Supply Chain Experts on B2B Collaboration October 29, 2007
Posted by mukundmohan in Analytics and Business Intelligence, Business Community Management, Industry Publications.Tags: collaborative supply chain management, global business, MIT Sloan Management Review, Wall Street Journal
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Stopped to sample the samosa at Whole Foods Market. Not good to shop on an empty stomach and fill the cart with snacks. They had free wifi for multitasking, but I picked up a section of the Wall Street Journal to get some ink on my fingers.
The samosas were good, but the stories listed in the Business Insights really got me salivating. They were listed by category: Marketing, Global Business, Finance, Technology and Operations; all subjects of great interest.
Spent more time reading than expected because all the stories were good. The one I want to share was under Operations: The Hand That Feeds You. Nancy W. Nix, Robert F. Lusch, Zach G. Zacharia and Wesley Bridges wrote it. They’re scholars and experts in the fields of marketing and collaborative supply chain management.
The article, if you haven’t read it, is an in-depth and insightful analysis of supplier collaborations and how some businesses succeed where many fail.
B2B collaboration is becoming critical aspect of global trading partners, as market competition gets increasingly fierce while customer demand grows. Research indicates that even as companies collaborate with suppliers to deliver goods and services better and faster to remain competitive, the failure rate is high.
They define collaboration as: an intense process where partners exchange information and pool their capabilities to solve problems that can’t be tackled individually.
They offer four elements critical to successful collaboration between companies, and five questions a company should ask themselves to make collaborations work. I’ve distilled them here.
- Be Willing to Engage – This requires sharing of information, making joint decisions, and resolving conflicts.
- Build a Collaborative Environment – Like building a brand, it’s important that the whole company is on board with the collaboration process. This may involve hiring people specially trained to manage the issues of collaboration.
- Learn from Your Partner – Increasing knowledge base, and the ability to absorb knowledge is important for companies to get past the “that’s not the way we do things here” mentality.
- Bring Expertise to the Table – It’s important that both parties bring something unique and of value to the collaboration, else the relationship becomes one-sided with one partner dependent on the other.
The questions are:
- Do you recognize when collaboration is needed vs. a more direct solution?
- Is senior management committed to the process?
- Can you improve on your collaborative team, and be willing to share information and ideas?
- Are you open to new ideas, and willing to learn from partners?
- Are you committed to making the relationship work?
This complete article, along with the others read with my samosas, can be accessed online at MIT Sloan Management Review.
Will the Real Managed Services Please Stand Up? October 26, 2007
Posted by Steve Cochran in Analytics and Business Intelligence, managed services, outsourcing services.Tags: data center, managed services, multi-tenant, outsourcing, platform, scalability
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Contrary to what you may have been told, not all managed services are exactly alike. When choosing which managed service to go with, making a sound and educated decision will land you a more advantageous service that will maximize profit and cut out needless expenses. Once your company has made the decision to outsource, it’s time to look at two options.
- The first alternative is a cut and paste method of sorts. This service takes exactly what your people are already doing and uses their company’s people to do the exact same thing. Next, they take the exact implementation of the products and services that you are currently using, and install them in their outsource facility in the same arrangement your company currently has them in. This method initially meets those requirements you’re looking for to know that the burden of responsibility has been given to someone else.
- The second type of service takes the requirements and functions you are trying to meet and deploys them in a structured environment where the systems, people, and processes are optimized to fulfill your goals and needs. Resources are leveraged across a much broader base.
E-Discovery, Data Archiving Compliance, and Best Practices October 26, 2007
Posted by mukundmohan in EDI, Technology.Tags: data integration, e-discovery, electronic records, FRCP, IT compliance, recovery management
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Effective December 1, 2006, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) were amended in a way that significantly alters an enterprise’s litigation risks with regard to electronically stored information. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure are used by U.S. District Courts to govern civil suits.
Electronically stored information (EIS) includes data, metadata, e-mails, text messaging, web sites and any other data and/or electronic information stored or created.
In a lawsuit, discovery is the pre-trial phase where documents and evidence are requested and produced by other parties.
The FRCP amendments created more stringent guidelines by creating a specific category naming emails and instant messages as likely records to be archived and produced during discovery when relevant. Additionally, e-discovery compliance requires that electronic records be produced in a timely manner.
This puts additional burden on IT departments to apply appropriate document archiving and retrieval technologies while creating processes to store, index, classify, protect and retrieve electronic data.
Aberdeen Group is in the process of creating a research study about a Best-in-Class message archiving and e-mail discovery program. It includes compliance for key business processes, information technologies to implement and manage the process, and data integration and recovery management practices.
Radiohead Takes Page from Jam Band Playbook – What’s Shaking Up Your Business Model? October 25, 2007
Posted by David Fontaine in Business Community Management.comments closed
Bands, like The Grateful Dead, Pearl Jam, Dave Matthew’s Band, Phish, WideSpread Panic (Jon Gatrell’s favorite group) and others, have thrived creatively, personally and financially by embracing the collective, the community, their fan bases and going against the grain of the traditional music business – for example, allowing bootlegging (not moonshine….but concert tapes and videos that spawned underground trading communities and industries).
At the end of the day, what’s good for the community, like grilled cheese sandwiches (never ate one, wasn’t a huge Dead fan ……but you get the point and it shows some love to my colleagues in the Bay Area), is good for the artist – the King or Queen (cue Freddie Mercury) of that particular supply and demand chain.
Radiohead, a critically acclaimed and commercially successful UK band, is going against the grain (if there is any grain left in the music industry). The band is a free agent – no label – and is offering its latest album (“In Rainbows”) for download only (at least for now until the box set comes out for $80 a pop) and fans, interested parties (like myself) can literally name their price for the download. When it comes to settle on an album price, the site simply states, “It’s up to you.”
Wait for it….wait for it…here comes the point, which is painfully obvious to anyone who has been paying attention. The music business has already been turned upside down, on its side, twirled in a couple spin cycles and bounced off a cliff.
Now comes this news.
Over the past 10+ years, there have been any number of digital distribution, e-commerce case studies that trumpet the potential for
e-commerce to transform or disrupt traditional business models – of course depending on your individual perspective. Napster, eBay, PayPal, Amazon, Yahoo, iPods and iTunes, P2P networks, My Space, Google……Those were game changers of the past generation, even though they are all still relevant, important and in some cases really innovative and cool.
In the case of Radiohead and the music industry, here is yet another wrinkle for retailers and suppliers to consider. But at least this is a familiar ripple and not a complete sea change.
For companies of all types but retailers and suppliers in particular, the next wave of e-commerce, Web and social computing applications are going to change the rules of “the game” just as dramatically. Mashups, Wikkis, Blogs, Second Life, integration of IM are new ripples in the ocean, but some of them could drive wholesale sea changes for business.
In B2B, we talk about Actionable Intelligence, Web 2.0 and Software as a Service/Managed Services as game changers. Do you have any thoughts about what the next game changer could be for your business?
