Suppliers, we'll contact the Category Manager of your customer which you can recommend anonymously.  Carriers, we'll do the same with your shippers.   This past week I got to sit down and interview an industry leader who has defined what collaborative sourcing is when he first created the system at Bristol-Myers Squibb 15 years ago.  Jeff Ryan of Bravosolution, a previous contributor to the GTBP.org, teaches his clients, which include industry leaders (BASF, Campbell's, Con-Way, FedEx, IBM, International Paper, Johnson & Johnson, Sara Lee, Scotts, Tyco, Unilever), how to get to the next level of collaborative savings after ‘blood-letting' suppliers on price based auctions.  He believes that a variety of non-price criteria need to be considered alongside price to achieve long-lasting relationships beneficial to both parties.  If you click on the link at the bottom, you can recommend a customer who you think might be in need of an education.

What first caught my attention last year was Elemica's stats, financials and growth.  This is also how I got pulled into the EDI industry back in 1995, after reading Sterling Commerce and Premenos' financials statements.  I was introduced to the company by Rick Bushnell, VP of North American Sales and Aleksey Konovalov, pre-sales engineer and SAP expert at a Lehigh University supply chain conference.  The second thing that surprised me was Elemica's weak web presence.