NGR's Blog

It is hard to talk about supply chain management without mentioning Wal-Mart.

In its relentless pursuit of low consumer prices, Wal-Mart embraced technology to become an innovator in the way stores track inventory and restock their shelves, cutting costs and passing the savings along to customers. In the process the company became synonymous with the concept of successful supply chain management.

"I don't believe there is a university in the world that doesn't talk about Wal-Mart and the supply chain," said James Crowell, director of the Supply Chain Management Research Center at the Walton College of Business. “They are just so well respected because they do it so well, and certainly I know a lot of peer institutions around our country … will bring a Wal-Mart guest to speak.”

The supply chain management has been focusing on squeezing cost and improving operations for decades. In the 1980s, there was a lot of focus on just-in-time production, lean manufacturing and discrete systems. In the recent decade, the obsession about high quality goods, cost minimization and flawless distribution has been made possible by the advancement in technology.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, as a part of a broader spectrum of sensor-based technologies, has dramatically revolutionized the supply chain management. Basically RFID is simply an enabling technology that has the potential of helping retailers provide the right product at the right place at the right time, thus maximizing sales and profits. RFID provides the technology to identify uniquely each container, pallet, case and item being manufactured, shipped and sold, thus providing the building blocks for increased visibility throughout the supply chain.

Efficient exchange of information can provide a company with higher service levels, lower inventory and a lower supply chain cost. Unlike the start of the last decade where the demand for a particular product was defined by the wholesale distributers, the manufacturers have direct access to assess the demand for a particular product in the market. SCM is concerned with the downward flow of product in the supply chain and an upward flow of information. Efficient exchange of information is very necessary for a company’s operations. IT infrastructure capabilities provide a competitive positioning of business initiatives like cycle time reduction, implementation, implementing redesigned cross-functional processes. Several well know firms are involved in supply chain relationship through information technology. There are several factors that have strongly impacted this change in the importance of information. First, serving the customer in the best, most efficient and effective manner has become critical. Second information is a crucial factor in the managers' abilities to reduce inventory and human resource requirement to a competitive level.

eProcurement can be of enormous value to companies of all types, and particularly to manufacturing companies. eProcurement provides numerous benefits to companies that employ this strategy, including the reduction of costs, the elimination of paperwork, as well as reduced manual labor and errors. eProcurement, when fully implemented in all departments, can also lead to a total visibility of spend, which leads to the ability to conduct spend analysis and to manage spend as well.

When conducting eProcurement, it is possible to obtain items from a catalogue of approved items, making the procurement process very streamlined and efficient. When conducting eProcurement, time is saved such that staff can work on high value transactions, and can concentrate on strategic sourcing and on improving supplier relationships. In short, eProcurement can be of enormous benefit to your company. In this article, we outline the various ways that eProcurement can lead to reduced cost, increased efficiency, and overall strength for your company.

Six Sigma is a set of statistical tools that act as a lens through which hidden problems can be identified and root causes uncovered, better equipping leadership to think through tough issues. It provides the metrics required to reduce variability in process execution so as to enable on-going improvement in competitiveness and manufacturing and business operations.

Six Sigma not only can benefit your business, but can transform it to becoming more agile and respond faster to change.

The cloud is new for everybody. And you know what? It’s okay to be scared.

Fear makes you aware of the things you need to take control of. Ultimately, you want to move into the cloud, but in your own time, and on your own terms.

We get that. We know how stressful transition can be, so we want to help you think through your decision-making process with some key questions.

Here is what you need to ask your cloud ERP provider.

• Do I have to pay you forever?
• How safe and accessible is my data?
• Will you continually update your software? But on my terms?
• If I commit to you, but you don’t live up to your SLA, can I easily take my data and move on to the next cloud ERP provider?

For years marketers have taken prescribed actions immediately upon observing particular triggers, in most cases some form of customer engagement sort of a phone call, purchase or direct mail inquiry. Of course, before the general public introduction of the internet  these kind of automatically approved activities took some time to reach the customer often weeks or more as we were conditioned to “permit 6-8 weeks for delivery” of our rebates, rewards and perhaps particular products and services. Today we're much less patient as customers and are demanding that even our small, local businesses react to our demands immediately.

A business cannot live by one outbound communication per year.  Chances are good you have probably wondered about your own communications strategy. Are you communicating enough?

