Recommended reading

Recommended reading for Procurement and Supply Chain

/in /by

I have recently been asked by students of my course ‘Cost Management, Procurement & Tendering‘ for recommendations for further reading on the subjects of procurement and supply chain.

The most comprehensive book on procurement is ‘Procurement and Supply Chain Management‘ by Kenneth Lysons and Brian Farrington. It is now 10th edition and is considered one of the best on the subject. Try to find this edition if you can because it represents the latest thinking on the topic.

Another good one is ‘101 Models of Procurement and Supply Chain Management‘ by Paul Jackson, Barry Crocker and Ray Carter. This contains various management models covering procurement and wider topics. There is not a huge amount of detail against each model but it is a useful reference for each. I would look elsewhere if you are searching for detailed assessments of models because this is designed as high level reference material.

The Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS) has a good bookshop with various texts, some of which include case studies. A lot of these are to support procurement and supply chain qualifications but make useful reading if you have a general interest in the subjects. See here: https://www.cips.org/learn/books/

CIPS Bookshop
CIPS online shop – course study materials and procurement reference books with over 350 specialist and exclusive business titles.

Hope this is helpful. See below for Amazon.co.uk links to the books mentioned.

Details of courses referred to in this post:

Cost Management, Procurement & Tendering
Understand how to reduce and manage business costs. Use procurement and tendering to achieve low ongoing costs.
Virtual working

The firm with 900+ staff and no office

/in , /by

Great BBC article on a company with over 900 staff working virtually with no office. The ultimate in premises cost saving!

The firm with 900+ staff and no office

Reducing Business Costs in 8 Proven Steps

My new cost reduction ebook

/in /by

I have just published an eBook on Reducing Business Costs which may be of interest to those who are keen to get their costs under control this year. It is a quick read and contains some key steps for success in cost reduction and cost management. Follow the link here to get a FREE copy.

https://costreductionmethod.com

If you would like a Kindle or ePUB version as well as the PDF then please message me and I will send it over. Feel free to re-share this post using the links below if you think that there may be others in your wider network who will benefit from the book.

Reducing Business Costs in 8 Proven Steps

The Kindle version can also be downloaded from Amazon here:

Reducing Business Costs in 8 Proven Steps

Why is efficiency, cost cutting and revenue generating more of a focus in tough times?

/in /by

I was recently asked “Why is efficiency, cost cutting and revenue generating more of a focus in tough times? Shouldn’t this be good business practice ALL the time?”

This is my answer:
In difficult times, depending on your sector, growing the top line organically can seem like very hard work, even impossible. This means that management teams tend to see cost reduction as the only viable way in which to deliver an improved bottom line.

In past dips in the economic cycle, the availability of capital has been (relatively) good. This has enabled some businesses to ‘buy’ top line growth through acquisitions, dominant mergers etc. In today’s environment this is much tougher to achieve leading again to the focus on cost reduction.

To answer the question directly, yes, of course “efficiency, cost cutting and revenue generating” are all areas which should be addressed by management in good times and bad. However, for the reasons stated above, efficiency, cost reduction and process improvement are all receiving much more attention at the moment.

In the work I do on cost reduction I am receiving a lot of interest and enquiries at the moment. What seems to be happening is that management teams have delivered the ‘easy’ cost reductions themselves but still need to find more. This leads them to seek external, specialist help to squeeze the extra savings out.

Thankfully this is possible to do. Using my own Cost Reduction Method, I have regularly delivered additional savings of over 15% on cost areas which have already been ‘reduced’.

 

Losing experienced people

/in /by

Do you believe that making experienced staff redundant would help your organisation achieve cost reduction goals? There are many arguments for and against this stance and it can be a tough decision when a company is faced with cutting their cost base significantly.

On the face of it, the last to go in an economic downturn situation should be the highly skilled, experienced resources as they will (should) be:

  • of great, demonstrable value to the organisation
  • and would cost an immense amount to replace when things get better

However, if the company has downsized, unlikely to grow to the same level again and clearly has a staff cost which is too high for its size then action must be taken or the business will eventually die.

I see many companies who suffer through not taking decisive action on staff costs when they should do. It is better to have retained some highly experienced manpower than for the business to fail and no jobs.

The best case scenario is of course that the business turns around and you are soon back to recruiting with ‘Interview in Progress’ signs appearing regularly at your office!