Category Archives: Miscellaneous

What If Your Supply Chain Software Vendor Goes Bust?

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A recent article in Logistics Viewpoints, the ARC Advisory Group Blog, asked a very important question given that many of the smaller vendors in this space are not on the solid footing they once were — What If Your Supply Chain Software Vendor Goes Out Of Business?

It’s a good question, especially since you’ll be in bad shape if you haven’t negotiated perpetual rights to not only the application but the code-base if you’re using a hosted solution and the vendor goes under or if you haven’t negotiated 24/7/365 full data access if you’re using a SaaS solution with mandatory notices before ceasing of operations, as I have noted you must do on several occasions.

In the first case, unless you happen to have an A1 development team in-house who can maintain the code base and customize it to your liking with little impact to your overall IT budget (which is likely not the case for 99% of non-IT supply chain companies), you’re going to have to migrate to another solution. If you suspect your vendor is going to go bust, and see the gradual warning signs of multiple layoffs, lack of solution updates, increased turn-around time on issue resolution, lack of insight into the roadmap, and the run-around when you try to inquire into their financial health with (what’s left of) senior management, then you need to start evaluating your options. If you start early, you can analyze your options, find the best one, and develop a staged migration plan that will minimize interruption to your day-to-day operations. If you don’t, you’ll be relying on expensive third party maintenance and prayers to keep you running until you can accomplish a stressful, organizational wide, all-at-once changeover.

In the latter case, you still have to migrate to a new solution, but if you negotiated full data access in a standard format, it’s just a matter of selecting the next best SaaS solution, loading all of your data, and then hiring a third party integrator to re-create any linkages to your current applications for automatic data exchange. You’ll have extra work while you manually export and import data until the new linkages are live, but since you’ll (again) negotiate full data access and the ability to export and import what you need, when you need it, with a bit of training and documentation, the interruption to your staff’s daily routine should be moderate at most.

Keep Your Hands Really Still!

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Editor’s Note: Today’s post is from Dick Locke, Sourcing Innovation’s resident expert on International Sourcing and Procurement. (His previous guest posts are still archived.)

I’ve got incredible respect for bloggers that post daily. I’m trying for a bi-weekly schedule and trying to keep the posts newsworthy. Not much happened in the last two weeks except for the possibility that the new US energy bill might include new trade barriers. I’ll need some time to get my head around that one. Right now all I know is pollution bad, free trade good.

So let’s go with a lighter note. And a test. Here are three pictures of hand gestures to avoid when traveling internationally.

Can you name some countries where these gestures would be considered rude, crude, or obscene?

Answers (in the comments) in a few days.

Big O

Thumbs Up

Thumbs Up

Dick Locke, Global Procurement Group and Global Supply Training.

Would This Be The End of Wall Street?

Louis Gerstner recently said that “short-term investment gains should be taxed at 80%”. It’s one of the most logical things I’ve ever read. But such a logical plan to fix what’s wrong with our greedy economy by taking us back to good old-fashioned long term thinking would likely be the end of Wall Street.

But would that be a bad thing?

Don’t Get Your Procurement Project Cut — Ask For Help From Your CFO

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A recent article on the “Disciplinarians’ Dilemma” in CFO Magazine noted that nearly all CFOs today have a mandate to conserve cash and that a recent McKinsey study found that 40% of companies surveyed are actively seeking to reduce research-and-development costs as well as the number of research-and-development projects they are funding. This is, of course, quite troubling because, as I have said over and over again (in my “dumb company” and “dead company” series), slashing research-and-development budgets in the near term will place companies in precarious competitive positions when the economy does turnaround. More specifically, they’ll struggle even more to maintain their existing client base while those companies that did innovate and develop more valuable solutions in the downturn will not only get most of the new customers, but lure some of their competition’s customers away.

However, as the article notes, instead of acting as the enemy of innovation, a CFO can play a critical role in fostering research-and-development. Given that the biggest weaknesses most companies have when it comes to innovation revolve around sticking to timelines, earmarking funds, and balancing the innovation portfolio, and that these are the strengths of the finance department, a CFO can play a critical role in the development of innovative new solutions by doing what she does best.

Furthermore, the same logic applies to procurement. While some less-than-visionary CFOs will look upon Procurement as a Cost Center, and try to freeze budgets, delay the acquisition of new technology, and freeze hiring even when you lose your staff due to attrition to more generous competitors, innovative CFOs will instead embrace the value, and substantial savings, Procurement can bring and help them balance their projects, funding, and available resources for maximum return to the company. And the best way to fall into the latter camp is to not only tell them what you can do, but let them know how they can help make your savings plans a reality and ask for their help. After all, which project are they likely to kill first — one they know nothing about or one in which they see, and are contributing to, the value?

Social Networks ARE a Disruptive Scourge

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… and despite what Phil Fersht says, we should not embrace them. I could write a five page essay on why we should outlaw them, but since they’ve given all of you ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder, if you’ve gotten this far), I’ll get to the point.

If you and your employees are checking your tweets every five minutes, how much work are you getting done? The answer: very little … at a time when your smart competitors who have banned MySpace, FaceBook, and, most especially, Twitter, from the workplace are running circles around you. There’s a place and a time for Web 2.0, and where most of today’s instantiations are concerned, the office is not one of them. It’s one thing to incorporate the useful components of the technology to allow your global workforce to come together, collaborate, and share ideas like RollStream did (which I do recommend) … but it’s another to allow your employees to follow sockington the cat on Twitter on work time. Think about it.