Category Archives: Technology

Are We Moving Away From China?

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Editor’s Note: This is Dick Locke’s third post as a regular contributor on Sourcing Innovation. (His previous guest posts are still archived.) Dick, who has delivered seminars to over 100 companies across the globe, is a seasoned expert on International Sourcing and Procurement who wrote the book.

I just read through AMR Research’s “Supply Chain Risk, 2008-2009: As Bad as It Gets“. It rightly points out that it’s been a scary year. It does do a very thorough job of criticizing China. I know that AMR is just reporting what their clients report to them so I can’t fault AMR for what they say.

Among the things they say

China is the world capital of supply chain risk.

And, because of such concerns,

The move away from China sourcing starts with higher value-added work, boding ill for the Dragon’s ambitions to outdo Japan’s ascent from a cheap labor to high-tech economy.

If such a move has taken place, it’s not apparent yet in the computer industry.

Here are statistics from the US International Trade Commission: HTS 8471 is computers and peripherals. Data is January through April.

 

Country 2008 YTD 2009 YTD Percent Change
Thousands of dollars YTD2008 – YTD2009
China $9,101,153 $8,407,280 -7.60%
Mexico $1,734,089 $1,863,850 7.50%
Malaysia $3,166,961 $1,150,911 -63.70%
Thailand $1,138,875 $818,513 -28.10%
Singapore $953,493 $543,373 -43.00%
Japan $537,601 $383,673 -28.60%
Canada $280,130 $232,428 -17.00%
Taiwan $276,369 $207,521 -24.90%
Ireland $221,564 $171,436 -22.60%
Hungary $244,124 $147,130 -39.70%
Philippines $234,714 $130,273 -44.50%
Germany $125,194 $104,954 -16.20%
United Kingdom $103,245 $94,534 -8.40%
Korea $152,459 $88,018 -42.30%
Israel $47,296 $52,556 11.10%
Subtotal: $18,317,267 $14,396,450 -21.40%
All Other: $290,471 $211,065 -27.30%
Total: $18,607,738 $14,607,515 -21.50%

 

Sources: Data on this site have been compiled from tariff and trade data from the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. International Trade Commission.

Comparing the first four months of 2009 to the same four months of 2008, computer imports into the United States dropped 21.5% in value. Imports from China only dropped 7.6%. China is increasing its share of imports.

I don’t think this is a sign that computer manufacturing is returning to the U.S. However, one sign that nearshoring may be taking hold is that Mexico is one of only two countries whose absolute value of imports increased. It jumped from number three country to number two.

These USITC reports are especially useful when sourcing. Look for both high value countries and rapidly growing countries. Your best sources will probably be in those countries.

Dick Locke, Global Procurement Group and Global Supply Training.

Roll Out to Your Community with RollStream

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RollStream (acquired by GXS) is a new entrant to the emerging SIM-centric (Supplier Information Management – centric) subspace of Supply Chain Management that has taken a Web 2.0 inspired approach to its solution. At the core of its “Enterprise Community Management” solution is the belief that collaboration is the missing critical component in many of today’s supplier management solutions.

As a result, when it comes to ease of use and supplier on-boarding, it has developed one of the best, as well as one of the easiest to use, solutions for Supplier Information Management as many people today are familiar and comfortable with the Web 2.0 and social network like interfaces it has developed for supplier, partner, and contact profile management as well as for survey creation and information gathering. It’s scalability and ease of use has allowed one of its largest customers to on-board their roughly 13,000 suppliers and manage roughly 150,000 points of contact. The solution has assisted this customer in credentials capture, compliance, training and enablement, and new technology rollout.

But, as you know, SIM is only the first component of Enterprise Management, whether you call it Supplier Central (CVM Solutions), Extended Enterprise Management (Hiperos), or Enterprise Community Management. There’s also, depending upon your outlook, risk, performance, compliance, sustainability, diversity, dispute resolution, initiative management, and collaboration for innovation.

