The quote in this blog’s title, “Vision without execution is hallucination,” came from Madge Meyer’s keynote address “The Essentials of Innovation Leadership” at this year’s CEB TowerGroup conference. Meyer is EVP, Chief Innovation Officer and Technology Fellow at State Street Corporation. Meyer discussed State Street’s approach to technology innovation. Some of her other gems were [...]
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In my previous blog I examined Ar iba’s history in B2B and how this may explain SAP’s acquisition, today I will consider what this high-level strategy could look like, what it means for SAP customers, and of course, what it means for Oracle… A B2B Strategy? On the face of things, Ariba looks like a [...]
Read More» In my previous blog I asked how SAP’s consolidation project may affect their customers, in today’s blog I will examine if SAP is now focusing more on B2B. Cloud, Collaboration, Supply Chain, B2B B2B e-Commerce is not new to SAP; Steve Keifer recently blogged how on SAP’s stake in Commerce One was dropped when they [...]
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Jaguar Land Rover reported today that they had record profits during 2011-2012, a 34% rise in profits over the previous year and overall vehicle sales hit a new high as well. The group made pre-tax profits of £1.5bn, up from £1.12bn the year before. Sales were up 29.1% to 314,433 units with Jaguar selling 54,039 [...]
Read More» It seems to me that there isn’t a single day that passes by without a market announcement, conference or opinion expressed about SEPA. Official implementation guidelines, rulebooks and even the official local language lexicon have existed for years through the European Payments Council. However, one item that is definitively NOT fully covered in my opinion [...]
Read More» On Tuesday May 22, 2012 SAP’s subsidiary, SAP America, Inc., entered into an agreement to acquire Ariba, a cloud-based business commerce network, for $45.00 per share, representing an enterprise value of approximately $4.3 billion. It’s certainly interesting, but it leaves me, and many others it seems, with questions. What further complexity will this acquisition add [...]
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In an earlier post I described the need for a social graph for the supply chain. The social graph would outline the various relationships between companies at different tiers of the supply chain. Such a mapping would be useful when unforeseen disasters such as earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, plant explosions and salmonella outbreaks occur leading to [...]
Read More» I was fortunate to be able to attend SAP’s SapphireNow conference last week in Orlando. It was the first time I have been able to attend this event and from my perspective it was interesting to see the sheer scale on which SAP run their events, this particular conference was huge! The event was combined [...]
Read More» Yesterday, SAP announced its intention to acquire B2B e-commerce vendor, Ariba for $4.3 billion. In addition to its suite of spend management and procure-to-pay applications, Ariba has built up one of the world’s largest business networks with over 700,000 members. The presentation materials issued following the announcement stated that “Ariba will enable SAP to create [...]
Read More» This week GXS attended the AFME 5th Post-Trade Conference in London, UK. Major stakeholders from the European Capital Markets were there alongside representatives from European and domestic public entities. Walking into the conference room, I expected the usual universal debate between the private sector, their business drivers, day-to-day challenges and call for self-regulation, versus public [...]
Read More» Everyone is talking about Facebook this week. How is that different than every other week you might wonder? This week, of course, will be host to the long anticipated Facebook IPO. The average person thinks of Facebook as simply a medium to keep in touch with friends and family, but the company is much more [...]
Read More» Throughout 2012 and most of 2011 the hottest topic in the supply chain has been risk management – and with good cause. In March 2011 when the terrible tsunami hit the East Coast of Japan, many of the world’s supply chains were crippled in the following months. Few people realized the extent to which the [...]
Read More» I was recently invited to attend the Deloitte Indirect Taxation conference in Westminster, London. This is an annual event that brings together industry professionals to discuss indirect taxation matters and industry trends around invoicing and trade. While the conference covered a wide spectrum of subjects, from the recent EU white paper on the future of [...]
Read More» A compelling bank value proposition has to be unique – differentiated with a clear justification to enter or expand the business relationship, combined with benefits and demonstrated return. But, unique differentiators have to be supported by unique business processes, technology and people, all of which reflect the spirit, values and brand of a bank. This, [...]
Read More» On Tuesday, GS1 US and GS1 Germany announced that it was creating a joint venture between their data pool subsidiaries – 1SYNC and SA2. SA2 and 1SYNC operate the two largest data pools in the world. The combined entity will host more than 7 million items synchronized between 15,000 businesses. This new joint venture is [...]
Read More» Last week GXS attended and exhibited at the NACHA PAYMENTS 2012 conference in Baltimore MD. There were many interesting educational sessions to choose from across several tracks. One session caught my eye in the Corporate Payments Solution track titled “The ERP Integration Cloud is Here!” presented by Rene Schuurman, Director and Product Manager Connectivity, from Citi [...]
Read More» Having just spent a few days in Germany at the EDIFICE High Technology conference, I’ve concluded strange things are happening in the world of supply chain management. Indeed so profound are these changes that it’s turning established thought and practice upside down. Reliable For the last twenty or more years supply chain has been based [...]
Read More» Earlier today I presented the keynote presentation at the 116th EDIFICE conference in Frankfurt, Germany. The EDIFICE association is an industry body that looks after the B2B related interests of companies operating across the high tech industry. This presentation was very timely as I have recently returned from a business trip to the East Coast [...]
Read More» It’s been tough, but I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking recently. And I’ve been thinking about risk in the supply chain. My mind has been focussed on this partly because it’s become increasingly important but also because we are giving presentations this week at the EDIFICE event on “Risk and Resilience” in the [...]
Read More» GXS recently sponsored a webinar titled “Key Technology Initiatives for Commercial Banking and Payments 2012.” CEB TowerGroup Research Director Steve Murphy and Associate Analyst Leo Lipis joined me to present the key business dynamics driving technology priorities in 2012. (You can view a replay of the webinar and get a copy of the slides.) Steve [...]
Read More» Last week I was fortunate to be able to attend some customer meetings in Japan. It was my first trip to the country and I was interested to learn how the manufacturing industry was embracing the internet and cloud computing in this part of the world. Japanese companies have traditionally preferred using home grown, behind [...]
Read More» It is not news that buying on credit (open-account) dominates global trade. The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) generally acknowledged that at least 80-85% of all global trade in 2010 was settled on open-account (OA) terms. When buying on credit the buyer takes on the supply risk and is obliged to “match” a purchase order, [...]
Read More» I have posted many blogs over the last couple of years on the subject of ERP B2B integration and how SAP projects for example can benefit from being integrated seamlessly to a B2B platform. I thought it would be worth exploring this subject further by expanding on the following statement, ERP systems are incomplete without [...]
Read More» There are plenty of EU rules and regulations to help us understand what constitutes a compliant electronic tax invoice. EDI as a means to exchange electronic invoices is long-established and proven since 1994, but in some countries there has been confusion around how EDI provides tax compliance. In the past, companies would run an EDI [...]
Read More» If you’ve been following you’ll recall I got a little distracted by a webinar featuring Marks and Spencer, how they engaged with their supplier community and automatically processed millions of invoices. As I pointed out, (before I got distracted), it surprised me to discover that there are over 500 companies across the globe who use [...]
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