Continental, Shift, Sourcing, Procurement

Continental Shift

02 Sep 2003 | (News)

How indirect sourcing and procurement in Europe differs from the U.S.; the value of aggregators and the conflicts of culture.

It's hard enough to find consensus for indirect procurement across lines of business or departments in an enterprise. That's why initiatives at companies seeking to control maverick spending and consolidate supply bases are invariably driven top-down.

Now consider the top-down challenges of sourcing initiatives at a typical enterprise in Europe, where valuable trading partners might arise in 15 European Union or say, 47 regional EMEA nations. There's every bit as much value in optimizing the supply base in Europe as in the U.S. of course, but it's a decidedly different animal to manage. Much of this is obvious but we'll admit that some high points needed a little explaining for us.

"It's as [if] you had 50 regional marketplaces in the U.S. for every state with different languages and legal procedures," says Jean-Francois Cazenave, CEO of private marketplace builder and service provider Hubwoo.

At Line56 we wondered why 18 months after public marketplaces in the U.S. (with a handful of commendable exceptions) failed miserably -- and the private marketplace movement had gone largely underground -- we were still receiving bubbly pitches from European marketplace start-ups. Were these guys covering their ears?

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