For the past three years, buyers have been inundated with negotiating and settling supplier requests for price increases. The combined breadth (cost areas impacted) and percentage increases are higher than I can remember in my almost 40 years in purchasing. You must go back to…
Tariffs, covid, shortages, war, and inflation. We have experienced over 5 years of chaos that have had purchasing professionals restructuring their supply chains. However, due to the unprecedented issues requiring immediate firefighting, sometimes shortcuts are taken and the restructuring results are not favorable. What mistakes…
Cost negotiation becomes a very hot topic when commodity prices fluctuate greatly. In the last few years sales organizations led the negotiation charge as they sought price increases to offset steep increases in raw materials, labor, and indirect costs. Now, buyers are starting to initiate…
Go Bionic – is the recommendation made to CEO’s the Boston Consulting Group’s (BCG) recently published book makes in its recently published book Profit from the Source1. BCG lays out some ideas for creating a bionic purchasing department combining technology/data and skilled and knowledgeable personal…
A few years ago, we published two white papers about Should Be Costing, The Road to Should Be Costing Part 1 and 2. In the papers we provide an overview of different (and easy) methods buyers can use to develop should cost models. Our Cost…
A friend just sent me a link regarding the west coast dockworkers contract that expires in June. The expiration brings with it the risk of a strike or lockout which would close west coasts ports and add to an almost unbelievable string of chaotic events…
As a buyer or a seller, one of the most difficult negotiations is a price increase request. Despite the difficulty, there appears to be a lot of it going on in the marketplace. Whichever side of the negotiation table you are on, we are seeing success from the side that outperforms the…
In whack-a-mole a person hits the mole forcing it down only to have it pop right back up in another location. In quotation whack-a-mole buyers push on an area of supplier costs to get pricing to go down only to have costs pop-up in another area…