New ways of thinking about Short-Term Savings vs. Long-Term Sustainability

" Volume purchasing is a no brainer that most consulting organisation claim to be expert at. While volume purchasing may represent your quickest hits, it can also create your worst long-term problems... " [read .pdf]

The Application of Person Centric Technology

"A personalised approach must resolve two issues. The first is to operate procurement so that performance is constantly maintained and improved over time. The second issue is to overcome information systems limitations. How can this be achieved?" [read .pdf]

More than Print Management

"Nowadays, organisations are faced with cost pressures. Cost reduction projects through Print Management represents a potential candidate for cost savings in services intensive industries such as finance and travel." [read .pdf]

Is Your Company Facing Increasing Pressure from Top Management and the Market to Reduce Costs?

"Slashing personnel, travel, training or R&D budgets is certainly not the way to be more competitive in the long run. What we need is a well thought out, understandable and implementable strategy to reduce costs. But how many people can honestly say that they understand and know the costs associated with what they do in the organisation?" [read .pdf]

Measurement and Informed Decisions

"Cost Analysis looks at the different types of costs incurred and how they may be controlled from a functional, manufacturing and process perspective. Cost Analysis examines the costs associated with a particular decision and what may be done about those in the future.

By knowing what costs are and how they behave across inter-dependent functional departmnets, you can take steps to improve efficiencies and engage in cost-reduction programmes." [read .pdf]

.... to Quality

"Companies today must create a constancy of purpose toward improvement of products and services, with the aim to become competitive, stay in business, and provide jobs...

Therefore, customer research becomes an integral part of production because it will drive the products and its features. Becoming efficient at production zero defects becomes nil if the product does not meet customer specifications." [read .pdf]

Collaborative Project Management Office

Aligning Portfolio, Programme and Project Management with Business Requirements

"The benefits of a PMO are reported in numerous sources of literature, with various books, articles and companies attempting to address similar issues: project methodology and project controls. All PMO’s are directed towards the same outcome: allowing the company (via all of its projects) to support business strategic objectives - these include securing cost savings, providing faster responses to markets, accelerating new products introduction, addressing customer needs and managing change effectively and efficiently.
Companies need competitive advantage and are actively looking for:

• Reduction in new product/solution development time;
• Reduction in infrastructure (networks, data centers, etc.) delivery time;
• Reduction in bid response time;
• Faster product/service time to market;
• Reuse of knowledge and information;
• A reduction in customer service costs; and
• Development and management of increasingly intimate and tight trading relationships with key partners, suppliers and customers.
  

Managers do not want an increased workload simply to satisfy ‘project methodology reporting’ needs. They must be allowed to focus their current expert knowledge on delivering outcomes and to improve business performance. The objective of using a collaborative PMO approach is to eliminate the overheads currently associated with traditional methods of project management. Managers are required to focus on business deliverables, and only a PMO that uses a collaborative approach is able to provide this." [read .pdf]