Supply Chain Management

For the Sterling Customer Connection 2009 event, I was asked to co-present the Ecommerce transformation initiative at Life Technologies. As it turned out due to last minute exigencies, Christian Wip, the Director E-Commerce at Life Technologies was unable to make it to the event and I became the sole presenter.
 
The Life Technologies Ecommerce initiative aimed at replacing their ecommerce web based sales channel with a new customer centric and technologically scalable solution based on Sterling MCS.The idea of the presentation was to share key insights, learnings and best practices we put in place to enable this successful transformation.

Continue reading "Life Technologies Ecommerce Transformation speaker session at Sterling Connection 2009" »

Posted by Guneet Paintal at 09:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Much has been said, written and debated about Procure-o-marketing. My friends in the procurement community have advocated the advantages of introducing procurement concepts in marketing. This  group in procurement community has seen marketing spend with skepticism and disdain, as an overhead which needs curtailment. So, all these talks of Procure-o-marketing have come as a “novel concept”. The million dollar question, (and this is not figurative alone…)  Is a natural “marriage’ of the two enterprise entities possible? I strongly advocate NO.

Continue reading "Beware! Do not mix Procurement and Marketing" »

Posted by Sudripto De at 02:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Apply the balm where it hurts  the most ...In the first of part of the blog series here, we are trying to understand the global economic problem through the the view that matters most for organizations , the lens of "Free Cash Flow", a measure of liquidty and business performance that most organizations operate on. In the interest of keeping this discussion focused, we have limited the point of view around the "procurement and supply management" processes and response strategies , but is well applicable across all operations . As we may still be getting over the worst of this " Tsunami " , wish if all of us could share the experiences and the survival stories for the benefit of the larger supply management community .

We keep getting lashed by these heavy waves of destabilization at frequent randomness, from Katrina, to Avian flu, to global recession and while we were still struggling on these, as if not enough, now the Swine flu. The USP of all these are that we don’t know what, when and how this hit us, when we were least expecting. It takes a good toll of all of us. The good thing about this is that it wakes us all from the slumber and complacency to make us take note and innovate.

The current economic crunch is one such great "Tsunami "which has jolted all the greats and spared none.

Continue reading "Part I: Winning over this "Tsunami" called Global Recession" »

Posted by Pradeep T Y at 08:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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Continue reading "Key themes at Customer Connection 2009 - “Connect & Collaborate”, designing applications for the 3G/4G mobile handsets, On-demand & multi-tenancy…" »

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Continue reading "Road ahead for Sterling MCS & MCF Product Suite - An insight from Sterling Customer Connection 2009" »

Posted by Guest at 05:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This current economy is certainly challenging all of us to do more with less.  As supply chain professionals, how often in the last year have you heard, “Cut costs, downsize your workforce, reduce procurement costs, and scale back inventory, and do it all without impacting revenues or customer service?  Sound familiar? 

We hear from our customers again and again that they need to quickly improve their supply chain performance.  However, customers with large ERP and legacy system investments have difficulty responding to critical business initiatives in a timely and cost-effective fashion.  These projects can take 9 to 12 months and cost over a million dollars.  No supply chain executive or CIO who values his or her job would dare take this traditional mega-IT project to the CEO for approval in this market. 

Continue reading "“Help! I urgently need to improve my supply chain performance and I have no money!"" »

Posted by Dave Lassiter at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Procurement salaries on the rise - 7% increase in 2008 vs. 2007. I very much expected this and I am sure the percentage will go up in 2009 as well. Reason, I attribute to, is the “R” factor - Recession. Cutting cost and improving on savings target are on the high focus and is uniform across industries, enterprise size and global regions. Though procurement department is not solely responsible to achieve these targets in the rough time (all the departments in the organization are involved), but these professionals drive this cause across the organization.

Continue reading "Congratulations, Procurement professionals…" »

Posted by Raj Rajendran at 08:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just read Justin’s blog on “hammering suppliers on price”; Prof. Rob has a very valid advice for companies on early warning signs of danger from suppliers.

Hammering suppliers on price and payment terms “now” vs. “long” term relationship, is a very important aspect in risk management. When there is a financial crunch in the buying organization, their sales are hit and their bottom-line is impacted.... suppliers, as partners or extended community to their organization, are expected and should also be a part of this tough journey. (Hopefully, this is only for few more months) So "renegotiating price" and change in the DPO with the business partners are inevitable. But to what extend?

Continue reading "Buyers & Suppliers - Time for redefined win:win practices" »

Posted by Raj Rajendran at 03:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "eCommerce order fulfillment must use consumer patience in sourcing and fulfillment to optimize cost of shipping to the customer" »

Posted by Vinayak Hegde at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "How do they do it? Strategies for staying in the AMR Top 25" »

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Posted by Vikram Shukla at 09:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Some time back I had written about the key requirements for Multi Tenancy in WMS (here). I spoke about a similar topic at Sterling Commerce Connect (read Gopi's despatches from the event here and here)

The topic was Global WMS deployment and our experiences while doing such implementations. 

In the course of the session we talked about the challenges faced in WMS and we noticed that quite a few were more 'traditional' - pertaining to the standard challenges faced by any software that manages operations. Things like speeding up people's tasks, seamless interleaving of physical movement of inventory and systemic processing; however another interesting facet was the focus on being able to deploy quicker and faster with MORE site specific customizations.  More?

