Leadership is fundamental to driving world class performance from negotiations. Playing out in front of us we have what will be one of the most important negotiations at a global level, ‘Brexit’ in the next few years. Irrespective of the politics, partisan views, and the rhetoric flying around, there are potential risks and opportunities for…
Commercial awareness skills are often seen and discussed by organisations as being key to success, however, few invest in the area in a focused way. In the UK over the past couple of weeks we’ve become increasingly aware of the challenges faced by the major incumbents in the grocery sector, and in particular Tesco, who…
Are you really walking the talk? Can you measure your actions and see improvements? This article reveals survey results that cover issues like these — results that might inspire a second look at your organization… As organizations, we believe the future of the professions we represent will be greatly enhanced by our ability not only…
We’re increasingly used to seeing articles in the press about the importance of cyber security. Thanks in part to some high profile cases, company boards are slowly waking up to the issue as a topic that they have to be involved in. However, a recent FT survey showed that only 3 in 20 said the…
In one of my sessions at the recent IACCM EMEA conference which looked at contracting skills I posed the question that whilst we would rarely let a product get to market without some form of testing or prototyping, how many commercial or contract management professionals consider testing their contracting structures or agreements? If we look…
As I have written before (“Supply Chain Shocks – A Risk or an Opportunity?“), in today’s connected world, companies can no longer just focus on the layers of the supply chain that directly contract with if they truly want to guard their own success. They need to understand the second, third, and further tiers, such that…
There has been much in the news around measurement or payment by results over the last week or so whether it is the reforms proposed within the UK justice system or the bonuses of top executives. What ever we call it rewarding by results has been around for many centuries and can be seen in…
There have been many column inches given over to the changes announced by Facebook to the T&Cs for Instagram. Having paid ~$1Bn for Instagram, Facebook is obviously keen to leverage the synergies and find a way of monetizing their new acquisition. In their move towards these goals, what they seem to have miscalculated is that in approaching…
Earlier this year the IACCM published ‘The Future of Contracting’ which was the culmination of inputs from 2,000+ practitioners as to what contract management would look like in 2020. There were many themes that came out, however, two of them were: the role of automation and tools; and the area of skills, organisation, and proceses.…
If you step back a moment and create an “if only …” list for you or your organisation and then look at its contents then it is likely that you’ll see an interesting trend and one which is important for our profession. You will likely see that your list is made up of offerings that…