Think about how many times during the year/quarter/month a customer needs you, or your products or services, and let that be your guide to determining how often to reach out and touch your audience. Think of this number as a minimum, then build from there.

Your business could be a marketing consulting firm, a software company, a nonprofit, an educational institution, a car dealership, a florist, a restaurant, a vineyard, a rock and roll band--you name it! Success and profitability is all about creating loyal customers (e.g. clients, users, donors, buyers, diners, drinkers, and fans) and driving interest, repeat business, and referrals.

Since it is roughly six to 12 times less expensive to sell to an existing customer than it is to acquire a new one, the value of customer loyalty and repeat business is just too compelling to ignore.

You have diligently gone through the process of establishing which of your subscribers are actually inactive and more importantly why. There could be a number of reasons for this, but one of the most likely is that your content simply isn’t interesting enough to grab their attention, either in the subject line or in the body of your emails. These are the subscribers that you want to target your re-activation campaign at.

Re-engaging (re-activating) your subscribers is a good idea for a number of reasons. Firstly, the process costs less than if you were to try and acquire new subscribers. Also, having inactive subscribers on your list can harm your reputation and deliverability. This is because client interaction is becoming increasingly important in the filtering decisions with ISP’s. With the aim of identifying spammers, these ISP’s turn old email addresses in to ‘spam traps’ or ‘honeypots’ and monitor email marketers that constantly send emails to these invalid addresses.

Every business, every industry faces attrition. Customers leave for a variety of reasons which are easily recognizable. For example, customers stop purchasing disposable diapers when their children no longer require a diaper, automobile owners may no longer patronize the car dealership when the warranty is no longer in effect. A competitor's new products might cause unforeseen churn. While there are many logical, rational and understood reasons that a customer leaves a company it is the silent attrition which can be the most devastating in this economy.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the only driver for cloud computing adoption was cost saving. In actual fact there are numerous benefits of cloud computing driving its adoption worldwide.

Research from Gartner forecasts that cloud computing will make up 20% of all IT budgets in 2012.

Growth in cloud-based business solutions is usually credited to its lower total cost of ownership (TCO) delivered when compared with traditional on-premise models. Certainly the cost savings available to business taking up cloud computing were an invaluable marketing tool, particularly against the economic backdrop of the Global Financial Crisis in the late 2000s. But whilst cost effectiveness is a compelling reason for its adoption, there are many other equally persuasive advantages offered by the technology.

In a supermarket, more than 90% items are recognized by barcode reader / scanner. We have all noticed that, whenever the cashier of the supermarket scans a barcode using a laser device, item description and price appears in the computer screen. Do you know how the magic works?

A barcode, is a code using multiple lines and spaces of varying widths, designed to represent some alpha-numeric characters. The barcodes generally are read with a laser scanner, which measures reflected light and interprets the code into numbers and letters. The barcode scanner passes the data to the attached computer or stores it to it’s internal memory.

While reading articles on Toyota's Production System I came across the term Kanban. Kanban is derived from the combination of two Japanese works, "Kan" meaning visual and "ban" meaning card or board. Kanban is a process relating to lean and just in time production, it is a scheduling system that helps determine what to produce, when to produce and how much to produce. Kanban maintains inventory levels by sending visual signals for production and delivery of new shipment as material is consumed.  The signals are tracked through the replenishment cycle and bring extraordinary visibility to suppliers and buyer.

The Kanban system was developed by Toyota after they observed how supermarkets operated in United States. Toyota observed that the supermarkets only stocked items that they believed they could sell, and the customers only took what they needed. Toyota decided to adapt this process in the production system, considering themselves as customers of their suppliers and their suppliers as stores. Toyota would go to its suppliers and only get what it needed, and the suppliers would then restock.

On a global level, procurement organizations are evolving with the ever-changing world to continue to deliver value to their business. Today, the goals of procurement departments go well beyond simple monetary advantages, despite facing numerous thresholds such as: supply market volatility, supply chain disruptions, rising costs of raw materials, and talent shortages. These challenges are only increasing in volume and strength, forcing procurement organizations to continue to transform and help power their business through the setbacks.

