[From iSource Business, February/March 2003] Never short on opinion and the drive to be the best professionals in their industry, the "Pros to Know" of the last few years have thrived on the adventures of the New Economy and, lately, the challenges of a slumped economy.
With the arrival of 2003, and with even greater resolve to move their organizations forward through these challenging times, this year's Pros are nothing short of being "Problem-solving Whiz Kids."
First, these problem-solving Pros face their challenges head-on. Whether it's the market's continuing economic struggles or the industry's lack of confidence in business ethics and accountability, our leaders are attacking the challenges with solid solutions.
Next, typical Pros take control. They examine all facets of the challenge they face, and then they decide what aspects should be tackled first. If you talk with this group of professionals they'll tell you they ask themselves a series of questions, beginning with, "What's best to remedy first?" They look for deadlines that can be extended, alternative technologies and whether or not the main structure of their plan works in the given environment.
Also, the typical Pro separates fact from fiction. When adversity arises, others may react with knee-jerk assumptions, but not a Pro. Instead, Pros seek out the facts, involve key stakeholders and get everyone's professional input for the challenges that inevitably lay ahead.
Finally, the typical Pro takes action. Having gathered the necessary tools and put them in place, the Problem-solving Whiz Kid takes the most reasonable action to turn things around.
Within this framework there are several ongoing issues that make an individual worthy of being identified as one of iSource Business' Pros to Know. First, our Pros are still spearheading and initiating supply and demand chain projects to advance their organizations' competitiveness, even while corporate finance must tighten the belt. Almost all of this year's honorees, as in the past, have at least 15 to 20 years of experience in their respective fields, and they know and practice solid business strategy.
Selecting the Pros was no less difficult this year than last. With a year's worth of in-depth supply and demand chain research and investigative journalism at our fingertips, it seemed natural to turn first to the writers of that editorial. We asked our writers to look back over their year of frontline reporting and nominate the most inspiring sources, most knowledgeable gurus and most dedicated proponents they had found. In addition, the iSource editorial staff and advisory board gathered to nominate those outstanding conference speakers, supply and demand chain management icons, or prestigious analysts that had crossed our radar screens over the past year. Every year hundreds of criteria forms are sent out. Also this year we gave our readers a chance to nominate the people they thought were most deserving of the award via our Web site, iSourceonline.com.
As nomination forms poured back in, the iSource editorial staff began a strict series of selection phases. Among the top elements factored into the selection: the candidate's fundamental participation in the development and execution of a supply and demand chain enablement initiative at a traditional brick-and-mortar company, the candidate's breadth of supply and demand chain knowledge and experience, and the candidate's continued participation in the future of supply and demand chain technology. (For a complete list of criteria, look for this article on iSourceonline.com.)
It is never easy to exclude people from a listing such as this, and inevitably, there will be those who were inadvertently overlooked. Nevertheless, we are extremely proud of this year's selection. 2003's Pros to Know are an increasingly diverse group of people with a broad range of field expertise. Leading by example, they offer other supply and demand chain professionals a rich perspective and progressive attitude toward new and emerging technologies. Bold, convicted and driven, these individuals will assuredly lead the industry to the next level in 2003 and we, at iSource, will eagerly follow.
Practitioner Pros to Know
Bob Barber
Senior Director of Corporate Purchasing
3Com
Barber established the worldwide strategic sourcing and procurement management team at 3Com, and over the past two years his group has combined innovative practices with new technologies to reduce the company's materials overhead cost to approximately 25 percent of the average for similarly sized organizations, reduce its supplier base by 80 percent, cut maverick spending by 90 percent and enable an electronic requisitioning process that now auto-releases 95 percent of all low-value purchase orders. In the process, the company was able to trim its purchasing organization's headcount from 43 to 14. Barber's philosophy on technology: "keep it simple." "Many solutions become so enamored with algorithms and complex solutions to multi-variable problems that execution becomes very difficult," he says.
R. Jerry Baker
Executive Vice President
MyGroupBuy Inc.
Continuing his long-established expertise in the purchasing and supply chain arena, Jerry Baker is a leading educator on purchasing, contract administration and logistics, having recently added international economics and management seminar courses to his teaching calendar. He conducts numerous distant learning courses. Perhaps his most notable achievement was his 20-year career as the executive vice president of the Institute for Supply Management (ISM). Today, Baker is helping to run MyGroupBuy, is a member of Perfect Commerce's advisory board and teaches at Shoreline Community College in Seattle, Wash.
