Books about Sourcing from Amazon.com

The decision to source software development to an overseas firm (offshoring) is looked at frequently in simple economic terms - it's cheaper, and skilled labor is easier to find. In practice, however, offshoring is fraught with difficulties. As well as the considerable challenge of controlling projects at a distance, there are differences in culture, language, business methods, politics, and many other issues to contend with. Nevertheless, as many firms have discovered, the benefits of getting it right are too great to ignore. This book explains everything you need to know to put offshoring into practice, avoid the pitfalls, and develop effective working relationships. It covers a comprehensive range of the important offshoring issues: from ROI to strategy, from SLA to culture, from country comparisons to provider marketing. Written for CTOs, CIOs, consultants, and other IT executives, this book is also an excellent introduction to sourcing for business students..
Price: $51.20 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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Price: $14.80 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Negotiating the lowest possible price is no longer enough. Internal customers now demand more: they need business advice, guidance, and expertise to manage their sourcing requirements. They need an organization that focuses less on price and more on the value that vendors can provide. The organizational key to unleash the potential of strategic sourcing is the Vendor Management Office. It is an over-arching organizational concept of strategically managing procurements and vendors to maximize business investments in key commodities. Resulting from over 10 years of real-life experience implementing VMOs, this book introduces the concept of a VMO and the VMO philosophy that cost is not always a factor. The book is much more than conceptual: concrete and practical tools considered necessary to launch a newly formed VMO are explored in detail. Additionally, appendices contain materials that can be easily adapted for use by any VMO..
Price: $22.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A growing number of senior executives are coming to realize that strategic supply management can be a significant driver of improved corporate performance and better risk management. Spend analysis is the most critical component, and the starting point, of strategic supply management and is essential to achieving world-class performance. If you cannot analyze your spend data, many opportunities for improvement beyond the low hanging fruit are without doubt being missed. One of the foundation blocks for transforming an organizations practices to world-class supply management is the business process called strategic sourcing. And one of the requirements for enabling world-class strategic sourcing results is rigorous spend analysis.

There is a lot of confusion on what constitutes spend analysis and what benefits can it provide. Spend analysis can help improve several areas: the identification of cost reduction opportunities, the prioritization of sourcing projects, the negotiated results, and the tracking and monitoring to ensure that negotiated results reach the bottom-line. It can also play an important role in improving compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley. However, implementations are complex and involve many departments within an organization. If the implementations are done correctly, they can yield high ROI. If not, they can consume money and deliver no returns due to lack of adoption.

Spend Analysis: The Window into Strategic Sourcing is the definitive text on this important subject, written by leaders in the field. It is currently the only reference that provides in-depth guidance on what spend analysis really is, what it specifically involves, and how to use it in your journey to world-class performance. It provides both an executive overview and technical details for practitioners. Readers do not need specialized knowledge in database systems, information technology or any other field to gain insights from reading this book. It is a must read for procurement, supply chain management, operations, and finance executives, and for practitioners and consultants.

Key Features:

-Offers guidelines and examples for building a business case for spend analysis and enumerates the important factors that ensure a successful implementation
-Includes case studies and various examples of savings opportunities revealed by spend analysis
-Provides information on transaction data and source systems used in spend analysis and explores various components of spend analysis application in detail
-Compares commonly used Industry Standard Commodity Taxonomies which play an important role not just in spend analysis but across the entire ERP footprint
-Presents advanced concepts in spend analysis such as how it can be used in combination with other applications and how it can drive better compliance
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Price: $50.84 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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Price: $39.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The authors of the widely acclaimed The Purchasing Machine deliver an eye-opening look at the power of supply management with The Incredible Payback.This timely book presents amazing success stories from best-of-the-best procurement organizations like Honda, Delphi, John Deere, and others.Using the same cost-management strategies implemented at these leading organizations, The Incredible Payback shows how any company can reap benefits including:* saving up to 30 percent on material and service expenses* leveraging technology to accelerate savings* high-yield supplier development programs* extension of financial opportunities throughout the highest levels of the enterprise, exponentially increasing savings potentialGreat companies save money every day. Now every organization can realize The Incredible Payback.
Price: $20.11 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"My history of gambling really began before I was born." So opens Bill Lee's self-told story of gambling addiction, which is set in San Francisco's Chinatown and steeped in a culture where it is not unheard of for gamblers to lose their children to a bet. From wagering away his beloved baseball card collection in third grade to forfeiting everything he owned at blackjack tables in Las Vegas, every new and terrifying loss validated Lee's feelings of worthlessness. With gritty honesty and true humility, Lee describes what gambling addiction feels like and looks like from the inside. "Everything was a blur to me," Lee writes about a gambling jag that brought him to financial ruin. "I was in such a reckless and self-destructive frame of mind that I would have bet my life if required. In a way, thats what I was doing. I was that far gone from reality." In the end, however, Born to Lose is a memoir of hope as Lee reveals how recovery from his gambling addiction has been possible through the Twelve Step program..
Price: $7.49 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Single sourcing is more than mechanical document conversion. It is an information development strategy. Although it is often confused with the process of converting paper-based documents into online formats, single sourcing is a writing strategy that enables technical writers to develop centralized information modules, then map them to distinct audiences and media.

For technical writers, single sourcing means modular writing and information mapping. Rather than developing information for a given format, such as a user guide or online help, technical writers develop information modules at the element (section, paragraph, and sentence) level. They then map these information modules to preselected audiences and media.

This guide explains in plain language and by example how to develop single source documents. It shows technical writers how to develop standalone information modules, then map these modules to a variety of audiences and formats using proven information mapping techniques. In essence, the guide provides a flexible framework for modular technical writing that can be applied to any audience in any medium..
Price: $38.26 [Notify me when price goes down.]

By applying Strategic Sourcing concepts, The Walt Disney Company realized $300 millions in annual savings, BellSouth improved its results by $1 billion, and IBM achieved 5% improvement in their margins. These are just a few of the many companies exploring the benefits of Strategic Sourcing, the next evolutionary step in Supply-Chain. Strategic Sourcing is a coordinated effort between the different areas of the organization and external partners. It helps companies to focus on the smart way of investing their resources. More than a guide for implementing Strategic Sourcing, this book talks about the importance of building strategic partnerships. At the end, you will realize that business relationships are not so different from personal ones..
Price: $17.77 [Notify me when price goes down.]