The Inovis Blog

Is your company interested in solutions that can not only increase revenue and profitability but can improve customer relationships as well? If so, I would like to recommend Inovis’ outsourcing solutions.

Why is outsourcing of business to business community management so beneficial? Whether your company chooses project-based consulting or outsourcing of your entire EDI operations, Inovis’ Outsourced Services can contain costs, simplify operations, increase speed-to-implementation of new solutions, and standardize data communication, flow and transport. Both Inovis’ Managed Services and Professional Services can take a huge monkey off your back.

Strong cost-containment pressures, scarce IT resources, and changing requirements of your key trading partners can be a huge burden to handle. Inovis Managed Services frees up people, resources, and time so you can free up your focus to better concentrate on constructing revenue. Our Managed Solutions provide a team of skilled professionals consisting of EDI Experts and Customer Support that use best-in-class methodologies, a customer portal that immediately increases visibility with its 24/7 access, a state-of-the-art network and hosting infrastructure, fast access to reliable communication in whatever format your business demands, and a scalable solution that enables your business to take advantage of business opportunities without any capital investments or downtime.

Professional Services help you to reduce supply chain interruptions, costs and risks thanks to installation/upgrade services, educational programs, operational assessment; technology planning, mapping services, and customized project-based consulting that provides access to our industry, development, and engineering expertise.

Whether you choose to benefit from offerings in our professional services, managed services, or both, rest assured that productivity, supply chain efficiency, the percentage of perfect orders, and speed-to-cash will be maximized while chargebacks, non-compliance, and tedious, manual interventions will be effectively minimized.

With all due respect to Mukund, he doesn’t possess what I’d call a vast pop culture library. I mention this because I was drawn to the tag line of last season’s hit NBC series “Heroes” — “Save the Cheerleader. Save the World” — when thinking about my new blog entry. Needless to say, this pop reference didn’t resonate very well. (Mukund: check out the official site), and you are probably wondering, “Dave, what does that have to do with the price of supply chain in China?” Here’s the point.

A friend of mine turned his nose up at the possibility of pursuing a position with a supply chain focused technology company during a recent conversation. Not cool enough, or something to that effect. But it takes just one look at a recent Investor’s Business Daily article to reaffirm the fact that Supply Chain is hot!

A 2006 AMR Research publication titled “Supply Chain Saves the World” underscores the critical importance of automating global business communities to remain nimble enough to react to changes in the supply chain (ideally before they have a real business impact) and to retain or improve a company’s competitive advantage.

My friend might argue that AMR overstated the importance of optimizing supply chains and extended business communities. He would be WRONG!! Look beyond IBD and AMR, and you’ll see continued indicators that this stuff (a technical phrase) is critical, important and, dare I say, sexy.

Take a look at a recent case study with On Semiconductor. You can see how their company is currently focused on removing complexity out of its supply chain as a way to enable frictionless business transactions and gain greater share of customers’ wallets. Blogs are only as compelling as the conversation and debate they drive, so I’m interested in your take on the topic:

• How critical are your supply chain operations?
• Is my friend one of the uninformed folks who doesn’t get it?
• How have you been a supply chain hero?

AMR Research was kind enough to send me several copies of their book, “Supply Chain Saves the World,” with contributions from Bruce Richardson, Kevin O’Marah and Randy Weston. If you’re one of our best commentators, we’ll send you a free copy of the book for getting engaged in the discussion.

Geek Marketing. It may have been identified and defined by John Dodds. Steve Rubel picked up on it, adding additional focus to the job description.

But it was my friend Tara Hunt (msrogue on twitter) who really nailed the role of The Geek Marketer in the Web 2.0 world. Maybe it was because of the picture, sort of a cross between Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. That’s an analogy worth a line of exploitation. Just one, it’s irresistible.

If traditional marketing is Elmer Fudd, then engineering is Marvin the Martian, leaving the role of Geek Marketer to Bugs. And that’s enough for that.

Being a self-proclaimed Geek Marketer herself, Tara easily identifies many of the traits to this unique role. Anyone working in, or with the VAN & EDI services industry will likely recognize him or her self, a colleague, or someone they do business with on a regular basis.

Bloggers are emerging as the 1^st wave of Geek Marketers, or at least identifying it, and bloggers love lists, so here’s Tara’s list with comments. Visit HorsePigCow for her complete version.

Geek Marketers:

1. Understand the tools intimately. The technical parts, yes, but also with an eye to the marketplace.
2. Understand how to handle feedback: Don’t take it personally.
3. Speak from the customer point of view with an understanding of the engineering point of view. Geek Marketers close the divide that probably arose when the wheel was invented.
   1^st caveman: wheel rolls, it good
   2^nd caveman: can’t sell it, add more features
4. Raise social capital daily. Tara believes this the most important trait because,“Credibility and trust are, above all else, the way to raise social capital.”
5. Integrate marketing holistically. “. . . their message is only as good as their product and their promise is only as good as their delivery…” Right On!
6. Provide or maintain the nerd values for the organization. Craig Newmark of Craigslist defines nerd values as: Do well by doing good. Nerd values are simple: It’s good to make a good living. It’s good to do well for your staff. It’s good to do well for your customers.
7. Your personal trainers. A good personal trainer doesn’t give you the big barbells until you are ready.
8. Agile Listen, learn and get more adept at predicting customers needs rather than reacting to them.

Tara Hunt believes the role of Geek Marketing is still emerging. Being involved with the growth of the EDI communication for over 20 years, we might differ on that, but we’re open to your commentary.

Jay Melton from our team is your Geek Marketer.

The Bottom Line: Are you a Geek Marketer? Is this an accurate list of your role? Let us know what you think?

picture credit: Tara Hunt www.horsepigcow.com