Debra D. Bell
Chief Procurement Officer
AT&T
While leading AT&T's e-procurement initiative and its project to e-enable its full "order-to-payment" process, Bell has become an advocate of working closely with colleagues in operations, sales and marketing and other functions to re-engineer business processes and manage the changes necessary to streamline the company's supply chain. "Implementing enabling technology can't be an insular activity just guided and led by the procurement organization," Bell says. "It needs to be a partnered activity." A 19-year AT&T veteran, Bell was named 2001 Purchasing Executive of the Year by NAPM NJ, receiving the Crystal Award for her accomplishments as a purchasing executive.
David A. Cotteleer
Planning and Control Manager, Materials Management Group
Harley-Davidson Motor Co.
Over the past three years, while Harley-Davidson has seen shipments of its trademark motorcycles increase by almost one-third, Cotteleer has been keeping busy leading the development and implementation of the company's supplier extranet ("The Harley Davidson Supplier Network"), spearheading the development of a process to evaluate the financial viability of suppliers and driving additional strategic initiatives designed to strengthen Harley-Davidson's supply chain. He has also been a leader in enterprise materials management strategy development and maintenance, materials systems and process integration initiatives, and supply base diversity initiatives designed to develop minority- and women-owned suppliers. A co-leader of Harley-Davidson's Supplier Advisory Council, Cotteleer is responsible for financial control and management of the purchasing, logistics and distribution functions.
Jagdish R. Dalal
Principal
JDalal Associates
"If businesses do not re-engineer their supply chains with the technology that is available today, they will no longer be competitive," says Dalal, who practices what he preaches. As chief information officer and vice president of e-business at United Technologies' Carrier division, Dalal led the effort to connect the company to its distributors and dealers through
a B2B environment. Previously he led supply chain technology initiatives at Xerox and Unisys, and as a managing partner at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, he headed the team that outsourced the procurement process from Nortel Networks in 2000. Dalal formed JDalal Associates (www.jdalalassociates.com) in April 2002 to offer his own expertise to companies looking to outsource business processes.
Randy G. Darcy
Senior Vice President, Supply Chain
General Mills Inc.
General Mills' supply chain thrives under the watchful eye of Randy Darcy. His responsibilities include purchasing, grain merchandising, engineering, manufacturing, packaging, distribution and logistics an all-encompassing view that has allowed him to deliver over $600 million to General Mills' bottom line via lowered unit costs and his constant search for innovative ideas to improve all areas of the operation. Additionally, Darcy is credited with developing an online collaborative logistics network with companies like International Paper, Land O'Lakes and Nestle´.
Jim Duckworth
Vice President and Director, Supply Management
Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector (SPS)
In his eight years with Motorola, Duckworth has overseen the merger of the supply management operations from five separate entities into one global organization. Through this organizational redesign and the deployment of strategic teams, Motorola SPS, with a $2.5 billion annual spend, was able to reduce its supply base by 50 percent, doubled its historical cost savings rate and tripled raw material inventory turns. Duckworth emphasizes the value in making the supply management function a partner to other functions within the organization, noting that at SPS, "Supply management is now more integrated into the business."
Christopher J. Flum
Vice President, Supply Management
ThyssenKrupp Budd Co.
Being a successful, $2.5 billion dollar supplier to the automotive industry is more challenging than ever: increased competitiveness and expectations are the standard. That's why Christopher Flum, vice president, supply management at TK Budd, along with the company's sourcing teams, selected and use an e-procurement and sourcing enabler, driving 20 percent of the overall cost reduction efforts at the company. However, much more is achieved: Flum's leadership efforts have reduced sourcing cycles 25 to 75 percent, standardized the sourcing cycles, and enhanced supplier benefits and relationships. Flum a 17-year veteran in supply and materials management states, "Supply management processes and sourcing tools will only drive value and contribution if the company, sourcing leaders and suppliers are strategically aligned to common visions, goals and objectives."
Michele J. Flynn
President
Expense Management Solutions
While vice president of real estate and administrative services for Liberty Mutual, Flynn spearheaded the development of an award-winning e-procurement system and orchestrated a complete transformation of the company's procurement organization. "It was the first operational, full circle e-commerce solution of its time." Flynn, in founding Expense Management Solutions, now shares her visionary methods with other corporations, by delivering savings through innovative solutions for supply management infrastructures, processes, systems and policies. A frequent writer and speaker on supply chain topics, Flynn favors simplicity in solutions: "If the solution is easy to use, expedites the process and generates clear positive results, over time an organization will get most of the users to buy into the system."
Larry C. Giunipero, Ph.D., C.P.M.
