Well, our friends at SafeSourcing (http://www.safesourcing.com/) have taken out the grammatical driver to advocate more - and more strategic - use of reverse auctions, both from the short and long-term perspectives. In today's article, they have made the case why reverse auctions are certainly a strategic tool that should be looked at by all organizations today. It is republished below:
Are Reverse Auctions Strategic? YES THEY ARE!!!!!!!
November 4th, 2010
This argument continues unabated so this author is jumping back in and looking at it from my teaching background albeit that was a long time ago if you remember the 3 – R’s.
What is strategic is entirely up to the person using the tool, whether or not they have used it before and if it returns the results they require as part of their strategic plan. So can a reverse auction be strategic. Of course it can. The overlying strategy might in fact be to simply get costs under control as quickly as possible. I shudder to think that this would be a company’s entire strategy, but in these times of economic survival it may well be. I can envision the following. The economy is kicking a companies ass and the CEO calls a staff meeting and says we have a new strategy and for the time being everything else will take a back seat in order to get our costs down. Come back in a week and tell you how you are going to do this immediately.
Now for the English lesson.
The word strategy is a noun that has several definitions. According to Wiktionary, 2 of those are.
1. A plan of action intended to accomplish a specific goal
2. The art of using similar techniques in politics or business
The word strategic is an adjective which we know is a word that modifies a noun and can also me modified by an adverb. So think of strategic as meaning of and pertaining to strategy and can be used comparatively as in something that is more strategic or less strategic.
So can a reverse auction or auctions be strategic. Of course they can and one example would be if your strategy was to simply reduce costs immediately. They can also be more strategic as part of a going forward strategy as well as provide other strategic benefits such as cleaning up your specifications and reporting as well as providing new sources of supply.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
I very much appreciate their position - and in this case, I think the seven exclamation points are very appropriate, as this is an important message to get out there. Theirs is a very good site to follow as well - bookmark and/or subscribe to their SafeSourcing Blog at http://blog.safesourcing.com/.
David
