Now more than ever, supplier selection must produce stellar results as companies increase their focus on supply chain management and push more requirements down the chain to their partners. Business continues, but with different strategies. For example, Siemens AG plans to reduce costs by centralizing 47% of its procurement spending by 2010, compared to its current level of 29%.

Clearly, companies are viewing changes in supplier management as a way to gain more value from their partners. Consequently, performance expectations are increasing, and companies are using their supplier partnerships as a means of driving innovation. Using the right supplier selection tools can play a critical role in building value-based relationships.

So, how can you ensure a successful selection process?

What is the Project Management Approach to Selecting the Best Suppliers — And How Will It Help Your Organization?

The Project Management Institute (PMI) model serves as an excellent framework for procurement activities. This structure can help procurement teams focus their attention on each key element in the selection process and identify the real treasures in their potential supplier base. The PMI model identifies five process groups teams can use to design and manage a value-based selection process. These are:

1. Initiating – Ensures the support of leaders in your organization so you can move forward.

2. Planning – Critical for identifying all of your business needs.

3. Executing – Provides a structured approach for evaluating bids to guarantee desired results.

4. Monitoring and Controlling – Forces you to evaluate and incorporate any new information.

5. Closing – Formalizes results and establishes a plan for implementation.

Initiating – The First Critical Step in Selecting an Innovative Supplier Partner

In the Initiating phase, the sourcing of a product or service is approved and key players are identified, including stakeholders and the project team. This is critical in large organizations where a product or service such as a communications process, for instance, touches a multitude of business units and functional groups.

For example, the General Motors (GM) dealer communications process involves approximately 10 constituent groups within GM alone. When the dealer relations team needed to identify a new supplier, they canvassed the corporation. They identified each department that used the process, even those that only sent materials to dealers occasionally. This group of stakeholders was involved up front, and the team was able to avoid issues later in the procurement activity.

Planning – A Phase That Must NOT Be Shortchanged Just So You Can Find a Supplier Quickly

The team uses the Planning phase to flesh out business and performance requirements in detail. Each stakeholder group feeds its unique set of expectations to the team, who then incorporates them into the requirements. The team identifies the risks, scope, cost targets, and timing of the procurement effort.

This phase has some unique aspects for a procurement project, the most important of which is identifying qualified potential suppliers. The team should think creatively about how the new supplier must create value and provide benefits that were missing in the past. With proper planning, an organization can move from having suppliers who just sit on the sidelines to having real value partners who support the strategic vision. For instance, suppose a sales organization wishes to upgrade its online store and improve order-processing time. They must identify a fulfillment supplier with strong IT capabilities and state-of-the-art warehousing.

A note of caution on the Planning phase is in order. Procurement teams must resist the temptation to shortchange this step in the name of finding a supplier quickly. The task of identifying requirements can take months, as was the case with GM’s dealer communications process. Identifying requirements up front will uncover possible conflicts and inadequacies. For example, if a benefits solutions group wants to implement a web-based application process, they need to know whether their existing technology infrastructure will accommodate such a change. Knowing these things will help the team come up with a realistic task list and timeline for implementation.

Executing – The Third Critical Step in Selecting an Innovative Supplier Partner

In the Executing phase, the team brings to bear the fruit of the Planning phase by creating and distributing a Request for Proposal (RFP) that reflects the business requirements. The team uses the requirements to develop evaluation and ranking tools, and then uses these tools to assess each response to the RFP.

The team identifies a subset of suppliers as candidates for negotiations, and conducts a series of detailed discussions that include clarification of the RFP response, scope issues, schedule, and other areas of concern. This step includes multiple rounds of pricing discussions that will lay the groundwork for a final selection.

