It has been well established that having a diverse and inclusive workforce increases results and employee satisfaction, so why wouldn't’ the same be true for companies that invest in building a diverse supply chain? That question is the one that started Jaime Crump down the path to become a supplier diversity expert and consultant.
Jamie is the president of The Richmond Group where she provides consulting and coaching services to corporate and certified diversity-owned businesses in the areas of strategic sourcing and procurement strategies, supplier diversity initiatives, and optimizing the leverage of a diversity certification.
Although supplier diversity programs are well-intentioned, they also have to be good for business, and as Jaime points out, there is a lot of research highlighting the correlations between a more diverse supply base and quantitative business improvement. The American Sociological Review, Harvard Business Review, and McKinsey have all studied the issue and found strong evidence to support true supply chain diversification.
In this interview, Jamie explains:
In last week’s podcast, Host Philip Ideson described the concept of the flywheel, a consistent pattern of small but deliberate actions designed to build momentum and deliver business results described in the book Good to Great by author Jim Collins.
This week, we apply that idea to procurement directly to ensure our strategies and tactics become (and remain) aligned with the goals and objectives of the enterprise as a whole.
This focus has to permeate every effort we are involved in and the benefit can drive competitive advantage through cost optimization, risk mitigation, revenue growth, regulatory compliance, or operational agility.
Listen to Part 2 of this series on the flywheel to learn:
At Art of Procurement, we believe that helping procurement teams effectively align their capabilities and outcomes with the goals of the businesses underpins the transformation of a team from transactional to strategic. In this podcast, we discuss a concept that is a big part of our Procurement, Inc approach and a core part of how we manage the Art of Procurement business itself: the flywheel.
Because this concept may be new to many of our listeners (it was new to us when we discovered it), we’re going to cover the idea in two episodes. This week we provide the broader business context of the flywheel concept, and in part two (next week) we will contextualize the flywheel for procurement teams and discuss ways to put it into practice.
In this podcast, you will learn about the following from Art of Procurement Founder and Host Philip Ideson:
Due to the risks posed by the coronavirus, procurement teams responsible for managing facilities services are currently experiencing quite a change. Services such as janitorial have quickly gone from transactional contracts established based upon cost to highly strategic relationships that must be in place and meet a new high standard for a facility to operate or even open.
Arthur Piszczor is a Consultant at Corcentric, where he has been helping organizations manage their facilities services spend since long before our current elevated requirements went into effect, and he has helped a number of clients manage not only the transition, but the process of planning for the future.
In this interview, Arthur shares his point of view with Philip Ideson and Kelly Barner on: