One of the big goals at IBM now is creating more visibility of information from within the company to key suppliers.

"A lot of our focus is on applying supply chain principles in their broadest sense to the servcies business within IBM to make them as responsive as the hardware business has been within the corporation," says John Paterson, IBM's chief procurement officer.

Paterson and other top CPOs discuss challenges and plans in Purchasing's Global Procurement Conference available at www.purchasing.com.