The Brief – July 2016

Profitable Fulfillment: Part One — The Opportunity

By Bill McBeath

Thursday, July 28, 2016

Today’s customers demand not just rapid fulfillment, but unique personalized fulfillment approaches with different requirements by sector, channel, and customer. The big challenge is doing it economically, efficiently, and profitably. In this series we explore four different approaches to achieving profitable fulfillment, managing the complexities of multi-tier, multi-partner fulfillment networks. [ Read: Profitable Fulfillment: Part One — The Opportunity ]

Pallet-level Monitoring for the Fresh Food Supply Chain

Freshness of produce is a key competitive battleground for grocers. The common practice is to monitor the temperature of the field, cooler, trailer, and warehouse. By instead monitoring the temperature within each pallet—from the moment it is picked in the field until the end delivery at the retailer—smarter decisions can be made, based on that information, and losses can be cut in half for both the grower and the grocer. [ Read: Pallet-level Monitoring for the Fresh Food Supply Chain ]

The Network Trend in Retail

Networks are all the buzz. But there are differences. Who, what and why are still those questions that need to be asked as you join up into a Retail Network solution.
Recent changes at GT Nexus/Infor, Descartes, e2open and others who support Retail/CPG and the implication for business processes. [ Read: The Network Trend in Retail ]

Inforum 2016 — Diverse Innovation on Display

At Inforum, we got a good sense of the energy, innovation, and ability to evolve that is keeping Infor competitive. [ Read: Inforum 2016 — Diverse Innovation on Display ]

Tradeshift’s Disruptive Potential

Tradeshift certainly has no shortage of ambition and big ideas. They started off as an invoice and payables automation network, then a procure-to-pay solution, then an extensible buy-side platform for source-to-pay and more. Now they are rolling out a platform providing on-demand, combination machine learning/AI/human concierge skilled services—initially for T&E procurement, but immediately after that for a much broader set of BPO services and much more. [ Read: Tradeshift’s Disruptive Potential ]