Is cloud computing merely a trend or the future of computing as we know it? In recent years, analysts have used survey after survey to find out if IT leaders and organizations would embrace Internet-based shared computing services.

You might be surprised to learn that ArrowStream had the answer to that question almost 10 years ago when cloud computing was still known as ASP (Application Service Provider). We were delivering cloud-based solutions long before hard economic realities made it a top business priority to migrate away from front-loaded investment models and find lighter weight, more flexible technology options.

ArrowStream Chooses SaaS in 2001
ArrowStream made SaaS (now more popularly called cloud computing) our chosen delivery model way back in 2001. The cost savings, flexibility, convenience, efficiency and collaboration capabilities of cloud computing reflected exactly what we set out to be almost a decade ago-the company that transforms the foodservice industry supply chains from reactive apparatuses into a dynamic network of business information and trading partners. We knew the road to greater business performance, bottom-line results and fierce customer loyalty traveled via the supply chain and SaaS was the best vehicle to get us there.

Those five core benefits that convinced ArrowStream to use SaaS a decade ago mirror many of the benefits business leaders across the foodservice industry (and beyond) are looking to gain from “the Cloud” today. They include:

Cost Savings
Cost effectiveness is a top and enduring priority for businesses working throughout the foodservice supply chain, from manufacturing to distribution to restaurant chains.  Cloud computing saves businesses significant upfront and long-term costs. Lower TCO (total cost of ownership) begins with the fact that there are no startup infrastructure costs.  Hardware, software, and ongoing maintenance is provided by the service provider. Technology is accessed securely over the Internet using a browser.

Businesses are also able to “pay as they go.” For example, that means ArrowStream clients only pay for supply chain services they use rather than paying for a giant solution package in which only parts would be utilized.  With centralized automated updates, cloud computing eliminates several administrative and operational tasks and offers one of today’s surest paths to greater efficiency.

Flexibility
Businesses expand and contract at different times, but often technology investments are a one-time buy at one size. The cloud changes that by establishing constant access to technologies and services over the Internet. Businesses can easily scale their technology subscriptions with the fluctuating size and needs of their businesses. Simply increase subscription numbers over the cloud to add new users. The same goes for scaling back. Businesses can easily cut back users and reduce access to programs to immediately reduce business costs.

It’s also simple to expand the capabilities of a solution via the cloud. For example, should a business’ supply chain reporting needs increase, ArrowStream OnDemamd customers can easily expand their reporting capabilities online. They can also reduce them if they are not being used.

The instantaneous flexibility businesses gain through the cloud not only equals rapid scalability but also gives businesses more direct, immediate control over supply chain costs.

Convenience
Internet-based services offer a level of convenience that anyone who banks or shops online understands very well. It’s hard to beat the convenience of being able to log in and get information from anywhere at any time. ArrowStream OnDemand clients have enjoyed that freedom for nearly a decade, which has expanded real-time management visibility into supply chain operations.

Because supply chain data and applications are always accessible anywhere, supply chain teams are better connected with the business teams (marketing, procurement, etc.) they collaborate with, the trading partners upon whom they depend, and the senior executive leaders who are eager to better understand supply chain operations.

Increased Efficiencies
Several operational efficiencies are gained as a result of cloud computing. For example, the expanded and widespread access to supply chain information means greater flexibility and more informed, faster decision making.  The simplicity of online services means less training for users and less training costs for businesses. Because there are fewer demands on the company infrastructure with cloud-based solutions, businesses save on infrastructure maintenance costs.

Simplified, Secure Collaboration
Since ArrowStream’s inception, we have advocated greater trading partner collaboration across the supply chain. However, divergent backend systems and technologies have made this a complex process. Not so with cloud computing, which gives businesses a shared space where they can immediately provide trading partners with access to critical supply chain information (inventory levels, delivery schedules, etc.). By having access to the cloud, businesses can protect the data they feel is essential to competitive advantage while sharing vital knowledge that can keep the supply chains of their partners and clients highly efficient and informed.

No matter what you name it-ASP, SaaS, cloud computing -the benefits of Web-based services are tremendous, especially across the supply chain where access to real-time knowledge has a powerful impact on day-to-day business results. As more businesses and trading partners seek out greater supply chain efficiency via the cloud, the faster and more insightful well-managed supply chains become.  It’s an evolution that’s about to gain big momentum, which is why ArrowStream is glad to be years ahead of the learning curve.

