The title of this post will invariably offend some readers as they will associate Mars with men and Venus with women. Maybe instead I should have said direct materials are from Jupiter and indirect materials are from Saturn. But the point of this post is not to associate a gender-bias with either category. Instead, the [...]
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Last week SAP hosted their Sapphirenow conference in Orlando, a conference that I was fortunate to visit this time last year. It was quite clear last year that SAP were making a very big push towards promoting their cloud, mobile and data analytics based services. Then just after the show they announced that they would [...]
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Most definitely with the GS1 organisation. Bringing the relevant entities together to agree a standard before you start is the right way to success. If you add a plan-execute-review process to underpin it, it should work smoothly and offer a stable, standardised platform for everyone involved in your supply chain to move forward in the [...]
Read More» I was struck with a sudden feeling of good health at the GS1 UK Conference in Coventry last week. In particular, I was struck by how many companies were asking in-depth operational level retail supply chain questions. Of course I’m excited by this kind of thing, it’s hard to get me to stop talking about [...]
Read More» Earlier this week Quidsi, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, announced a new program called Familyhood Plus that bears a close resemblance to its parent company’s Prime offering. Quidsi, which translates to “what if” in Latin, is an umbrella company that sits atop numerous popular web brands such as Soap.com for health, beauty and household essentials; Wag.com, [...]
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In my last blog entitled, The Advance Ship Notice (ASN) — 20/20 Vision we discussed the many benefits produced by the use of ASNs. However, there are also barriers to that success that must be overcome before the goal can be realized. One of the biggest challenges to ASN success is the level of supplier and [...]
Read More» It’s getting near exam time in our household. The teenagers involved have been read the riot act, told that revision is the order of the day and that there will be no more distractions. The Internet has been temporarily locked down, the games console is in quarantine (under the stairs actually, but don’t tell them) [...]
Read More» In an earlier blog entry I highlighted some of the results from a new B2B Managed Services study by Stanford University’s Supply Chain Management Forum. The blog entry highlighted some of the results relating to how B2B Managed Services supports international expansion projects. Overall, the study looked at the how B2B Managed Services is being adopted by [...]
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I think I have mentioned a few times now that electronic invoicing isn’t new and has been around some time in the form of electronic data interchange. A question I am frequently asked, and most recently by a UK government Minister, is if e-Invoicing offers such compelling cost savings and efficiencies, then why isn’t everyone [...]
Read More» Organisations that have spent years integrating their business processes & IT systems can find themselves with just 12 months to de-couple and transition them.
Read More» My colleague Steve Keifer recently posted a blog entry about the connected car and I just wanted to take a few moments to extend his thinking a bit further. The connected car will completely change the way in which both the consumer connects with their car and the car connects with its surroundings. The so called ‘internet [...]
Read More» While hindsight may be 20/20, when applied to an enterprise supply chain, it’s not as impactful as foresight. In order to reduce supply chain costs, particularly around logistics, we need the ability to see beyond our walls, and that is precisely what Advance Ship Notices (ASN) give us. So, what is an ASN? An ASN [...]
Read More» The global manufacturing industry has been on a roller coaster ride over the past few years and following significant investment in new plants in the Far East, attention is now turning to establishing new plants in Latin America and Mexico. Brazil and Mexico are receiving a high proportion of inward investment at the moment, particularly [...]
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The GXS team (including our little mascot Gixsie) is attending the NACHA PAYMENTS 2013 conference in San Diego, CA this week. This year’s PAYMENTS event features more than 130 education sessions and numerous networking opportunities. There are a number of different educational tracks including Corporate Payment Solutions, Automated Clearing House (ACH), Global Focus and The [...]
Read More» So things had been going well. The Project had been “live” for nearly eight weeks and I was revelling in the new redesigned and highly efficient business operations. As ever there had been a number of factors influencing this, technology change was one element (more people just seemed to be doing it), cost reduction was [...]
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