Analyst Insight: The lack of understanding of the supply chain by the financial team is the third-highest obstacle in achieving supply chain performance. The supply chain is a complex system with increasing complexity. Many unknowing financial leaders try to manage it through Excel spreadsheets which is inadequate to truly understand the trade-offs. - Lora Cecere, Founder of Supply Chain Insights
So collaborative purchasing appears feasible for the restaurant industry. But what about other business sectors? Can different companies - even direct competitors - really band together to get better deals from their suppliers?
Analyst Insight: Simply stated, the marketing mission of any business is to profitably create "something" that a customer will buy. The operational objective of the business is to deliver the "something" to the satisfaction of the customer. The financial objective is to charge a fee equivalent to the customer's perceived value while generating a return on the capital investment the business made to create "something."
- Rich Sherman, Supply Chain Discipline Expert at Trissential
New York-based BizSlate is launching its cloud-based resource planning tool to give small business a hand with their supply chain challenges. Unlike legacy vendors in that sector, including SAP and Netsuite, the technology is specifically designed for department stores, retail chains, small boutiques and the like. Chief executive Marc Kalman says BizSlate is ideal for companies that have "outgrown QuickBooks" but don't have ample resources at their disposal for IT.
Doug Colbeth, chief executive officer of Kinaxis, delves into the new idea of supply chain management as-a-service, examines the state of cloud-based applications, and suggests a new term to replace "supply-chain management."
Accellos, a vendor of supply-chain execution software, has achieved compatibility with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013, for the latest releases of AccellosOne Collect and AccellosOne EDI (electronic data interchange).
A discussion with Dinesh Dongre, vice president of strategy with Softeon, about how companies can shift their focus from cost reduction to growth, as a response to economic recovery.
IBM has introduced software that is intended to address the rise of "omni-channel" shoppers - consumers who expect a consistent sales and marketing experience across multiple sales channels.
