We are finding that a lot of supply chain software takes a lot of time for on boarding and our guest today is here to tell us about their solution that can be implemented in days! Thats right Chris from Right Sized inventory is here to tell us all about how they make that happen and what they are doing for warehouses everywhere,
Chris is the Vice President of Right Sized Inventory, an optimization software that helps companies eliminate inventory imbalances through real life simulations. By gathering the correct data all in one place, RSI helps companies get started with predictive analytics and supply chain optimization.
With safety stock being questioned these days because of Covid and organizations are looking at different solutions to help diversify their inventory such as just in case instead of just in time, Chris tells us how his clients are using the data RSI provides them with differently, and they are seeing requests they have never seen before.
The unique selling point with RSI is that they help companies manage their inventory more efficiently at an affordable price. How? They use their own patented technology that gathers and synthesizes data in a couple of hours. By using their software, clients are able to manage their inventory surplus and excess, helping them save them millions of dollars as well as improve customer service levels.
Since RSI is affordable and based on tech, they are able to work with companies of all sizes. Using one real life example, Chris explains how they decreased a client’s inventory levels by 20% and helped them save over 6 million dollars. With the Covid-19 pandemic, they are still able to help businesses prepare for when demand increases and any other what-if scenarios. For the future, RSI is focusing on growing their organic approach, partnering up with consulting firms and embedding their patented technology into their systems.
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Mike works for Apex, the third largest freight forwarder in the world and number one forwarder transporting products from China. In 2019 they flew 500 charter flights, and have grown by $1 billion in 10 years!
Apex transports all types of products, from high tech, to retail, to ecommerce. They have charters that transport over 100,000 kilos and their planes can reach every corner of the planet. How have they adapted to the current crisis? Apex has been instrumental during the pandemic: they’ve offered space on aircrafts to government response teams, have transported PPE products to many countries and played a big role in protecting front line workers.
Do they have a secret to success? Mike says that Apex focuses on growth by adding talent that shares the same vision as them. From the words of their customers, this is what makes them a company that “always finds a way to get things done” and are able to find unique solutions to problems. Having invested in tech early on, Apex has been able to pivot more easily than other forwarders, giving them an even bigger competitive advantage. Although the future is unclear on how Covid will impact supply chain, Apex’s ambition is still to become the major freight forwarder across the globe.
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The biggest challenge in industrial manufacturing is customer acquisition and retention. When it comes to marketing in the traditional world of Industrial manufacturing many companies see marketing as a cost center rather than an investment. This means marketing budgets are given low priority, especially during a recession when in reality marketing should be at the forefront of any strategy because it will set you apart from your competitors and keep your brand top of mind. In the long run, this ends up being more expensive, since companies need to start from ground zero when the market picks up. Only some companies are realising that marketing is the key to future success - especially when trying to get through a revenue plateau.
Christopher realised this was an issue and started helping more industrial companies with their marketing. His system focuses on creating momentum, producing value and building a community before launching a product or asking customers to buy. Consistency and the long play is what sets one marketing strategy apart from the rest, marketing should work hand in hand with sales to keep the leads flowing in. Sales should be encouraged to showcase their thought leadership online with the help of the marketing team and together the business will have a winning strategy.
Christopher is a big believer in social and uses social media such as Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn (3 hashtags!) as a platform to educate, entertain and build up a consistent brand image. As consumer behaviors keep shifting, more industrial companies will have no choice but to turn to more effective marketing in order to gain a competitive edge.
Christopher is also the leader in the profile rings you see on Linkedin, he gave back to the supply chain community by doing this for professionals for free to stand out, in a time of so much noise its efforts like these that will be the most rewarded
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● [0.35] Industrial Manufacturing
● [4.46] Top challenges in the industry
● [11.59] Winning marketing strategy
● [16.35] How different platforms provide communication opportunities
● [23.00] The carbon footprint of manufacturing companies
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Anju is the product manager at Coupa Software, an all-in-one business spend management platform. In today’s Women in Supply Chain series, Anju tells us how she got into supply chain, the valuable lessons she learnt from failure and why it’s important to put a focus on diversity.
Anju moved from working in the corporate world at Oracle to a fast paced beauty startup. She was passionate about understanding the various pieces, solving business problems and growing both as a person and in her career. She says it’s important to be flexible, say yes to opportunities and be willing to take a leap into the unknown; this is what got her to where she is now.
Our world has never been so diverse and inclusive, and yet there is still a lot of work to do. Anju explains why it’s important to have role models to look up to, and that in order to move the needle of diversity we need to encourage more discussions, be aware of our biases and lead with empathy. Her advice to other women in supply chain: think about what you want out of your career and be willing to pursue your dream. Women are sometimes afraid to verbalize who they want to be - Anju urges them to take risks and not be afraid to change.
