Supply Chain

Expense Management: Better Ways to Buy
Sometimes costs don't need to be cut so much as captured, quantified, and reconsidered.

At the height of the dot-com boom, in January 2000, the term "E-procurement" appeared in these pages for the first time. Virtually synonymous, then, with E-commerce, the term joined a burgeoning pantheon of Internet buzzwords and promised a revolution in how companies bought and sold everything from raw materials to contract labor. So your head of sales knows the names of all his clients' kids? Quaint, but pointless: soon all buying and selling would take place in cyberspace, transparently, instantaneously, and impersonally. Welcome to the New Economy. continue