Four steps to prepare for travel procurement in 2021

While traveller safety remains the priority, reduced travel levels present buyers with the opportunity to consolidate spending and accelerate sustainability.

Business travel had all but stopped at the height of the pandemic. Today the industry remains largely grounded, with the vast majority of companies having cancelled or suspended international and domestic trips. Much remains up in the air, although the positive news from several late-stage coronavirus vaccine trials will have given travel managers cause for optimism. Until an effective vaccine is widely available, there will be opportunities for category managers to add value. With employees travelling less, spending on transport and accommodation can be consolidated and sustainability initiatives accelerated. There was much else to discuss besides sustainability when Procurement Leaders hosted a call between two multinationals recently, to compare their 2021 business travel plans.

How Brazil eliminated overpriced procurement with data

Brazil’s Price Dashboard allowed public access to previous prices for government purchases of materials and services, saving both time and cost.

The Greek mythological prophet Tiresias needed help to read the future. He was blind and had an assistant to describe the smoke patterns from burnt offerings so he could interpret what would be imminent.

Innovation in Procurement: How CPOs Can Deliver Value

It’s a common misconception that procurement in business is all about saving money.

While savings do play a role in procurement, there are many other factors that business executives must pay attention to in order to continue to deliver successful results.

Financial Services MUST Think Open Source

They need to give inhouse talent access to what’s happening in ‘upstream communities’

Open source software is highly valuable to the financial services industry, and 93 per cent of the sector’s IT leaders agree enterprise open source is crucial to their organisations. Adoption rates bear out this perspective, with enterprise open source currently making up 40 per cent of software used in the sector and projected to rise to 46 per cent in two years.

COVID-19 Impact on the EMEA Cloud Market – Time to Shine for Cloud?

As Covid-19 fundamentally shakes up how we live, learn, socialize and work, the governments across Europe are taking drastic measures to keep citizens safe and healthy. No doubt, the impact of the current situation will be massive on the economy, market sentiments, and uncertainty in spend, including IT spend.

While there is a significant impact on the European cloud market, it is potentially positive!

Winning the Customer’s Heart — Building New Business Models

In today’s digital economy, companies are increasingly recognizing the importance of delivering an experience that makes them stand out from their competition.

According to The Vertical Markets Survey 2018-2019, 46% of European companies ranked customer experience as their top business priority for this year.

There is significant opportunity to disrupt

The NEXT Frontier for Southeast Asia’s Growth?

The digital economy should be a new ASEAN Economic Community pillar.

Singapore deserves high praise for driving forward a resilient and innovative ASEAN community as well as bringing about several agreements designed to invigorate the region’s digital economy.

Agriculture in Latin America & the Caribbean is Poised for Real Transformational Change.

As agriculture and food systems across Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) try to recover from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, policy makers must act to unleash the sector’s vast potential to drive sustainable and inclusive growth for decades to come, according to a new World Bank report.

Smart technologies: where will the energy come from?

Only way forward is to ensure greener energy generation and increased energy efficiency.

If there is one positive impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it is the good news on the environment front. As human beings shut themselves up behind doors and governments, factories and offices remain closed, Mother Nature has healed herself, if only partially.

Blue Light Innovation in 2021

In recent years the blue light sector has become even more under pressure to deliver effective and efficient services that guarantee public safety. Faced with external events such as terrorist attacks and internal transformation pressure, the sector like never before is the focus of public scrutiny.

The Future of Emergency Medicine: 6 Technologies That Make Patients THE Point-of-Care

Car crashes, home injuries, fires, natural disasters: every minute – if not every second – spent without treatment in such cases of medical emergencies and high-risk patients could reduce the chance of survival or proper recovery. In fact, when deprived of oxygen, permanent brain damage begins after only 4 minutes, while death can occur as soon as 4-6 minutes later. In this race against time, digital health technologies that turn patients into the point-of-care could prove to be game-changers for first responders and emergency units. 