The RollStream solution addresses, in its own words, basic Supplier Information Management in the form of on-boarding and profile management, Dispute Resolution by way of on-line collaboration, Compliance and Risk Management by way of task-managed projects and web surveys, and Performance and Feedback Management by way of a workflow-based community dashboard and collaborative scorecarding process.

The Supplier Information Management component, which is what they started with, is mature, and as I said above, one of the best and easiest to use solutions that you’re going to find for SIM on the market today, used by a number of global Fortune 3000’s to manage supplier bases of over 10,000 suppliers and 100,000 contacts in a number of verticals. The collaboration components, with complete conversation and audit trails, simplify the online dispute resolution process and make it much friendlier than the alternatives.

The Performance and Feedback Management is good for simple surveys and on-line discussions, but don’t expect to be able to build any complex scorecards within the system at this point in time. If you have a solution that generates your scorecards as spreadsheets or PDFs, you can automate the retrieval and attachment of the scorecards within the platform and then create tasks around the discussion of the scorecards with the relevant individuals at each of your suppliers, which could be quite helpful, but you can’t yet build complex scorecards within the system or attach comments to individual sections. This should not be an issue for most companies in most verticals, but if you are very metric-focussed or use collaborative scorecarding and need to retrieve inputs as well as send them and integrate all of the scorecards into a common collaboration tool, you’ll need to evaluate the solution carefully.

This brings us to the last component — Compliance, Risk, and Sustainability Initiative Management. Their solution, which allows you to build as many virtual sub-communities as you want within the application, and then create as many task-managed projects around those communities as you want, is quite powerful in its simplicity when it comes to the management of these projects, but most projects will require data collection and the degree of data collection will determine its fit within your organization. If you primarily do indirect sourcing or simple commodity sourcing, the solution should be more than enough for your needs as most of the regulatory requirements can be captured in simple yes-no questions. But if you do direct manufacturing, where you have to deal with RoHS, REACH, and or WEEE, the simple survey-monkey style web-form survey capability isn’t going to cut it when you have to capture not only whether or not thousands of chemicals are present in your products, but to what extent they are present. Similarly, if you have adopted, or foresee the need to adopt, complex carbon measurement calculations which depend not only on if-then logic (which the forms support) but also complex built-in calculations, then you’ll find their solution is not ready for prime time.

So what’s the verdict? I think many companies will find that the solution meets their SIM-Centric Enterprise Community Management needs, especially when you consider that even the best solution will take at least a year to roll-out to thousands of suppliers and get them proficient on the solution. In that timeframe, you’ll see more capability added to the Performance Management and Compliance, Risk, and Sustainability Management components as RollStream continues to implement their solution roadmap.

Now is the time for SMBs to invest in Supply Chain Technology

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I have to agree with a recent article in the Supply Chain Digest on why “SMBs should invest in Supply Chain Technology” now because it echos what I’ve been trying to say for over a year now … it could save your company a lot of cash. As Dr. Norek notes, on-demand supply chain solutions change the financial dynamics and may help improve cash flow right away. e-Sourcing helps you negotiate more savings. e-Procurement cuts your transaction costs and, integrated with e-Contract Management, helps you realize your negotiated savings by preventing maverick buying and flagging invoices not at contracted rates. e-Supply Chain Finance Solutions streamline invoice processing and help you get paid on time, especially if they support dynamic discounting. And so on.

You need to spend a little to save a lot and make a move while others stand pat and, right now, I can think of no better investment than supply chain technology which can deliver ROIs of 3:1, 5:1, 7:1, 10:1, and more (especially if you invest in the right spend analysis and decision optimization solutions). And if you can find a True SaaS solution that meets your needs, the up-front costs are minimal, and the continuing costs extremely affordable, especially compared to the continuing ROI that accompanies some of these modern supply chain technology solutions.

During these difficult times, well-planned and executed supply chain technology investments can allow SMBs to grow and save costs while many of their bigger counterparts are shrinking. So make a move … the market is yours for the taking!

One More To Go and Technology and My Hobby Attains Seniority

Over on New Florence, New Renaissance, Vinnie Mirchandani’s Technology and My Hobby series recently received its 64th submission, putting it one post away from seniority status. For those of you looking for something different, but yet interesting, to read … if you haven’t already, you should check this series out. To help you find the guest posts related to your hobbies, I’ve indexed them in alphabetical order by category.