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How does replenishment work in your warehouse? It is probably very manual, lots of paperwork and different stakeholders involved making it impossible to be be agile and efficient. Because of that I thought it was important to introduce you to a company that is revolutionizing this. Andrew is the CEO of ShelfAware, a company that helps suppliers see in real-time what is on their customers’ shelves through hardware tracking RFID technology. This technology allows companies to see the exact moment a customer takes an item off the shelf, how many items they take and how much is needed to replenish stock.
Using RFID technology together with real-time software means that suppliers can easily replenish stock without worrying about waste, workers don’t have to waste time counting items and companies can gather data on their customer habits. From a cost effective standpoint, everyone wins. ShelfAware works as a 3rd party SaaS (Software as a service), so they don’t need to touch the product at any point in the supply chain. The software connects with a tracking code that can easily be printed by the supplier and is put on the product itself.
Who is ShelfAware’s ideal client? As Andrew says, he keeps discovering new industries this system could be useful for. They started with industrial suppliers and manufacturers, but anyone from a dentist to a large scale conglomerate can make use of their product and software. Andrew has helped businesses drastically lower inventory without losing the rate at which they replenish items. Once again, this is proof that collaborating with other companies can make them stronger together.
Lastly we get a sneak peek into Andrew's new show on The SC Supply Chain TV on Youtube called From the Frontlines where he brings us into the frontlines of business, entrepreneurship and supply chain!
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Alloy was founded 4 years ago when Joel and his co-founders realized there was a huge lag between supply chain and the retail industry. From the very beginning, the company focused on customer centricity and invested most of its resources into R&D. Now, Alloy helps everything from small companies to Fortune 500s optimize their supply chain by connecting their data to customer demand. Focusing on customer experience for not only their customers but their customers, customer has been their key to success in this very competitive landscape of supply chain technology.
The main challenge when it comes to retail supply chain is the huge shift in consumer habits, partly due to e-commerce. Nowadays, consumers expect a seamless customer experience, an infinite amount of stock and personalized offers. However, realizing that that there is a direct mis match between customer demands and retail distribution, Alloy were really able to dive deep into this challenge and come up with solutions that are not seen on the market yet, that is why they have a growing base of some of the biggest names in retail. Alloy really wants to make sure that their clients supply chains are giving them a competitive advantage and they do that by helping retailers coordinate all the different moving parts of their supply chain.
The landscape and technology is constantly evolving, so how does a startup like Alloy adapt? You guessed it: collaboration. Right from the beginning Alloy was partnering with companies and made sure to be grounded to real world problems. As the number of partners and clients increased, the more they were able to take a holistic approach to resolving their clients’ pain points. Alloy’s future involves more effort on the data side through R&D, and more specialization of every element of the supply chain.
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Today’s special episode features Scott and Greg from Supply Chain Now! Scott, Greg and Sarah have a lively discussion about whether we are seeing the death of the end-to-end supply chain. You will also hear about how the circular economy and supply chain is the answer plus how the role of sustainability will play out with consumers and the future of consumerism.
Organizations have spent a lot of time and money trying to perfect their end to end supply chain, but Greg says the circular supply chain is here to stay. The circular supply chain consists mainly of turning waste into opportunity. As the world’s resources become increasingly limited, companies are having to look for other ways to source and distribute their products and services. This, together with a huge shift in consumer behaviour towards sustainable practices, means companies will soon have no other option but to adopt a circular mindset.
How can companies adopt a more sustainable supply chain? Sarah talks about collaborating with startups in order to find innovative solutions and challenge the status quo. Scott and Greg talk about the importance of changing mindsets and focusing on customer experience. This includes encouraging suppliers to take on more responsibility and looking for materials that are economically viable, sustainable and convenient for the customer (like 3D printing, for example). Companies should put more effort into building a brand and communicating their concept and vision, as well as identifying specific ambitions and building business cases. Some best practices include educating employees, finding the right KPIs and being willing to “do good” and talk about it.
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Angie has worked in supply chain all her life, with her earliest career memories involving a master thesis and meeting Ted Ruhly, the CEO of Maersk. Since then, Angie has continuously sought career growth and built extensive experience within the industry. Featuring Angie in our "women in supply chain" series has a personal significance to Sarah and is a career highlight for Angie with all her hard work in helping to close the gender gap. In this episode, Angie talks about the guidance she received from her father, why she is passionate about this industry and how the people make all the difference.