I.S.M. Professor of Purchasing/Supply Chain Management
Florida State University
Academia is where the ideas that shape corporate behavior are being developed and debated and Larry Giunipero is in the thick of it. Previously employed by Westinghouse Electric Corp., as well as a consultant to several major corporations and the co-author of three textbooks, Giunipero says his main goal is to further knowledge to help students better understand and learn about the supply chain. In his classes he introduces them to the B2B Internet space and emphasizes the fact that technology is not a salvation when it comes to supply chains. "If you have a lousy organization or lousy skill sets, just bringing in technology is not going to make it better. The processes and the fundamentals and the skill sets have to change, too."
Ann Grackin
Former Vice President, Supply Chain Service
AMR Research
With more 20 years of high-tech industry experience, Grackin is a firm believer in using technology as a supply chain enabler, but she warns that too many enterprises have not given sufficient thought as to how they will implement the technology. "Expectations have been out of line and are still out of line," she says of companies that got caught up in the exuberance of the dot-com era only to turn away from technology when the boom went bust. "Today's negativity demonstrates that they still have not learned the right lessons," she says, "since there are a significant number of firms that have gotten extraordinary results and true business transformations with technology." Grackin is currently launching a supply chain firm called ChainLink, which will focus on global supply chain issues.
Keven Gray
Vice President of Corporate Strategy
Corporate United
Gray spent eight years directing sourcing at Bettcher Industries, and his early experience with online bidding and sourcing in the 1990s led him to become an evangelist for e-sourcing, speaking before dozens of local Institute for Supply Management chapters and at national conferences on the topic. Yet he remains pragmatic about the role of technology in improving the supply chain: "E-business tools enable supply chain professionals to institutionalize best practices and then accommodate constant incremental improvement discipline to the process improvement imperative," he says. His advice for would-be process enablers? "First, get CEO-level support, then make sure each process is sound before you e-enable it."
Betsy Harrington
Director, Procurement Solutions & Commercial Services
Alcoa Inc.
"It is all about breakthrough performance in saving money via total cost of ownership or improvements in efficiency," Harrington says of her work at Alcoa, where she leads the enterprisewide identification, development and deployment of solutions that support the company's supply management strategies. Alcoa is in the midst of an initiative to fully digitize the procurement function by deploying optimized processes, and under Harrington's leadership the company has been highly aggressive in pursuing change, opting to fast track mini-pilots or forgoing pilots altogether. "We do in days what others do in months, and we do in months what others do in years," she says. "We take calculated risks, and when we make mistakes, we use them to learn."
Ray Hill
Chief Procurement Officer
Pitney Bowes
Since joining Pitney Bowes in 1995, Hill spearheaded the implementation of e-business solutions throughout the company's purchasing function and has championed Pitney Bowes' collaboration with solution providers to develop such applications as supplier management software. His team's efforts are credited with generating in excess of $500 million in savings to the bottom line, shortening purchasing cycle times, reducing inventory by over $100 million and improving product quality and overall supplier serviceability. "Technology is a tool," he notes. "A company must still create the appropriate strategies for its product mix and then use technology to implement those strategies. The traditional purchasing matrix still applies in today's e-world, we just have better ways of making it work."
Henri Irrthum
Vice President, Global Sourcing and Logistics Services, and Chief Procurement Officer
DuPont
In his 33 years with DuPont, Irrthum has worked in the manufacturing, marketing and information technology sides of the business, in both Europe and the United States, giving him a broad perspective on the chemical giant's global operations. But since 1997 he has headed up the company's global sourcing efforts, becoming chief procurement officer in 1998. Overseeing DuPont's $15 billion annual spend on raw materials, supplies and services, as well as its $1.6 billion yearly spending on global logistics, Irrthum has spearheaded initiatives to introduce e-procurement into the organization, to Web-enable the company's purchasing and logistics processes and to drive increases in shareholder value by restructuring DuPont's sourcing process.
James M. Jordano
Director, Strategic Sourcing
United Technologies
Under relentless pressure to increase productivity, James Jordano has managed to keep ahead of the game. In fact, Jordano pioneered the use of reverse auction technology in the area of indirect sourcing. As a result, United Technologies became the first company to conduct reverse auctions, already sourcing over $200 million of its indirect goods and services online. Jordano preaches cost reduction to offset the current economic slump, since as much as 60 cents of every dollar that comes into a typical company's value chain is consumed by the purchase of goods and services. "Supply chain management is at the heart of our cost savings program. Every dollar we take out of procurement cost is a dollar more to the bottom line," he says.
