wrong in the past 

• Discuss why that makes for vulnerability in the current situation.  

• Some lessons from best-in-class organisations to see how companies can accelerate results without losing the value of investments made to date.

Watch the webinar

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Whatever happened to digital procurement transformation? - Part 1

The events of 2020 have led to many procurement teams refocussing their attention on hard savings, cost control, and visibility in the supply chain. Impacts have been felt across organisations and companies have had to look hard at capital and strategic programs.  What then for digital transformation projects?  Are these to be shelved, cancelled or downscaled?

In this two-part webinar series, we look at the recent drivers of the priority changes for procurement, assess the likely impact on strategic projects and examine how procurement teams should look to leverage their digital investment in the future.

In part one of this series, this webinar is hosted in partnership with GEP, we look at:

• The current state of procurement investment, especially in CAPEX and strategic projects

• Discuss the trends and challenges caused by the global pandemic and economic crisis

• What companies need to consider in order to build resilience into the operation for the years to come.

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Supplier relationship success strategy: Balancing costs, risks and stability

In turbulent times the typical procurement response is to take a short-term, blanket view of all suppliers – negotiating the best prices to improve the company’s working capital. Suppliers will have similar motivation to protect their own interests – thereby putting a strain on the buyer-supplier relationship. Such an approach also creates elevated supplier risk through excessive demands for cost or payment term improvements.

In this webinar we will discuss a program for working with suppliers in ways that will help both sides successfully manage through these uncertain times to emerge in a more favorable long-term position. Procurement should adopt a tiered approach to its supply base; by differentiating operational suppliers from critical and strategic suppliers, who can be targeted with a win-win cost base optimisation strategy. 

What you will learn:

• The right tactics for strategic/critical suppliers and for operational/transactional suppliers

• Risk assessment guidelines for both categories of suppliers

• Making a smooth transition from a short-term, cost savings focus to a longer-term, cost advantage goal

Watch the webinar

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Spend Category Outlook 2020: Key Trends, Challenges and Opportunities Amid the Pandemic

The pandemic has changed just about everything you thought you knew about managing your key spend categories. You need to get a handle on the new market dynamics – but you’re also under pressure to control costs while finding opportunities to reinforce supply networks and create growth. Robust supply market intelligence is critical for the achievement of these goals. 

Where have the most significant impacts been felt? What’s changed, and what hasn’t? Is there really a “new normal” across the board, or only for some categories?

In this webinar series, the leaders of GEP’s category advisory groups will present their outlook on the top trends, challenges, and opportunities in 10 key spend categories. The discussions will be set in the context of COVID-19 and the consequences that are beginning to be felt throughout the global business landscape.

On the Agenda:

• Category-specific impacts of COVID-19 across industries and regions
• Changing scenarios in supply, demand and pricing
• Market opportunities for categories and subcategories now, in 3-6 months, and beyond

Watch the webinar

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Brexit and Beyond: Tips and Tools to Help Procurement Prepare Now

Yes, it's difficult to anticipate the unknown -- and Brexit still holds a lot of unknowns for business right now. Procurement is in a prime position to step up and help the business understand and manage the impact of Brexit. We could even say that the procurement function is crucial for enterprises that want to properly prepare for this historic event.

Yes, it's difficult to anticipate the unknown -- and Brexit still holds a lot of unknowns for business right now. Procurement is in a prime position to step up and help the business understand and manage the impact of Brexit. We could even say that the procurement function is crucial for enterprises that want to properly prepare for this historic event.

Cross-border trade, supply chain and movement of goods are already top of mind and on business leaders' agendas. How can procurement think beyond the obvious and take steps to address the more latent risks that enterprises face? And how can current procurement technology options contribute to this process?

Why Attend This Webinar:

•         Understand how various companies are navigating the diverse Brexit scenarios to forecast impacts on their businesses

•         Learn about technology tools and techniques for assessing potential Brexit consequences across all your spend categories

•         Get advice on formulating a practical plan for conducting a Brexit risk assessment

Category Management in Practice

World class procurement organizations have done their part in driving savings over the past decade, but there are diminishing returns to traditional approaches. In the decade ahead, procurement organizations must increase their level of partnership with business leaders while providing sustainable value that extends beyond cost savings. Strategic category management (SCM) is an approach that aligns procurement activities with business objectives and helps enable this partnership aspiration.

Join GEP’s Bruno Khan and Joel Johnson discuss why SCM is needed, what it entails and how to get started with an SCM program, in this all new, intriguing webinar – a must watch if you’re looking to build or enhance an SCM program, or to simply gain a clear understanding of how SCM can add value compared to traditional sourcing approaches. 

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The Categorical Imperative: Advancing Strategic Partnerships Through a Category Management Framework

In a ‘mature procurement’ scenario, the procurement team is not just a tactical support, but a strategic partner to the business. Based on a better understanding of the business’s needs, the procurement team needs to focus on developing category strategies (as opposed to sourcing strategies) that will use multiple levers to drive value for the business.

In this webcast presented by GEP and SIG (Sourcing Industry Group), GEP’s Biju Mohan discusses methods and motivations for developing an operating model to drive a more strategic approach to category management. Discussion points include:

• Partnering with the business to develop a category strategy aligned with business requirements
• How to avoid the ‘cost-reduction trap’ by using innovative levers to generate value

Essential viewing for procurement pros aiming to lead their organizations to new levels of performance and effectiveness.

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Use of these links will take you away from the CIPS website to internet sites maintained by third parties. You assume sole responsibility for the use of all third-party links. CIPS provides these links as a convenience and accepts no responsibility for content, errors, omissions, or inaccuracies.