Angie’s main challenge in supply chain was the pushback she got from colleagues and coworkers when she advocated for change and innovation. Angie knows that disruption is what encourages progress, but it can be difficult to implement when leaders are being pulled in so many different directions. As a woman in supply chain she has worked hard to challenge the status quo at all times in her career in order to encourage more diversity amongst male and female leaders.
What’s her advice for the younger generation? She explains that it’s worth exploring the different partnerships your universities may offer. Be willing to go to conferences and reach out to leaders, look for ways to optimize the supply chain ecosystem and consider getting into cyber security. As she says, there is a shortage of talent and therefore many opportunities for students looking to get into the industry. For Angie herself, the future is focused on finding a healthy work balance and driving innovation forward.
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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!
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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.
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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!
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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!
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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.
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.
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.
● [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
● Supply Chain Management for Dummies
● ASCM
The damage and loss of products in supply chain cost the industry billions of dollars every year. That’s a huge amount of money and waste in products that are being thrown out - That's the issue Spotsee is tackling with their product: indicators that track and record data such as temperature, tilt and impact throughout a shipment journey. There are a lot of challenges in this area that supply chain professionals are facing, Angela talks about the top realities companies are facing and how exactly Spotsee can help you save time, money and waste.
Spotsee allows companies to be proactive rather than reactive when it comes to damaged products. Instead of receiving damaged products, blaming the shipment company and filing an insurance claim, companies can now collaborate with the freight forwarders to determine why and how the damage happened and work on fixing the problem together, all based on data. These monitoring programs reduce damage to 40%, which can translate into tens of thousands of dollars saved for certain companies.
Spotsee works with several market segments as well as SMEs that are looking to grow. By having real time data on product journeys, companies waste a lot less time, energy and money fixing these issues. In the long run, this is a much more sustainable business model which can give companies a huge competitive advantage. Spotsee are also big on company culture, find out more about how they are encouraging the next generation to come and work in supply chain. Their ambition? To aggregate all the data from every journey, product and company so their customers can take real actionable steps from large-scale data analysis.
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Meet Catapult, an intuitive digital platform that helps businesses make decisions based on freight rates. The founders were tired of the manual process of keeping track of rates through word documents, excel spreadsheets and decided to build a solution to help manage all the different rates from different carriers.
What does all this technology mean for your business? Virgil Ferreira, the CEO of Catapult joins us to talk about how their platform helps businesses see rates from different carriers including ocean, air and ground, giving logistics providers more visibility into their rates so they can increase their margins. A Challenge that logistics providers face is that they don't have access to industry data but Catapult changes that as providers can also compare their own data with industry data and see it all in a standard, easy-to-use view. The biggest challenge logistics providers face is understanding how to get the best market rate. With Catapult, businesses can use the tool to see the gaps in their system and focus on improving profit, which all providers are looking to do!
Their typical clients are mid to global sized forwarders with a large number of vendors and a large customer base. These are clients looking for technology enabled solutions and need help getting their rate management house in order. By using a rate management platform, logistics providers can apply margins where they want, map different features into an internal format and use this across different modes. As Virgil says, the main things companies should be focusing on in 2020 is understanding what the customer is expecting and encouraging interoperability across different structures.
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BEHIND THE SEAMS - Suuchi Ramesh is a software engineer with a background in supply chain, she is also the founder and CEO of a tech company that is bringing supply chain and fashion together called, Suuchi. Suuchi is the next generation technology platform for fashion, managing everything from design through distribution.
The main challenge the fashion industry faces is that the entire supply chain needs to be unbelievably fast, diversified and efficient. Suuchi helps companies get to the next level by taking care of the back end, and letting companies focus on what they do best: scaling the brand. Suuchi helps companies diversify the supply chain by digitizing the entire process, because all brands must start thinking of supply chain as a strategic competitive advantage
What sets them apart? Transparency. They’re able to track and trace every process in the supply chain, which allows them to provide their customers with truly data driven solutions. Suuchi has the flexibility to work with all size of companies and their customers use their software in a few different ways: some use their software just for supply chain, others use the software from the design of products all the way to the distribution of their products to their end consumer. Suuchi is also very passionate about helping their customers and brands become more sustainable and reduce overall waste in their businesses. When creating Suuchi, they were mindful to include in-depth data and analytics that helps to optimization sustainability and the reduction of waste strategies. Suuchi is now going into series B and expanding their reach in supply chain, all while providing smart, sustainable solutions.
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Claudia is our Women in Supply Chain Feature for February and is someone who enjoys life to the fullest. Her attitude is: family first, career second and community third. She graduated in engineering, joined IBM, ran an entire supply chain, worked in GE Healthcare and is now working in supply chain for Google. Her career has been a huge adventure, and today she shares some of the nuggets of wisdom she’s learned over the years.
