A “Three-Legged” Stool Approach to Optimizing Indirect Spend
As any procurement professional who’s managed indirect categories will tell you, the relative spend is not equal to the relative headaches. To optimally manage the most burdensome indirect categories—e.g., uniform rental, waste & recycling, pest control, security & guard services, and energy & utilities—an equally complex approach is required. [...]
Industry Alert: As Waste Brokers Consolidate, Your Spend Skyrockets
If your organization is using a waste broker, its already missing out on managed costs, transparency, and advocacy—and thus, optimal bottom-line impact. But with rapid, real-time industry consolidation within the […]
Why Fine Tune is replacing the word ‘savings’ with ‘spend reduction’
I graduated from college and embarked on my career thinking I knew what the word savings meant. Mine was the common-sense definition that “John and Jane Q. Public” use every […]
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Sustainability vs. Sustainable: Is your energy management strategy truly efficient?
At its core, the word “sustainability” is defined simply as the ability to continue at a certain level—no explicit consideration for whether something is “green,” renewable, or recyclable, and no defined parameters around carbon footprint. Simply: “able to continue." This naturally begs the question: is your energy management strategy sustainable? [...]
Is Your Procurement Department Burning Out?
“Everyone in Procurement is talking about burnout,” says Tom Mills, Head of Procurement & Properties at Bibby Financial Services, in his recent LinkedIn post. And he’s not wrong. Procurement burnout […]
Who’s Managing These Tail Spend Expenses, Anyway?
We’ve frequently discussed in recent years how leaned out procurement departments are increasingly vulnerable to attack by their indirect suppliers, on a range of fronts. Perhaps the most acute vulnerability facing these departments in 2023 is the inability to engage in any sort of actual expense management whatsoever, especially [...]
Buyers: It’s time to take back your power. Here’s how.
The harsh reality is that at the dawn of 2023, procurement teams and buyers in general are facing an exceptionally challenging landscape, and the grand-scheme question facing these professionals is: “How can we reclaim some of the power we’ve lost?” [...]
The Unintended Consequences of “Net-Never” Payment Strategies
An accomplished procurement executive recently joked with me that their prior employer’s vendor payment terms were “net-never.” The phrase resonated with me and my team, as we’ve witnessed just how […]
Price = Checkers; Cost = Chess
With highly complex indirect services like uniform rental, focusing on unit rates is playing checkers. To play three-dimensional chess, you need to elevate your focus from rates/prices to all of the factors that ultimately drive your true costs. [...]
How to Better Align Your Pest Control Program With Your Food Safety Goals
In the past, we've covered topics like cost reduction and optimization related to pest control spend; this time, we'll offer tips on another frequently asked question: "How can I address my concerns of ensuring our organization receives the optimal level of service from our provider and our existing program is improved?" [...]
Contract Security Services, Part II: How can I fight back against rising costs and worsening service quality to get what I pay for?
Within contract security services, rising costs and lowering service quality are a curious contradiction to the established adage, You Get What You Pay For. In Part I of this two-part series, we examined the “why” behind the rising costs and lowering quality. Now let’s get into what you, as a customer of security services, can do about it. [...]
Contract Security Services, Part I: Why are my costs rising so much while service quality is worsening?
As a consumer of contract security services, you may feel like the old adage, You Get What You Pay For, has been turned upside down. If your company is like many others around the country, the quality of service you’ve been receiving from your security vendor has been dramatically decreasing, while your costs have been increasing—probably significantly. [...]