Book Description

This volume brings emphasis to the variety of ways the suply management process adds value to the organization. This text covers all aspects of value enhancement, well beyond basic cost-saving measures. "Supply Management for Value Enhancement" focuses on the critical issues involved with outsourcing/privatization, inventory management, cost avoidance/cost reduction programs, forecasting, hazardous materials management, JIT inventory systems, lease-buy and net present value analysis, and how to develop strategies based on long- and short-term market forecasts. ... Read more

Book Description

Every company hopes to get better prices, better service, and morepredictable behavior from their suppliers. Now, the developer of the STeP(Systematic Technology for Procurement) System has provided purchasingexecutives with a complete guide to logically systemizing their company'sprocurement operations. Based on practices developed in the procurement of high- technology systems and now extended to all large-scale purchasing operations,the STeP System saves corporations money and leads to better results whennegotiating procurement deals.

Purchasing and supply chain managers will learn to plan for procurement, createand train a purchasing team, request and evaluate proposals, and competitivelynegotiate deals. This book thoroughly provides a strategic view of thecustomer/supplier relationship, and includes tables, figures, checklists, andself-evaluation forms, along with bonus material such as Procurement Planoutlines, Deal Summary sheets, and sample SOW (Statement of Work) outlines.Finally, a book has arrived that puts the science back into the art of the deal. ... Read more

Book Description

SELLING A BUSINESS CAN BE A TIME-CONSUMING and frustrating experience for those not knowing the ideal way to go about it.This book explains what needs to be done before selling a California business to achieve success.Over 70% of all California business owners who put their business on the market never end up selling!Reasons vary and the common ones are: too high a selling price, unrealistic deal structure, or not being ready for sale in the first place.All business owners should be proactive and start thinking about the sale of their California business well in advance - not at the time they have to sell it.The author has sold his own California businesses by himself and through business brokers and also has the experience as a business broker and consultant for the past 15 years.He knows what it takes to successfully sell a California business.In this book he shares with you all the successful strategies it takes to be successful in Selling A California Business! ... Read more

Book Description

Until now, the relationship between a company and its customers or suppliers has consisted of arms-length haggling over the price of a part or a service. Today, reveals alliance expert Jordan D. Lewis, customers and suppliers are actually embracing each other—sharing data, design work, and even research and development. The result, Lewis finds, has been a dramatic improvement in each firm's costs, quality, cycle times, and customer satisfaction—without added expense. Building on his groundbreaking work, Partnerships for Profit, Lewis shows managers how to maximize the potential of these new customer-supplier alliances—described by the Wall Street Journal as a "revolution"—by drawing upon his hands-on experience and research with best-practicefirmsworldwidesuchas Motorola, Chrysler, and Marks & Spencer.

Although more and more firms now recognize the importance of customer-supplier alliances, few actually know how to make them work. Using interviews with employees ranging from top executives to purchasing and sales people, Lewis takes the reader inside these leading-edge companies and their top suppliers to show precisely how the "connected" corporation can double its competitive resources by forging customer-supplier relationships for greater financial strength, higher market share, more value, and increased operating flexibility.

Lewis provides the tools managers need to structure and manage effective and successful alliances. He discusses all of the initial questions on how to get started—when to use alliances, how to choose the best partners, and how to set clear objectives targeted on high performance. Specific techniques are presented to foster joint creativity—from building interfirm teams to systems-based thinking—as well as methods for monitoring alliance performance and progress. Lewis also shows ways to develop the foundation of cooperation, negotiation, and trust between partners which is so crucial in achieving optimum competitive advantage.

