Buying for Business: Insights in Purchasing and Supply Management

Christopher Barrat · Mark Whitehead

Aug 2005 · Sold by John Wiley & Sons

About this ebook

Buying For Business provides a simple but comprehensive guide to purchasing and supply. With current literature often academic in focus and unsuited to modern business readers, it offers straightforward and engaging information on the principles and practice of purchasing and supply management that will be of great value to anyone in business who deals with suppliers. Experts Mark Whitehead and Christopher Barrat answer all the key questions facing purchasing in business today, and offer advice on everything from ethics to outsourcing. Diagrams, analysis tools and pro-formas aid understanding, while case studies and bench-marking exercises illustrate and reinforce the learning.

About the author

Christopher Barrat started out armed only with a degree in law and a bus conductor's license. He now has over 25 years of business experience. Working in the UK chemical industry, he was involved in sales, marketing and corporate purchasing before taking on more senior roles in ICI as European Sales Manager and Purchasing Director - experience that has given him a view 'from both sides of the table'. He is currently a director of the Greystone Partnership, where he specialises in developing skills in purchasing, negotiation, management and communication. He is a popular speaker and proud to be the first person to get the word 'Sex' into the CIPS annual conference agenda. He lives in Manchester with his family, and works with major blue chip companies throughout Europe.

Mark Whitehead started his career with a brief spell as a teacher before finding his vocation in journalism. He covered education, HR, management and general news for a variety of publications before specializing in purchasing joining Supply Management as deputy editor. The baffled looks on people's faces when he tried to explain what his magazine covered led to the idea of writing it all down in a book. He strongly believes that nothing is too complicated to be explained simply, which is one reason why he became a journalist and not a nuclear physicist. The other is that he dropped sciences in the fourth form. He lives with his wife and young son in north London, where he plays a variety of musical instruments and beats the congestion charge by cycling to work.