Staying out in front
Even the best must get better
Mike Verespej, Editor-in-Chief -- Purchasing, 3/3/2005 7:00:00 AM
Greg Tennyson, vice president of procurement for Oracle Corp., in a conversation last month, talked about the importance of "staying out in front of the curve" in terms of where procurement is heading. "You endeavor to achieve world-class," says Tennyson. "But you have to understand that world-class is a moving target."
It's similar to the thoughts that Brett Edmisten, director of strategic sourcing, Cessna Aircraft , shared with me near the end of last year. A winner of the PURCHASING Medal of Professional Excellence in 2003, Edmisten waxed enthusiastically to me about how far Cessna has come since winning that award and the additional progress it has made in controlling spend and integrating manufacturing with strategic sourcing. But he added: "While we have achieved a good performance, we have a long way to go. It is a never-ending endeavor. To remain a leader in global procurement, you can never be satisfied."
It also means that you can never stop learning. That's why PURCHASING is presenting its fourth Global Procurement Conference, a two-day webcast series on April 13 and April 14. Our keynote session on day one will feature three previous winners of PURCHASING's Medal of Professional Excellence. Lucent Chief Procurement Executive Joe Carson, IBM CPO John Paterson and Greg Shoemaker, vice president of central direct procurement at Hewlett Packard, will discuss what it takes to be best-in-class in purchasing. They'll share best practices for spend control, global sourcing, supplier performance management and process automation. On day two, our keynote will address how to go global with an indirect sourcing strategy and how to overcome the challenge of finding suppliers with the capabilities to serve overseas locations. The session will feature Kinnar K. Ghiya, e-procurement sourcing program manager for Intel; and Larry Welch, vice president of indirect procurement of Hewlett Packard and top procurement officers from American Express.
For registration information, visit: /
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