Restaurant Leadership Offers 2010 Outlook

At the end of April, I attended Restaurant Leadership-a national gathering of industry, business and community visionaries. The mood was upbeat as we heard businesses express their optimism for a profitable year. The consensus is that the restaurant industry is hacking its way out of the thick weeds of the recession, and starting to find room to grow again. 

While it was exciting to debate industry trends (this year the role of social media was a hot topic and one I will cover in a future blog entry soon), the real issue of the event and of this year is the tough competition restaurants have from supermarkets and retail giants like Target and Wal-Mart. With grocers and retailers selling prepackaged meals at very low costs (often much lower than the cost of eating out), restaurants face ongoing price pressure despite improvements in the economy.

At the end of 2009, CREST (Consumer Reports on Eating Share Trends) reported that supermarkets prices had fallen from the year prior while restaurant prices were higher. Wallet conscious consumers have been cooking and eating at home more often and the question is how do restaurants lure them out again? The odds are high that penny pinching will continue among consumers. Americans are saving more than twice the amount they were two years ago according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the fourth quarter of 2007, 1.5% of earnings was going toward savings in American households. By the fourth quarter of 2009, the number had risen to 3.9%.

Rather than waiting for a shift in consumer habits-good habits like saving more-restaurants will need to compete head-to-head with supermarkets and their low-cost, prepackaged foods. That means price is king and efficiency is a must. Restaurant chains will need to squeeze every bit of efficiency out of their supply chains in order to keep prices competitive and attractive to cost conscious consumers. Even grocery and giant retail competitors are loudly talking to the market about supply chain efficiency. Think of Wal-mart’s current TV ads, which speak to making the most of their truckloads in order to deliver lower prices to their customers. The supply chain is your most direct route to greater efficiency and the world’s largest retailer knows it.

Restaurants too must invest in supply chain solutions that provide greater visibility and the detailed knowledge needed to better manage their pricing, spending, logistics and promotions. Only with end-to-end and trading partner-to-trading partner supply chain insight can restaurant chains truly compete in terms of price with grocers and super stores today. And in this brightening economy, restaurant leaders nationwide agree: It’s a good time to get out there and compete.

Part 2 of a 4 part series

In December, I posted the first in a four-part series of blog entries focused on the need for greater supply chain openness among foodservice industry trading partners.  That inaugural post looked at the advantages of joining an established network of industry trading partners, which is ArrowStream’s first piece of advice to businesses determined to get on the path to greater openness and more effective cooperation among trading partners.  

Now it’s January. A new year and a new decade have arrived, and it’s time to explore ArrowStream’s second tenet of Supply Chain Openness: Aligning and Integrating Supply Chain Management Technologies.

First, you need to evaluate your relationships with your manufacturer and distributor partners. At ArrowStream, we believe the most fundamental part of technology integration is trust. Have you established trust among your trading partners so that they would be willing to share their data with you? I hope the answer is yes because in order to be aligned and integrated, you must first break the barriers of information sharing by eliminating any fear your trading partners may have with technology integration. Data is the great currency of the information age and when your business is locked out of valuable supply chain data sources due to information protectionism, your organization is the poorer for it. The more your supply chain management tools and applications allow you to connect with those of other trading partners the more information and analytics you have fueling your business decisions.  Explain to your trading partners that with technology integration, everyone shares in the savings.

Look for Compatibility and Integration
So, how does a foodservice business go about ensuring the supply chain technologies it invests in can integrate with trading partners? First, you need to look at the big picture. What is your vision and why is technology good for your business? What results do you expect to see? Widespread technology integration among trading partner supply chain systems can seem like a daunting, long-term goal, however it doesn’t have to be. In fact, integration can be a relatively simple process that will lead to tremendous financial benefits. The more integration you can gain with each technology advancement and enhancement, the more data rich and supply chain efficient your business becomes.

Begin by looking at your 10 most important trading partners and determine what barriers are getting in the way of data sharing - information protectionism; multiple technology platforms; lacking in trust. These unnecessary barriers prevent spend, inventory and supplier data from informing the critical decisions you and your trading partners make every day.   Consider how much more effectively you could work with your suppliers (and benchmark their true performance) by synchronizing data and giving all parties access to valuable information like food spend, procurement, contracts, pricing and shipping information.