Can SMART Tech SAVE Lives?

For thousands of years, human society has organised itself in the form of towns and cities, from humble communities living within rudimentary settlements to the powerful city-states of the Renaissance to today’s modern metropolises. But coupled with the potential offered by today’s connected technologies, we may be standing on the brink of the most revolutionary change in the history of these bustling urban hubs: the transition of cities’ relationships to their citizens, from merely the material settlements they call their home to living, breathing entities capable of facilitating the minutiae of their day-to-day lives.

Halal Industry Remains Resilient Despite Challenging Times

The Halal industry continues to show resilience due to its strong fundamentals amidst the current volatility of crude oil prices and the Covid-19 crisis, says the Halal Development Corporation Bhd (HDC).

Data-centric innovation and digitalisation will catalyse India’s growth

India’s strength lies in its large population, growing economy, pace of digital adoption and core tech competencies supported by a robust tech ecosystem, and a burgeoning innovation and entrepreneurship environment.

India is transforming. Technology has been the key cause of this tectonic shift across critical sectors like healthcare, education, agriculture, manufacturing and retail, with an explosion of smart and connected devices, robust applications and use cases. This is being powered by a surge in data-centric innovations that harness the power of data through leading technology solutions based on compute, storage and memory. There are tremendous opportunities to leverage the power of technology to enrich the lives of people, optimise businesses and boost a country’s progress.

Banking on the Cloud

As all four major Australian banks publicise their aspirations to move to a simplified, more agile and cost-efficient operation, hybrid cloud capabilities are at the heart of enabling this growth and transformation goal.  As banking organisations create new business models, cloud will enable a simpler, efficient and more customer aligned bank. Cloud investment is growing.

It will require a lot of Tech to re: ADJUST Now

It will help lay new foundations for businesses and societies post-pandemic.
As countries start to think about what work looks like post the pandemic, we can look at what this means for businesses. While every industry and business is different, there are several commonalities that present themselves to organizations of all sizes.

Cloud Computing: Floating High in the Latin American Market

As the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Latin America improves, the demand for cloud computing and similarly positioned digital technologies is on the rise.

There is some good news for the movers-and-shakers in the cloud computing market. As the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Latin America has improved in recent times, demand for cloud computing and related services is on the rise. In fact, our latest market research report predicts a double digit CAGR for the cloud computing market in Latin America.

Avoid self-inflicted pitfalls in funding

At any cost, do not inflate on those optimistic targets

Depending on the balance-sheet, purpose, and duration of capital, as well as the size, sector and stage of business, there are many ways businesses can raise money. It could be direct from the markets through equity, loans or convertible bonds.

While each method has its pros and cons, making the right decision mostly involves avoiding common pitfalls such as:

Africa is the HOTTEST Innovation Continent

As startup and innovation culture deepens on the continent, the explosion of tech hubs across Africa has shown no signs of slowing down: the number of tech hubs across Africa grew by nearly 50% over the past year. As these hubs play crucial roles for community, business incubation and ideation, their growth continues to fuel innovation on the continent.

DP World to join shipping industry’s blockchain platform

Shipping and ports have been relatively late entrants to digital change

 The coronavirus lockdown has accelerated a digitalisation drive in a global shipping and logistics sector that still routinely delivers many documents by bike messenger in some countries.

Vertical Farming Transforms The Farm-to-Fork Supply Chain

Indoor vertical farming has been around for quite some time, but leading companies in this industry are starting to garner a great deal of attention from the business press even as investors have poured money into the industry. As the world population continues to expand, so too does the amount of fruits and vegetables needed to feed the world. We are not creating new farmland to accommodate the increase in fresh food required. Vertical farming can be part of the solution to this problem.

