bricks matter

Raise a Glass to the Smell of INK!

by Lora Cecere on December 7, 2012 · 0 comments

My soul craves a holiday. Like many of you, I’ve sat in one too many airline seats, hustled for one too many cabs and slept in too many hotel beds. I need to unwind. I want dust to gather on my suitcase as I bake my special holiday treats. I crave time to step off the treadmill of life to think. It is time for reflection and celebration.

The book Bricks Matter is currently at press. In my mind, I imagine a factory of printing presses whirring with the words that I have written; the smell of ink hangs heavy in the air; the printing line is busy stacking cut sheets on skids, assembling the book onto pallets; forklifts are putting the cases onto trucks. I think that it is only fitting that a book about supply chain is born this way into the real world.

I anxiously await to open my first box.  Holding the first book in my hands will be emotional. It represents 18 months of hard work. The presses are rolling. The hard copies of the book will ship from the Amazon warehouses on January 4th and the digital versions will be available the week of December 22nd. Emotions are swirling in my head. I am anxious. What will people think? Will I have the courage to read the ratings and reviews? I feel a bit naked.

In between strategy days this week, I had a call from Branka in Croatia. I do not know her, but she reads the Shaman and is an active member of the Supply Chain Insights Community. She stumbled on the website through a Google search, and she has become a loyal reader. She said that she has a group of friends that reads the blog and they have placed their pre-orders on Amazon.  They are also anxiously waiting to open their boxes. She invited me to visit Croatia to speak about the book to her group in March. We now have six book signings confirmed in the spring. I love the thought of swapping stories with supply chain pioneers around the world and discussing the book. (You can follow the book tour and my insights on a new website dedicated to the book at www.bricksmatter.com.)

I am glad that it is Friday. It was a busy week. In between writing deadlines for next year’s January publications, I also had a call from Sam, who had read my post about Steve, asking for help on S&OP. He started with a simple question. He had a need for an S&OP technology. He asked, “Would you be willing to help me too?”  I said, “Yes.” His chemical company had been spun off many times and the regions had started very autonomous S&OP processes. There were many of them, and he needed to bring them together in an executive dashboard.  He had read my research report Putting Together the Pieces  and wanted to chat about his options. I give thanks for Sam and for Steve. I am amazed that this blog has allowed me to connect with Branka in Croatia, Mark in China, Dudes in the Philippines, Eric in Brazil, Niels in Australia, Trevor in Canada, and Jose in Mexico. The list goes on and on…. I am in awe and wonder that a simple blog allows me to connect with 5,000 people around the world in a meaningful way.

This evening marks the third anniversary of the Supply Chain Shaman’s blog. This post is the 147th. I purchased the domain when I announced that I was leaving AMR Research. It was a cold day in Boston three years ago. The sting on my face from a nor’easter was one that only a Boston resident could know. I held my coat tight as the tears froze on my cheeks. I was scared. I could not go forward as an analyst after Gartner Group’s purchase of AMR Research, but embarking on my own journey was frightening. I did not want to do it, but I had to.

I started my new company, Supply Chain Insights, on February 10th, 2012. We published 19 reports this year and had 62,513 views on SlideShare of the work that we have written. The best read report was Does S&OP Improve Supply Chain Agility?  It’s been read by over 2,750 line of business users. The Cash-to-cash Cycles report that we published December 4th has already been viewed by over 600 readers. The power of ink amazes me. The viral nature of being an analyst in a world of social technologies is exhilarating. I love writing. I love helping Scott, and Sam, and connecting with people around the world. Tonight, I raise a glass to the power of ink. Happy holidays.

Where has the TIME Gone?

by Lora Cecere on September 15, 2012 · 0 comments

Greetings from Melbourne, Australia. Tonight, I have dined on Tasmanian salmon, enjoyed a snack of Tim Tam fingers, and dipped Wattle cookies into my coffee. I traveled over 10,000 miles. It has been a very long day.