Next, talk with the supply chain solution providers to look at how they can support greater integration of supply chain systems. At ArrowStream, we understand how vital integration and data sharing is to the daily efficiency, fundamental success and bottom-line health of our foodservices clients. Any provider of supply chain solutions today knows that helping trading partners better integrate and work together will only make their systems more effective and widely sought after. If you find the certain technologies and/or their solutions providers are limited in helping your business integrate with trading partner systems, quickly take them off your list.

Time & Effort Well Spent
This increased focus on integration capabilities adds only a small amount of time to the technology vetting process but will yield greater visibility, resources and insight to your overall supply chain management solution.  As more and more businesses across the foodservice industry work to better integrate systems and share data, the shorter and shorter this integration assessment process will be. By demanding topnotch integration capabilities from solution providers, industry trading partners are helping to push supply chain technologies exactly where they need to be-on the bleeding edge of secure, smart, innovative supply chain integration.

One Essential Key to Having a Banner 2010

What makes a good manager great? For ages, many believed it was an intangible and immeasurable gut instinct that made strong business leaders visionaries. A manager that took risks by “going with his gut” or “trusting her instincts” had more than moxie, but also a better performance record to go along with it.

While there is always a role for instinct in business, history and measurement have found that sound and timely business information will outdo a sixth sense any day of the week. Take for example the IBM Global Business Services study and report, “Business analytics and optimization for the intelligent enterprise.” The study of more than 400 high and low performing business enterprises showed again and again that top performing businesses are more effectively tapping into timely business data and analytics to improve decision making and business operations. Below are just a few of the outcomes from the study and its executive report, which you can read in full here. 

• In the study, organizations that had analytic programs that were “well underway” were found to be more than three times as skilled at using information to understand risk (and twice as skilled in using that information to predict outcomes) than businesses that did not make analytics a priority.
• Top performing businesses are “twice as skilled as low performing businesses when it comes to extracting and prioritizing relevant information.“
• Top performing businesses were found to be “three times better at applying information for more predictable outcomes, which gives them the opportunity to better anticipate, navigate and handle contingencies.“

This clear link between top performance and the smart use of timely data and analytics across a business organization is irrefutable. In fact, it’s becoming a calling card for success as leading businesses make good, actionable information a main driver of business strategy and competitive advantage.

For the foodservice industry, there has never been a better or more important time to embrace the masses of business data provided by the supply chain and convert it into useful, actionable information. Eating habits are changing and attracting the American consumer will be harder than ever. The peak year for dining out in America was 2001, according to Harry Balzer, senior vice president and chief industry analyst with the market research firm NPD Group. Since then, people have been eating more of their meals at home, ending a five decade trend in which Americans frequented restaurants at ever-increasing rates.  After a decade at the mercy of global fluctuations in commodity and fuel pricing, a brutal recession and falling restaurant traffic, foodservice businesses need to make most of 2010 and the decade it rings in. It must become an era of embracing business intelligence in order to radically improve decision making, efficiency and business performance results. Confident in the value that analytics can bring to the foodservice industry, ArrowStream has greatly expanded its Performance Management capabilities. Our mission is to put critical business information at the fingertips of CFOs and procurement executives. Aggregating spending, inventory, purchasing, volume and contract data from across the supply chain, ArrowStream’s performance management dashboards give foodservice industry leaders an astonishing, new and real-time perspective on costs and vendor performance. 

With the analytical tools performance management provides, CFOs across the industry finally have a simple, flexible system for accurately comparing supply chain trading partner performance and costs. Rather than trusting that a vendor’s costs are low based on price sheets, business leaders can benchmark trading partners in real time to see exactly what is spent and where. This invaluable data can be used to make the very best purchasing and partnership decisions as “best in class provider” becomes a title trading partners must earn rather than a designation assumed by gut feeling. 

Today ArrowStream’s Performance Management Module offers dashboards for Total Landed Costs, Spend Analytics, Inventory Volume Tracking and Market Basket. By the end of 2010, additional dashboards for key functions, such as budget analysis, cost control, inventory, promotion and contract management will be added to the system. To learn more about ArrowStream performance management tools and how they can expand and optimize the ways businesses measure company and trading partner performance, I invite you to click here.

A new decade has come and it’s the perfect time to shake things up for the better. Here’s to 2010, a decade ArrowStream is certain can be one of smarter supply chain management, meaningful business analytics and new standards of excellence across the foodservice industry.