According to a study by My Purchasing Center, research put out by consulting, technology service, and outsourcing giant, Accenture, procurement leaders are changing their strategies. The study says these forerunners are “transforming procurement from a cost-focused function to one that adds new levels of value, reflecting the mastery they have achieved across six measures.” The study focused on mastery behavior in strategy, sourcing and category management, supplier relationship management, requisition to pay processes, technology enablement, and workforce and organizations.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is a core system for mid-sized businesses and above in many industries, particularly those with manufacturing and inventory management requirements. Here’s a quick overview of some important ERP benefits that your business can achieve.

Product companies are facing significant challenges. Complex global supply chains have become the norm. Social data has changed the way people communicate. Supply chain velocity has exploded. Shorter order runs, compressed innovation cycles, faster decision making, on the spot judgment calls: companies have no choice but to move faster.

Most companies understand that cloud services can save money and provide good service levels.  Nucleus Research found that cloud applications deliver 1.7 times more ROI than on-premise applications.  So if you haven’t moved your ERP to the cloud yet, it’s for reasons other than ROI. But three other strategic capabilities should get you thinking:  the ability to collaborate, greater operational agility, and deeper visibility.

The complex B2B sale has some unique characteristics: higher average value, longer sales cycles, and a number of participants in the purchase process. And it is increasing in complexity. Buyer behaviour in B2B has changed dramatically in the past 5 years as the internet redefines how companies buy goods and services. Buyers are doing most of their initial research online before initiating conversations with vendors and are better informed at an earlier stage. Buyers are also more difficult to reach because of the increasing volume of electronic communications they receive. Traditional marketing and sales techniques are less effective for these reasons. We're moving from a focus on 'outbound' techniques like press advertising, mail shots and cold calling, to 'inbound' techniques based on websites, online ‘pay-per-click’ advertising and ‘content-based’ marketing. The changes present a threat to companies who don't adapt quickly to the new environment, but they offer a huge opportunity for those who learn how to use their online presence to generate demand effectively. The real promise of the new era of marketing and sales is the ability to use automated, repeatable processes to scale up the generation of high-quality sales leads - what we call 'demand generation' – leading to corresponding increases in sales conversions and revenue.

In the present stressful work environment, vacation trips are usually pushed off merely because people don’t have the time to devise a holiday and mistakenly believe that a travel agent is simply too expensive. While using the help of effective email marketing software, you can offer holiday possibilities and proposals to a large database without breaking your marketing budget. Email newsletters and reminder emails can ignite the imagination of thousands of possible clients and demonstrate how useful and essential your services are.

Email newsletters can deal with a wide range of different ideas rapidly, thereby attracting a much broader audience than a more targeted and inflexible marketing campaign. In the newsletter, you'll be able to discuss  affordable family holidays and discount last minute getaways as well as highlight luxury destinations, thus reaching clients of all economic levels. Additionally, you'll be able to use the newsletter to give travel tips and engaging stories, making the newsletter a pleasure to read to ensure that your communications are not only sought for within the  barrage of emails but also passed directly to others.

Lead management has become a basic necessity for marketing purposes. B2B marketing departments, thorough as they are with their motives of accentuated investment returns, encourage the employment of an optimized lead management process. Nurturing your leads on a mass scale will not provide you with the sales figures that you have been aspiring for. Because each prospective lead’s requirements differ you need to customize your lead nurturing plans accordingly to achieve the maximum.

The lead management lifecycle is a known fact — capturing, nurturing, scoring, timing the leads when they are sales ready and evaluating. An effective lead management helps you to identify the needs of your customers and close the sales deals efficiently. There are different sources of communication, such as the email, phone, social media, etc., where you can meet your prospective customers. Strike and build a relationship with them and nurture them by providing them with research materials and statistics so that they can come to a conclusion regarding the products they want to purchase.

CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, as a technology solution and application is not simply a product to be purchased with associated benefits enjoyed. CRM, in this light, is a business system that integrates and enhances a customer centric business plan of a given organization. A precursor to gaining a quality CRM application is the complete understanding of HOW the organization operates and interacts with customers. Most businesses have a clear picture of how they are supposed to run, but with a complete process review (the initial stage of any successful CRM implementation) often shows that the “what is” is separated from the “what was intended.” In many instances, this helps companies realign themselves or see better ways of accomplishing goals. Either way, productivity increases and management gets a better view of the actual corporate operations and a 360 degree view of the customer relationship.