By capitalizing on the new customer-supplier alliances, any firm can increase its competitiveness regardless of industry, company size, or whether its focus is on goods or services. Lewis provides managers of all types with the framework they need to avoid the pitfalls and enjoy the full benefits of the connected corporation. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Highly Recommended!
Author Jordan D. Lewis uses the experiences of four major companies - Motorola, Philips Consumer Electronics Company, Marks & Spencer and Chrysler - to show the benefits of creating an alliance with your suppliers. The book, which is thorough and complete, if a bit long-winded, explains the benefits of such customer-supplier alliances, shows how to get started if you want to form a partnership and spells out how to maintain the relationship. The obligatory tables and figures are conveniently listed right after the table of contents. If you are in a huge rush, you can skip the book and just read the tables, because you will probably get a condensed version of the same information. But we at getAbstract think you'll enjoy reading how these four companies fumbled through the awkward initial stages of customer-supplier alliances and then emerged into trend-setting, money-making success. ... Read more

Book Description

This practical workbook uses computerized spreadsheets to teach mathematical concepts related to retail buying. Exercises help the reader use the computers to formulize and test complete buying strategies. Includes computerized buying simulation software. ALSO AVAILABLEINSTRUCTOR SUPPLEMENTS CALL CUSTOMER SUPPORT TO ORDER Instructor's Guide,0-8273-6798-8 ... Read more

Book Description

This book offers a history and cultural analysis of the supermarket and of everyday shopping in twentieth-century Australia. It discusses the rise of the supermarket in the United States and Britain, and its eventual emergence in Australia in the 1960s. This is contrasted with the demise of the counter service grocery store. As well, the views of shoppers in Australia toward the "new" supermarkets are documented through the use of oral history. More broadly, the book involves a critical discussion of what it means to live in a consumer society and of the work of cultural analysts on consumption. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

ACCURATE & RELEVANT - RESEARCH BASED
This is an extremely valuable book for anyone researching or studying the Australian FMCG / grocery business.

It is very accurate and not at all self serving to the industry who are followers not leaders.

It contains a wealth of quantitative information in a structured fashion, while remaining easy to read.

It is worth buying for anyone who has anything from an assignment to a PhD to do on the topic. ... Read more

Book Description

Discover what every entrepreneur wishes they had known before they started their business! So, you're starting a business? Or thinking about it? Chances are you'll be full of ideas, very excited but a little bit daunted. And you'll certainly have a hundred and one questions about what you should and shouldn't do. Because this is important and you want to get it right. The good news is - you're not alone - because thousands of entrepreneurs have been where you are now. And in this book you can learn from their mistakes and discover everything they wish they had known before they started out - so you can get it right first time.

From Acorns is the essential 'how to' guide to starting a business that doesn't bog you down in complex financial forecasting and the intricacies of tax law (because we know you've got enough to worry about this week). Instead it tells you everything you absolutely need to know to get your business off to a fantastic start - and nothing else. Discover how to tell if you've got a great business idea, what goes on in the mind of a bank manager, how to price your product/service, why you need a dragon to look after your cash flow, how to be a great guerilla marketer, plus hundreds of other tips and pieces of practical advice that make the difference between success and failure. From Acorns is the first book to show how simple - and fun - starting a business can be! ... Read more

Book Description

The fourth edition of this outstanding reference work provides an extensive update of the existing material. Managers, investors, and accountants who need to understand current valuation issues for litigation, taxation, and financial reporting purposes should have the new edition of this text as an essential reference tool. Topics covered include capitalization of dividends; valuation of derivatives; valuation of gold companies, government enterprises, and insurance companies; and valuers and their legal ability. ... Read more

Book Description

IN TODAY’S HECTIC AND COMPETITIVE WORKPLACE, it’s increasingly difficult to have a realistic day-to-day game-plan that is motivating. It’s hard to find the time to make personal and financial goals—much less exceed them. And with employees leaving the cities for the suburbs in droves, much valuable time is wasted in travel to and from the office—not to mention the time it takes to get from account to account. To counteract these trends, Dan Collins and the team at Collins Educational have developed the award-winning Sound Selling Audiobook. It’s an easy-to-follow program that will help everyone who has something to sell achieve their goals, work more effectively day-to-day to accomplish their game-plan and make their time on the road more useful and productive.