Musings from the 2009 IFMA/IFDA Presidents Conference

They say a little wine can help you learn a second language- dissolving the fear of making mistakes as you try out a foreign tongue.  We also found it to be an excellent conversation complement at the ArrowStream wine tasting event during the IFMA/IFDA Presidents Conference this November.  While none of the attendees, who included foodservice industry executives from leading restaurant chains, distributor companies and manufacturing businesses, were at all nervous about sharing their industry savvy, the wine was a great reason to step back from the conference hubbub. It was a reason to gather, relax and muse philosophically about how to “fix” the biggest problems the industry faces today.  

So, with wine in hand and conference badges off, what did this room of industry leaders reflect on?

First, there was the inescapable economy.  Even the best of Bordeaux cannot erase the heavy weight of economic woe. With commodity prices increasing, foodservice leaders are once again faced with a struggle to cut costs at a time when their core costs are rising. It was agreed in most circles that night that the strongest weapon foodservice businesses have against cost creeping is supply chain knowledge and process excellence. The more efficient and informed your supply chain, the more control you have over costs.

The second great area of focus for the industry and the leaders who attended the tasting was value menu programs. In light of widespread shifts in how people spend and save money, industry leaders agreed that smart value menus will attract and retain customers. The challenge to these efforts will be a successful launch and management of these programs in the marketplace as well as the struggle to win the attentions of a stretched and stressed consumer base.

At ArrowStream, our foodservice clients have found time and again that one of the most effective ways to increase the success of value menu programs is to better partner and integrate with internal departments (such as marketing, distribution, etc.). The better coordinated internal departments are in planning, creating, launching and monitoring local market promotions, the greater the results are.

The final thought was really more of an affirmation that open dialogue among foodservice trading partners will lead to great achievements. If one simple wine tasting can have so many industry participants and leaders agreeing and collaborating, consider what the results would be of a more open, trusting supply chain.  Forums like these are essential to helping the entire foodservice industry work towards greater partnership and the eventual goal of widespread, strategic information sharing.

Establishing trust and common operational goals is the first step to successful foodservice industry supply chain data sharing as it focuses all parties on bottom line results rather than the small costs they can squeeze from their trading partners. While the goal of sweeping openness and trust across foodservice supply chains is a long-term and-some would argue-lofty one, it’s one well worth having because it will transform operations and expand profitability possibilities for the entire industry.  And that’s a goal well worth raising your glass to!

Why Information Should Be Shared, Not Guarded

Henry Ford once said, “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.”  His application of this principle led to Ford Motor Company’s profoundly positive and enduring influence on supply chain efficiency. ArrowStream has also made the practice of teaming up with trading partners for mutual success across the supply chain one of our guiding principles. It is a way of working that allows us to partner with customers and their suppliers to eliminate waste, enable timely and informed decision-making, achieve rapid speed to market and enhance profitability.   

But coming together and sticking together is not easy when many and varied businesses are involved. Barriers to true information sharing (such as systems limitations as well as cultural, business and training constraints) can easily hinder effective supply chain synchronization among trading partners. The temptation to keep information in silos as a way to protect margins or perceived territory is a universal one, which is why information is often purposely made unavailable to trading partners.

In order to overcome information protectionism and get businesses to work together effectively and openly across the supply chain, it is crucial for trading partners to establish trusting relationships and understand the bottom-line value of sharing business data. Consider leading national food services chain Applebee’s as an example in laying the groundwork for greater supply chain information sharing and partnership. In an effort to reduce costs and improve efficiencies, the company recognized the need to obtain comprehensive views of supplier, distributor and restaurant data and to gain insight into hidden freight costs.  But before an information sharing process could be established, distributors had to be convinced to share critical freight management information, historically a sheltered income stream for distributors. 

Applebee’s was able to convince its manufacturing and distributor partners to participate in the ArrowStream Network of 2,300+ foodservice manufacturers, distributors and chain operators by demonstrating the significant freight and process efficiencies they stood to gain. The bottom-line argument was that by using the volume of more than just one retail chain, tapping into ArrowStream Logistics’ patented freight optimization technology and leveraging the capacity of The Network’s 200+ Distribution Centers and 61,000 routes, the distributors would have more full trucks.  Costly Less-Than-Truckload (LTL) percentages would be significantly reduced.  Inventory velocity would increase.  Distributors who participated in The Network would share in the savings. 

This mutually beneficial model convinced Applebee’s partners to participate. And while making a successful argument was a challenge, the significant and recurring freight savings across the supply chain that all trading partners now benefit from have been well worth the effort. Today Applebee’s has significantly reduced its LTL percentages and has achieved measurable freight savings as a result, all while gaining real understanding of its freight costs. 

