The New World of Global Trade Management

Posted on August 16, 2013 by Kelsey Price

Ty Bordner

The term “global trade management” used to mean one thing: compliance. Not anymore. Ty Bordner, VP of Product Management & Solutions Consulting at Amber Road, describes how GTM today embraces the whole experience of moving goods across borders: regulation, duty management, logistics, and, most of all, global supply-chain visibility.

In the past, each of those processes would have been handled by separate, non-integrated IT applications. But companies can no longer afford a fragmented approach. They are looking for a one-stop shop for their GTM solution. They want a single vendor that can provide a common platform for managing all of their critical requirements.

Discover the trends driving GTM to new heights in Ty’s article here at SupplyChainBrain.

Brown-Forman Grows its Spirited Exports Program with Amber Road

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Kelsey Price

It may be hard to believe that one of the world’s largest producers of wines and spirits once lacked visibility of its ocean shipments and carrier performance levels. But back in 2004, Brown-Forman had to rely on the tracking systems of individual carriers to keep tabs on product in transit, with no single platform to monitor the movement of popular brands like Jack Daniel’s, Southern Comfort, and Korbel.

Brown-Forman began looking for a software suite that could provide a central repository while navigating the highly regulated alcoholic beverage industry, where strict records are essential. The company picked Amber Road (then Management Dynamics).

Brown-Forman quickly gained some unsettling insights into its supply chain. For example, the company had thought its distributors were taking between three and five days to clear their goods and get them unloaded. However, it sometimes took up to 10 days. With Amber Road’s solution, the company was able to determine when its containers were being released to customers.

“It has helped us to secure our supply chain, giving us visibility from beginning to end,” says Sherree Hockensmith, International Transportation Manager at Brown-Forman. “We now have tools to slice and dice our data anyway we need to.”

The company now knows great deal about the actual services levels it receives from its carriers, and can track its containers from production facilities in Kentucky and Virginia all the way to destination.

To find out more about Brown-Forman’s success with Amber Road, please read this SupplyChainBrain feature.

Recent Trends in Adoption of Supply Chain Software

Posted on November 8, 2012 by Jim Preuninger

If the Supply Chain can’t be Simplified, New Strategies are Needed to Account for the Complexity

Recently, attendees at the Amber Road user conference had the opportunity to hear William McNeill, Senior Research Analyst at Gartner, speak about global trade trends and priorities. In particular, Mr. McNeill cited a survey of “Supply Chain Digest” readers conducted by Gartner that focused on the adoption of supply chain software. (For more observations on this study, see Dan Gilmore’s comments here.)

The survey of 259 senior supply chain executives found that nearly 35% of respondents identified supply chain visibility and event management (SCVEM) as the most important supply chain management (SCM) and execution (SCE) application for acquisition in 2014.

Of respondents that saw SCVEM as a strategic advantage for their business, 13% had purchased software as a service (SaaS) or cloud-based applications in the past and 26% expected to in the future. This seems to indicate that the companies that see the strategic value of SCVEM initiatives recognize that the best way to integrate with the third-parties that provide visibility data is through ubiquitous online access.

McNeill noted that many organizations are accustomed to exchanging information with supply chain partners through electronic data interchange (EDI). These companies have already seen the strategic value of sharing information with an extended network of supply chain partners and are willing to take the next step to cloud technologies.

In contrast, among those organizations that view supply chain visibility as a cost of doing business, only 5% have purchased SaaS applications and only 15% intend to do so in the future.

When asked about the top three obstacles to achieving their organization’s overall supply chain goals and objectives, 41% of respondents chose “difficulty or inability to coordinate and synchronize end-to-end supply chain processes” as one of their chief obstacles. Thirty-seven percent chose “lack of visibility across the supply chain” and 35% chose “supply chain network complexity.”

In contrast to the previous year’s study, the percentage of respondents citing supply chain network complexity as one of their top obstacles increased by 11%. McNeill sees this as an indication that while the supply chain is actually becoming more complex, supply chain leaders understand that they have to adjust their approach to deal with this inherent complexity. If it can’t be simplified, new strategies are needed to account for complexity.

One way to address these issues is with a SaaS/cloud based solution that integrates partner and visibility data into a comprehensive view of the supply chain. The survey data bears this out with the number of organizations that view online solutions as strategic business enablers and as a way to manage supply chain complexity.

