Category Archives: Knowledge Management

Integration Point: A Global Content Provider

When we last covered Integration Point (in 2008 and 2010), we discussed their solutions for customs, security, and product classification; for free / secure trade zones and for regulatory compliance.

We talked about how their SaaS solutions helped companies with product classification under HS codes, advance notification (as required by 10+2), denied party screening (through integration with the US denied party lists), free trade / special economic zones (and identification of associated agreements), and the creation of necessary documents as well as the creation of surveys to determine if the supply base was compliant.

It was a good all-around solution, but it wasn’t a one-stop shop. While the import and export management solutions were extensive, the supply chain compliance solutions were limited; free trade was primarily ECCN, entry visibility, and country of origin; there was no automatic HS or country of origin classification; and content was primarily limited to HS/HTS codes, common import documentation, custom compliance documentation, and FTA summaries.

However, recognizing that their entire solution was dependent on good content, Integration Point, which now has twenty (20) offices across six (6) continents (and which promises an Antartica office as soon as the penguins start trading), started working on a Content Repository ten years ago and over the last decade has grown that content repository into a Global Content Repository with relevant trade data for over 185 countries. This include HS Codes, Tariff Schedules, Import/Export documentation requirements, rulings, free trade agreements, free trade and special economic zones, customs compliance programs, denied parties, sanctions and embargoes, and relevant trade acts, such as Lacey. The repository, which is maintained by a team of over 200 people globally, contains millions of base documents and millions of codings and mappings and is updated daily.

Daily updates is a critical part of a trade content repository. While some countries only update their tariff schedules a few times a year, others update their schedules monthly, and some update their schedules weekly (or more as Brazil once updated its schedules 80 times in one year). In addition, as trade relations improve or break down between countries, new trade restrictions / sanctions / embargoes are created almost overnight, denied parties get added to the list daily, and new regulations and rulings also come out on a daily basis. Correct classification, coding, and documentation is the difference between trouble-free trade and having your shipment held up for days, weeks, or months. And not shipping a restricted product to a denied party is the difference between smooth sailing and being federally investigated and fined millions of dollars. In both cases, your logistics and trade managers can only insure properly documented, legal, trade if they are on the ball with up-to-date data.

Since Integration Point has a global team, Integration Point, which sells access to its content repository as well as its trade management solutions on a subscription basis, is able to keep its repository current, which is no mean feat considering there have been over 2M updates to HS classifications alone on a global basis so far this year and over 1M updates to the import / export document database were required to capture regulation updates, trade agreement updates, form updates, and new rulings.

Integration Point now has one of the best and most complete Global Content Solutions out there and should be included in your list of content solution providers as you endeavour to get your compliance under control because Content is a Cornerstone of Compliance.

Plus, based on this content, Integration Point is now able to offer innovative solutions around country of origin determination, product classification, tariff analysis, and supply chain costing. We will cover these in future posts in early 2015.

Procurement Trend #27: Inter-Departmental Collaboration

Twenty-four trends remain
Together they bring disdain
We’re trapped in the mundane
They are Lucifer’s bane
… and we cannot rest until they are slain!

We cannot give up. We cannot give in. We must shed light on the darkness that each and every false prophecy brings. Only then can we move forward.

The journey is long and hard, but at the end of this thirty part series, you should not only understand why so many historians are still talking about the false trends we debunked in our Future of Procurement series, what you need to do to prevent staying in the past with your organizational “peers”, but what you need to do to not only stay in the present but start marching towards the future, which is coming faster than you think.

So why do so many historians keep pegging this as a future trend? There are a number of reasons, but among the top three today are:

  • Stakeholders are multiplying
    as Supply Management spreads
  • Stakeholder review and participation is increasing in importance
    as more knowledge work is being outsourced
  • Fiefdoms still exist in large(r) corporations
    as many organizations still measure your worth by the number of people under you or the budget you control and not the value you bring to the organization.

Multiplication of Stakeholders

Team management skills are now at a premium. A Supply Management leader not only has to manage a cross-functional team to be successful, but a team where each department being represented is typically at odds with each other and itching for a full-contact rugby match. (It wouldn’t be unrealistic to suggest that your organization might want to start by bringing in a career kindergarten teacher.)

Project Management skills are also becoming more important by the day, as the Supply Management team will need to maintain appropriate focus in each of the cross-functional team members to insure that things get done when they need to get done to keep each sourcing event and procurement project on schedule.

The Knowledge Economy

While often overlooked, knowledge management and collaboration portals will soon become a key part of your organization’s technology infrastructure. Your organization needs to capture all input and organizational knowledge (before it walks out the door), track all relevant issues, and make sure all of the relevant information not only gets in the hands of who needs it, but when external parties are involved, capture their knowledge, decisions, and processes (and not just output) as well in case it needs to be reconstructed or redeployed later on.

Fiefdoms

Off with their heads! Well, figuratively at least. If your organization has one or more fiefdoms, then your organization has someone unwilling to relinquish control, even if that is what is required for the greater good. In this case, your organization has to fight the urge to try and fix the problem with more training or yet another reorganization (which is typically very, very disruptive) and simply do what the kings of old did when they had problems with the dukes — and take off their heads!

If, and only if, the leader can be reformed, give her another management position within the company (and possibly initiate some inter-departmental collaboration at the same time as she will more than likely be more than willing to work with her old department). But if he’s stuck in his ways and can’t be reformed, bite the bullet, give him a fair severance package, and push him out into the outside world. Just like a ship that’s dropped anchor can’t sail, a company with a lead filled sandbag can’t rise above the clouds, no matter how much hot air that individual puts out on a daily basis!

