Perfecting the customer’s last mile delivery experience can be achieved by reducing logistics complexity and increasing efficiency, while controlling costs.
Wholesale Distribution
Wholesale distribution across all industries
Geospatial Intelligence: Part Three – Distribution Network Planning, Logistics and Route Optimization, and Supply Chain Risk Management
Geospatial intelligence is vital to successful distribution network planning, logistics/route optimization, and supply chain risk management. Optimizing a distribution network requires location-related data such as consumption patterns by location and drive times from DC locations. Route optimization requires accurate maps, vehicle locations, and traffic patterns. Supply Chain risk involves knowing the actual location of production and sources of supply and tracking relevant events around the world.
Multifaceted Businesses: Part One – Evolving Business Models
Manufacturers and wholesale distributors are evolving from primarily or exclusively selling physical products, to more diverse business models, providing a variety of services and outcomes. Here we discuss what is driving this evolution, including the emergence of the Outcome Economy.
End-to-End at E2open
At the recent E2open Leaders’ Forum, we learned more about their vision, approach, and roadmap to providing a comprehensive end-to-end platform and network. Recent acquisitions have punctuated the differences in strategy from other network platform providers.
Digital Supply Chains: Part Three – Delivery Management, Contract Management, Procure-to-Pay
A fully digital supply chain extends to delivery to the home or business. It also encompasses contract management and procure-to-pay. We look at examples in these areas.
How Some Manufacturers and Distributors Are Thriving in the Age of Amazon: Part One – Differentiating
Amazon (and others) have profoundly raised customer expectations for frictionless commerce, fast-free delivery, and nearly infinite selection. This impacts not just retailers, but manufacturers and distributors as well. Here we explore three examples of companies thriving in this competitive environment by differentiating with unique services and experiences.
JDA’s Journey to a Global Optimization Platform – Highlights from Focus 2018
The mood at this year’s JDA Focus (their annual conference) was optimistic, coming off of healthy growth last year, with tons of new innovations, and major R&D investments underway. Here we cover the highlights, including their ‘moon shot’, the Autonomous Supply Chain.
Enabling Growth: More Than Just a Tagline for NetSuite
At this year’s SuiteWorld conference, we heard about new developments and numerous customer examples showing how NetSuite enabled their growth.
Leveraging the Legacy – Infor Continues to Invest in the Latest Technologies While Capitalizing on Their Heritage
At Infor’s Innovation Summit for Analysts, we heard about their new data lake, investments in artificial intelligence, retail, manufacturing, and distribution. Here we cover some of the highlights.
Crossover Businesses: Part One – How a Business Changes When it ‘Crosses Over’ to Combine Manufacturing, Distribution, and Retail
As the lines between manufacturers, wholesale distributors, and retailers are increasingly blurred, it impacts the basis of competitiveness, business models, processes, services, and systems. In this series, we explore what happens when businesses ‘cross over’ to become a combination of manufacturer/distributor/retailer.
Advanced Pool Distribution: Part One – How Pool Distribution Works
Pool distribution is a key part of the equation for retailers trying to achieve excellence in store replenishment and omnichannel fulfillment, at the lowest costs. In part one of this series, we examine how pool distribution works and summarize the key difference between advanced vs. basic pool distribution.