Partnering and the Bottom Line

“Supply chain management has become a complex, technology-driven discipline that reaches across functions, business processes, and corporate boundaries. Nevertheless, some CEOs pay little attention to SCM as a strategic concern and thereby squander its potential to improve overall performance.” – Harvard Business Review, Sep 2007

Does your company periodically review its core competencies that support your customer value proposition? Does your company seek out ways to leverage external experts to minimize costly investments in non-core competency areas? If not, then it is likely you are falling behind your competition.

Your Customer Value Proposition, CVP, represents your company’s identity in the Customer’s view. Your CVP identifies what current and prospective customer’s value and it establishes the basis for alignment of your firm’s resources, products and services to that value. How you define your customer value proposition determines the differential value your firm offers its clients.

The marketplace is constantly changing and competencies considered essential yesterday may not serve you today or tomorrow. A core competency simply stated is an area where you make focused internal investments to maintain or gain a competitive advantage. Let’s face it, if you are not investing in an area to keep ahead or stay equal, then it is likely a candidate for partnering.

A periodic core competency review enables your firm to refresh its understanding of the required skill-sets to deliver a compelling CVP. The core competency review exposes opportunities to leverage industry experts for non-core activities. A solid partnering strategy can enable you to leverage a provider’s investment in people, process and technology, so as to improve your CVP.

For a partnering strategy to be successful, it must be based on a platform of collaboration. The partnering strategy needs to operationally align the many skills sets toward a series of short and long-term goals. Whether the goal is cost reduction, targeting a new market, or simply to gain a competitive advantage, the successful team is one that can align its collective competencies to obtain common goals.

In closing, if you made the decision to leverage and collaborate with partners in your Supply Chain, then let them do what is their expertise to do. Your role is not to manage the details but to orchestrate, direct and transform the team to operationally align to your CVP. Doing so will bring great benefit to your customers and shareholders.

contributed by Warren White

January 2008 Spotlight: New Year resolution 'Increase Office Email Productivity'

A quick way to boost your company's bottom line is to have your employees learn the basics of sending office email. I know this sounds silly, but hear me out. Each day millions of emails are sent to people that don't care, won't read, and frankly find it a waste of time just deleting them. Ever see someone with thousands of emails in their queue?

Email has gone from carrying vital air and water to a combination of transporting water and sewage. If that makes you sick, good it should. The tonnage of garbage moved into the plumbing daily is overwhelming. From ill conceived messages to the forwarding of email strings to the unneeded tirades, these and more add to the waste.

A quick math check supports that the time wasted daily adds up very quickly and becomes a large impact to the bottom line. Most professional workers spend 20-75% or more of their time daily on systems reading, preparing, or sending email. I guess this is a part of our paperless society.

Learning what to send, how to send it, to whom to send it to and when to send it can make a big impact on your bottom line. Doing it right requires less time for all parties, which allows more time to address the real opportunities or challenges.

Ever receive email from any of the following people in your company?

• The Miner: Always sends a string of emails and actually expects you to start at the beginning and relive their version of email hell. After you finish mining the details, you are expected to determine what should be done. Feel that monkey jump onto your shoulder? Press the Delete key and move on. This person is clueless.

• Mr. Shotgun: When in doubt send it to everyone you can think of that may be able to do something. No doubt someone is likely to be foolish enough to pick it up and run with it. We pity the fool. Again press Delete and smile.

• Mr. Verbose: Provides too much info all the time. No one can ever validate all the narrative and attachments. The intent is to impress and the outcome is to be oppressed. Recommend immediate deletion.

• Mr. Opinion: Always a comment and never much resolution. Enjoys prolonging meaningless conversations to ensure that their point is heard. This is best evidenced by staying on-line vs going face to face or picking up the phone. Send them a differring opinion to keep the chain going.

• Mr Teflon: No matter what you write or how you write it, it just won't stick. There is always someone else to whom you can assign it or put to task. Ownership gone awry, I think so. Contact Sys Admin and have their account deleted.

• Mr. Sunshine: It could be the worst storm of the century and this person will be singing you bright sunny tunes about all being well. Forward their email to Mr.Opinion, as he will certainly be able to set the record straight.

OK, so who do you work with the most? Bottom line is that you can make a difference by changing the rules and playing a new game. When you send email be clear about your needs, don't make the reader search to understand, send it to those that need it vs everyone, respond when requested, and for goodness sake cut out the strings. Make it a great day!

contributed by Peter Pazmany

Industry Trends - 2008 World Trade Growth

IBISWorld predicts that global trade will increase to about $5.6 trillion in 2008. Many believe that this is an accurate forecast in spite of the recent downturn in world stock markets. Half of the world’s top ten global growth industries have transportation or logistics components and contribute approximately $900 billion to that forecast figure.

The top ten growth industries (in percentage growth order, $ in billion) are:

• Biotechnology - 14.9% growth to $144
• Heavy Duty Truck Manufacturing – 9.7% growth to $298
  Internet Service Providers - 9.4% growth to $127
• Logistics – Couriers - 8.9% growth to $204
• Civil Aerospace Products Manufacturing – 8/8% growth to $132
• Movie Production and Distribution – 8.7% growth to $119
• Logistics – Shipping – 7.2% growth to $144
• Direct Life, Health and Medical Insurance Carriers – 7% growth to $3,490
• Civil Ship and Boat Building – 6.7% growth to $100
• Compulsory Pension Provision Funds – 6.5% growth to $139

These top ten industries account for approximately 88% of the total trade forecast.

Increasing international trade is directly responsible for continually increasing demand to transport goods. While the internet moves information in the blink of an eye, physical goods still require thoughtful economic solutions. The design and construction of better transportation methods and improved supply chain logistics channels is a necessary component of this growth. Many opportunities are provided to forward thinking companies for partnering with these industries to demonstrate their capabilities in re-engineering the supply chain and associated activities.

contributed by Michael Singleton