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Let's Talk Supply Chain

Let's Talk Supply Chain is not your average supply chain podcast. We feature not just the top of the industry, but also diverse voices from within the community, new innovations and the disrupters making waves in the industry. Don’t listen to the same ol' same ol', be sparked by new ideas and fresh perspectives only on Let's Talk Supply Chain.
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Now displaying: March, 2020
Mar 30, 2020

With procurement departments finding themselves lean and mean these days, where are you spending gaps? Are you leaving money on the table? You might be, so what are you going to do about it. Some of your biggest savings lie within your nuisance expenses like uniform, waste disposal and pest control services and you may be like many other procurement departments that only review these expenses every few years. Rich Ham from Fine Tune is here to tell us why we should reconsider that strategy and how his company helps companies save money by optimizing those difficult-to-understand expenses.

The current challenges of procurement professionals are that expense categories are segmented, some requiring much more management than others. This means that many business strategies leave money on the table, waste time and energy and don’t allocate resources adequately. With Fine Tune, companies can outsource all the complex, confusing expense management processes and focus on their core competencies and as Rich says “offloading headaches”.

How does Fine Tune do this? They partner with the right people and focus on collaboration amoung all parties. This is very apparent when Rich shares with us a real life example of a client who had 14 different suppliers with several different contracts. Fine Tune helped that company reduce their suppliers to 4 through consolidation and that resulted in a huge cost savings of 35%. Rich goes on to say that their true speciality is removing friction from procurement and operations. The result? Companies invest in the Fine Tune management program because they don’t want to let go of Fine Tune!

In this episode we discuss:

  • [0.30] Where are your biggest savings
  • [5.56] Where are you leaving money on the table?
  • [24.15] Reducing costs by 35%
  • [28.07] Removing friction from procurement
  • [35.58] The future is bright

Resources and links mentioned:

Mar 23, 2020

What does your digital future look like? That is the question on everybody's mind as tech changes on a daily basis, In Sweetbridge's episode in 2019 Scott said the knowledge base is changing every 1.5 years.

Diane is the Vice President of Omnichain, a company that offers end to end supply chain solutions to companies looking to optimize workflow, manage different channels and orchestrate correct supply strategies. They are the partner for the future.

Currently, many team members of companies need to manually add data into systems, losing information, accuracy and time.  This is because the supply chain industry is still very fragmented, with organisations struggling to connect and collaborate. Omnichain’s platform describes itself as a digital supply chain fit for the future, thanks to its better forecasting, operations system and proactive push model. Omnichain’s solution is what distinguishes it from its competitors; no need to download or integrate anything, everything can be done directly within the platform!

Omnichain prides itself on using blockchain, a kind of distributed ledger and database that allows you to maintain and record all devices and transactions across a supply chain. Most people co-relate blockchain to crypto currency but that is not always the case. This technology allows you to hold information quickly and securely, which allows Omnichain to keep the entire supply chain management securely under a blockchain key. Omnichain’s ideal client is someone who faces the challenge of a fragmented operation and is looking for a better day to day workflow. Its solution encourages companies to go from a reactive management situation to proactive, allowing them to deliver real value from their data.

In this episode we discuss:

  • [0.30] A Different approach to blockchain
  • [9.39] What is a digital supply chain fit for the future
  • [15.17] No integration needed!
  • [19.40] blockchain is perfect for supply chain management
  • [25.05] The future is bright
Mar 16, 2020

Procurement Foundry is an online private community for people working in supply chain. Mike founded this community when he knew he needed a safe place to network and discuss challenges with other professionals, but didn’t have the time or energy to go to regular networking events. Procurement Foundry now has over 2,000 highly engaged members with 20 chapters in the world.

How can you join Procurement Foundry? If you’re a professional working in supply chain, you can head to the website and fill in their membership request form. Then, your application is vetted and processed by a team to make sure you’re not a consultant or salesman. Once in, you have access to several discussion channels, job boards and even virtual meeting rooms.

Mike says that Procurement Foundry has a huge amount of potential he hadn’t foreseen when he first started the community. First of all, the huge amount of empathy amongst the members means people are willing to share templates, strategies and advice to other professionals. Secondly, the huge amount of expertise in the community means there are plenty of talent opportunities, which translates into a great talent pool for hiring managers and great learning opportunities for students. Finally, the high engagement means that Mike is able to accumulate a lot of data on the members, which helps understand the direction in which the industry is going. If you’re all for collaboration, Procurement Foundry is the place to be!

In this episode we discuss:

  • [1.35] What is Procurement Foundry?
  • [6.23] Everyone wants to join
  • [10.43] What we all can learned from the community
  • [20.40] What can you expect, resources, content etc
  • [29.33] data like you have never seen it before

Resources and links mentioned:

Mar 9, 2020

Akshay is the co-founder of Terminal 49, an online platform that helps importers, trucking companies and brokers track all their container movements. In the container world, things are still being done as they were 10 years ago. Terminal 49 aims to simplify global trade with much more efficient workflows.

Visibility is a big challenge in supply chain: truckers, shipping companies and freight forwarders don’t communicate effectively and lack collaboration. Everyone’s solving a different problem, there’s a lack of education and cooperation is non-existent. This disconnect is what Terminal 49 aims to resolve.

Akshay provides us with two excellent examples of a shipper and a broker. Before using Terminal 49’s dashboard, this shipper had several spreadsheets used for forecasting reports, ETAs and container management. When an incident happened, all information had to go through several different people in the chain. Now, with an all-in-one dashboard, the shipper can easily track every container and keep on top of demand. Oh, and all they need to do is import their spreadsheets onto the dashboard - no need to copy and paste thousands of numbers. Although the logistics world is a competitive space, Akshay says there’s a lot of room to innovate and create value, and that really, it’s still early days!

In this episode we discuss:

  • [1.00] Terminal 49’s story
  • [15.25] Why visibility is a challenge in supply chain
  • [20.10] Successful examples of using Terminal 49’s dashboard
  • [31.34] Advice for people who want to get into supply chain tech
  • [33.59] The future of Terminal 49

Resources and links mentioned:

Mar 2, 2020

Supply Chain can change the world

Elizabeth got into supply chain after discovering her love for writing so she fell in love with the supply chain industry. That makes Elizabeth perfect for our Women in Supply Chain feature on the podcast for the month of March because

Beth believes that this industry truly has the power to make the world a better place and that is why she has stayed working with ASCM for over 16 years.

Global is where is it at

What is the future for supply chain media? Rennie believes that there’s a trend for high quality content that’s not focused on day to day tasks, but instead on more important global issues.

She’s contributed herself by working with Mr Supply Chain (Daniel Stanton) and his book titled Supply Chain Management for Dummies. Elizabeth is also very proud to have contributed in-depth interviews with successful women in supply chain, and believes these are great opportunities for women to learn from each other.

No longer the only Woman in the room

In terms of diversity, Elizabeth is so excited to see that more and more women are joining the supply chain industry. Like at one point in her career she would look around the room at conferences and could maybe count the number of women in the room on one hand.

More organizations are working to increase diversity which in turn creates a healthy form of tension created by different points of view and more innovative conversations. So, Are you looking to get into supply chain? Her advice to the younger generation is to always be open to opportunities and taking risks, you never know where it can lead.

In this episode we discuss: 

      [1.16] Falling in love with Supply Chain

      [4.30] Learning to become self aware

      [12.31] The future of supply chain media

      [18.02] The proudest moment in her career

      [21.52] No longer the only woman in the room

Resources and links mentioned:

      Supply Chain Management for Dummies

      ASCM

 

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