How to learn to “keep learning”. August 28, 2007
Posted by mukundmohan in News.comments closed
Will Price talks about the Beginner’s Mind and the ability to keep an open mind to keep learning. This is the #1 skill (if it could be called that) that I personally look for when I am interviewing any candidate. People that are always curious, ever willing to learn, try things out and keep on the edge of discovering are people that I always want to be associated with.
One of the people I admire a lot is Vinod Khosla. I had the opportunity to work in one of his portfolio companies a few years ago at Asera. He would come a couple of times a quarter and sometimes address the team. What I was amazed by was his ability to learn new fields, areas and technologies so quickly and ‘immerse” himself in learning. Granted it was for a purpose (or profit) but during the time he invested in Asera, he had done a deep dive on Optical Networking, investing in several successful companies (one of which he sold for several Billion – yes, B during the bubble) to Cisco. He had previously done the same apparently before joining Sun. And currently is on the Green Tech quest.
Here are 3 “tactics” that I use to immerse myself into a “new”, uncharted area. I did this with SEO – search engine optimization (which I am currently learning and thanks to Rand, Danny and Lee).
1. Talk to as many experts as you possibly can FIRST. I do this initially so I can get a lay of the land quicker. Most people I talked to dont mind giving the expert opinion to a relative newcomer.
2. Read as many blogs, review news and peruse as much relevant online content as possible
3. Keep an ongoing list of all the relevant webinars, conferences and seminars that you can attend. Then attend as many as you can to get multiple perspectives.
Finally write about your experiences (best way to remember is to write) so you can help other new comers to the field.
image courtesy: This sales man’s life
Assessing Your Supply Chain August 28, 2007
Posted by Rene' Cook in Inovis Solutions.comments closed
Building a strong supply chain is essential for business success. But when it comes to improving supply chains, few companies take the right approach. Many businesses work to make their chains faster or more cost-effective, assuming that those steps are the keys to competitive advantage. To the contrary: Supply chains that focus on speed and costs tend to deteriorate over time. Only companies that build supply chains that are agile, adaptable and aligned get ahead of their rivals.
Hau L. Lee, A Triple-A Supply Chain, Harvard Business Review on Supply Chain Management
Inovis’ Professional Services Operational EDI Assessment offering analyzes your existing EDI program and identifies opportunities for improved agility; better response time and accuracy when dealing with abrupt changes in the market, adaptability – meeting your customer needs and focusing on a solutions rather than obstacles and defining processes that align with your organization, as well as identifying cost-savings and operational improvements.
- Inovis’ Operational EDI Assessment service assists you in establishing optimal supply chain communication practices to ensure your company’s infrastructure is operating at maximum efficiency and is flexible enough to serve the ever-changing demands of your clients and trading partners.
- You benefit from best practices derived from previous customer implementations and over 20 years of expertise delivering our products and services to over 20,000 companies encompassing a wide range of industries and markets across the globe.
How it works…
- We start by reviewing the current overall business operation as it relates to Supply Chain communication. We look for areas of improvement as well as develop Best Practice scenarios as they relate to your organization.
- We will interview key senior management and Supply Chain team members to discuss organizational challenges and evaluate your organizations flexibility in today’s competitive market. (Are you able to effectively handle abrupt changes to Supply Chain demands?)
- We review your current EDI software implementation (Hardware, Capacity Planning, Software Implementation, Integration to back-end application, Backup procedures) and provide feedback regarding scalability and overall system optimization.
- We review and gather information regarding existing EDI transactions for improved processing and less error handling; as well as review current processes for maintaining and adding new Trading Partners
- We then prepare documentation to baseline the current state of your Supply Chain program, the desired state and document the gaps; and we address the needs of your organization to align with your company’s interests and goals accordingly.
- We then conclude by conducting an “analysis debrief” session at assessment’s conclusion.
Inovis Professional Services’ Operational EDI Assessment offering leverages our expertise to analyze your existing Supply Chain program and help you identify areas to enable your organization to be more flexible, adaptable and provide more cohesive alignment to your organizational and supply chain needs.
