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Empowering Decisions

The world is mainly divided in two blocks in term of tax: the Value-Added-Tax, or VAT, that has been adopted by 166 countries out of 193 in the world; and the US, which is almost the only country that has sales tax. Some countries have still a very complex tax system that has not been unified between the provinces, like Canada, however the Good and Services Tax (GST) works mainly like the VAT.

There are a lot of differences in the way these two main tax systems work. Robust tax management can simplify the complexity for procurement.

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Unlocking the strategic value in contracts.

A recent McKinsey study was chock-full of surprises in terms of procurement and CLM, including this little gem:

Across industries, total procurement operating expenses are typically less than 1 percent of total spending. By underinvesting in this way, companies are overlooking a significant source of value: suboptimal contract terms and conditions combined with a lack of effective contract management can cause an erosion of value in sourcing equal to 9 percent of annual revenues. For Fortune’s 2016 Global 500 companies, this 9 percent would have equaled $2.5 trillion in value.”

Kind of makes you wonder, what’s in your contracts?

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It’s not just about IQ, but EQ (Effectiveness Quotient).

While intelligence is critical, a precise measure of procurement intelligence is less important than the performance it generates. In point of fact, as a department (and the entire profession) matures, the definition of procurement intelligence becomes a moving target; and it becomes relative to nearly all stakeholders in the source-to-settle spectrum .

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It’s time to up your digital game.

In this fourth and final part of our blog series for the release of CPO Rising 2018: The Age of Intelligence, Managing Partner & Chief Research Officer of Ardent Partners returns to delve into Chapter Four – Strategies for Success. He caps off the report by offering best practices and forward thinking from leading global CPOs about how to achieve Intelligent Procurement. They run the gamut from common sense to “why didn’t I think of that?” — and you’ll find many more in the report itself which is available for download.

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Is Spend Under Management a “Has Been?”

In this, the third of our four-part blog series for the release of CPO Rising 2018: The Age of Intelligence, Kelly Barner of Buyers Meeting Point delves into the myriad facets of Procurement Performance in Chapter Three. There’s no debate that the importance and influence of procurement is on the rise across industries, but the question is, are procurement’s metrics – like spend under management – truly representative of those accomplishments?

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In the first of our four-part blog series for the release of CPO Rising 2018: The Age of Intelligence, Andrew Bartolini of Ardent Partners introduced the State of the CPO. In Chapter 2, Julien Nadaud, Chief Product Officer at Determine explores the State of Procurement, and how data intelligence is shaping the future through a connected cloud ecosystem.

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