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Preferred supplier lists

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Shrinking preferred supplier lists and growing brands

By ⋅ 29 November 2010 ⋅ Post a comment

We seem to be entering a new stage in the evolution of the preferred supplier list. In its first guise – let’s call it Ardipithecus Ramidus, after the most primitive hominid yet found by palaeontologists – the PSL was a sad and solitary figure, wandering the corporate plains. It had little intelligence, preferring to bludgeon [...]

Beyond the PSL?

By ⋅ 1 July 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

Chatting to a couple of clients in the last week, a word came up that I hadn’t heard for a while: multi-sourcing. The last time people really talked about this was around the dotcom boom, perhaps because the circumstances required a lot of specialist skills which they didn’t think they’d find in the big generalist [...]

Is the second tier second tier?

By ⋅ 23 December 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

Second tier. Middle tier. Neither term is particularly flattering. Both inherently suggest the existence of a first tier or a top tier, which in turn suggest that the distinction between the two tiers is one of quality. And with the ‘third’ tier cornering the ‘specialist’ tag, that one’s out of the question, too.  Perhaps it’s [...]

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