Something to talk about
At the recent Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Tampa, we got to hear from some leading high tech manufacturers about how they manage the customer experience lifecycle when marketing, selling and servicing business, or enterprise, customers rather than consumers. This was all part of a series of industry roundtables focused on key topics related to […]
Turn Analytics Loose On How You Sell And Stop Losing Money
Recently I read an online article about the “teardown” of the latest Samsung Galaxy S5, that is, which materials are used to build it. It’s really amazing how sophisticated these products have become. They have chips that manage RF, Wi-Fi, power GPS, and then of course there’s the central processor. Then, there’s also an array […]
“Crowd Selling” – How To Deliver The Ultimate B2B Customer Experience
Some books are just really, really long – like War and Peace, by Tolstoy. Some books are deliberately obtuse – check out Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum. Most of us only read such books when we have to – as in school – or when we feel some urge to take on a challenge “just because […]
Oil refineries, e-readers and human rights – connecting the dots
In today’s paper, Delta Airlines announced that they were purchasing an oil refinery from ConocoPhillips in Pennsylvania. They’ll spend $150 million on the acquisition and another $100 million to optimize the refinery for jet fuel production. Included in the purchase are various pipelines and transportation assets that will connect the refinery to several of Delta’s […]
Attacking Supply Chain Volatility at SCOPE
In a couple of weeks, IBM will be participating in SCOPE East, the Supply Chain Operations Private Exposition, to be the week of April 23 in Chicago. The conference is an excellent opportunity to talk with supply chain professionals about their struggles. We know, from our recent Global Chief Supply Chain Officer Study, that one […]
Smarter Commerce and the Offshoring Dilemma
In a recent article of Bloomberg Businessweek (Feb 6, 2012) entitled “Time to Head Home for Some Manufacturers,” the point is made that many manufacturers are reconsidering whether they should be bringing some of their manufacturing operations back to the States. In years past, the decision to offshore to places like China was an issue of […]
De-Risking the Supply Chain – Thoughts for 2012
At the CSCMP conference in Philadelphia recently, we spoke about what companies can do to “de-risk” their supply chains. In the following video, Stephen Dean of Ryder and I spoke to Supply Chain Brain magazine about this topic. The chief observation I made was that volatility has become systemic in today’s supply chains: demand volatility, […]