Christian Schuh

Alenka Triplat

Daniel Weise

Wolfgang Schnellbacher

Procurement can be your company's secret weapon for winning in turbulent times. In most companies, procurement is an unglamorous, unloved part of the business. A job in the procurement office? A fast track to nowhere. Sourcing and supplier management is strictly about costs, the thinking goes, and all that matters is playing hardball to get these as low as possible. No connection to innovation or strategy or creating positive value. Not so fast. As Boston Consulting Group thought leaders Christian Schuh, Wolfgang Schnellbächer, Alenka Triplat, and Daniel Weise explain in Profit from the Source, procurement should be regarded in a new light, because it has the potential to be a CEO's secret weapon in these fast-moving, disruptive times. The authors offer a wake-up call and a new strategic blueprint for leaders everywhere. With vivid stories and in-depth case studies, they illustrate that no other business function offers the same holistic view of a company—from suppliers who provide the organization with raw materials and components to consumers who buy the finished product. While it's true that a core task of any procurement function is to keep costs from spiraling out of control, the authors show how procurement can help businesses generate phenomenal value from five other sources of competitive advantage critical to success—innovation, quality, sustainability, speed, and risk reduction. Drawing on BCG research and the authors' firsthand experience working with some of the world's leading companies—in high tech, automotive, consumer goods, and many other industries—Profit from the Source provides proven strategies to drive new bottom-line, as well as top-line, growth for your company.

Transforming Your Business by Putting Suppliers at the Core

Profit from the Source

Wayne Brown

Wim Plaizier

AT Kearney

Laurent Chevreux

What do The Beatles, Apollo 13, the Roman military, a pack of wolves, and the very best companies in the world all have in common? Answer: Plasticity. They can change, adapt, and excel as the situation requires. In most organizations, strategy and functional excellence get the most attention. But even the best of either provides only limited long-term advantage. Highly effective organizations add Plasticity as a third dimension and rack up stellar breakthroughs—again and again. It is the key ingredient that allows strategy and functional excellence to deliver value. As the authors show in Corporate Plasticity: How to Change, Adapt, and Excel, Plasticity also enables great organizations to break down barriers and collaborate in the pursuit of a common objective, and to reconfigure or rewire themselves to face down challenges or reach ever-stronger competitive positions. Through entertaining stories and astute analysis, this book demonstrates that Plasticity spurs sports teams to become champions, companies to book record earnings, and artists to attain worldwide fame. You can use its principles—adaptability, flexibility, fluid networks and roles, lofty goals, and innovation, among others—to achieve operational excellence, tear down silos, and create more vibrant, creative enterprises. Your organization can become not just highly profitable and fun to work for, but an organization that can change the world. Plasticity allows an organization to choose its own destiny, become versatile, and dare more than others. Its success lies in a set of abilities called the Magic 7: Purpose: Your company must discover, select, and express what it is meant for. Focus: Your company must have the courage to ignore everything that is not in line with its purpose, and then see that purpose through. Culture: Your company must create the conditions that allow people to work across boundaries and outside of predefined roles. Spirit: Your company must inspire people to feel part of a cause that is bigger than they are. Networking: Your company must provide the means, freedom, and encouragement for people to nurture and grow their internal and external networks continuously. Knowledge: Your company must encourage experts to provide their knowledge and make it readily available to everyone who needs it. Leadership: Your company's leaders must model and personify the characteristics they want others to adopt. Silo thinking? Poor collaboration? Weak earnings? Strategies that gain no traction? Corporate Plasticity: How to Change, Adapt, and Excel is the answer. It shows you how to cultivate each of the seven disciplines to infuse Plasticity in an organization. That—along with razor-sharp strategy and crisp execution—will unleash the power you need to reach both personal and corporate goals. You might even change the world.

How to Change, Adapt, and Excel

Corporate Plasticity

Joseph L. Raudabaugh

Robert Kromoser

Michael F. Strohmer

The approach used on a given spend item should largely depend on the balance between supply power and demand power. That is the logic behind the bestselling Purchasing Chessboard®, used by hundreds of corporations worldwide to reduce costs and increase value with suppliers. The 64 squares in the Purchasing Chessboard provide a rich reservoir of methods that can be applied either individually or combined. And because many of these methods are not customarily used by procurement, the Purchasing Chessboard is also the perfect tool for helping buyers to think and act outside the box and find new solutions. A well-proven concept that works across all industries and all categories in any given situation, it is little wonder that business leaders and procurement professionals alike are excited by, and enjoy strategizing around, the Purchasing Chessboard. This second edition of The Purchasing Chessboard addresses the new realities of a highly volatile economic environment and describes the many—sometimes surprising—ways in which the Purchasing Chessboard is being used in today's business world. Yet despite all of the great achievements of procurement executives and their teams, they do not always receive the recognition they deserve. In response, the authors have developed and outlined within the book an unequivocal approach to measure procurement’s impact on a company’s performance—Return on Supply Management Assets (ROSMA®).

64 Methods to Reduce Costs and Increase Value with Suppliers

The Purchasing Chessboard

Alenka Triplat

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