Continue reading "WMS-The new pain points" »

Posted by Chandradeep Bandyopadhyay at 03:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

What are your present day challenges from supply chain tools you have? In which technological area of supply chain would  your next investment spend go? If you had a wishlist of expectations from supply chain tools, which ones would make it to top three ?
Well most of the supply chain tool vendors are coming up with their roadmaps of the future based on specific trends in the market. It is important that supply chains keep their tools as current as possible since it provides a great competitive edge to an organization. Participate in our on-going Supply Chain polls, that assesses the most popular features that organizations are vying for in their supply chain tools.

Posted by K. Srinivas at 03:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I’ve been globe trotting lately - India, UK, US and such. Living in Seattle puts a tacit yet obliging pressure on you to visit Starbucks. Ordering a cup of coffee after 9 months was an all new experience from the previous time I was there. Double-tall, non-fat, de-cafe, extra-hot cappuccino for instance, Sugar free, soy, cinnamon dolce, and no-whip latte for another. So I couldn’t stop but notice the granularity of the orders and what Starbucks had accomplished in the past 9 months.

Continue reading "Amazon for Cloud Computing is as Starbucks for Coffee??" »

Posted by Guruprasad B. Nagaraja at 04:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In my previous blog I had touched on the “Why” aspect of a supplier platform strategy to avert the impact of supplier bankruptcy. In the market similar trends are taking place where manufacturers are coming together to develop a common procurement platform for sourcing from a common supplier pool. Such a step should be fraught with a lot of caution, as it is not an omnibus solution. Instead of just hurrying up the myriad steps to reach the goal and announce the collaboration success as media hype, a step-by-step approach with attaining stability after each step is necessary. That is why you will see a lot of “yes-no-yes-no…..” iterations in the media about a lot of superficial collaborations being floated. Probably that is the reason you would hardly see much in the media about such platform strategies already in place among many Japanese manufacturers, as they feel that media announcements will only follow once a critical mass is attained.

Here I explain “How” manufacturers are trying to solve the complex puzzle of the platform strategy.

Continue reading "Fearing supplier bankruptcy? Take the steady steps for procurement collaboration with your competition" »

Posted by Sudripto De at 01:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I had talked about how to do forecasting during recession in my earlier blog here. During my discussions with end users the common feedback has been that frequent forecasting can help in faster sensing of demand, it doesn’t help in reducing inventories. Some of the most common questions emerging from end users on short term frequent forecasting are –  

• How to deal with lead times which are longer than the forecasting period?
• How do I change my safety stock levels? Do I need to?
• How will my service levels will be affected?
• How shall I deal with larger demand variation in granular level forecasting?

Continue reading "Resolving the puzzle of achieving Higher Service Levels and Lower Inventory Levels through Faster Demand Sensing!!" »

Posted by Mitul Shah at 09:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In the current downturn, organizations are typically looking at spending only on sustenance and not wanting to start any new projects/initiatives- however there are organizations which have a clear focus of ensuring that they make the right investments in a downturn to overcome the challenges faced and also be ready when the economy revives. Organizations are always thinking of planning and optimizing their investments and this is more relevant in the current economic scenario. Areas of investment in Supply Chain during the current dark period’ gave us some interesting outcome.

Continue reading "Is Supply Chain Planning still the top most priority of investment during uncertain times?" »

Posted by Amit Bakre at 06:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Many a time Returns Visibility is assumed to be limited to track and trace of the orders and inventory as they flow in the reverse supply chain. True visibility means having actionable insights into the lifecycle of the return order. This includes maintaining and updating information at unique item level throughout product lifecycle(manufacturing to end-of-life stages), tracking the return reasons and end state dispositions and understanding the customer demographics for the returns. 

Continue reading "Case for Return Lifecycle Management Platform" »

Posted by Amarpal Sanghera at 12:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Recently I read a great news article in Supply Chain Digest titled “Triple-A Supply Chain” that actually talks about the article published in Harvard Business Review in the year 2004 by Hau Lee. I am sure most of you would have read it but for those who haven’t, I sincerely suggest that it is a must-read for all supply chain practitioners. Although the article is more than four years old, it is very pertinent in current business environment. Let me just provide the objectives of the three A’s mentioned in the postingf and then, I would like to share my viewpoints with respect to one of the A’s that I feel is the ‘most relevant and critical’ capability for all the companies. The three A’s that have been talked about are:

a)      Agility – it is about how quickly a company can respond to any change in its business environment. It refers to short-term changes.

b)      Adaptability – it is the capability of a company to adapt to business changes that are more permanent in nature and therefore, it is strategic and has a long lead time.

c)      Alignment – it is the ability to have common and shared interests across the supply chain including vendors and customers.

Continue reading "Alignment in Supply Chain – is it really possible?" »

Posted by Aatish Goel at 04:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Is your Supply Chain catching a Flu?" »

Posted by Mitul Shah at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is in continuation to my earlier blog which covered Day 1 of Ariba Live: http://www.infosysblogs.com/supply-chain/2009/04/notes_from_ariba_live_1.html#more

Continue reading "Notes from Ariba Live - 2" »

Posted by Sameer Prashar at 03:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)