Forewarned is forearmed, they say – I wonder, if it holds when it comes to computers – very finicky things, these machines. Well, mostly so in this case. However, this month has not been very great on the computer front – I’ve trashed/burnt three computers now. First, two desktop computers at home that had a KVM switch between them went down together because of what looks like a power surge in one of the computers. So I had to buy a brand new one – got a Core duo which more than made up for the loss of the two. Then roughly a week and a half later, my work laptop just blinks (maybe the coffee that I splashed on it helped! :-)),flickers and then calls it a day. No! Year, No! life.
It will be a little slower than usual getting off the ground after this crash. I’ve recovered almost everything vis a vis this blog and so should be up and running to speed soon enough.
Ciao!
Yesterday, I signed up at the Aberdeen Group website to take advantage of a free report offer that is running through Jan 26th, 2007 to download a copy of the report titled – New Strategies for Financial Supply Chain Optimization. (Apparently at this link, you don’t even have to sign up to get the report) The focus of the report is,
Rethinking Financial Practices with Your Suppliers to Maximize Bottom Line Performance
and the introduction to the report outlines what the folks at Aberdeen think is a glaring opportunity for firms that have gone the route (I guess there are but a few firms that have not either lead or followed their competitors overseas) of global sourcing or offshoring/outsourcing:
Driven by the pressing need to lower the cost of goods sold, companies have embarked on sourcing from emerging markets and have been able to achieve significant benefits when the strategy was executed correctly, including 10%-35% savings on the cost of goods purchased. However, most companies are still leaving money on the table because they fail to take into account the SCF opportunity when undertaking low-cost country sourcing (LCCS). Applying SCF innovations can bring the next wave of cost savings into the corporate LCCS program, helping a buying organization optimize its working capital, reduce product unit costs by taking advantage of arbitrage opportunities due to the higher cost of capital in emerging markets, as well as reduce supply base risk by enabling faster and more predictable payments to emerging market suppliers.
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