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Empowering Decisions

Two organizations leveraging technology in pursuit of agility.

In Part One of this two-part blog series, Determine Chief Product Officer Julien Nadaud laid out the fundamental thinking and strategy behind what it takes to move toward a more agile procurement framework and operations. Part Two below delves into some of the specifics that two Determine customers used to streamline, modernize and “agilify” their organizations. As Ardent Partners points out, agile is the future of procurement success — here are some examples of how that looks.

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Making the move from concept to reality.

In this two-part blog series, Determine Chief Product Officer Julien Nadaud explores what it takes to strengthen your procurement strategies and make them easier with just one word: agile. Part One looks at the groundwork required to rebuild your present agile procurement strategies, and in Part Two he’ll summarize two case studies surrounding specific examples of agility in action. The idea of “agility” is getting a lot of play in the procurement world these days, but it is real, achievable and what success will increasingly look like .

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CLM implementation do’s, don’ts and steps to take…and mistakes to avoid.

It would take a lot more than three minutes to learn what we have in over two decades of contract management solution implementations. But, by the time you finish reading this article, you’ll come away with a better understanding of steps you should take to achieve CLM success simply by avoiding some basic but common mistakes that put implementations at risk.

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November was all about success; how to achieve it, undermine it, prepare for it, and customers who embody it, like Alliant Credit Union and Watermark Retirement Communities. Anytime you start out on a new project, one of the first questions asked is likely, “how do we measure success?”

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Customers, compliance and clicks: How procurement is reinventing retail success.

The retail industry operates in a high-visibility, consumer-focused environment. That brings with it a host of opportunities, but also exposes it to the vagaries and shifting whims of target audiences, which are increasingly demanding as well as sliced into ever smaller, more specific demographics. In order for retailers to be successful in a heavily competitive marketplace, they must adopt advanced procurement strategies and technologies that go far beyond the traditional focus on cost savings efforts alone .

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How Watermark Retirement Communities took their processes from “black hole” to “Best Team Performance” at CPO Rising 2018.

In Part One of this series, we looked at how Alliant Credit Union (ACU), an invaluable Determine customer, turned their approach to establishing business process alignment into operational excellence and award recognition by being named “Best Credit Union in America” by MONEY. Part Two explores another stunning achievement in cross-functional alignment — how Watermark Retirement Communities took a holistic strategy to process improvement and parlayed it into transformational success and earning the “Best Team Performance Award” at CPO Rising 2018. Like ACU, Watermark’s accolades are well deserved.

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How ACU, the Best Credit Union in America, turned listening into procurement process efficiency.

Two invaluable Determine customers from completely different industries – Alliant Credit Union and Watermark Retirement Communities – recently achieved award recognition for achieving transformational excellence through cross-functional alignment. In light of that, we thought it would be useful to look into the factors that help define transition success, starting with Alliant Credit Union in part one of this two-part series.

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Everyone makes mistakes. Just don’t make these.

You’re an experienced sourcing or procurement professional. You’ve been through umpteen sourcing events, worked across a number of industries, did tours of duty in companies of all sizes. And yet, once in a great while, you still have the inevitable forehead slap moment and the inner cry of “why did I just do that?!” It happens. Whether you’re an industry veteran or just starting out in your career, the following seven sourcing project errors — sophomoric as they seem — are common. And easily avoidable.

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CPE programs, training workshops, industry events like the SIG Summit, eWorld Procurement and ProcureCon, even podcasts and Ted Talks; what they all share in common is providing content to satisfy those who are constantly striving for self-improvement. Likewise, most of our resources focus on helping you translate that need for improvement to your Source-to-Pay, contract management, sourcing and other processes. This October DetermiNews has plenty to accompany you on your path to process efficiency.

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Valued Determine customer Éditions Lefebvre Sarrut (ELS) took up the challenge of achieving a Procure-to-Pay solution implementation in just 20 days. Gilles Grenier, IT Procurement Manager, reveals the best practices and methods used to achieve this successfully.

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