Inflation is rising inexorably –it is currently 3.5%, and there are expectations that it will increase towards 5% in Australia. Inflation is already 7.5% in the US, a figure that doubles relative cost within ten years.
What can buyers actively do to manage price increase requests? Should we invest time in chasing marginal cost saving opportunities when all costs are rising in an inflationary economy? Most contemporary buyers have only ever known a buyer’s market, let alone a market in which costs and wages are spiralling upwards. What real and practical steps procurement practitioners can take to mitigate inflationary pressures in the supply base? What are the readily available methods, tools and capability needed to manage price increase requests from suppliers, including the role of price variation formulae, price increase clauses in contracts, buying buffer stock and other tactical responses.
This January, The Hackett Group completed their annual survey on the shape and trends of global procurement, and particularly how it has evolved post Covid crisis of 2020 and 2021 which has cast such a long shadow over business conditions. According to The Hackett Group’s 2022 Key Issues Study, procurement executives expect more fallout – even a perfect storm of supply-side factors, pent-up demand and massive injections of cash into the economy has triggered an inflationary wage/price spiral, causing procurement organizations further headaches, compounded by a great-resignation.
Dial-in to hear their global procurement lead, LIVE from Florida USA, explain The Top 10 procurement priorities ranked in the most recent Key Issues Study 2022, and just how well the world of procurement seems to be coping post Covid – what clues are there in these trends for your procurement strategy in 2022?
Stakeholder relations has been a top three issue for procurement in most of the research for the last 15 years or so, yet, with a professional approach to the problem, much can be achieved. This session will explain the tenants of stakeholder management and how to map your stakeholder groups and their needs. It will also use the health sector as a case study given clinicians are amongst the most demanding stakeholder groups.
The link between planet health and health of people – Bupa’s One Health approach: People’s health is interconnected and interdependent with the health of our planet. We need to look after one, while taking care of the other. This means addressing our direct business footprint to minimise harm and maximise our sustainability. It also means acting on our indirect value chain.
As a healthcare company, we have the opportunity and the responsibility to play a part in the intersection between people and planetary health, building awareness and driving action. Bupa’s goal to become Net Zero – a different form of real cost, that remains important, inflation or not.
Many faced supply shortages at the outset of the pandemic – more so in Australia perhaps, at the tip of the global supply chain? CPO
And some buyers in Australia confessed to one-eyed purchasing decisions of the past unravelling quickly and threatening vital supply. Santos
Today, many are re-evaluating offshore sourcing to re-balance risks -v- cost gains – especially from inbound supply chains.
and even reviewing their business continuity plans for the future …. But how to go about this, prioritize well and make these fine judgments?
The ‘logistics & freight’ category is one most buyers became familiar with during the pandemic – if not before. The industry that was took for granted, always available, reliable, predictable, a decisive factor for Globalisation – no longer the case, with many buyers recently exposed to the category and its vagaries.
Workforce shortages, then bottlenecks, then wild price spikes all forced tactical responses followed by more strategic questions. Six-fold increases into container shipping rates to ANZ ruined margin at the same time as sustainable & ethical procurement policies refused to yield. Coles lead for their supply chain services category will provide an Update on the Challenges and ins and outs of transport & logistics category for 2022 – key learning points from the pandemic and the new best practices for freight, transport, logistics and supply chain services.
In order for there to be a hero, one needs to have an enemy. Today, the enemy is inflation, and our hero is the Procurement professional. Many organisational leaders would have already put the call out to their Procurement teams to step up and support the business during these challenging times. In this presentation, we will explore the causes and consequences of inflation and then we’ll review some practical, tried and tested tactics that procurement professionals can deploy to protect their organisation from the inflationary affect.
Lean Agile Procurement (LAP) is a new approach, forged from Europe in 2015, that addresses some of the direct criticisms procurement perpetually suffer from stakeholders – Agile is not just about SPEED but also RESPONSIVENESS to changing corporate needs and includes a customer perspective throughout this end-to-end approach to procurement
Hear exactly how APA Group utilised an AGILE PROCUREMENT approach to spec, source and contract for supply of 1.5m Digital Gas Meters, Procurement Mgr – Networks from scratch, in one 13 week project, during the worst of the lockdown period (Aug-Dec 2020), working ONLINE only, through MS TEAMS, APA Group from 6 competing global vendors, using the LAP approach, to secure the best two vendors from 34 hopefuls.
What is happening in the law and how is it affecting procurement practices? This speedy UPDATE will fill you on all the legal changes, both actual and anticipated, that are relevant to procurement.
Are YOU up to speed at your organisation on:
• Modern Slavery – post covid UPDATES
• Post Covid legislation allowances
• The Payment Times Reporting Act 2021
• The Forced Labour Bill 2021 – NSW
• The Unfair Contract Terms Act – amendments and updates
• The post-Covid application of Force Majeure
• The legality of eSignatures
• Potential CPR changes
• Collaborative contracting – including NEC 4 and ECI
The need for capability uplift of procurement professionals has never been greater than post-Covid-19. With limited supply of new procurement professionals, changing work patterns, the future capability changing quickly and procurement resource demands growing throughout Australia and New Zealand, what does this mean for future capability of procurement