Oracle has announced the release of v6.3 of its Oracle Transportation Management (OTM) and Oracle Global Trade Management solutions. Read the rest of this entry »

In surely one of the first mergers of the year, GT Nexus and TradeCard are announcing their intent to merge their companies. GT Nexus provides a cloud-based global trade and logistics platform for manufacturers, retailers, and logistics service providers. TradeCard provides a cloud platform for managing sourcing, logistics, and finance on a single system. Read the rest of this entry »

I am very excited to be joining Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) as senior analyst, supply chain management.

TEC’s decision-support engine, robust feature/function models, and rich database of vendor capabilities enable TEC clients to realize faster time-to-value in software decisions.  Watching the evolution of how clients use software advisory firms, and, then, starting up my own analyst firm, has persuaded me more strongly than ever of the value of such an online capability for software evaluation. Read the rest of this entry »

While day 1 of the IFS World Conference 2012 in Gothenburg, Sweden was mostly about mobility, day 2 expanded into some other interesting themes and topics. IFS has long positioned itself as a single-instance global enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution alternative to SAP and Oracle. The realm of corporate social responsibility (CSR) presents notable challenges for organizations due to the intricacy of global and local laws and regulations and the difficulty in navigating them. In his keynote presentation (which he mostly repeated in his subsequent presentation to the press/analysts), IFS CTO Dan Matthews pointedly stated that CSR is difficult to manage at a global level. Read the rest of this entry »

At the end of part III of this series, the software selection team at MegaResistCap had turned in their software selection votes to the company’s executive operating committee. Jim, director of information technology (IT), was anxiously awaiting the voting result, which was now being announced by Francois, the company’s chief legal counsel. Francois wasn’t one to mince words, and got right to the point: Read the rest of this entry »

In the first two parts of this series (part I, part II), Jim, director of IT at MegaResistCap, learned that the company’s recently rolled out enterprise resource planning (ERP) system would have to support global trade management (GTM) functionality more quickly than expected. He had sent an e-mail off to his chief information officer (CIO), Mike, suggesting a new project be set up and managed by the project management office, MegaPMO. Now, with some trepidation, he awaited the response from the CIO.

The week following Jim’s e-mail passed without a reply to his message. Was the CIO trying to distance himself from Jim’s message? Was the executive operational committee upset by the suggestion of another software project after they just got through the high-cost ERP rollout? Or did they agree with the suggested approach? Read the rest of this entry »

When we left Jim, it was 7 pm, Sunday night. Jim, director of IT at MegaResistCap, had received a message from his CIO. The company’s legal counsel wanted to know if their systems were able to support the company operating as a “deemed exporter.” (See Part I of this series.)

Jim knew he needed to work his magic and offer a solution or at least a direction to management—that’s why they paid him the big bucks. He put himself on a schedule for the evening:

1) Research, 7–9 pm;
2) Proposed solution steps outline, 9–11 pm.

It was also part of his position to stay on top of the latest industry directions, but he had lost touch over the last year and a half during the ERP rollout.

Jim started googling “deemed exporter regulations.” The US BIS Web site was informative but like all government Web sites, it was filled with acronyms, regulations, subregulations, and references that led to other government agencies that Jim thought only existed in spy novels. The not-so-subtle references also pointed out that the fines assessed for single civil violation can result in a $250,000 (USD) civil fine or twice the amount of the transaction. Criminal violations carry a penalty of up to $1 million (USD) per violation and imprisonment for up to 20 years! Read the rest of this entry »

Jim, information technology (IT) director of MegaResistCap Inc., was finally getting back to a reasonable schedule 3 months after the “go-live” date of the company’s new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. He was hoping to spend the weekend in the garden, and was looking forward to checking messages on Sunday to get ready for a productive week. That was, until he saw the memo from the company’s chief legal counsel, forwarded by his chief information officer (CIO), Mike. Read the rest of this entry »

My recent article SAP SCM – Stepping Out of (Relative) Obscurity analyzed SAP’s revamped comprehensive supply chain management (SCM) suite, its major components, and its supply chain process bundles. In addition to receiving a number of public comments and ratings by TEC’s readers, I was recently roasted privately during a lunch meeting with a couple of peers.

Namely, they expressed their surprise at the quite positive tone of the article, and at the lack of my typical skepticism (and sometimes sarcasm). Well, perhaps I am a sucker for a good “big picture” vision, and it seemed to me that SAP had created a compelling strategic story. The ideas such as the “Visual Enterprise” sounded refreshing to me, especially after several years of SAP being quiet on the Line of Business (LOB) applications delivery front. At the end of the day, it was important to highlight that the solutions that SAP is offering for supply chain executives expand across the traditional TLA (three letter acronym) boundaries of SCM, product lifecycle management (PLM), customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), manufacturing execution system (MES), etc.

