The concept of “Columbus Day” as a holiday is new to me, but I love the day off. Every year, when I get this extra holiday, I find that I like Columbus MORE and MORE. I used the time this year to do some fall shopping. It was a time for a welcome relief from travel, and to reflect. Columbus discovered new worlds. Remember the grade school poem of “In 1492 Columbus sailed…
In the 1990s, it was all about transactions. In the early 2000s, it was about catalogs and shopping carts. Later as teams tried to integrate the end-to-end supply chain, the focus was document management. Today, with the introduction of F8 by Facebook it is about effective story telling and harnessing the Open Graph. What is the “it”? It is the ability to reach the customer: the heart of the supply chain. The story is the…
Whew! September has been busy. In the past two weeks, I flew 35,000 air miles and spoke at six events. As I sit in my seat in 3C on the way to San Franciso, it is a time to reflect. Of all the people that I met this month, three comments are rolling around in my mind: Like a Tube of Toothpaste: Squeezed at Both Ends I was interviewing a good friend for…
The storyline is old. This blog is a new take on an old story. The storyline was the central theme of the 1983 American comedy titled Trading Places starring Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy. Remember it? It was one of my favorites: a funny movie where an upper class commodities broker and a homeless street hustler switch roles when they are unknowingly made part of an elaborate bet. It is…
“We have the most powerful distribution mechanism that has been created in a generation,” Mark Zuckerberg, Founder Facebook at the launch of the 2006 Connect Platform It is called the socialgraph: the complex interconnection of social relationships. It is a new type of network. One that has the power to redefine the shopping experience allowing companies to anticipate, personalize and energize the shopping experience in new ways. Tapping the potential of this technology shift will make the vision…
This week, I attended the Annual Council of Supply Chain Management Event in San Diego. Speaking at eight of the last nine CSCMP event, I am a veteran. It is one of the largest supply chain events in North America. The mood and attendance at the event is usually an accurate predictor for technology spending in supply chain applications. So what was it like?. Attendance was up this year by 33%, but the mood was stayed. More people,…
“When the well is dry, we know the worth of water.”, Benjamin Franklin It was a cold winter day in Minneapolis. The security guard at the gate warned me of frost bite walking from the parking lot to the corporate offices of a client. So, I scurried along with snow crunching under my boots. I was also expecting a frosty introduction. Manufacturing, distribution and sourcing were at an impasse. I was walking into…
SPLAT! An email lands in my inbox. The voice on the phone says, “We just sent you a link for you to view our presentation. I hope that you don’t mind that it is late. Let me give you the passcode.” I smile. Their presentation, like 99% of all analyst briefings, arrives within five minutes of the briefing start time; and, they want to do a web conference. <I have…
In the movie Snow White, the Queen possesses a magical mirror that answers any question, to which she often asks: “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who in the land is fairest of all?” …to which the mirror always replies “You, my queen, are fairest of all.” _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Companies want to know “who has the best supply chain?” Unfortunately, there is no supply chain magic mirror; however, each June we can…
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