2 Babes Talk Supply Chain

Diane has worked in supply chain for 25 years. Her career has taken her from Ireland, to Australia, China and finally California. She started her work in travel management and eventually fell in love with designing business systems, logistics and leveraging technology to improve supply chain. Thanks to her upbringing, Diane isn’t someone who shies away from making her voice heard and being a leader. Early on in her career she worked hard to create a culture where the team provided regular feedback which in turn helped her become a better leader. Her objective has always been to find someone to replace her position once she moves on, so the team can thrive without her. To Diane, success is her client’s success. This is what gives her a sense of fulfillment and encourages her to keep working. Her advice to other leaders is to hire people who have initiative, who are ambitious and inherently curious. She also places a lot of emphasis on being able to admit mistakes, and knowing that one cannot grow without first

Mike works for Apex, the third largest freight forwarder in the world and number one forwarder transporting products from China. In 2019 they flew 500 charter flights, and have grown by $1 billion in 10 years! Apex transports all types of products, from high tech, to retail, to ecommerce. They have charters that transport over 100,000 kilos and their planes can reach every corner of the planet. How have they adapted to the current crisis? Apex has been instrumental during the pandemic: they’ve offered space on aircrafts to government response teams, have transported PPE products to many countries and played a big role in protecting front line workers. Do they have a secret to success? Mike says that Apex focuses on growth by adding talent that shares the same vision as them. From the words of their customers, this is what makes them a company that “always finds a way to get things done” and are able to find unique solutions to problems. Having invested in tech early on, Apex has been able to pivot more easil

The biggest challenge in industrial manufacturing is customer acquisition and retention. When it comes to marketing in the traditional world of Industrial manufacturing many companies see marketing as a cost center rather than an investment. This means marketing budgets are given low priority, especially during a recession when in reality marketing should be at the forefront of any strategy because it will set you apart from your competitors and keep your brand top of mind. In the long run, this ends up being more expensive, since companies need to start from ground zero when the market picks up. Only some companies are realising that marketing is the key to future success - especially when trying to get through a revenue plateau. Christopher realised this was an issue and started helping more industrial companies with their marketing. His system focuses on creating momentum, producing value and building a community before launching a product or asking customers to buy. Consistency and the long play is what

Anju is the product manager at Coupa Software, an all-in-one business spend management platform. In today’s Women in Supply Chain series, Anju tells us how she got into supply chain, the valuable lessons she learnt from failure and why it’s important to put a focus on diversity. Anju moved from working in the corporate world at Oracle to a fast paced beauty startup. She was passionate about understanding the various pieces, solving business problems and growing both as a person and in her career. She says it’s important to be flexible, say yes to opportunities and be willing to take a leap into the unknown; this is what got her to where she is now. Our world has never been so diverse and inclusive, and yet there is still a lot of work to do. Anju explains why it’s important to have role models to look up to, and that in order to move the needle of diversity we need to encourage more discussions, be aware of our biases and lead with empathy. Her advice to other women in supply chain: think about what you want

How does replenishment work in your warehouse? It is probably very manual, lots of paperwork and different stakeholders involved making it impossible to be be agile and efficient. Because of that I thought it was important to introduce you to a company that is revolutionizing this. Andrew is the CEO of ShelfAware, a company that helps suppliers see in real-time what is on their customers’ shelves through hardware tracking RFID technology. This technology allows companies to see the exact moment a customer takes an item off the shelf, how many items they take and how much is needed to replenish stock. Using RFID technology together with real-time software means that suppliers can easily replenish stock without worrying about waste, workers don’t have to waste time counting items and companies can gather data on their customer habits. From a cost effective standpoint, everyone wins. ShelfAware works as a 3rd party SaaS (Software as a service), so they don’t need to touch the product at any point in the supply c

Alloy was founded 4 years ago when Joel and his co-founders realized there was a huge lag between supply chain and the retail industry. From the very beginning, the company focused on customer centricity and invested most of its resources into R&D. Now, Alloy helps everything from small companies to Fortune 500s optimize their supply chain by connecting their data to customer demand. Focusing on customer experience for not only their customers but their customers, customer has been their key to success in this very competitive landscape of supply chain technology. The main challenge when it comes to retail supply chain is the huge shift in consumer habits, partly due to e-commerce. Nowadays, consumers expect a seamless customer experience, an infinite amount of stock and personalized offers. However, realizing that that there is a direct mis match between customer demands and retail distribution, Alloy were really able to dive deep into this challenge and come up with solutions that are not seen on the ma

Today’s special episode features Scott and Greg from Supply Chain Now! Scott, Greg and Sarah have a lively discussion about whether we are seeing the death of the end-to-end supply chain. You will also hear about how the circular economy and supply chain is the answer plus how the role of sustainability will play out with consumers and the future of consumerism. Organizations have spent a lot of time and money trying to perfect their end to end supply chain, but Greg says the circular supply chain is here to stay. The circular supply chain consists mainly of turning waste into opportunity. As the world’s resources become increasingly limited, companies are having to look for other ways to source and distribute their products and services. This, together with a huge shift in consumer behaviour towards sustainable practices, means companies will soon have no other option but to adopt a circular mindset. How can companies adopt a more sustainable supply chain? Sarah talks about collaborating with startups in or

