The ‘Focus on Costs’ Programme came from our thinking on the way into the 2020 COVID-19 crisis. As the crisis struck during early March and we moved into full lock-down we pulled together a series of articles that built into a 10 point programme for reviewing and reducing costs...

Today is the final article in this series aimed at helping organisations to Focus on the Bottom Line using a concept developed within JMCL which we refer to as Enlightened Procurement.   This concept is all about the simultaneous realisation of dramatic cost reduction and increased value to an organisation from its 3rd party...

Today we are concerned with the application of the Enlightened Approach across your business.  So far in this series we have focussed very much from a Procurement perspective to address third party spend and value adding benefits.  The same concept of simultaneous cost reduction and value improvement can be applied across the business...

Over this series of articles, we have explored several key elements required for the delivery of an Enlightened Procurement programme, the simultaneous delivery of cost out and value up.   Our scope has included everything from understanding spend categories, through to specific approaches to address each, dependent upon its risk and value...

So far, in this Programme, we’ve described how to segment and approach your cost base to drive savings and optimise supply chain resilience. In many people’s mind procurement is about cost savings…and at its core, that’s what it is. But, besides savings it’s also able to deliver a lot...

Yesterday we analysed the Strategic Security and Strategic Critical boxes (see Fig. 1 below.) Spend categories in these boxes are defined by relatively high Supply Risk.   Today the focus is upon the nature of relationships between buyers and sellers and specifically upon the concept of Relative Power in a...

Yesterday we looked at realising Tactical Longer- Term savings from third party costs using a spend segmentation framework called the Kraljic Matrix (see Fig.1 below), a four-box matrix defined by Supply Risk and Size of Spend. The source of Tactical Longer- Term savings is from spend categories allocated to...

Yesterday we looked at realising some quick win savings from third party costs (the spend) using a spend segmentation framework called the Kraljic Matrix (see Fig.1 below), a four-box matrix defined by Supply Risk and Size of Spend. Quick Wins savings are those that make an immediate impact upon...

Yesterday we introduced a simple tool for your organisation to address third-party costs and build resilience into your supply chains.   This tool, the Kraljic Matrix, is deceptively simple yet provides a significant amount of insight into approach required for different spend categories and the associated speed, impact and effort...

Yesterday we explained the necessity of really looking at your business’s cost base during this pandemic. Over a fortnight and in the spirit of pulling together, we’re issuing daily advice building into a full programme to show you how to review and reduce your cost base, whilst maintaining supply chain...