Additionally, by breaking down the freight barrier with its distributors, Applebee’s opened up the opportunity for even greater information sharing across the entire supply chain resulting in over one million dollars in recovery of overcharges on an annual basis. Leveraging the Arrowstream OnDemand technology, Applebee’s is able to quickly and accurately integrate information from all its trading partners.  Applebee’s and its partners share complete information on things such as: supplier shipments, on-hand inventory at the distributor, demand and fulfillment data at the restaurant level, as well as have comprehensive views of contract, pricing and compliance information. This level of supply chain visibility enables Applebee’s to quickly identify trends within a promotion and ensure the right products are getting to the right locations at the right time.  It also ensures franchisees are getting charged correctly, producing optimal profitability and efficiency.

It’s a simple supply chain equation: The ability to work together cooperatively fosters the ability to effectively share information. The ability to share data expands competitive advantage and bottom-line success for all contributors. Before this equation can be applied, you must first establish trust among your trading partners so everyone is rest assured that you are committed to helping them increase their bottom-line rather than take money out of their pockets.

As more companies look to share information across the supply chain the more benefits all trading partners will see.

Good news from the May 26 Consumer Confidence Index:  Consumer confidence is up to its highest levels in eight months. However, this news is tempered by figures that demonstrate consumer confidence is still low overall by historical measures.  Additionally, a June 2 report from the Commerce Department reports a continued reduction in spending of 0.1 percent overall and by 0.6 percent for nondurables like food and clothing.  It’s no wonder that today’s consumers are more thrifty, saving more than ever and cautiously spending less due to rising unemployment and declining housing values. How does this cautious consumer affect the foodservice industry?  More importantly, what are chain leaders doing about it?

Poor Economy Raises Demand for Value and Service

Food industry trading partners know that the economic decline has caused consumers’ expectations of value and service to rise. Recent research from Technomic shows that most consumers do not expect the economy to readily improve and are increasingly seeking out promotions and discounts such as fixed price, value meals, etc. In addition, the survey reports that while consumers plan to reduce the number of visits to restaurants, they also plan to reduce the alcohol, dessert and appetizers they buy, all while expecting better service because business is more precious now.

The challenge for restaurant chains is how to offer greater value to their customers to drive more sales. Successful chains are improving supply chain operations to meet these challenges, deliver value and increase traffic. Take these two examples:

Wendy’s implemented a complete supply chain solution that enabled more informed and timely forecasting and product movement decisions that are particularly important for effective promotions.  So despite the economy and its impact on the industry, the company can stay profitable. The solution provides:

• integrated and synchronized supply chain data from all distributors, with critical data available daily
• usage tracked daily within a promotion
• real-time access to data for finance, marketing and other functional areas, and
• dynamic routing for nimble and cost-effective freight management

Arby’s increased SKUs by 300% due primarily to executing an aggressive promotions strategy and managing the added complexity with an integrated supply chain solution that:

• validates that supply plans are executed by the company’s DC partners,
• makes it simple to set order caps for auto-shipments of items and validate the dates and quantities of auto-shipments by the distribution centers, and
• eliminates dollars lost in misdirected inventory and advertising by reducing the incidence of out-of-stocks late in a promotion.

So, while a promotion can entice a visit, fulfilling service expectations including product availability and price ensures a positive experience, which has been deemed critical during these tough economic times.

Arby’s found that its integrated supply chain broadens its menu item selection and pricing options because it can capture all purchasing data and view it by category so the chain sees opportunities to negotiate volume purchases with suppliers. The result is that consumers get more choices at a better price, and the chain gets a better bottom line.

The chain also gets distribution fee pricing stability by controlling the parameters and data for the distribution RFPs. Arby’s and its distributors now estimate from the same information creating a fair and accurate proposal process, delivering protection from late price changes.

Interestingly, a recent NRA survey asking chain operators how they plan to deal with the economic downturn and control costs showed only two of seven strategies named by respondents involved the supply chain. Instead, “negotiate further with distributors” and “carry less inventory” topped the list as strategies for surviving economic tough times.

Yet successful chains like Arby’s and Wendy’s have demonstrated, it’s not just about carrying less inventory, but rather about making smarter decisions about product movement and sharing information with trading partners. The result is a transparent and therefore more efficient and profitable supply chain process for all.

