their business processes, says Gay Whitney, senior vice president for industry engagement.
Traceability, efficiency and safety are the technology concerns that
keep professionals up at night, and that includes in supply chain
management, she says. “We provide specific support in these areas
to enable supply chain efficiencies across the globe.”
Specifically, GS1US is involved in healthcare, retail, CPG, food-
service, apparel and general merchandise. “There are a lot of simi-
larities in their supply chains,” says Whitney. “They all need to
efficiently meet customers’ needs, to work with partners to leverage
technology to meet those needs.”
Why is this so trying for some? “We’re at an inflection point,” she
notes, “because there has been an explosion of data. And the use of
that is critical to partners who want to be best in class.”
So what’s the role of standards in this? “They are a critical com-
ponent. If you want to do business across the globe one way, it’s
critical to use standards and standardized technology consistently to
realize the efficiencies and benefits of that technology.”
Collaboration is so important to any successful endeavor, and
information is a key component of that. “Most companies are inter-
ested in having visibility into their trading relationships, into their
supply chains, and how they do business,” Whitney says. “If you
can identify things as they move through the supply chain and
share that information with your partners, we consider that effective
means of collaboration. It enables collaborative forecasting and
planning, and it breaks down functional silos within the supply
chain so that everybody benefits.”
Embedded Analytics in Transportation Management
Stan Hirshman, vice president of enterprise solutions for MercuryGate, a TMS provider, says transportation management
services are best delivered by SaaS. He also maintains that his
company’s data analysis process is superior to the more traditional KPI approach.
What’s so wrong with key performance indicators? For one thing,
says Hirshman, they’re backward-looking. “They look at trends and
things that have already happened. They’re good at telling you
what you may have screwed up or could have done better. But the
best you can hope for at that point is not to repeat the mistake.”
Embedded analytics, he maintains, is a proactive method of seeing
things as they exist now, like a dashboard, as opposed to historical
trending analysis. The system constantly reevaluates key metrics, so
information remains up to date at all times. “With it, you really can take
action today and prevent some bad things from happening.”
The best areas for using such a solution? Of course, carrier man-
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