Vertical Farming is a High-Tech Endeavor
Vertical farming is the practice of growing crops in vertically stacked layers. Vertical farming incorporates controlled-environment agriculture, which is a fancy way of saying that it provides protection and maintains optimal growing conditions throughout the development of the crop.
At the leading firms, vertical farming is a big data, high tech endeavour. At AeroFarms, a leader in the space, their plant scientists monitor millions of data points every harvest. The company says their LED lights are used “to create a specific light recipe for each plant, giving the greens exactly the spectrum, intensity, and frequency, they need for photosynthesis in the most energy-efficient way possible.” This lighting allows them to control size, shape, texture, color, flavor, and nutrition of their plants.
The company has received $100 million in venture capital and has two patents. The titles of their personnel sound much more like what you would find at a high-tech company than at a big farm conglomerate. They have a chief technology officer, engineers, scientists, risk managers, and even a director of intellectual property.

5 Tools & Practices that can help Your Remote Team

Today, almost 63% of companies have remote employees and expected that in the coming decade over a third of full-time workers will work remotely. Mainly, your sales department may have workers that operate in different geographical locations, even across international borders.  As a result, you may choose to create your regional sales efforts by engaging remote team members who do not work from a central workplace and can be self-driven.

How True Leaders Communicate in a Crisis

Reflect while taking action.

With nearly a fifth of the globe’s population on lockdown, many of us have replaced our morning routine of getting ready for the day and then taking public transportation or the car to the office with rolling out of bed and onto the sofa to start work. Those routines and rituals that take us from home to work have changed, as has the content of many executives’ jobs. Operations professionals, for example, normally ensure products move through the line smoothly, but they may now be faced with the prospect of closing several factories while trying to keep another one open. The shape of work itself has been disrupted. And uncertainty about what the future holds is unprecedented.

Is Soy the Next Palm Oil?

Tropical forests continue to be threatened by rampant agricultural production of key commodities, such as palm oil, sugarcane, and soybean. While these commodities are traded and consumed the world over, the bulk come from just a handful of countries where they are produced. According to FAO data, more than 80% of palm oil in 2016 was produced in just two countries: Indonesia (53%) and Malaysia (29%). And over 80% of soybean was produced in three countries: the United States (35%), Brazil (29%) and Argentina (18%). Meanwhile, almost 40% of the world´s sugarcane was produced by Brazil alone.

Good customer service comes naturally

Which is why having the right individual and team matters most in such interactions

Like many other issues, the falling standards of customer service are a concern for all. These days quality customer service is indeed a rare phenomenon that we experience.

Procurements Value Super SIX

Mark Künnen is a Specialist Market Manager, Clarity 360 EMEA, based in Frankfurt

Clarity 360 ™ – simplified Clarity 360 advantage™.  Award Winning Cloud, Procurement & Professional Services.

https://www.Clarity-360.com

Africa & MEA : An Emerging Frontier for Global Services

Numerous locations in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) are emerging as upcoming destinations for global services delivery. Several multinational companies have set up their centers in the MEA region to deliver services to Europe and North America, and tech giants including Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Uber are leveraging it for global services delivery.

What’s the appeal?

Indian IT 4.0: Upping the Ante on Innovation

For long, India has been the destination for low-cost outsourced software services, but it’s not enough now.

The IT services industry has remained a crown jewel in India’s success story, and a key growth catalyst in the nation’s economy. This industry grew to $181 billion in 2018-19,

Hospitals have a cure for their financial woes

COVID-19 has finally imposed the need to expand telemedicine as a viable option

When the pandemic stormed across the globe creating havoc, the healthcare industry was left grappling with a reality that it hadn’t faced in living memory. Hospitals despite being a hot zone in this situation, literally and figuratively, also became a danger zone for several patients who feared venturing past its doors to avoid catching the lethal infection.

Australia’s cloud market booms as productivity benefits unfold

Cloud technology has proven to be just as popular and effective in Australia as it has across the globe, according to new analysis from Deloitte Access Economics. According to the firm’s calculations, the integration of cloud technology within operations across Australia has boosted the economy’s productivity by nearly $9.5 billion over the last half a decade.

Not only has cloud adoption enhanced key areas of business