Using a Supply Chain Control Tower to Become Your Own 4PL

Posted on July 5, 2012 by Ty Bordner

For Some Companies, it Might be the Natural Outcome of Centralizing Supply Chain Operations and Data into a Control Tower

As more organizations are moving toward heightened supply chain visibility, many are coming to realize that what they’re also doing is becoming their own fourth-party logistics (4PL) provider. What’s a 4PL? The term was coined by Accenture (when it was Andersen Consulting) and is defined as “an integrator that assembles the resources, capabilities, and technology of its own organization and other organizations to design, build and run comprehensive supply chain solutions.”

Essentially, a 4PL is like a general contractor for logistics. Typically, it is a neutral party that will help unify and reengineer supply chain processes, while coordinating the activities of 3PLs and other supply chain partners. However, companies that have embraced supply chain as a core competency are seeing value in assuming the 4PL role themselves to meet their specific supply chain goals. The activities are managed from centralized hubs of technology, people and processes – frequently called “control towers.”

The concept of a supply chain control tower has been gaining momentum over the past year. A control tower is a single command center for visibility, decision-making and action, based on real-time data. With a control tower in place, taking on the 4PL role allows organizations to accelerate collaboration and achieve higher levels of performance among their varied providers.

In addition, centralizing supply chain data and processes as a self-4PL gives companies the flexibility to plug in new logistics providers using standard interfaces and configurable processes. This eliminates lock-in with a particular 3PL or system and puts the company in a position to control interactions with trade partners. Control tower managers gain deeper visibility and can use data-driven analysis of service levels to objectively manage each provider.

Further, by collecting and analyzing data from supply chain processes, managers can measure performance according to standard metrics. With business intelligence tools, managers can perform “what-if” analyses to optimize sourcing or distribution decisions, pinpoint a process breakdown that results in excess inventory, and right-size inventory based on actual cycle times and variability.

Final Thoughts

Being a self-4PL may not be right for companies that don’t yet have the resources or expertise to manage all aspects of their logistics and supply chain. But for others, it might be the natural outcome of centralizing supply chain operations and data into a control tower.

Supply Chain Control Tower: What is Old is New Again

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Ty Bordner

The concept of a supply chain control tower has been gaining momentum over the past year. A control tower is a single command center for visibility, decision-making and action, based on real-time data. According to Capgemini Consulting “A supply chain control tower is a central hub with the required technology, organization and processes to capture and use supply chain data to provide enhanced visibility for short and long term decision making that is aligned with strategic objectives.” (Capgemini Consulting, “Global Supply Chain Control Towers” May 2011)

It’s also a new name for a concept that has been around for a while: 4PL. Companies are increasingly realizing that supply chain must become a core competency, and taking on the 4PL role offers them the ability to accelerate collaboration and achieve higher levels of performance. The control tower represents the common processes that are enabled by cloud-based technologies, such as configuring a set of services to business units and trading partners across a supply network. These services start with basic plumbing ‑ collect and aggregate all orders, shipments, inventory and status. This information is linked to other enterprise systems to provide global visibility, then transformed to become the input for supply chain execution solutions.

The control tower is a hub that must go beyond visibility to provide integrated global logistics and trade compliance services. Based on a company’s supply chain segmentation strategies, these services must be configured to support the needs of business units and the key fulfillment attributes of a product line. Control tower managers can decide how to distribute the services by determining the correct mix of centralized and decentralized execution for their supply chain design.

Having one global supply chain system and standardized processes give companies the flexibility to plug in new logistics providers as needs change or quickly assimilate new businesses. The control tower reduces the “lock in” of using an external provider’s system, and changes the balance of power in a relationship. Control tower managers now have the visibility and data-driven analysis of service levels to objectively manage each provider. Similarly, new businesses can be plugged in with standard interfaces and highly configurable processes.

By collecting the mountain of data from the daily orchestration of supply chain processes, control towers also offer unique insight into performance. With business intelligence tools, managers can perform “what-if” analyses to optimize sourcing or distribution decisions, pinpoint a process breakdown that results in inventory builds, and right size inventory based on actual cycle times and variability.

No matter what you call it ‑ a control tower or 4PL ‑ the technology is available today to enable global supply chain teams to tame complexity and control their own destiny.