She’s had many challenges in her career as a female on a supply chain team, but it’s her positive attitude and openness to taking care of others that helped her get to where she is now. She’s really had to push for opportunities, and has seen the industry evolve over the 36 years that she’s been working in supply chain. Things are getting better, with now 25% of leadership positions held by women. Claudia works hard to educate leaders and encourage the right conversations about diversity and openness.
What about supply chain? Claudia explains that companies aren’t using data as they should be. She says that it’s important to get the basics first, make sure to have the right KPIs in place and then analyze the big picture. Her advice to fellow supply chain leaders is to meet with customers on a regular basis. Understand the voice of the customer and don’t always think of optimizing a function but instead, the end to end journey. Her plans for the future are to keep on learning and growing, never wasting a day and keep pushing for diversity.
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Anthony is the president and CEO of UNA, a dynamic group that works with procurement managers, business owners and executives to save money, time and effort. How? Through Collaboration, partnerships, software and strategy.
Una offers a consolidated approach to procurement with a mission is to support sourcing and procurement heros in the supply chain industry. They’re all about collaboration, a top down approach and an emphasis on culture. They believe in empowering and giving a voice to professionals by acting on accurate and well analyzed data. As an example, just one of the ways Una gets involved is by helping professionals negotiate solid contracts and develop key relationships with suppliers.
How are they so successful? They understand that their solution is not a fit for everybody. They position themselves more as a dietitian rather than a broker - meaning they assess the problem, procure the trust and work with their partners in a solution driven environment based strictly on what works best in their structure. What does it look like to work with Una? Tune into the episode to find out, as they share some amazing stories. Anthony believes that this industry is heavily untapped - Una's future is focused on getting the word out and building more relationships with customers who share their core values
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Today we have a special treat: Last week I joined Daniel Stanton, Mr Supply Chain on his Linkedin page to do a Live about our 10 ten social media tips and today, we are releasing the recording to our community as well! Daniel is a top influencer in the global supply chain community: the author of Supply Chain for Dummies, publisher of 10 supply chain courses on LinkedIn Live and over 35,000 followers on LinkedIn!
In our live we discuss top social media tips for professionals in the supply chain industry. Why care about social media? Social media is a great way to build a professional network. It’s also an amazing way to learn more about your industry, as well as share what you know yourself. And of course, if you do it well, it’s a lot of fun.
When getting started with social media, it’s important to pick a platform where you feel the most comfortable. This could be Twitter for engaging conversations, or LinkedIn for B2B communication. Daniel emphasizes the importance of finding your tribe and building a network of like-minded individuals. Sarah shares some tips when it comes to engaging with others online, and Daniel tells us how we can encourage others to engage in conversations. The episode ends with an explanation from Daniel on why social media is a part of building and navigating your professional journey. At the end of the day you get out of it what you put into it.
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Rebecca is Vice President of customer success at E2open, the largest software and information provider for the shipping industry. They’re already connected to over 100,000 supply entities, 35,000 shippers across 177 countries and perform 8 billion transactions per year. In other words, they know what they’re doing when it comes to supply chain and they help to unleash business potential in every company they work with.
Rebecca explains that companies in 2020 should focus on embedding technology and AI, and learn how to leverage real time channel data. Instead of just following the trends and buzzwords, companies should put an emphasis on understanding the best way to leverage technology, since it’s not a one size fits all solution. This means understanding what to do with data and how to use it appropriately.
Another issue that will be affecting supply chains globally is Brexit. E2open offers a unique solution called “Brexit ready in one day” that prepares companies for the potential impacts of Brexit. What makes E2open different is their large network and the fact that they’ve been managing data for two decades. Thanks to this, they are well equipped to enable convergence and unite supply chain - whether it’s with an SME or a huge conglomerate.
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Holly got into logistics like many of us: by accident. After the 2008 financial crash she moved to Texas and was offered a chance to work in supply chain. Although she’d always worked in media and had a marketing degree, once she “drank the juice” she got hooked on the logistics industry, and has been working in supply chain sales ever since.
As a woman in supply chain she’s grateful to society for enabling a social environment that boosted her career. She’s learnt how to earn respect, push her own limits and combine her passions (branding and marketing) into her career. Most of all, she’s worked on combining the right and left side of her brain, to foster more creativity when working on solutions for a changing demand.
On top of dealing with a fast paced and demanding job, Holly is a single Mom and works remotely. But she’s managed to keep a balance and enjoys a successful personal life. How? She says by remembering her priorities, having a strong support network and doing some serious planning. She makes the time she has with her son extra special and makes sure to have a dedicated office for work to keep disciplined with her time. She is living proof that you can have a successful career and home life - just take it easy on yourself too!
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