The title of this post will invariably offend some readers as they will associate Mars with men and Venus with women. Maybe instead I should have said direct materials are from Jupiter and indirect materials are from Saturn. But the point of this post is not to associate a gender-bias with either category. Instead, the point of the planet metaphor is that direct and indirect materials are two very different worlds. Both involve the procure-to-pay cycles for products, but for very different kinds of products.
procurement
Spend Analysis
If you have ever used a personal finance package such as Intuit’s Quicken then you already have a good understanding of the concept of spend analysis. With Quicken you can download all of your purchases made with checks, credit or debit cards from the banks which provide you the accounts. You can also key in expenses directly for purchases made with cash.
Corruption in Government Procurement – Bananagate, Lockheed and Operation Ill Wind
On the morning of February 3rd, 1975 Eli Black, the Chairman and President of United Brands Company, arrived early to his office on the forty fourth floor of the Pan Am building in Manhattan. Using his briefcase, Black broke open the window then jumped to his death. Investigations into Black’s death uncovered a large conspiracy between United Brands and the government of Honduras. The incident involved taxes on banana exports from the Central and South American countries such as Honduras, Guatemala, Ecuador, Columbia, Nicaragua, Panama and Costa Rica.
Verticalogy by Steve Keifer 