With all the recent talk of the economy and the environment, I thought it would be relevant to look at some of the small things we, as individuals, can do to help our companies battle the economic downturn while saving our planet. Today, social responsibility is not only good PR, it makes good business sense. Here are some simple steps you can take to help your company go green while still keeping extra “green” in its pockets: Read the rest of this entry »

In over a decade of covering the enterprise application space, I’ve repeatedly lauded and advised vertical focus (i.e., someone’s proven expertise in some particular industry and market segment), but not that much vertical integration per se. My beliefs were recently confirmed by what I learned while pursuing my APICS CSCP (Certified Supply Chain Professional) title.

Namely, Module One of the APICS CSCP Learning System, entitled “Supply Chain Management Fundamentals” teaches that companies have generally pursued one of the following two types of supply chain management (SCM): either vertical or lateral (also known as horizontal) integration. Vertical (supply chain) integration refers to the practice of bringing the entire supply chain inside a single organization.

In fact, vertical integration, or the ownership of many or all the parts of a supply chain, has been around longer than the term “supply chain.” By bringing many supply chain activities in-house and putting them under centralized corporate management, vertical integration solves the problem of who will design, plan, execute, monitor, and control supply chain activities. Read the rest of this entry »

Yes all of us are well aware that the global economy is in a downturn. We hear it in the news, on blogs, in articles, and we see it around us with massive layoffs and lower consumer spending. So while we have heard all about these problems, what is the solution to fix these issues from an enterprise point of view? Read the rest of this entry »

Part II of this blog series explained ToolsGroup’s value proposition for achieving service level excellence in distribution environments. The point of the Service Optimizer 99+ (SO99+) suite’s name is that a “99+ percentage” represents the gold standard in customer service levels, and it takes a product purposely built to achieve service level excellence and to support such a high standard.

ToolsGroup’s latest version of software continues to build on the functionality needed to reach this goal.

Back to Mitigating Long Tails

Having put the necessary pieces in place, over the past year ToolsGroup has turned a particularly keen eye toward how to succeed in environments with a “long tail” demand. The long tail theory originally held that in an environment such as the Internet-based retailers (so called “e-tailers”), which is less affected by physical manufacturing, product and distribution constraints than so-called “brick-and-mortar” retailers, demand will spread across a huge array of items (a.k.a., stock-keeping units or SKUs). Read the rest of this entry »

Part I of this blog series introduced the notion of long tails in modern supply chains. That blog post also introduced the vendor ToolsGroup and its solution for planning and optimizing finished goods in distribution environments.

So, How Does ToolsGroup Solve the Distribution Puzzle?

Most of the benefits are driven here by the distinctive Stock Mix Optimization capability that has delivered higher service levels with much less inventory for ToolsGroup customers. As its name suggests, the feature is used to define and manage the right mix at each location in the supply network to deliver the targeted customer service level. Read the rest of this entry »

As is the case with white papers, vendors’ press releases (PR) can range from blatant bragging about the “latest-and-greatest” product capabilities (and other marketing “fluff”) to tastefully asserting competence and educating the market about specific issues.

One example of the latter would be Emptoris‘ April 2008 PR on the findings  of a panel of financial and procurement experts that have worked and consulted with leading Fortune 1000 companies. These experts offered their advice to chief procurement officers (CPOs) on actions to take to weather, and even excel in, a potentially uncertain economic environment.

The expert panel participated in a brainstorming session with leading financial, technology and procurement consultants to offer a list of immediate and intermediate steps that companies can take to gain greater control over spending and effectively reduce costs. Read the rest of this entry »