World Trade - October 2008 - (Page 35)

SUPPLY CHAIN SURVIVAL GUIDE I ing our customers into regulatory compliance. lo We are looking not just to have a software niche, but to make a foo footprint in the industry.” cur “With the current economic trend, many companies have experienced a downtrend and are seeking innovations to increase their bottom line. IES is uniquely positioned to help these same companies reduce costs by streamlining existing data throughout the entire supply chain and using that same data for accounting.” He cites internal studies that show a reduction in labor requirements up to 40 percent, and an increase in efﬁciency and accuracy of up to 20 percent based on IES tools. The IES approach appeals to Kenneth Black, Business Process Management at Crowley Logistics in Jacksonville, Florida, a business operating unit of Crowley Maritime Corporation. Black has also rejected overtures from the ERP majors for the time being. “We made a company decision to stick with backbone ﬁnancials and integrate third-party systems from business units into that,” he explains. Given their role as a global 3PL offering a wide variety of services, Black said Crowley needs to be able to provide a supply chain solution for customers shipping freight who need to be able to identify and track cargo down to the SKU level. He said IES Ltd. provided a solution that allowed current and potential customers to integrate into their own ERP systems. Art Mesher, who has promoted development of Descartes System’s network to deliver on-demand solutions to logistics providers, agrees that there’s plenty of room in the marketplace for best-of-breed vendors. “The big question is how big the best-of-breed will be. There will always be some companies that want competitive differentiation for their supply chain management tools and won’t want what’s sold to everyone,” he insists. Mesher calls “the secret sauce” for the survival of the best-in-breed vendor a combination of a very large customer base and a “defendable and unique value proposition” to offer manufacturers, retailers and distributors worldwide. But to sell against the Oracles and SAPs, that have “ninety things to sell,” Mesher says that stand-alone vendor “better be at least twenty times better” at what they do, particularly as the large vendors can offer discounts that might cripple a stand-alone software developer. “The truth is the large vendors address the most common denominator; the less differentiated solution,” concludes Mesher, explaining that this approach was just ﬁne for customers whose competitive edge comes from their manufacturing processes or marketing approaches. But if a business bases its competition on providing the most nimble, efﬁcient supply chain possible, and desires the lowest costs or highest service levels—if it wants “something better than the norm”—Mesher said this is where the best-of-breed pays off in spades. WT Contributing Editor Amy Zuckerman covers supply chain IT from her base in Amherst, Mass. WTM08084GTnexus2.indd 1 WWW.WORLDTRADEMAG.COM 7/14/08 3:00:17 PM 35 http://www.gtnexus.com http://www.gtnexus.com http://WWW.WORLDTRADEMAG.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of World Trade - October 2008

World Trade - October 2008 Contents Tune Up Your Supply Chain Globalization: The Real Competitive Threat Supply Chain Watch Tradewinds Shippers and Providers Collaborate to Take on a Challenging Economy Tweaking the Supply Chain to Optimize Value and Minimize Cost Supply Chain Software Morphs Into Enterprise Management Can Warehousing Really, Truly Be Strategic? Everybody is Global Between the Devil and the Deep The Hidden Costs of ‘Free’ Translation Blowing Smoke

World Trade - October 2008

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