Monitoring and Controlling – The Fourth Critical Step in Selecting an Innovative Supplier Partner

In the procurement context, Monitoring and Controlling involves a review of the scope, requirements, schedule, and other metrics involved in the evaluation. This review creates an opportunity to refine assumptions and get feedback from the respondents on their ability to meet or exceed the stated performance goals. Teams can use the feedback to calibrate the performance goals and to make tradeoffs of scope versus schedule, for example. Then they can create a more realistic set of performance goals, if appropriate. The team documents changes to performance metrics, scope, and schedule, and presents these for approval as well.

Closing – The Last Critical Step in Selecting an Innovative Supplier Partner

Closing is the last phase of the project. Here the team recommends a supplier to the appropriate groups, and the purchasing managers develop the contract documents. The procurement team develops guidelines on details to watch for while managing the new contract. For example, if the team awards a contract to a web developer on the condition that the developer commits additional resources for implementation, the commitment needs to be captured in the guidelines to ensure it is not overlooked. This document also serves as a reference for future procurement activities, including any follow up work with the selected supplier.

This five-step method is an indispensable tool for addressing current and future requirements, particularly for multifaceted contracts involving diverse stakeholder groups within your organization. Using it will ensure your ability to select a partner with the vision and capabilities needed to create a sustainable, scalable solution that advances your strategic goals.



By: Monica Johns

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Though there are enough ideas to propel one’s fundraising ambition, there are certain ground rules to follow while attempting to raise funds. First of all you may need to define in concise terms, everything about your project and its objectives. Ask yourself, how your fundraising effort helps society as a whole. How many people will get the benefit? What exactly are you going to do with those funds? Will it help you to grow personally and socially?

Once you’ve laid a solid groundwork, look for fresh and innovative ideas, which are different and beneficial to hundreds of people. The ideas you choose must be socially feasible and economically viable. Never cling to those ideas which are common and repetitive. You may also take care to see that you are not repeating the same idea, which is currently pursued by other people. Let your ideas be innovative and universally beneficial

Once you decide to use the fund for a specific purpose, you’ve already taken the first stride in philanthropy. Many of the common ideas include raffles, lottery, sweepstakes, contests on entry charges, shows, dinners, music concerts, sales of different kinds, fashion shows and other similar ideas. Ultimately, you’ll have to decide about the type of fundraising event, that best fits your local requirements.

However, there is a quality tag attached to every idea; it is doesn’t make a real practical sense, if your fundraising idea is costly. Remember that your aim is to raise funds for your charitable activity and not spending excessively on organizing the fundraising event itself. The event you are planning must not be too flashy or expensive; such simple events will save money in many areas. Try to save money wherever possible; money saved is money spent on non profit, charitable activities.



By: Daniel Lesser

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The home remodeling as well as the changes you make from time to time to your home are usually meant to make you feel better and relaxed in the home. In case you have a home in the colonial style, you will probably have to practice some remodeling in order to maintain the old charm of your palce. Even though it is more recommended to remodel the entire place at once, you can still keep it easy and remodel one-step at a time.

In case you are looking for decks in Northern Virginia, you can easily find internet advice on Northern Virginia deck as well as numerous ideas in order to add a special feeling to your house.

It is a very known thing that the remodeling of the home will make you think you live a new and more comfortable indoor life. You should also know that the outdoors are as important as the indoors when speaking about the comfort of your home. Thus, the Northern Virginia deck companies can help you with the remodeling project for you deck North Virginia.

These companies are prepared to provide you Northern Virginia deck plans, ideas as well as total costs and support for your remodeling process.

The deck is a surface similar to the floor, it is more often than not constructed outdoors, and it is connected to a structure. The decks are very frequent used as a part of the landscape of the gardens, in order to expand some of the living areas of the home or as an option to the patios. The decks can be constructed from numerous types of materials and the Northern Virginia deck companies can help you out with all these matters.

The aspect of your deck can be traditional, created from timber and wood and these ones are extremely popular for the reason they have a very elegant appearance. These days, you can opt for designs that are more modern and use some combinations of plastic and wood, and offer your deck a minimalist look that will still look natural. The Northern Virginia deck companies can provide you with the best installations when it comes to decks in North Virginia. The materials that you can use range from the redwood, yellow pine to the vinyl railing.