Have You Mastered the 4th T of Tracery?

Regular readers will know that the time of PPT — People, Process, Technology — has long passed. In today’s fast paced world where product life-cycles are sometimes over as soon as they hit the market, and where your competitors are constantly striving to outpace you in both sales and supply management, you can’t live on processes anymore — they go stale almost as soon as you’ve got them figured out. And in a knowledge economy, just having a butt in a seat or a worker at an assembly line isn’t enough to succeed — you need a worker who, at the very least, is smarter than the average worker and, preferably, smarter than the worker employed by your competitor. And your technology cannot get out of date.

That’s why SI has been promoting the 3 T’s for years — Technology, Talent, and Transition. You need a solid, regularly updated, technology foundation upon which to build your modern Supply Management Organization. You need talent to put together good operating procedures, properly use the technology, and to constantly identify new opportunities for cost reduction or value generation. And you need great transition management as even best six sigma process today won’t cut it tomorrow when you need to upgrade your product offering, switch suppliers, change distribution methods, and make sure your product is Designed for Recycling from the get-go as new regulations are forcing you to take back your product at end of life and recycle it as you are using chemicals and / or rare earth minerals that are heavily regulated.

But while these are necessary conditions for Supply Management success, they are not necessarily sufficient. While it is true you will not succeed without a mastery of technology, talent, and transition management, as per our first post on Project Assurance, organizational success also depends on selecting a superior strategy and seeing it through until the desired results are achieved (or the organization changes its strategy, which hopefully wasn’t done arbitrarily on the whim of a CXO after talking to a buddy on the golf course). However, in order to properly implement a strategy, you have to not only see it through from start to finish, but you have to make sure all of the process streams necessary for success are both completed and properly synched. Just like the key to a good weave, as one might find in Egyptian Cotton, is a skillful interleaving of the thread, the key to a good strategy, is a skillful interleaving of the process strands into an effective transition plan from where you are to where you need to be.

And this, dear readers, is Tracery — the “delicate, interlacing, work of lines as in an embroidery”, or, more modernly, “a network” — the glue that not only binds the Technology, Talent, and Transition Management that your Supply Management organization needs to succeed, but that interleaves these threads in a way that causes each of them to reinforce each other and make a stronger whole.

Supply Managers are the Rock Stars of the Coming Resource Revolution … But

… the reality is that, in the majority of organizations, Supply Managers are still zeroes, not heroes, even though Professor Sheffi is taking the glass half full view in his article on “how a profession went from zero to hero” on SupplyChainMIT.com.

Supply Managers are only heroes in those leading organizations that were forwarding looking enough to let Purchasers gain influence in both the inbound and outbound supply chain and raise the profile of the organization in the eyes of both customers and suppliers. Their new practices, global view, and risk mitigation not only raised their profile, but also the profile of the organization as a whole. They were given more respect and authority, and soon after were the heroes of their organization.

But not every organization had the foresight of these leading organizations and, as a result, it is still only a select group of leaders that have truly embraced Supply Management and leaped the pond. Most organizations are still effectively in the dark ages and haven’t even embraced RFx or basic e-Invoice technology. While a considerable (but not necessarily a majority) of Fortune 500 / Global 2000 organizations have embraced Supply Management to some degree and some Procurement or Sourcing Technology, as you work your way down to mid-size and smaller organizations, the percentage of organizations that have embraced Supply Management and associated technology decreases dramatically.

Furtheremore, not only is there a huge number of organizations that have not adopted Supply Management, there is a huge gap between the enlightened and the ignorant. And the gap could mean the difference between uninhibited success and eventual bankruptcy.

So how do we spread the message to the masses and usher in the resource revolution?

Looking Behind the Knowledge Network Curtains (Repost)

This post originally ran on November 19, 2010. However, it is still as relevant today as it was then and, for those of you who did read it before, not too much of a distraction to you as we approach the World Cup Final 😉

Today’s guest post is from John Shaw, the Director of Education Services for Supply Management at BravoSolution.

In a recent post, the doctor asked, “Where is the Knowledge Network?” and “What is an aspiring supply management professional to do?”

Our industry is offering a growing list of online resources and supply management organizations. We can use these resources to augment the knowledge we gain through our professional activities and personal networks. As the doctor stated, each of these resources takes time and effort to build, so naturally, the goals and objectives of these networks are aligned with those individuals who invest in building each network in the first place.

Our challenge as supply management professionals is to navigate this forest of information in a way that maximizes our personal development. To do so, we need to understand where our personal objectives align with those of a knowledge network. The better we understand how each network’s objectives align with our own, the more value we will receive out of the limited time we have to invest in them.

So as both a consumer of these networks and a developer of some (see discloser below) I’d like to offer some questions for you to ask when trying to determine if participating in a particular knowledge network would be valuable to you:

  • Does the intent of the network align with the needs of the membership?
    The Network Guidelines should clearly state the audience, and the types of information exchange the network facilitates. If they are not stated, or they do not align with what your current development needs, your time may be better invested elsewhere.
  • Who are the thunder lizards?
    Look to see who the most active participants are. The most active people in a community will steer its direction. If these people are your peers, or better, if they are in roles that you aspire to, look further into participating.
  • Who is in charge?
    Successful communities are driven by the membership. If enough thunder lizards march in the same direction a community will move and take a life of its own. The builder can find him/herself in the passenger seat. In the best scenario, you’ll find that the thunder lizards are your peers, and they are in charge!

So what are we to do? Unfortunately there isn’t a simple answer. Whether we are learning about supply management, following politics or trying to get the best advice online for fixing a leaking pipe, we need to look behind the curtains to understand our information sources

Thanks, John!