Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Recession? What Recession? Here’s 91M for Inventory Software

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I couldn’t help but notice this recent article in Intelligent Enterprise that noted that “SAP offered 91M for SAF”. Now, good inventory management software is extremely valuable because it can significantly reduce the 30%+ overhead (on product cost) that many organizations lose in inventory each year, but SAF is a little company of about 100 employees that only had 19M in revenue last year. That’s a 4.8 multiplier … in a down economy!

Forget the current share price, which likely skyrocketed on the rumor alone. You invest based on the likelihood of getting your money back in a reasonable time-frame. Considering that most small company sales drop considerably when they’re swallowed by an 800 lb gorilla, SAP will be lucky to get their money back in five years.

But more importantly, if that 91M had been funneled into an R&D group with some freedom, imagine what that could have built! Maybe they could even realize their Vision of the Future. Instead, as far as I can tell, they’re just spending more of their customer’s money on empty calories by paying too much of a premium. Well, at least they ain’t spending 5 Billion for Business Intelligence.

Ensuring Responsible & Ethical Production: Can You Answer Walmart’s Five Questions?

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Walmart has made it’s 15 Question Sustainability Product Index public. Can you answer it’s five questions on people and community?

  • Do you know the location of 100% of the facilities that produce your product(s)?
    You should. You really, really should. Not just for ethical reasons, but for compliance and regulatory reasons.
  • Before beginning a business relationship with a manufacturing facility, do you evaluate the quality of, and capacity for, production?
    If you sell the product, and it’s defective, you’re on the hook.
  • Do you have a process for managing social compliance at the manufacturing level?
    If you don’t, how do you insure your social policies are being followed?
  • Do you work with your supply base to resolve issues found during social compliance evaluations and also document specific corrections and improvements?
    You need to lead the way.
  • Do you invest in community development activities in the markets you source from and/or operate within?
    While not critical from a compliance or regulatory viewpoint, it’s the right thing to do.

Can we Sustain the Global Food Supply Chain?

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The threat of contamination can be disastrous for both public health and businesses, thus prompting companies of all sizes to focus on sustainability initiatives designed to ensure the health of the entire food and beverage ecosystem.
Aberdeen Group, “Sustaining the Global Food Supply Chain”, January 2009

In their research preview, which noted that global food production, processing, distribution, and retailing have never been under greater scrutiny by both regulators and consumers than they are today and that their upcoming study will explore pressure points, planned actions, and best practices in supply chain management, Aberdeen points out that thought leading food and beverage companies have taken on aggressive goals to ensure end-to-end visibility and quality, reduce negative impacts on the environment, and enhance positive change on society through frameworks of shared value.

But sustainability requires organizations to change and innovate in fundamental ways and represents, in and of itself, a sea change in the way society views the role of business and the centrality of business ethics. And in this economy, despite the need, not many companies are changing. This is a disturbing thought when you take into account that last year, global food reserves reached fifty, if not one hundred, year lows and that global shipping is currently responsible for 4.0% of all global climate change emissions due to an utter lack of regulatory requirements compared to the automative and trucking industries.

So can we sustain the global food supply chain?

We thought Global Warming Would Be Good? Were We Wrong?

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Back before we knew it was an inconvenient truth, we Canadians were all for global warming … thinking it would skyrocket our property values and help us take over the world. But now, after a summer of miserable wet, dank, allergy and asthma inducing weather … we have to ask “were we wrong”?

I don’t know. Canadians for Global Warming

Speculation is Fun … But You Should Get the Facts

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Speculation, a favorite pass-time of many bloggers, is fun, but you should get the facts before you sponsor any blog.

That being said, it never hurts to latch on to a winner early (especially if a sponsorship is being priced competitively), and there are a few up-and coming winners out there, particularly if your focus is narrower or broader than supply chain innovation, education, and best practices. So, if you are a forward-thinking marketer who knows your traffic is going to the blogs (after all, the only traditional publication that appears to get more regular web traffic than this blog is Purchasing), I’d highly recommend that you consider putting your logo on multiple, complimentary blogs and make your brand #1 in the eyes of your prospective, and discerning, customers.

First off, in the supply chain space, I’d recommend taking a close look at Bob Ferrari’s Supply Chain Matters. While still on the low end of the middle ground in the rankings (between Procurement Insights and Supply Excellence), Bob has been churning out high quality content since day one. If Bob decided to make Supply Chain Matters a daily blog, stepping up from his sporadic posting schedule of about every three days on average, I think Supply Chain Matters could shoot up the charts and quickly become, without question, the third most visited blog in supply and spend management space.

Secondly, in the related Metals space, I’d highly recommend Aptium Global’s Metal Miner. Now augmented with it’s MetalMiner IndX service, Metal Miner, which now claims to be the fourth largest online metals publication (and the traffic engines appear to support this claim), has been bringing you quality information on the metals market since it’s launch in December of 2007. It’s no-nonsense approach to quality information day-in and day-out, coupled with it’s metal pricing index that is updated daily, has allowed it to climb to the point where it is now also the third most trafficked supply chain blog (which you can verify through external triangulation across the five major traffic ranking sites). Quite impressive.

Thirdly, in the broader enterprise solutions space, I’d recommend Vinnie Mirchandani‘s Deal Architect. While Vinnie doesn’t tend to do deep dives into particular solution offerings very often, he offers a myriad of insights on a regular basis that can help you get a very strong understanding of the enterprise software space if you read it regularly. And that is one heck of a useful service … especially since you’d have to subscribe to Gartner or Forrester to get the same quality of insight, and they’re certainly not free!

Well, those are my recommendations if you’re on the market for (multiple) blog sponsorships as an innovative, thought-leading organization.