GXS Insights: Enhancing Customer-Centric Supply Chains

	Select an Insights Edition Insights Index 1st Edition: Inside SaaS 2.0 2nd Edition: Navigating Cross Border Business Boundaries 3rd Edition: How to Increase ERP Success with B2B Integration 4th Edition: Enhancing Customer-Centric Supply Chains Market Research \| Industry Perspective \| Technology Perspective GXS Insights: Enhancing Customer-Centric Supply Chains GXS INSIGHTS GXS industry and technology experts are thought leaders in their fields. They conduct research, determine best practices and share their expertise. GXS maintains INSIGHTS as a service to customers and prospective customers to provide insight on critical business issues and technology. RSS Feeds Get GXS News via RSS Videos Customer-Centric Supply Chains With Martin Christopher Emeritus Professor of Marketing and Logistics at Cranfield School of Management Over 819 supply chain executives around the world were surveyed to gain an understanding of trends in customer-supplier relationships and supply chain technology. Listen to Martin Christopher share the key findings. » EDI - The Standards Deviation with Steve Keifer GXS VP of Industry and Product Marketing In theory standards such as EDI standardise data exchange between business partners in a supply chain. But in reality, there are many different variants of the EDI standards, many different ways to share EDI messages and many different interpretations of the standards. Watch Now » Pushing B2B Complexity to the Cloud with Steve Keifer GXS VP of Industry and Product Marketing A new model is emerging for managing B2B e-commerce complexity. Many leading manufacturing companies are seeking to push their B2B complexity into the cloud with a Managed Services model. Watch Now » Complexity in B2B Integration for Multi-National Corporations with Ryan Kraudel GXS Director of Product Management for Managed Services There are multiple dimensions of complexity that manufacturers are facing. Doing business across geographic regions, vertical industries and business processes each creates new levels of complexity. Watch Now » Webinar Customer-Centric Supply Chain Webinar With Martin Christopher Emeritus Professor of Marketing and Logistics at Cranfield School of Management Watch to the replay of the webinar in which Martin Christopher first announced the results of the Customer-Centric Supply Chain study. Watch Now » Resources » Authors Market Research Enhancing Customer-Centric Supply Chains by Martin Chrisopher, Emeritus Professor of Marketing and Logistics at Cranfield University An SCM World Study developed in partnership with GXS Traditionally, most supply chains have been designed from the factory outwards. In other words they were designed to enable the operations of the supplier to be optimised—particularly in terms of costs and efficiency. Now, with the change in the balance of power, the supply chain needs to be designed from “the customer backwards.” The implication of this is that companies have to move away from the one-size-fits-all mindset when it comes to supply chain design and instead recognise that key accounts will require customised solutions that meet their specific needs. Read more » Industry Perspective and Best Practices The Manufacturing Industry’s War Against Complexity by Steve Keifer The optimisation of supply chain partnerships, processes and technologies is a key factor in providing competitive advantage for large retailers and manufacturers. However, for the suppliers who sell to and sell through these large organisations, the effect has been anything but supply chain optimisation. No two customers approach supply chain optimisation in the same way. Consequently, suppliers are forced to support a myriad of different order forecasting, fulfillment and logistics processes and a wide variety of technology standards for visibility, collaboration and synchronisation. These manufacturers are in a battle against the growing complexity in their demand chains. Read more » Complexity in the US Apparel and General Merchandise Supply Chain by Steve Keifer To ensure consistent execution of preferred supply chain processes, the general merchandise and department store sector of the US retail industry has created a sophisticated system of performance incentives for suppliers. The performance management system manifests itself in the form of retailer compliance guides, which outline detailed rules for processes such as Floor Ready Merchandise and Cross Docking. Unfortunately, one of the key challenges is that there is very little consistency between the retailers on the specific metrics being tracked. A typical apparel supplier might have 10 retail customers each of which has 150 compliance guidelines, 5% of which change monthly. Read More » Supply Chain Complexity in the Automotive Industry by Mark Morley The automotive industry has a highly globalised and highly specialised supply chain to support vehicle production. Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) source sub-systems from Tier 1 suppliers who source component parts and raw materials from Tier 2 & 3 suppliers. Not only is the value chain complex, but the technology standards utilised to exchange information between buyers and suppliers are diverse and fragmented. ANX, ENX, JNX, OFTP, Galia, VDA, EDIFACT, ANSI X12 are some of the major vendors, network protocols and messaging standards utilised by the automotive supply chain. Read More » The Standards Deviation by Steve Keifer Someone once said, “The great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.” The quotation has been repeated for years, somewhat in jest, by various thought leaders in the technology and engineering industries. But it reflects a paradoxical challenge that exists with trying to standardise business processes and technology interfaces in a competitive marketplace. And the B2B e-commerce industry offers an excellent case study for exploring these challenges. Read More » Point of Sale Data Sharing — A Case Study in Standards Deviation by Steve Keifer Among supply chain experts there is almost universal agreement that the most important change manufacturers can make to their business models is to become more demand driven. A critical foundation of a demand driven supply chain is the ability to “sense” demand in the marketplace. Yet, despite the widespread agreement on the value of demand sensing for many years, the retail industry continues to struggle with information sharing strategies. One issue is the level trust between retailers and suppliers, who are increasingly becoming both partners and competitors. But trust is not the only barrier. Inconsistent technology practices add significant complexity to data sharing efforts as well. Read More » Technology Perspective and Best Practices How GXS Managed Services can Enhance Customer-Centric Supply Chains by Mark Morley One of the key findings from the SCM World study is the level of complexity customers are facing in their supply chains. Complexity can represent both a challenge and an opportunity. A number of leading manufacturing companies are viewing complexity as an opportunity for differentiation. How can technology be utilised to help manufacturers master complexity in their supply chains? A number of large manufacturers are turning to cloud-computing models offered by Managed Services providers to offer more customer-centric approaches to integration. Learn more » Complex Supply Chains Demand B2B e-Commerce Excellence by Steve Keifer Today’s complex supply chain processes cannot be supported without automation. The volume of products, orders, materials, invoices and payments simply is too large to process manually. Customers, suppliers, plants, warehouses and inventories are scattered across the globe, making paper-based business processes an unrealistic option. To manage the high transaction volumes demanded in today’s global supply chain, manufacturers are deploying sophisticated planning and execution systems. However, these applications require real-time information flows with high-quality data to be effective. Learn more » Executive Dialogue Blogs Customization of the Supply Chain—The Consumer Packaged Goods Perspective Retailers and consumer product suppliers are increasingly customizing their approach to gain competitive advantage. Examples of unique product configurations include multi-packs (same item in bulk), variety packs (mix of flavors of same item) and club sizes (packaging of complementary, but different items). Responding to retailer needs, Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies began to offer customized services such as specialized pallet configurations, vendor managed inventory and dedicated in-store support. Read More » Are Car Manufacturers About to Take Build-to-Order Mainstream? In the automotive market, build-to-order has been the preserve of the premium car manufacturers such as BMW, Audi and Mercedes. However due to the recent downturn in the economy the volume manufacturers such as Ford and GM are also having to think about introducing build-to-order inventory management systems. Read More »
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