Kendall Gordan, SE
http://www.foxfiresoftware.com

Thanks for taking the time to share your vision on supply chain. It is always a pleasure to see your perspective, and I enjoyed meeting you at CSCMP in October 2005.

Now, to comment on your blog entry…

You mentioned that you met with 10 major corporations in early December 2005 that had major fundamental problems with their business technology. Since I’ve worked in the area of supply chain technology implementation in retail, wholesale, manufacturing, 3PL – as customer, vendor, implementor, third party – I had a few insights on the struggles that these companies may be experiencing.

1) Perhaps the largest area that I have realized which you identified quite readily is that many ERP (and other supply chain planning / execution systems) are designed to support manufacturing, not necessarily distribution. I worked with a company that spent millions of dollars trying to implement a manufacturing-centric technology suite to manage their procurement and transportation planning. It is hardly better than the 10 year old system it replaced and requires a lot of circumvention and manipulation. The technology just wasn’t designed to work in a distribution environment.

2) Many companies I’ve worked with have lacked a proper requirements defintion phase, or insisted on implementing technology without investing in proper project management or implementaiton methodology. They spend a lot of money on the back end trying to fix what they didn’t do properly in the first place.

3) Understand that the salespeople for many software vendors are glad to sell you their software even if it is a bad fit for your requirements. ALl too often I’ve seen companies try to implement a package that doesn’t even meet their needs, but somehow they were convinced that it was the right choice.

4) Know when to call it a day and start over. Sometimes, in hindsight, a software or project selection just won’t meet the ultimate requirements and it may make more sense to reset an initiative, even if it means abandoning software and services that cost substantial dollars. Remember, past costs are sunk costs, but you should always challenge the path forward to ensure it makes the most sense going forward.

5) Make sure you have the right staff leading strategic supply chain initiatives. If you do not have qualified strategic thinkers with supply chain experience as part of your management team, this will impact project success.

Ned, I still challenge some of your ideas, especially as the maturity of the on-demand applicaiton service provider (ASP) capabilities mature over the next year or two, but I’ll always respect your vision and thought process. Keep on blogging, maybe I will too.

Daniel M. Greenberg
Supply Chain Execution Integrator / Business Process Design
Dallas, Texas

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