In case you think about remodeling your home, the patio needs to be one of your top priorities. A stylish and beautiful patio represents the best a colonial residence can have. A patio is a special part of your home and it is more often than not used for recreation or dinner purposes. You need to keep in mind that your patio needs to blend perfectly with the general aspect and style of the home so try to select the building or remodeling materials properly. Remember that the Northern Virginia deck companies can help you with your projects, from the initial plan to the selection of the materials and the completion of the entire project. If you want a new deck, you should look for a Northern Virginia deck company.



By: John Cvetkovic

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If you notice, you may observe that most of our nonintellectual discussions and conflicts are wars between tradition and innovation. Here you may find a person trying to convince others that one should stick with the legacies: experienced, practices, and patterns – not necessarily using the spoken words, but some contextual jargon; while the other person is contradicting. If only innovation and creativity can make a difference. Or in other words, you learn as you go. The same quarrel exists in our software engineering field, at least in our local industry as I see.

1. The Fundamentalist Craftsmen or Blind Followers 

There are people who have strong belief in old practices. They always have the same number of documents, same life-cycle, identical design, and unbelievably a single strategy for every project. The most surprising point for me is that even the failure is unable to make them believe that there’s something wrong. Instead of trying to make some improvements and searching for the shortcoming in their practices and strategy, they start believing that failure is a norm, or it’s not failure at all. For instance, you’ll hear them saying “Clients never get satisfied” or “Losing deadlines is a norm in our industry”.

Examples -make things easier

In a software project, the offshore back-office development team shares the documents reside in their local repository with the the on-site front-office team to let them update the documents. In absence of their access on offline documents the local team shares the documents via email with the remote team. Obviously they get frequent version conflicts in documents and when it happens, they arrange a meeting and manually resolve the conflicts in the documents.  For months, they suffer with this problem but avoid change in their practice e.g. having an online document repository instead of shareing the documents on email. The term coined here is Brute Force approach as Steve McConnell called it

2. The Innovator – or scientist, we can say 

Away from the above category, the innovators are what most of our new graduates comprise of. They start with buzzwords like Web 2.0, cloud computing and believe that legacy practices are obsolete and that the senior folks are not creative at all. They drive their projects for learning, ignoring the ground realities they neglect the cost and risk of change and avoid exploiting legacies: patterns and practices. Since they believe that they make things better than they are, it’s possible if you see them writing their own DB connection pooling in technologies having built-in connection pooling or writing their own classes from scratch instead of extending the existing one. They often try to make simple things state-of-the-art and having insufficient knowledge and experience they get lost in the middle. The term coined here is “Silver Bullet” as Steve McConnell says.

3. Engineering Mindset: the most needful 

The moderate mindset - or engineering mindset as I say- tends to utilize and exploit the experience, invested by the lots of great minds avoiding useless reinventions but never shy to address the issues with in the particular scenario, if it doesn’t fit with. The mindset says that understand your objective whether it’s build-to-learn or learn-to-build. It says that to be honest and successful, an engineer shouldn’t behave like a scientist who build and destroy just for learning. And it says that there’s always room for improvement since it’s a going concern but it’s not the ultimate goal of an engineer instead it’s to deliver the most optimal and economical.

A single practice may have different out comes when followed with or without reason. So, if a practice is being followed by majority, most probably there are reasons, try to find them, dont’ shy asking other followers if you couldn’t,  but if nobody else knows, you have at least one reason to avoid it. Better to have your own with reasons instead of following blindly.

Being an engineer, I do not believe that I am right all the way, considering that I’ve limited amount of skills, knowledge, experience. Your comments and disagreements will be anticipated hoping they’ll help us having a balanced mindset.



By: Catalyst

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