Those who use this program will develop the clarity to set goals and see results, be they entrepreneurs, business owners, executives,or salesprofessionals.Collins Educational hastaken the numerous paths that successful salespeople follow and condensed them into a series of fifteen keynotes.These keynotes create a foundation for a new level of assurance in professional selling and a new level of sales success.

The Sound Selling Audiobook offers a unique blended-learning method for bringing a salesperson, sales manager, sales team, or other growth-oriented businessperson closer to his goals and then beyond them. All it initially requires is time to listen, anytime or anyplace that’s convenient. The learning is accomplished by positive affirmations, and it works without all the over-sensationalized effort and stress that is commonly associated with sales training. Musical interludes, proven to aid in retention, are peppered throughout and offer time for reflection. It’s all part of helping those in sales to improve their personal effectiveness. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A sales audiobook with lots of helpful information
This sales audiobook helps professionals improve on their personal effectiveness. It presents the essentials of successful sales skills in a clear format. The 15 Keynotes includes strategies to plan your sales, keep focused, connect with customers and identify their needs, creating value, bringing passion into the sales process and generating a referral network. Occasional breaks of new age music offer time for reflection. ... Read more

Book Description

A winning formula for capitalizing on the supply chain to satisfy customers and build revenue. ... Read more

Reviews (6)

Tons of Theory & Buzzwords, Zero practical application
Lots of talk about "mushroom-shaped business models" and "value constellations", and maybe 1 good framework that is useful (the phases of supply chain efforts).

Everything worthwhile is in the first couple of chapters - after that it devolves into hypothetical mumbo-jumbo without a supporting case study in sight.

Great if you want to examine the possibilities, but it smacked of the late-90's "any business model is possible" thinking.

Lots of stuff like "in the future, businesses will have to choose who in their supply chain will do all the purchasing for every company, and share costs and revenues". It sounded a lot like Marx's "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

I was looking for practical advice on how to move my company forward. I wasted 2 five-hour flights reading this.

Do you Have a Supply Network?
A useful and thought provoking text for supply / purchasing professionals looking for inspiration on how to improve their organisation, no matter how basic their organisation is - everybody has to start somewhere. Although mainly focussed on consumer / FMCG corporations Poirier writes in an entertaining and logical way, with plenty of case references to exemplify what he is explaining. Very relevant in these times of technicological change, poirier also explains how the web can enable supply networks to create a virtual "glass pipeline" of information.

A "must read" if you are serious about transforming your organisation.

Highly Recommended!
Cheers to Charles C. Poirier, who took a topic that almost cries out for unintelligible jargon and undecipherable graphs, and instead laid it plain, in common English, for all to understand. His essential notion: To achieve efficiencies you must develop a closer working relationship with the vendors that make up your supply chain. The goal is to share real-time inventory and production data so that your network of business partners - Poirier's supply-chain constellation - is better able to meet the end needs of the consumer. The major shortcoming of the book lies in its omission of information-based companies from its analysis. How can knowledge industry firms integrate their less tangible supply chains, and will they reap the same rewards as widget-makers if they do? Regardless, we [...] strongly recommend this book to anyone not an expert in the latest logistics-management techniques - and, unfortunately, that's almost everyone.

Sustained advantage through a customer focused approach
I felt that this book made some good points and presented a good framework for identifying where you are and where you need to get to. His framework of 4 levels of supply chain optimization: Sourcing & logistics and Internal excellence which are internal in nature and Network construction and Industry leadership which are external in nature contains some valid points. One point is the need to sequentially move through the levels instead of trying to jump right to the end. Another point is the need to continue moving in order to succeed. His point that all participants must share benefits from supply chain optimization is very accurate. I have seen at least 2 health care supply chain optimization efforts fail because of this issue. Finally, he doesn't claim that building a sustained competitive advantage is simple and he certainly doesn't try to give a cookbook approach for achieving it. A sustained competitive advantage is not a static achievement, it can only be maintained by taking an external view of supply chain optimization that is focused on building a value added community (or alliance) that enables: rapid, interactive, and successful product design and introduction; global available-to-promise capability with completely visible inventory; ability to assemble, build, or configure diverse components into a finished order; features of mass customization in the finished offering; a glass pipeline for viewing availability and flow of goods and services; analytical and financial feedback loops that accurately measure progress; continuous learning and improvement; etc....

