Festive update

What a year - the Purchasing Coach was set up and work has never been busier, I reached the 50 milestone and survived, had 3 holidays and saw much more of friends!

Lets start with work. As I struggled to explain what I did to Janet Torley she said in reply "aren't you The Purchasing Coach" and the rest as they say is history. This blog was born and so too a description that enables others to more easily understand what I do. After all I've always been very passionate about organisations taking their purchasing seriously and always encouraged purchasing departments to understand themselves and to communicate effectively with their internal stakeholders and stop the constant us/them/win/lose with suppliers. Why would I want to stop now?

Activity in 2012 has included: sourcing strategy implementation, category management project facilitation and coaching, purchasing team development, skills gap analysis & e-enabled category management implementation. 2013 starts with some procurement e-learning development - so never a dull moment.

The work has meant a lot of travelling and there will be another blog on the subject of trying to reduce the mileage for 2013. One upside of the travelling has been being able to: catch up with friends where ever I am, visiting the theatre or shops whilst in London and trips to Glastonbury and Castlerigg Stone Circle to name just 2 on route. I'm also more relaxed about turning up at a hotel @ 2230 when I haven't booked and being able to find a room for the night!!

I even managed to take holidays this year!! They started with a few days in Cumbria lambing - I loved it even if the arthritic knees didn't. I'm certainly hoping to go again in 2013. Nothing like lambing to take you back to basics and remind you what's important. My next holiday was at Findhorn to celebrate their 50th on the subject of Love Magic & Miracles (need I say more). The final break was a week in Bamburgh for my 50th starting with a girlie weekend. Blogs on learning from all these can be found here.

In other words a year spent doing what I enjoy, visiting places that inspire and ground me and laughing much with friends.

Sending you festive greetings as this year ends and wishing you and yours an abundant and laughter filled 2013.

With much love
Alison x

The Purchasing Coach
Inspiring change inside and out

PS if you get to read the blogs you'll also see there's been a lot going on to improve my health and wellbeing as the picture of breakfast on the beach demonstrates :-)