Angie has worked in supply chain all her life, with her earliest career memories involving a master thesis and meeting Ted Ruhly, the CEO of Maersk. Since then, Angie has continuously sought career growth and built extensive experience within the industry. Featuring Angie in our "women in supply chain" series has a personal significance to Sarah and is a career highlight for Angie with all her hard work in helping to close the gender gap. In this episode, Angie talks about the guidance she received from her father, why she is passionate about this industry and how the people make all the difference. Angie’s main challenge in supply chain was the pushback she got from colleagues and coworkers when she advocated for change and innovation. Angie knows that disruption is what encourages progress, but it can be difficult to implement when leaders are being pulled in so many different directions. As a woman in supply chain she has worked hard to challenge the status quo at all times in her career in order to encour

With procurement departments finding themselves lean and mean these days, where are you spending gaps? Are you leaving money on the table? You might be, so what are you going to do about it. Some of your biggest savings lie within your nuisance expenses like uniform, waste disposal and pest control services and you may be like many other procurement departments that only review these expenses every few years. Rich Ham from Fine Tune is here to tell us why we should reconsider that strategy and how his company helps companies save money by optimizing those difficult-to-understand expenses. The current challenges of procurement professionals are that expense categories are segmented, some requiring much more management than others. This means that many business strategies leave money on the table, waste time and energy and don’t allocate resources adequately. With Fine Tune, companies can outsource all the complex, confusing expense management processes and focus on their core competencies and as Rich says “off

What does your digital future look like? That is the question on everybody's mind as tech changes on a daily basis, In Sweetbridge's episode in 2019 Scott said the knowledge base is changing every 1.5 years. Diane is the Vice President of Omnichain, a company that offers end to end supply chain solutions to companies looking to optimize workflow, manage different channels and orchestrate correct supply strategies. They are the partner for the future. Currently, many team members of companies need to manually add data into systems, losing information, accuracy and time.  This is because the supply chain industry is still very fragmented, with organisations struggling to connect and collaborate. Omnichain’s platform describes itself as a digital supply chain fit for the future, thanks to its better forecasting, operations system and proactive push model. Omnichain’s solution is what distinguishes it from its competitors; no need to download or integrate anything, everything can be done directly within the platf

Procurement Foundry is an online private community for people working in supply chain. Mike founded this community when he knew he needed a safe place to network and discuss challenges with other professionals, but didn’t have the time or energy to go to regular networking events. Procurement Foundry now has over 2,000 highly engaged members with 20 chapters in the world. How can you join Procurement Foundry? If you’re a professional working in supply chain, you can head to the website and fill in their membership request form. Then, your application is vetted and processed by a team to make sure you’re not a consultant or salesman. Once in, you have access to several discussion channels, job boards and even virtual meeting rooms. Mike says that Procurement Foundry has a huge amount of potential he hadn’t foreseen when he first started the community. First of all, the huge amount of empathy amongst the members means people are willing to share templates, strategies and advice to other professionals. Secondly,

Akshay is the co-founder of Terminal 49, an online platform that helps importers, trucking companies and brokers track all their container movements. In the container world, things are still being done as they were 10 years ago. Terminal 49 aims to simplify global trade with much more efficient workflows. Visibility is a big challenge in supply chain: truckers, shipping companies and freight forwarders don’t communicate effectively and lack collaboration. Everyone’s solving a different problem, there’s a lack of education and cooperation is non-existent. This disconnect is what Terminal 49 aims to resolve. Akshay provides us with two excellent examples of a shipper and a broker. Before using Terminal 49’s dashboard, this shipper had several spreadsheets used for forecasting reports, ETAs and container management. When an incident happened, all information had to go through several different people in the chain. Now, with an all-in-one dashboard, the shipper can easily track every container and keep on top of

Supply Chain can change the world Elizabeth got into supply chain after discovering her love for writing so she fell in love with the supply chain industry. That makes Elizabeth perfect for our Women in Supply Chain feature on the podcast for the month of March because Beth believes that this industry truly has the power to make the world a better place and that is why she has stayed working with ASCM for over 16 years. Global is where is it at What is the future for supply chain media? Rennie believes that there’s a trend for high quality content that’s not focused on day to day tasks, but instead on more important global issues. She’s contributed herself by working with Mr Supply Chain (Daniel Stanton) and his book titled Supply Chain Management for Dummies. Elizabeth is also very proud to have contributed in-depth interviews with successful women in supply chain, and believes these are great opportunities for women to learn from each other. No longer the only Woman in the room In terms of diversity, Elizab

