posted on 6/1/2011 11:31:00 AM
Most companies’ enterprise systems don’t foster genuine interaction with their partners or customers. Here are some forward-thinking examples of how to change that.
Do your business systems really support your current business model? I suspect that in most cases, they don’t. This is partly true because the core business team has changed in the past 20 years to include a network of partners. In addition, transactional enterprise systems don’t fully adapt to the varied needs of the network and do not foster all of the needed interaction with partners.
Most systems also have a limited definition of the supply chain: namely, plan-source-make-deliver, and maybe return. Today, customers are demanding value from additional areas, such as material or supplier substitutions, product design and innovation, aftermarket services, pricing, terms, and conditions. To best deliver on all of those value areas, all of the companies in a business network must collaborate.
This collaboration tends to happen among mid-level managers, and high-tech luminary Geoffrey Moore points out that we don’t have good systems to support these folks. Moore says that these network interactions require not only the data from systems of record, but ways of working that are more like social media. He calls these “systems of engagement.”
Moore has defined characteristics for systems of engagement: mobile, social, ad hoc, and real time. In other words, these systems must foster genuine interaction in a real-time interactive manner, no matter where the parties are at the moment an issue arises. The true marriage between social media style and enterprise application is not yet common, but here are a few examples of current systems that offer each.
Mobile: Customer relationship management (CRM) is not the only system has become available for use on mobile devices. Business intelligence has also gone mobile, from providers such as Birst, IBM Cognos, myDIALS, QlikTech, SAP, TAKE Supply Chain, and Transpara. Mobile supply chain management is available from AirClic, Lawson, Oracle, and SAP. Application-specific mobile solutions can be a good starting point as well, such as those from Activant for delivery verification or ClickSoftware, IFS, and Stratix for field service.
Social: Sharing ideas, facts, and insights is the core of collaboration. CCI’s TRACC framework for supply chain indicates that more mature companies have improvement systems that foster integration across disciplines and learning networks. Supply chain software to support some back–and-forth exchange is available in various forms from B2B Connex, CDC Software, Infor, JDA, Kinaxis, Logility, and SAP. Supplier quality software is also becoming available from plant-floor systems providers such as Apriso, Camstar, and iBASEt.
Ad hoc: Because issues do not emerge on a schedule, it’s important to be able to support collaboration as situations arise, while still managing the issue. Some of the companies listed above can do this, though not all can. Those that come from a partner portal or trading exchange approach often have the always-on infrastructure to allow this. Companies such as Axway, IBM, E2Open, JDA, ModusLink Global, and Vecco offer interesting architectures for partner collaboration.
Real-time: Some of the solutions listed above enable real-time communication, collaboration, and issue resolution. What to share in real time can be a question. Sharing concepts and opinions is great,—even data on which to formulate decisions. However, data must be clean and accurate or the partners can merely reach the wrong decision more quickly.
We have been talking about win-win relationships for years. Yet, few companies have the visibility, collaboration, and interaction facilities to allow their partner network to act in a truly synchronized fashion when a new situation arises. Getting engaged can happen much more rapidly for those leveraging reliable, secure software platforms. What could you improve in your delivery with a more engaged set of supply chain partners?
Julie Fraser is president of Cambashi Inc., the U.S. arm of the industrial-focused analyst/consulting/market research firm based in the United Kingdom.