I will be speaking on Monday at “Mastering Supply Chain Management with SAP” by the Eventful Group. I am excited to talk to an Australian audience and welcome them to the SCI Community . I will share more on these insights later this week (probably from an uncomfortable plane seat somewhere over the Pacific on my way home).

Lots Going ON!

We now have 240 participants in the SCI Community. My goal is to have over 6000 supply chain leaders active in the community by February 2014. Slowly people are getting their sea legs and building confidence to share their voice. One manufacturer has asked for benchmark data, one has submitted a question to a wizard, but no one has had the courage to share a technology/consulting partner rating or review.  You could be the first! Congrats to Karen Conway at GHX for jumping in head first. She is our Featured Leader on the SCI Community leader board this week. I love her leadership in Healthcare. And General Mills is leading the contest to sign up the most community members to get a free training day, along with signed copies of the book Bricks Matter for the supply chain team (the contest ends on October 31st).

Watch your mailbox this week. More reports are on the horizon. I am spending the weekend working with the Supply Chain Insights team (via Skype) to finish up three new reports that will publish in the Supply Chain Insights newsletter next week. (You can still sign up for the newsletter .) This will make our 11th report published since we founded the company in February 2012. All of our reports are available on slideshare or in the SCI Reports area of the community. (We had 3,000 views of our reports this month.)

A  new webinar series is also being kicked off. We’re currently finalizing the content for our first webinar in the series. Over 100 supply chain executives have signed up so far. It is great to see old friends on the list. In this webinar, we will be sharing twenty years of financial data along with insights on how companies have performed on the Supply Chain Effective Frontier. This webinar has been six months in the making, and I am proud to co-host it with Abby Mayer, Research Associate, Supply Chain Insights (@indexgirl). Please sign up for the webinar  while open seats remain. It is the first of a series of webinars that we will be doing (one per month) to help you and your supply chain team better understand supply chain excellence.

The book page proofs of Bricks Matter, co-authored with Charles Chase, have also arrived from Wiley. We have a burgeoning file of 65 sign-offs (and ten refusals) for artwork and stories to be included in the book. All these changes caused a flurry of activity at the end. The book is a retrospective of thirty years of supply chain leadership. It is chock-full of case studies, quotes and data. Wiley has told me that the book is so well written that they have moved the publishing date up from December 24th to early December. Next Saturday, I will spend the entire day going through the manuscript for the final (yes, FINAL) set of edits. This is the thirteenth set of edits. The book took six months to write and four months of begging for sign-offs/permissions. But it is almost done.

How Can You Help?

I am working hard to redefine the analyst model. My goal is to make research more relevant, actionable and available. I believe that research sells and relationships renew. So, you might be saying, how do I help Lora to change the analyst model?  There are three favors that I would ask:

  1. Join our Community. The community is free and available to all that care about supply chain.  Sign up your team at the Supply Chain Insights Community.  Come join in a conversation, and add your voice and share your opinions on supply chain excellence. Try a rating and review. If you have gone to an event and it was great, give it a rating. If you have gone to an event and it was bad, let others know.
  2. Use our Research.  Our research is designed to be leveraged. We want it to be used. We want to become the brand standard for business leaders trying to understand the definition of supply chain excellence. Read it. Use it. And let us know your feedback.
  3. Complete our Surveys. Open research is only possible when people fill out our surveys.  We have four in the field right now, and we would love your help in completing one:
  • For technology providers, consultants and manufacturers, let us know your thoughts on Transportation Management: http://tinyurl.com/sci-trn-b
  • A special study of retailers to understand what should be the Role of the Store: http://tinyurl.com/sci-ros-b
  • A study on the use of channel data focused at retailers and consumer products companies. Downstream Data: http://tinyurl.com/sci-dsd-b
  • How has digital marketing affected trade promotion budgets?  And how will this shift affect trade promotion practices? To know, help us by filling out our study on Trade Promotion: http://tinyurl.com/sci-tpm-b

All the best!  We at Supply Chain Insights are having fun. Many thanks to our 42 customers that have helped us by buying services (speaking, webinars, advisory workshops and strategy days) in our first six months of business. We are committed to serving the supply chain leader through open, relevant research.