The damage and loss of products in supply chain cost the industry billions of dollars every year. That’s a huge amount of money and waste in products that are being thrown out -  That's the issue Spotsee is tackling with their product: indicators that track and record data such as temperature, tilt and impact throughout a shipment journey. There are a lot of challenges in this area that supply chain professionals are facing, Angela talks about the top realities companies are facing and how exactly Spotsee can help you save time, money and waste. Spotsee allows companies to be proactive rather than reactive when it comes to damaged products. Instead of receiving damaged products, blaming the shipment company and filing an insurance claim, companies can now collaborate with the freight forwarders to determine why and how the damage happened and work on fixing the problem together, all based on data. These monitoring programs reduce damage to 40%, which can translate into tens of thousands of dollars saved for c

Meet Catapult, an intuitive digital platform that helps businesses make decisions based on freight rates. The founders were tired of the manual process of keeping track of rates through word documents, excel spreadsheets and decided to build a solution to help manage all the different rates from different carriers. What does all this technology mean for your business? Virgil Ferreira, the CEO of Catapult joins us to talk about how their platform helps businesses see rates from different carriers including ocean, air and ground, giving logistics providers more visibility into their rates so they can increase their margins. A Challenge that logistics providers face is that they don't have access to industry data but Catapult changes that as providers can also compare their own data with industry data and see it all in a standard, easy-to-use view. The biggest challenge logistics providers face is understanding how to get the best market rate. With Catapult, businesses can use the tool to see the gaps in their s

BEHIND THE SEAMS - Suuchi Ramesh is a software engineer with a background in supply chain, she is also the founder and CEO of a tech company that is bringing supply chain and fashion together called, Suuchi. Suuchi is the next generation technology platform for fashion, managing everything from design through distribution. The main challenge the fashion industry faces is that the entire supply chain needs to be unbelievably fast, diversified and efficient. Suuchi helps companies get to the next level by taking care of the back end, and letting companies focus on what they do best: scaling the brand. Suuchi helps companies diversify the supply chain by digitizing the entire process, because all brands must start thinking of supply chain as a strategic competitive advantage What sets them apart? Transparency. They’re able to track and trace every process in the supply chain, which allows them to provide their customers with truly data driven solutions. Suuchi has the flexibility to work with all size of compan

Claudia is our Women in Supply Chain Feature for February and is someone who enjoys life to the fullest. Her attitude is: family first, career second and community third. She graduated in engineering, joined IBM, ran an entire supply chain, worked in GE Healthcare and is now working in supply chain for Google. Her career has been a huge adventure, and today she shares some of the nuggets of wisdom she’s learned over the years. She’s had many challenges in her career as a female on a supply chain team, but it’s her positive attitude and openness to taking care of others that helped her get to where she is now. She’s really had to push for opportunities, and has seen the industry evolve over the 36 years that she’s been working in supply chain. Things are getting better, with now 25% of leadership positions held by women. Claudia works hard to educate leaders and encourage the right conversations about diversity and openness. What about supply chain? Claudia explains that companies aren’t using data as they sho

Anthony is the president and CEO of UNA, a dynamic group that works with procurement managers, business owners and executives to save money, time and effort. How? Through Collaboration, partnerships, software and strategy. Una offers a consolidated approach to procurement with a mission is to support sourcing and procurement heros in the supply chain industry. They’re all about collaboration, a top down approach and an emphasis on culture. They believe in empowering and giving a voice to professionals by acting on accurate and well analyzed data. As an example, just one of the ways Una gets involved is by helping professionals negotiate solid contracts and develop key relationships with suppliers. How are they so successful? They understand that their solution is not a fit for everybody. They position themselves more as a dietitian rather than a broker - meaning they assess the problem, procure the trust and work with their partners in a solution driven environment based strictly on what works best in their s

Today we have a special treat: Last week I joined Daniel Stanton, Mr Supply Chain on his Linkedin page to do a Live about our 10 ten social media tips and today, we are releasing the recording to our community as well! Daniel is a top influencer in the global supply chain community: the author of Supply Chain for Dummies, publisher of 10 supply chain courses on LinkedIn Live and over 35,000 followers on LinkedIn! In our live we discuss top social media tips for professionals in the supply chain industry. Why care about social media? Social media is a great way to build a professional network. It’s also an amazing way to learn more about your industry, as well as share what you know yourself. And of course, if you do it well, it’s a lot of fun. When getting started with social media, it’s important to pick a platform where you feel the most comfortable. This could be Twitter for engaging conversations, or LinkedIn for B2B communication. Daniel emphasizes the importance of finding your tribe and building a netw

Rebecca is Vice President of customer success at E2open, the largest software and information provider for the shipping industry. They’re already connected to over 100,000 supply entities, 35,000 shippers across 177 countries and perform 8 billion transactions per year. In other words, they know what they’re doing when it comes to supply chain and they help to unleash business potential in every company they work with. Rebecca explains that companies in 2020 should focus on embedding technology and AI, and learn how to leverage real time channel data. Instead of just following the trends and buzzwords, companies should put an emphasis on understanding the best way to leverage technology, since it’s not a one size fits all solution. This means understanding what to do with data and how to use it appropriately. Another issue that will be affecting supply chains globally is Brexit. E2open offers a unique solution called “Brexit ready in one day” that prepares companies for the potential impacts of Brexit. What m