^The APQC Blog

This morning, I gave a 30-minute presentation highlighting the best KM content APQC has published so far this year. If you want to find out what’s new and exciting in the Knowledge Base, I recommend listening to this recording of the presentation or downloading the slides. The slides are particularly useful because they provide direct links to all our latest content.

What practice in procurement is associated with shorter supplier lead times and faster PO
processing? Category Management. By clustering suppliers into categories, you can leverage similar market intelligence, sourcing strategies, and supplier relationship management programs. Here's an article with actual APQC data on this topic: Procurement Category Management: Faster Purchase Order Cycle Time

No one knows who first said it, but a popular saying asserts: "You don't know where you're going until you know where you've been." I'd like to offer an equally, if not more important, statement that can be applied to process management and improvement: "You don't know where you can go if you don't know where you are."

Effectively Managing Risk Across the Enterprise is a new and ground-breaking report from APQC on enterprise risk management (ERM). The pioneers featured have crafted mature ERM programs that not only protect them from major negative events, whether strategic, operational, or financial, but also help them to stretch their wings in pursuit of ambitious aims.

APQC research suggests that while many aspects of knowledge management (KM) relate to the work force, KM isn’t typically a top priority for HR. But at organizations where HR is involved in KM efforts, the benefits to business performance can be significant.

Luckily, you didn't have to actually be there this time. We wrote it all down in New Product Development: Embracing an Adaptable Process - EXFO Case Study.

What are the essential ingredients for work force planning success? What work force planning strategies, processes, and practices give your organization an advantage over competitors? In thinking about these questions, did any of the following approaches come to mind?

It might seem harsh to talk about killing potential new products before they launch. Killing them before they go to market means they never get a chance to be the next "big thing." But the reality is that organizations with the ability to make those tough decisions tend to have greater success in the market for those products that they do launch.

APQC research shows that a growing number of financial executives have resolved that traditional approaches for managing business performance are no longer adequate.

As large organizations struggle to plan and execute growth strategy in an economic recovery that is hard to read, many are embracing a paradigm shift which, although not new conceptually, now stands a very good chance of changing the way businesses control and deploy resources.

Want to know how leading organizations keep their innovation processes rigorous yet flexible? APQC gathered data from 250+ organizations and created two reports: the first is more qualitative and focuses on the best practices. The second is quantitative and highlights the metrics and benchmarks of the best performing organizations.