April 10th, 2009

Next big land rush: believe it or not, is knowledge management

Posted by Kevin O'Marah @ 8:11 am

Categories: ERP, Enterprise Architecture, Intellectual Property, Supply Chain, Supply Chain Applications

Tags: Supply Chain, Collaboration, Knowledge, IP, Entertainment, Supply Chain Management (SCM), Knowledge Management, Strategy, Network Technology, Networking

This sounds silly for anyone who has ever been involved in the typical hapless library exercise of a digital “knowledge management” initiative.  The lasting image for most of these efforts is of a black hole - everything goes in, nothing comes out.  But get ready for a change of tune.

The root of this is an exploding need among all players up and down the global supply chain to harness and leverage their intellectual property without giving up control or worse, having it hijacked and used against them.  An example is the kind of engineering intensive knowledge stored in the heads of thousands of soon-to-retire manufacturing process guys in the chemicals industry.  I talked to ExxonMobil about this and found they’re keen to solve it before the IP ends up sitting on a beach in Florida somewhere.  At the exact opposite end of the spectrum is the issue of managing IP for a company like Hasbro.  They have pure entertainment images that will manifest as profitable toys like Barbie, unless someone raids the files and dumps a load of cheap counterfeit knockoffs onto the market.

How do you capture, catalog, update, distribute, and otherwise collaborate on knowledge (i.e., IP) when it ranges from expertise to trademarks?  It turns out practically every technology vendor category has an answer for you.  Collaboration vendors from little guys like Jive to big guys like OpenText have a story.  B2B and EDI guys like Sterling Commerce, GXS, and Inovis are part of the puzzle.  PLM guys like Dassault, PTC or Siemens are certainly in the mix.  Digital Rights Management vendors have been thought of largely in terms of media and entertainment uses, but players like Adobe, EMC, and even Oracle (with its Stellent property) deserve a look on this front.  Plus the security vendors like Symantec, EMC and RSA need to be considered.  And finally, all the platform guys figure into the equation - IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle all appear across the board with “solutions” in each of these categories.

The net of it all is that manufacturers and retailers across sectors will absolutely need to handle the question of how IP works its way around the global supply chain.  One worry: letting Microsoft Sharepoint creep in as the defacto standard for management of IP in interenterprise collaboration.  Its so easy to set up and start using… it naturally links to your most familiar workspace, namely Excel, PowerPoint, and the rest of MSOffice.  But where is the control and scalability?  I’m not saying Microsoft can’t do it, just that renegade groups of employees doing it on their own will almost definitely end up making a mess, and possibly and expensive one.

Missing from the list of vendors with a solid pitch here is SAP.  The ERP backbone of choice for so many companies may have a stranglehold on transactions, but they lack punch when it comes to interenterprise collaboration, relying on partners like Seeburger and Crossgate.  This may seem a sideshow in Walldorf, but every industry is beginning to see the value of stuff that is presently flying around the digital supply chain, largely unsupervised.

I’d love to hear ideas on how best to map out a strategy for this problem.

March 13th, 2009

Connecting the Spend Management Dots with Contracts

Posted by Mickey North Rizza @ 11:49 am

Categories: Procurement, Sourcing, Supply Chain Applications

Tags: Contract Management, Contract Management Product, Service Management, Mickey North Rizza

While not exactly a well-known name, Zycus continues its spend management expertise by rounding out its sourcing suite with Contract management.  Targeted towards the sourcing and procurement professional, Zycus iContract provides organizations the ability to actualize negotiated contract savings through real-time monitoring, proactive alerting, and search capabilities.  The product has intelligent tracking of contract compliance and utilization across the contract lifecycle.

The addition of the contract management solution means Zycus is a full sourcing suite contender against Ariba, BravoSolution, Emptoris, Iasta, Oracle, and SAP.

The contract management product is timely as organizations struggle for compliance while reducing costs, and ensuring item and service availability.  Facilitation of contract visibility and across the enterprise means connecting the dots between the cost and availability of products and services to the income statement with potential balance sheet liabilities.  Contract management solutions, such as Zycus iContract, are a determining factor in the connections and relationship of the enterprise and supply.

With Zycus new contract management solution, Zycus continues its powerhouse journey.  The solution is a strong alternative to pricier ERP products. In this economy, best of breed continues to advance, which begs the question, what will the ERP vendors do to counter and stop the movement to best of breed?

February 20th, 2009

Tech and the global supply chain – Who’s the MVP for work over the past ten years?

Posted by Kevin O'Marah @ 7:16 am

Categories: ERP, Supply Chain Applications

Tags:

At AMR Research we constantly study the question of applying technology to supply chain to make it work better.  Lots of old-school Lean freaks like to believe process is everything, sometimes implying that technology doesn’t really matter.  I dispute this.  Neither works well without the other, but it is certainly safe to say that without technology there would be no real global supply chain.

This got me to thinking, who, if I had to choose one, deserves the title of Most Valuable Player?  Which technology vendor has created the most business value in the global supply chain since the peak of the bubble?  A few obvious candidates come to mind: Read the rest of this entry »