A manufacturer, a distributor and a restaurant chain are sitting at an industry conference.  What sounds like the opening line of a corny joke accurately describes the beginning of the path to future success for foodservice and grocery trading partners.  That path is collaboration.  Facing mounting cost pressure, competition and consumer demands, these partners are leveraging supply chain technology to share information that just a few short years ago would have been held close to the vest. 

 I recently had the privilege of spending time with some of the most influential supply chain leaders in the foodservice industry at the Chain Operator Exchange (COEX) on March 3rd in Orlando, Florida.  COEX draws industry professionals, and is recognized as the premier educational forum for the chain restaurant operator market.  Nearly 60 restaurant chains, distributors and manufacturers gathered at a session entitled “Integrated Supply Chains Help Reduce Costs, Build Revenue,” hosted by Dan Cox, COO of Distribution Market Advantage.   This was the fourth such session that ArrowStream has sponsored–making the number of senior supply chain leaders having attended ArrowStream sessions in just over a year nearly 1,000.   

The most recent panelists included the senior supply chain management of leading chains like Wendy’s and distributors like the SYGMA Network.  The panelists and the audience shared insights regarding supply chain technology and process improvements.  I would like to share with you the key learnings I derived from listening to this panel and through my discussions with the panelists and audience members afterward. 

The Evolution to Cross-Enterprise Collaboration

Establishing a fully connected supply chain is an evolutionary process that requires putting the right people, processes, culture and technology in place.  The Supply Chain Maturity four-stage model was shared with the audience that depicts the evolution the restaurant chain can expect to make with better information and visibility across the supply chain. 

Stage 1: Functional Focus: companies have documented their departmental supply chain processes and data flows.

Stage 2: Internal Integration: companies are collaborating internally - cross functionally through company wide processes and data sharing.

Stage 3: External Integration: companies are beginning to collaborate with their supply chain partners. They may identify joint business objectives, develop action plans, implement common processes and share data across their organizations.

Stage 4: Cross Enterprise Collaboration: this is the Holy Grail for supply chain maturity. At this stage, trading partners truly collaborate with aligned business objectives, making decisions and executing against customer requirements together in real-time.

To reach Stage 4, companies must be willing to collaborate and build an integrated supply chain — to share information and make the best decisions cross-enterprise. Mr. Cox reported that no more then five to ten percent of trading relationships are prepared to provide the trust and transparency to reach Stage 4. This lack of trust is due in part to the past prevalence of favoring short-term margin protection over the long-term viability and profitability of all trading partners in the supply chain. 

 Some panelists placed their companies at the early stages of Stage 3 while others reported the majority of their trading partners at Stage 1.  What we’ve seen at ArrowStream is that companies can rapidly advance from Stage 1 when executive restaurant chain management is committed.  This first major step is to lead their companies and trading partners to supply chain integration – making it clear to partners and employees alike that removing barriers, fostering collaboration and leveraging supply chain integration technology are paramount company objectives.  At which stage is your company?

End-to-End Connectivity: A Significant Issue

Supply chain optimization can’t occur without the full integration of all supply chain partners – from the manufacturer to the distributor to the restaurant chain to the franchisee.  Panelists shared that the most common points where links in the supply chain break are between the manufacturer and distributor and between the restaurant chain and franchisee.

ArrowStream restaurant chain customers have facilitated restaurant chain/franchisee connectivity by identifying technology solutions that rapidly address franchisee pain points.  For example, Church’s Chicken was able to offer value to its franchisees through information sharing via an automated invoicing process that saved store managers on average 500 hours per week.

Visibility Enables Fluid Product Movement, Profitable Promotions

One of the hottest topics among the panelists and audience was the need for visibility into inventory levels at each stage of the supply chain – particularly during promotions to make smart product movement decisions.  The panelists shared how they garner support among their trading partners by demonstrating the significant and proven shared freight and process savings that result from sharing information via a centralized supply chain management system.  Once the supply chain software is deployed among trading partners – typically with in three to six months — the rapidly realized savings overcome issues like margin protection and fear of process change, making smart product moves possible.

While the bottom line benefits of the integration of the supply chain would make any CFO smile, the results are no joke:  these panelists report significant annual inbound freight savings, millions in recovered charges to franchisees, improved customer satisfaction and returns on promotions. 

We will continue to provide more insights from future industry events and research to help you achieve the same benefits as described by this COEX panel. Be sure to stay connected and, in the meantime, share your ideas or thoughts by sending me a note!