Buzzwords
As Theodore Levitt observed "man lives not by bread alone but mostly by buzzwords". Little substance here. Like many books of its type would have been much better if it was 1000% shorter. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

Executives in all kinds of companies -- both service andmanufacturing -- are painfully aware of the pressing need to stretchresources and, at the same time, keep a competitive advantage. Whatmany are not aware of is the tremendous financial benefit that can berealized through an important technique known as Supply ChainManagement.

This breakthrough approach to procuring supplies, equipment -- evenraw materials -- is well known to purchasing professionals. Now itscost-savings will be abundantly clear to top decision-makers. The bookshows how to:

**get the best possible financial deal with suppliers
**applyimplementation steps to set up air-tight processes
**ask the rightquestions, use the right tools, and measure the results
** understand how Supply Chain Management fits into strategic planning.
... Read more

Reviews (2)

Here's a good coverage of SCM with implementation flavor
As the title clearly states, this is an "executive guide" to SCM. The authors give a good, broad coverage of the major issues. Like most AMACOM books this is an easy read, but gives one plenty to think about, particularly those new to the subject. The emphasis is on how one could use SCM concepts and chapters end with a short "implementation guide." The coverage is broad and comprehensive enough to give the reader all the topics needed for further detailed investigation. The tables, figures and diagrams are good and useful. For my liking a few case studies/practical examples would help; and some treatment of information technology would have been useful. If you're not an expert already and want to get most all the basics in one place, this book will do it for you.

Good overview of strategic purchasing to reduce costs
This book is very focused on purchasing rather than the traditional view of supply chain that incorporates all materials, production and delivery related business processes. Given that narrow focus, it handles the purchasing subject reasonably well, but from a high level. It is a good book for executives without appreciation for the key drivers from across the organization of total life cycle costs. Includes many case studies relating purchasing cost savings based on cross organizational cooperation and viewpoint. If you want a book about 'Supply Chain', pass on this one. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A well written A to Z of Outsourcing
Do you work for an outsourcing provider?
J Brian Heywood's book about outsourcing is a comprehensive look at the topic from the perspective of both the client considering outsourcing as a way to improve their competitiveness and the outsourcing service provider. Both types of organisations will gain an invaluable insight into the outsourcing world. The book gives sound advice and backs up the advice with loads of actual examples. The author explains how outsourcing, if handled correctly, has the potential to produce real tangible saving for all types of organisations, not just large ones. He also explains how outsourcing arrangements can fail and what clients and service providers should do to limit their risks of failure.
The book answers the questions:
· Why outsource?
· What are the benefits of outsourcing?
· Which functions should an organisation should consider outsourcing?
· What are the alternatives to full outsourcing?
· How does an organisation choose an outsourcing service provider?
The author argues the case for a 'Business Satellite' approach to outsourcing where the client and the service provider establish a separate organisation that is jointly owned so both can share in the future benefits generated from the outsourcing agreement.
I would say that this book is a must read for any organisation looking for ways to improve their competitiveness in today's market. ... Read more

Book Description

Managing suppliers is a complex process that is often underestimated. This book presents research carried out by a practising manager in the automotive industry, coupled with over six hundred interviews in automotive, aircraft and white goods industry, in order to describe the tools and techniques needed to better manage suppliers. ... Read more

Book Description

Purchasing Capital Equipment will help you develop a strategic plan for purchasing capital equipment that addresses the needs of the organization. This proven method also address through the supplier selection process-the concept that procurement is based upon fact and documentation supports the final decision to buy. ... Read more