I know how he is going to do it

I just had a meeting with someone who used to work at Arcadia.  The way it works there re managing the cost base is that the MD - Ian Green, signs off every order that is placed over £5000 (excluding Goods For Resale).  That has created a culture where they just don't spend money.

Before the announcement of Sir Philip Green helping the Government, apparently the Head of Purchasing from Arcadia got sent to a meeting with the Chancellor - I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for that meeting.

So the answer is that perhaps the PM will be signing off all requests for expenditure now ? - that should be interesting.

What are you doing next week?

There was a piece in yesterday's Indy about the inaugural Edinburgh International Marketing Festival (EIMF) that is on next week. I am up there on Tuesday and really looking forward to hearing the different speakers. 

One of my procurement friends wanted to attend but was told that it wasn't relevant and their manager would prefer them to focus on a clearer marketing procurement mix"....!?! - exactly the attitude that needs to be changed.

Here is a link to the article if you are interested in attending - independent article.

The Elephant in the room

A great title and actually quite a good article about where does the person responsible for bringing procurement and marketing together now sit in the balance of cost and value.  They are referring to the CFO, the Finance Department and I think it is a good (and short) article to read, just to make you think about making sure that you have a positive engagement with the respective Finance teams at the client side.  Click here for the article - Elephant-in-the-room

This made me chuckle

Sir Philip Green, the head of clothing retailer Arcadia Group, has been asked by prime minister David Cameron to lead an external efficiency review into government spending. He will scrutinise government spending over the past three years to identify inefficiencies and potential savings.

I would not have put the two parties together.  Whilst Sir Philip is very well known for knowing every detail of his cost base, he does lead a very lavish lifestyle as the reward for doing this.  So on reflection I think it is an inspired choice and I would love to know who negotiated the contract with him and what his fee is (if there are both of course!).

A classic !

Leaving a client's last night, I decide to get a black cab to the train station.  In getting in the cab, the MD of the agency of the client that I had just left rang me (we are about to start negotiations with them).  After exchanging hellos, he mentioned that they were a Oyster card travelling agency.  Well done I said - good to see an agency managing it's overheads (I still shudder about the £2k we were going to spend on flowers for a client pitch at Lowe's).  Then he mentioned that he had seen me getting in a cab - oops !.  Live and die by our procurement standards ?? (in my defence I was paying for it myself !).

Just made me really laugh.

Bookings now open

I am running a 2nd training session for The IPM (was The ISP) on Perfect Procurement.  I run it alongside Lizzie Palmer from Second Circle - who was my client when she was in charge of Global Marketing when we were at Orange, so we have a good mix of procurement and marketing insight into how to put a really productive relationship in place between agencies and clients. 

We got really good feedback from the last one - so here are the details if you are interested - perfect procurement

Purchasing's eqivalent of The Apprentice

Here it is -  a very very detailed run through of the Battle of the Buyers task that we undertook on the hottest day of the year (well so it seemed).  You can also bid for the items that we 'negotiated' for the task.  Hope you enjoy it and congratulations again to the winning team.  Here is the link to the article - Battle of the Buyer.

ANA Study and strong words in Campaign

The ANA in the USA has just published a report which says that the majority of clients are still using the fee based remuneration system, with only a small minority (1% - very small then) looking at value based output.  I would have thought the latter would be higher with the likes of P&G and Coca Cola now looking to operate in this week. Be interesting to see which clients over here start to look at value based pricing in a big way.  Here is the link to the article - ANA report.

The letters page in this week's Campaign page 22 has 2 letters of interest.  One from David Wethey @ Agency Assessments which leads on from the above mention of value based pricing.  David feels that clients and especially procurement people have become use to paying agencies as some form of salary and that we should look at how architects and design shops are charging.  True re design agencies - they tend to charge per staged delivery.

The next letter is from someone called Marcus Cauchi (if you look him up he seems to work in sales). His views on the Thomas Cook media pitch are shall we say very strong.  His website seems to be written with the same strong view on life.  He does make some decent points, and I understand why Campaign has published it as it is a very entertaining ! read, but I do object to the phrase 'guttersnipe procurement monkeys' when he is talking about the recent Belgian pitch where the agencies went on strike.  Does he know all the facts and like the Thomas Cook pitch, it is always better to know all sides of the story before making such sweeping comments.  But worth a read if you have a copy of Campaign.