The Sourcing Solution

Purchasing is a critically important business function, although it lacks the glamour and excitement of, say, finance or sales. In the past, purchasing employees have often been little more than glorified clerks mired in price comparisons. Sometimes, their responsibilities included accompanying vendors to ballgames and such, activities that helped keep the purchasing pro’s mind off the fact that not many CEOs seemed to come up through the purchasing department. That may already be changing. Indeed, purchasing is now a career hot spot. Several trends - such as corporate demands for cost cutting and outsourcing, new electronic markets and auctions, globalization of customers and vendors, sharper supply-chain logistics technology, and the movement to create partnerships with suppliers - make purchasing substantially more important than ever before. Author Larry Paquette offers a short, lucid, quite readable summary of the essentials of purchasing in that light. getAbstract.com finds it an excellent, comprehensive and useful overview of sourcing.