How Important is Local Language?

English is the language of business in most of the world, and in some countries, like India, at least 1 in 10 people speak it as a second or third language. So if you speak English, you can theoretically do business the world over. But is it enough?

A recent article over on the Harvard Business Review on “bridging the cultural divide” asked if learning Hindi is the key to creating business connections in India. According to one of the individuals being interviewed, you have thousands of entrepreneurs blooming in every region, in every city and in every town. It is no longer a few large industrial groups that control the Indian economy. Many of these young entrepreneurs feel comfortable [doing business] in Hindi. And this is true in many countries where English is fairly widely spoken for business (including China).

Plus, every language has words that are not easily translatable into English, just like many words (and phrases) in English are not easily translatable into some foreign languages. For example, the article mentions the translation of ‘chhatra latak, vaayu jhatak’ for ‘ceiling fan’, which means ‘that which hangs from the roof and sweeps the air’ and a recent article on Matador Abroad gave us 20 awesomely untranslatable words from around the world. So there are numerous advantages to knowing a local language.

Of course, if you’re not doing local business, and mainly outsourcing to the region, you probably don’t need to know the local language, but if you’re trying to sell into the region, there can be significant advantages.

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Looking Behind the Knowledge Network Curtains

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!

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What’s the Right Number of Approvals?

In a recent piece by ChainLink Research on “how a legal department can add value”, the author noted how gaining efficiencies is not only about technology, but about process. Referencing Cisco’s big push to get to “one-approver per function”, the article noted that it’s important to ask what is the real ROI of having additional approvers and what is the related impact on revenue and customer satisfaction. It’s important to ask how much time the extra approvals take and what the time-value of money is for holding up orders for that many extra days. And what is the cost to the organization if approver number 17, who is the least affected by the purchase, decides to reject the order 7 days into the process when the product is needed on day 10?

While it’s probably impossible to build some hard and fast rules that will always apply, it is important to set some ground rules as to when another approval is needed, and when an approval can be skipped or automated. For example, does every order over $10,000 need to be signed by three approvers? What if the order is for four new servers at a cost of $20,000 and the purchase has already been approved in principle in the budget (for an amount up to $25,000)? Should not the CTO’s approval alone be sufficient once the product has been selected (provided proper procurement policies have been followed)?

At most there should be one approver per function, and the approval of functions that are minimally impacted should probably not be required at all if at least one of the approvers is a senior manager or the purchase is not high dollar and at least one of the approvers has deep product and/or service knowledge. And any approvals that can be automated should be. For example, a $500 spend on office supplies for approved products from an approved supplier should probably not require three manual approvals.

Any thoughts as to what the right number of approvers is?

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An Integrated View Is Needed, But Integrated Dashboards Are Deadly

A recent piece from ChainLink Research on going “from complexity to clarity” suggests a “management dashboard” that allows a manager to see the status of the end-to-end supply chain and the potential implication of a decision with respect to its impact on key metrics is the key to getting a grip on your complex supply chain.

It sounds great in theory, but it’s very dangerous in practice. Why? In addition to all the reasons I’ve already given you on why dashboards are dangerous and dysfunctional (in this post and this post), when you start chaining dashboards from different systems, you introduce the following additional risks:

  1. inconsistent views
    Different systems may calculate metrics in different ways. For example, the WMS (Warehouse Management System) may present an on-time delivery rate of 90% while the SIM (Supplier Information Management) System has an on time delivery rate of 85%. Which is right? What if they’re both right? For example, the WMS may calculate on-time as percentage of shipments that arrive on the designated day using arrival time while the SIM calculates the on-time as the percentage of shipments that arrive complete on the designated day.
  2. propagated errors
    What if the dashboards propagate erroneous metrics that are used in calculations to produce even more erroneous metrics? For example, what if the WMS incorrectly calculates on-time using date and not delivery time, and doesn’t capture the reality that everything after 11:00 am is late (as the truck can’t be unloaded during the normal shift if it doesn’t arrive by 11:00 am)? An inflated metric is then passed to the IMS (Inventory Management System) which uses this metric in its perfect on-time metric, which calculates this metric using parts that pass visual inspection but not quality testing. An inflated metric is then passed to the SIM system which might calculate perfect orders using orders that pass initial component testing, but ignore failures or returns within the full integrated QC (Quality Control) testing process.
  3. overconfidence
    The more information you have, the less likely you are to notice missing information. For example, if you have a dashboard that tells you your highest spend categories, current sourcing projects, upcoming payables, on-time orders, missing orders, expiring contracts, current and past-due project tasks, etc. you might not notice that your logistics costs are going through the roof.

In other words, integrated dashboards don’t necessarily improve visibility, but they do increase risk!

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If There Is One Constant in Global Business …

… it’s buyer-beware. And one can’t help but heed the truth when you read this recent article over on Forbes on India’s Restaurant Secrets. Quickly getting to the point, the article notes that:

“Today’s Special” can mean three things:

  • the restaurant is trying to get rid of old food,
  • the chef is experimenting with new food, or
  • there is a genuinely good ingredient that’s come in and the chef wants people to enjoy it.

There’s very little difference between this situation and the situation you are faced with when a supplier puts up a large stock of inventory for auction at low, low prices. Either:

  • the supplier is trying to get rid of obsolete inventory,
  • the supplier is trying to push a new, struggling, product line, (which will likely be discontinued in the near future) or
  • the supplier was so proud of a particular product that it got a little too enthusiastic in a production run and/or just wants to get the product out there (expecting that word of mouth will lead to many profitable sales in the future).