Read the rest of this entry »

It gives me great pleasure to announce that the 2012 Supply Chain Management Buyer’s Guide is here. Download your copy now.

In this buyer’s guide, I address a topic that deserves more discussion among supply chain strategists: collaboration. Read the rest of this entry »

TEC is coming up with four new buyer’s guides for 2012, and one slot is reserved for supply chain management (SCM) solutions. My main reason for pushing for this was that the global business landscape has been battered significantly by a slew of economic, political, social and environmental events over the past five years. This has resulted in significant losses for businesses around the world.

It is no secret that the world is going to engage in  a fairly trying period for the foreseeable future. And businesses will need to examine their outside environment more closely than ever before committing themselves to action. They will also need to take measures for obtaining greater visibility into and around their supply chain in order to adapt more quickly to changing circumstances.

TEC’s 2012 SCM Buyer’s Guide will discuss the issues that will continue to challenge supply chains, specifically in regard to managing complexity, achieving insight into the chain, and managing collaboration within the chain.

Here is a short synopsis of items I’ll be covering in the guide. Read the rest of this entry »

Globalization has lost its novelty. For most goods-driven enterprises it has become a matter of fact, just to stay in the game. However, the level of complexity that doing business globally entails can be daunting for professionals in charge of overseeing the supply chain—especially when the business needs to be nimble to keep ahead. Nimble can be painfully complex, but it doesn’t have to be difficult. That’s where global trade management (GTM) comes in. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series introduced TAKE Supply Chain, a supply chain management (SCM) division of TAKE Solutions, Ltd. The parent TAKE Solutions is a global technology solutions and service provider, which focuses on two principal business areas – life sciences and SCM (the company is listed on the Indian Stock Exchange).

My first post described TAKE Supply Chain’s genesis since its inception in 1994 as BPA Solutions, through its ClearOrbit phase from 2001 to 2007, and finally from TAKE Solutions’ ownership on. Throughout all these changes, the company’s mission has remained intact: “To improve the speed, visibility and control of extended manufacturing and distribution value chains.”

Part 1 also analyzed TAKE Supply Chain’s current product lines, starting with Demand-Driven Supply Network (DDSN) solutions. The first DDSN offering was OneSCM, which is an online supplier relationship management (SRM) platform that features multi-tier, multi-tenant software as a service (SaaS) architecture and is designed for mid- to large-sized manufacturers and distributors.

Part 2 continued with the analysis of TAKE Supply Chain main product lines, in particular the Xtended Process Control (X.PC) SRM suite within the DDSN product line and the Enterprise Returns Management (ERM) suite within Demand-Driven Distribution & Fulfillment solutions (TAKE’s second major SCM product line). The final part of this blog series will now address TAKE Supply Chain’s remaining product line: Mobile & Auto-ID Solutions, and will discuss the company’s competitive landscape.

Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series introduced TAKE Supply Chain, a supply chain management (SCM) division of TAKE Solutions, Ltd. The TAKE Solutions parent company is a global technology solutions and service provider, with significant focus across two principal business areas – life sciences and SCM, with an almost even breakdown of revenues between these divisions (the company is listed on the Indian Stock Exchange).

My blog post first described TAKE Supply Chain’s genesis since its inception in 1994 as BPA Solutions, through its ClearOrbit phase from 2001 to 2007, and from the TAKE Solutions ownership on. Throughout all these changes, the company’s mission has remained intact: “To improve the speed, visibility and control of extended manufacturing and distribution value chains.”

Then, the article analyzed TAKE Supply Chain’s current product lines, starting with Demand-Driven Supply Network (DDSN) solutions. The first DDSN offering was OneSCM, which is an online supplier relationship management (SRM) platform that features multi-tier, multi-tenant software as a service (SaaS) architecture and is designed for mid- to large-sized manufacturers and distributors.

Part 2 of this blog series will continue with analysis of TAKE Supply Chain’s main product lines, in particular looking at the rest of the DDSN products and at its Demand-Driven Distribution & Fulfillment solutions (the second major product line).

Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past several years I’ve repeatedly heard of a supply chain management (SCM) software and professional services company called ClearOrbit that was recently renamed TAKE Supply Chain. I admit to initially being in a quandary how to figure out the company’s exact value proposition and differentiation, given that its corporate Web site and press release (PR) messages as well as webinar topics seemed to be all over the SCM map: from labeling, printing, and package visibility, via reverse logistics, warehousing, radio frequency (RF) and RF Identification (RFID) mobility, to procure-to-pay (P2P), and supplier relationship management (SRM).

After a while, I finally had my “a-ha!” moment of epiphany and realized the company’s mission: “To improve the speed, visibility and control of extended manufacturing and distribution value chains.” There are indeed many business problems encountered in managing globally extended supply networks.

Read the rest of this entry »