Category Archives: Technology

High Tech Needs Next Generation Supply Management

As chronicled in this recent commentary by Bob Ferrari over on Supply Chain Matters, not only do accelerating dynamics reshaping high tech supply chain networks bring implications, but there is continuing turbulence among and across high tech and consumer electronics value-chains. This means that now more than ever, firms in these segments need to continually re-visit their strategic sourcing and supply plans for long-term implications and, in SI’s view, they need to start by adopting next level supply management strategies when they revisit their plans.

And, as Bob suggests, it is imperative that senior management is continually educated to developments and that strategic strategy sessions and interchange be more than just a periodic occurrence. As clearly indicated in this morning’s post, Next Level Supply Management requires Collaboration, Stakeholder Partnership, Leadership, Early Involvement, and Alignment. Not only does Supply Management need to speak as one voice, but the entire company needs to speak as one voice in this sector. The storm is too violent to ride out if everyone is rowing in different directions.

Thank You Brian! Building Apps IS Wrong!

In a recent post over on Software & Services Safari, Mr. Brian Sommer tells us that Building Apps is Wrong! and, as far as the doctor is concerned, he couldn’t be more right!

According to Brian:

      Software application development has been going on for decades. In the old world of software, applications took a (usually accounting) business event and then validated, stored and reported it. These were internal usage utilities that dealt with internal data. That’s the wrong perspective to have today. Businesses don’t want apps – they need ‘capabilities’. Moreover, they need capabilities that serve different kinds of information to different kinds of smart devices to mobile, interconnected workers.

And, as Brian points out, not only do interconnected workers that want to access information whenever and wherever they are, they want one user interface no matter how many solutions are serving up information on their device.

This means that a Desktop App, an iOS App, an Android App, a Windows App, each customized to the browser or platform, is not the way to go. When you customize to the platform, you tend to drift away from the current UI to the new UI until you have a hodge-podge of interfaces across a dozen platforms. Unless you want to develop your own extensions to the default development libraries on each platform, and alter your UI to be observant of the limitations of each library, you need to focus on a platform-independent delivery method (such as mobile-compatible HTML 5) and focus on what the user really wants — a slick, information-rich, user experience, and not a solution exclusively oriented around the data and the capabilities of the platform.

After all, as Brian points out, what the user really wants is:

  • Context to enrich and complete transactions, customer interactions, etc.
  • Information served up at point of need
  • Information designed to answer the worker’s or customer’s needs
  • Information beyond transactional data
  • A solution that makes the most of data, voice and video

and not flash. If they want HD graphics, they’ll fire up a HD game.

Nothing for Nothing

After reading this recent article over on Chief Executive on how 66% of CEOs Plan to Freeze or Downsize Workforce Size which also pointed out how the majority of CEOs expect capital expenditures to remain flat, as per Chief Executive’s monthly survey of CEOs’ perception of overall business conditions (that garnered 247 responses), I can’t help but think of No Sale, No Store by the Arrogant Worms:

…
This week!
This week only!
We pay the GST!
We pay the PST!
We pay for delivery!
We pay for everything!
How do we do it?
How do we offer these fabulous deals?
Volume!
We got the most!
The best!
The worst!
We've got it all!
We’ve got everything!
Except one thing...
What’s that?
We've got no store!
No products!
So come on down!
This week!
…
Every week!
Every year!
No money down!
No payment ever!
That’s nothing for nothing!

Simply put, no new investments into new technology to increase productivity to give current staff time to create new products and services and no new staff to create new products and services creates an innovation free company. An innovation free company has nothing to offer. And you get nothing for nothing. It’s a lose-lose all the way around (as new technologies sit on the shelf and talent sits on the couch.) There’s no sale, as there’s no store.

The Cloud is Full of Sweet Fluffy Dreams

If you want to win favour with the doctor, this is a good way to start. Over in the recent edition of the SIG newsletter, Kent Parker, COO of Ariba, wrote an article on how the Cloud represents a more scalable, efficient way to do business on a global basis because it requires no software, hardware or resources to deploy and time to value is near immediate. However, he noted that these rewards can only be reaped if the organizations providing these networked community capabilities transform in ways that enable them to deliver products and services that meet a completely new set of business challenges and customer needs. Otherwise, the benefit of the Cloud will remain nothing more than sweet, fluffy dreams.

In the article, Kent presented six new rules that companies need to follow if they are to transform in a way that will enable them to deliver the products and services that are required in today’s knowledge-based network economy. The first four were quite obvious:

  • break down application silos
    the goal is to connect all of your applications and let data flow through the lifecycle
  • make innovation a constant
    customers expect improvements on a rapid timeline
  • focus on quality
    because, simply put, no one wants cr@p
  • stay agile
    or you will be outmaneuvered by your competition

However, the last two were not and keys to success in today’s economy:

  • overhaul customer support
    In an always-on community, customers demand immediate, proactive response to their issues, particularly as they impact business commerce continuity. But if you’ve outsourced most of the function of internal IT to an external provider, then you need to make sure the provider is not only offering the service level guarantees, but that it has the competency to provide the necessary support. In the IT world, system restoration sometime between 8 am and 5 pm on the next business day is NOT acceptable.
  • redefine customer relationships
    Go-live is the beginning, not the end, of a customer relationship. In a network-driven cloud community, customers and other participants require more continuous, ongoing assistance with enabling and institutionalizing business commerce capabilities. A company that offers a cloud-based solution has to be willing to continuously work and support the customer on that solution. Or the customer will go elsewhere.