Category Author Company
Archaeology (Armchair)
More Essays		 Michael Lamoureux (of Sourcing Innovation)
Baseball (Little League) Mike O’Brien (of Appirio)
Basketball Coaching Dan Dal Degan (of Salesforce)
BBQ Floyd Teter (of Jet Propulsion Labs)
Beagles Peanuts
Blood Donation Tom Foydel (of SightLines)
Brewmastering (Home) Dennis Howlett (of ZDNet)
Bridge David Dobrin (of B2B Analysts)
Cars (Tinkering) Brian Sommer (of TechVentive)
Cartoons (Tech Toons) Alvaro “Blag” Tejada Galindo (of SAP)
Cats Rusty Weston (of Third Set Media)
Chess Rita Mirchandani
Community Service (Long Distance) Will Scott (of Waer Systems)
Cycling Paul Wiest (of Siemens Enterprise Communications)
Disney World Jim Holincheck (of Gartner)
Fishing Mike Prosceno (of SAP)
Friends Naomi Bloom (of Bloom & Wallace)
Flying Ameed Taylor (of Applation)
Gardening Erik Keller (of Wapiti LLC)
Gastronomy William Mougayar (of Eqentia)
Golf Jim Rafferty (of Market Shapers)
Grandparenting Frank Scavo (of Computer Economics)
Green Living Timothy Chou (of Cloudbook.Net)
Harmonica Leonardo Kenji Shikida (of Vetta Labs LTDA)
Home Design Josh Snowhorn (of Terremark)
Home Improvement (Global) Helmuth Guembel (of Strategy Partners)
Home Movies Tom Wailgum (of CIO Magazine)
Jazz Radio DJ Jim Berkowitz (of CRM Mastery)
Horses (Low-Tech) Mark Galloway (of oppSource)
Martial Arts Harald Reiter (of SSIP)
Model Planes Anil Wats (of DP World)
Music (as a Second Career) Richard Hunter (of Gartner)
Musical Discoveries Mike Laven (of Traiana)
Jazz (Big Band) Joe Thornton (of Lawson Software)
Opera Guenther Tolkmit (of Lawson Software)
Organ Playing Gerlinde Gniewosz (of Zuztertu.com)
Photography Michael Krigsman (of Asuret)
Reading Francine McKenna (an Author)
Restoring Antiquarian Books Jason Busch (of Spend Matters)
Rifles (Target) Tom Ryan (of Gartner)
Rock (Guitar) Devan Sabaratnam (of Business on Software fame)
RVs Tom Chimera (of Overpayment Recovery Services)
Running Eric Dirst (of DeVry)
Sailing Curtis Beebe (of PwC)
Side-Tripping Kimberly McDonald Baker (of Project Partners)
Photography Michael Krigsman (of Asuret)
Singing (Soprano) Gretchen Lindquist (of SAP Security)
Skiing Sig Rinde (of Thigamy fame)
Snorkeling Louis Columbus (of Cincom)
Soccer Coaching Christian Schuh (of Siemens Enterprise Communications)
Squash Nick Dembla (of Capsilon)
Super Momming Joy Wald (of ADT)
Technology Impact Bob Warfield (of SmoothSpan)
Technology Luddism Josh Greenbaum (of Enterprise Application Consulting)
Tennis Karen Beaman (of Jeitosa)
Theatre Marilyn Pratt (of SAP Labs)
Travel (International) Harish Malani
Vinyl DJs Ray Wang (of Forrester)
Wine John Dean (of ex-Steelcase fame)
Woodworking Jeff Nolan (of Venture Chronicles (.com))
Working Out Larry Dignan (of ZDNet)
Writing Charlotte Otter (of Charlotte’s Web)
Writing (Adventure) Rein Krevald (an Author)
Youth Science Mentoring Charlie Bess (of EDS)

Is it Time to Get Hip with Hiperos?