Failure to Communicate? August 28, 2007
Posted by David Fontaine in Business Community Management.comments closed
From the beginning of time, communication has been the foundation of human relationships and interaction. We evolved from grunts and hand signs to more advanced forms of verbal and written communication and language – although grunts and hand gestures still remain a popular form of communication during road rage “sessions” on certain metro Atlanta roads.
With advances in communication, human knowledge and commerce have grown with the ability to transfer knowledge between individuals, build historical and community repositories of knowledge and pass knowledge down to future generations – sometimes to the amusement of subsequent generations.
And if you look in the world of commerce, individuals who communicate well tend to be more successful because they connect with customers, investors, employees and others to get things done. It stands to reason that what’s good for an individual should be good for an organization or collection of individuals, like companies. One would think. One would be wrong.
While infrastructure, technologies and processes, processes and more processes are in place to facilitate communication inside and outside the enterprise, according to Deb Perelman’s eWeek blog, 28% of respondents to a recent CompTIA survey say that most projects fail due to poor communications.
And there’s still a basic failure to communicate with all external business partners according to many industry pundits, including Forrester’s Ken Vollmer who wrote in a Feb 9, 2007 note that “many organizations with a significant number of B2B interactions with customers and suppliers still do not use any form of automated, electronic document exchange technology due to the difficulty in identifying benefits that could be used to justify the business case for moving from manual to automated information exchange systems.”
I joined Inovis in 2006 with a background in transactional, telecommunication, software, e-commerce and other tech industries. My reaction to being told that after 30 years of EDI, so called automation and an alphabet soup of B2B saviors, that companies were still faxing and emailing and calling each other to complete basic functions — you have got to be kidding me!!
So it’s time to get on board and begin communicating across every business relationship to begin to align processes for shared benefits. Until that basic communication layer is built, we’re only automating a percentage of commerce and in some cases just speeding up chaos folks.
And all the collaboration, visibility and supply chain concepts that show up on Gartner Hype Cycles and Forrester Waves and other conceptual roadmaps will fall short of their promise, because even the most advanced corporations have a basic failure to communicate.
No self help books required here folks – although a quick scan of Amazon shows that some people might be more concerned with animal communication than basic multienterprise connectivity! Really all that’s required to move into the now is the knowledge that there are applications and services for everyone from the largest enterprise to a SoCal surfer selling surf gear or sea shell bracelets out of his garage.
With open lines of communication between business partners, I guarantee that you’ll feel much, much better.
Inovis in the Fast Lane With Freeway Commerce August 28, 2007
Posted by Meg Sewell in News.comments closed
As a recent addition to the Inovis family, I’ve had one heck of a time getting acquainted with the Alpharetta office and staff. Much to my joyful surprise, I have found every day here to be extremely pleasant—and efficient. You wouldn’t believe how quickly things get done in this place!
My first week here, I noticed Mukund Mohan saying hello, typing in his blackberry, keeping an eye on his 200+ favorite blogs, attending meetings left and right and simultaneously managing the launch of completely new content and designs for the Inovis website. Judy Bryan was quickly arranging conferences, ball games, road shows, t-shirt orders and countless other things within minutes in the cubicle next to me. She even managed to move her family (husband, kids, dogs, cats, mice and all) in her spare time. Anne Tamaroff was completing projects, papers and presentations at the speed of light. Every time I swiveled my chair to ask her a question, she had bolted for the door to get another finished document out. Inovis’ CTO, Steve Cochran, had to take a call during my first encounter with him and informed me when he hung up that he had just bought a house. I’m breaking a sweat just trying to keep up with these people!
Then, just a few days after my arrival here, CEO Sean Feeney announced that Inovis has just acquired Freeway Commerce in the UK. I thought Steve’s house purchase was impressive! The pace has been set and will continue. With the purchase of Freeway Commerce, Ltd, Inovis is poised to accelerate European expansion and growth. The combined companies will provide extended capabilities and expertise that will pave the way for an even more solid and effective business.
In our next blog post, Emma Lund of Freeway Commerce will share her thoughts on the acquisition of Inovis and Freeway Commerce. Cheers!