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Hiperos is a relatively new entrant in the space focussed on what they call “Extended Enterprise Management”, which is their term for what you get when you amalgamate (what I call) Enterprise Contract Management, Compliance, Performance, and Sustainability into a single 360° solution platform.

The goals of the platform are to provide you with:

  • Supplier Information Central
    • collect all supplier information in one application
    • allow it to be entered and reviewed by suppliers, third parties, and internal staff, according to roles and permissions
    • allow for the creation of quick and easy monitoring reports that can be displayed in a dashboard
  • Cross-Enterprise Supply Chain Risk Assessment
    • allow risk to be evaluated against any supplier or service provider
    • allow risk to be evaluated by category / product line
    • allow risk management programs to be created based on whatever supplier / risk segmentation criteria you select
  • Supplier Performance Management
    • allow for the easy definition of surveys and scorecards
    • allow suppliers to be evaluated based on the type of product being delivered or service being performed
    • allow for internal and external feedback, subject to approvals
  • Regulatory Compliance Management
    • support any and all compliance regulations your organization is subject to (RoHS, HIPAA, ITAR, etc.)
    • allow requirements to be easily communicated to suppliers
    • monitor responses and flag non-compliance for exception based monitoring and resolution
  • Sustainability Initiative Support
    • allow sustainability guidelines to be captured
    • allow them to be communicated across the supply chain
    • monitor adherence to implemented programs

For those of you in a rush, I’ll tell you right now that the application (which is now on R3) does precisely what Hiperos says it can do, that it’s relatively easy to configure and use (and a couple of clients have self configured it without any help at all), and that it can be configured to report on precisely what you want it to report on, and display this information in real time on every login. Furthermore, if you use it’s capabilities to augment data collected internally with data in your other entprise systems and external data sources and integrate 3rd party risk and financial data, such as what you would get from Equifax, Lexis Nexis, or D&B (using their new “D&B Inside” offering), you can truly get a 360° view. Furthermore, if you define your risk assessment and monitoring metrics accordingly (and / or select the right templates for your vertical and organizational risk management needs), my assessment is that you can be just as confident in the risk assessments as you would be if you outsourced it to a specialist consulting firm (especially if you bring one of them in to help you define your risk assessment program and insure you set up the feeds, applications, and reports appropriately).

The application allows you to define what fields you want to track, what metrics you want to use, the calculations that define those metrics, and the reports the metrics appear in. It also allows you to define as many roles as you need (buyer, manager, approver, CPO, third party auditor, supplier, etc.) and define access permissions and capabilities based on those roles. In addition to the standard supplier, contact, contract, and (enterprise) program entities, it also allows you to define “relationships” and define the data you want to capture, track, and measure against those relationships. For example, a relationship will be with a supplier, managed by a local account manager and supplier account manager, against a program type and have it’s own status and risk measurements. Collectively, these measurements and statii can be rolled up to give an overall status and risk picture, which, of course, can be drilled into at any time. You can also define as many levels of details as you need in your surveys and scorecards, which, of course, frees you from the limited capabilities of a 3-dimensional spreadsheet workbook. And it comes with template libraries for standard compliance (HIPAA, RoHS, REACH), risk management, and sustainability (carbon tracking) initiatives that can be used to jumpstart configuration for your enterprise.

The one weakness is that while the application has been configured to be extensible and accept an unlimited number of external data sources, at this point in time, only RSS Feeds and a couple of 3rd party financial feeds are configured out-of-the-box. This means that you will have to do some integration with appropriate 3rd party data sources to get a 360° view, which is vital because, if you don’t have someone on the ground, or a good relationship with a 3rd party auditor you can trust, you can’t trust self-submitted supplier surveys alone. (And, these days, some of the best leading indicators are those you get from financial risk data consolidators like D&B — who acquired Open Ratings — and Equifax — who acquired Austin Tetra — and from import/export visibility companies like Zepol, Import Genius, and Panjiva.)

The application is one that is definitely worth looking at, because the only other providers offering integrated solutions of the same breadth are Aravo, CVM Solutions, and, if you’re in the health-care industry, Vendormate.