Hau L. Lee
Thoma Professor of Operations, Information and Technology Graduate School of Business
Stanford University
He talks the talk and walks the walk when it comes to supply and demand chain management. Hau Lee not only teaches classes on such topics as supply chain management, inventory planning and manufacturing strategy, but he has also consulted extensively for such industry giants as HP, General Motors and SUN Microsystems; co-founded a demand chain optimization solution company; and is currently sitting on the board of various software companies. In addition, Lee is the founding and current director of the Stanford Global Supply Chain Management Forum, which is an industry-academic consortium to advance the theory and practice of global supply chain management. He sums it up by saying, "Supply chain management is the battlefield for competitiveness in this century"
Nancy Mailhot
Vice President Global Supply Chain
Phelps Dodge
Nancy Mailhot hit the ground running when she started working at mining and manufacturing leader Phelps Dodge in March 2001. The company was facing heavy business pressures, what with low copper prices, building inventories and high energy prices, so Mailhot made cost reduction her main focus. Since that time she has literally built the company's global sourcing organization from the ground up, and she developed a strategy to extract value from 100 percent of the company's spend. She said she always thought she'd try procurement for a couple of years and then move onto something else, but "I've been in this field now for 16 years it's the change in technology that keeps me here. I see lots of opportunity in this field going forward."
Edward J. Marien, Ph.D.
Director, Supply Chain Transportation, Purchasing and Supply Management Programs
University of Wisconsin-Madison
If there's one absolute in supply and demand chain management, it's that it's constantly changing. In response, Ed Marien is offering non-credit, continuing education programs for industry practitioners for manufacturers, distributors, retailers, carriers and third-party services providers so that they can stay at the top of their game. In addition, he has been employed in and consulted for organizations in supply chain, logistics, transportation, economics and business planning. In all things, he emphasizes the use of process improvement models along with practical tips and techniques for clients to build trading partner relationships.
Theresa Metty
Senior Vice President and Director, Worldwide Supply Chain
Motorola/Personal Communications Sector
In Theresa Metty's first two years at Motorola PCS she unified its supply chain operations, reconfiguring and optimizing them to serve the global consumer electronics business.
Her approach was to refocus the company's supply chain operations group to become a global competitive advantage for Motorola, offering expanded supply chain services to key customers. Her team conducted a brutally honest evaluation of PCS' supply chain systems and operations in comparison to the industry's best-in-class supply chain operations. She
is the first to say "We've come a long way in our first two years, but our transformation is not yet complete." Under Metty's leadership and encouragement, PCS has defined a transformation roadmap, leading the organization into what they've dubbed the "Next Generation Supply Chain," which is a continually revised and expanded roadmap for PCS' future supply chain growth.
Tim Minahn
Vice President, Supply Chain Research
Aberdeen Group Inc.
At Aberdeen, Tim Minahan provides the essential analysis of software and services needed to create the most competitive procurement, sourcing and supply chain management operations, focusing specifically on total cost management (TCM). He attempts to find the strengths and weaknesses of technology solutions and services by tracking things like spending analysis, procurement execution, contract management and supplier performance measurement technologies, as well as consulting with early implementers of the technology. Minahan is also a recognized expert on supply chain and technology issues, often appearing on CNN and ABC as well as in various publications to give his take on the industry. His current research efforts include managing Aberdeen's e-Sourcing Index, benchmarking supply-side contract management practices and examining the use of procurement and supply chain technologies within the public sector.
Pierre Mitchell
Vice President Research Fellow
AMR Research
With 15 years of industry and consulting experience in operations strategy, process redesign, and systems selection and implementation, Pierre Mitchell is one of the premier analysts in the supply chain industry. Prior to joining AMR, Mitchell gained practical experience by redesigning supply chains and implementing ERP systems for clients like Xerox, FedEx, Ford Motor Co., and Johnson & Johnson. In his current role at AMR Mitchell keeps the complicated IT and supply chain talk at the customers' level, helping practitioners to gain value and design efficient, competitive supply chains, as well as making sure vendors improve their products and value to their clients. In 2002, he produced the first major rating of strategic sourcing and e-sourcing vendors in which he cautions that, "Early e-sourcing adopters have garnered strong ROI, but lean e-sourcing products don't satisfy a bigger appetite to support complex sourcing processes."
Eric Morley
Director of Transportation Supply Chain Process
Best Buy Co. Inc.
Eric Morley joined Best Buy in 1987, and during his 15 years with the company he has served in such capacities as retail, risk management and logistics. Within logistics, Morley has been responsible for private fleet management, transportation operations, carrier management, vendor collaboration and supply chain management. Additionally, Morley and his team have helped Best Buy remain competitive by creating a more efficient supply chain; for the past two years they have been involved in the selection, system and process design, and implementation of Best Buy's transportation management and supply chain event management (SCEM) systems.
Sandra Morris
Vice President and Chief Information Officer
Intel Corp.
Not only is Sandra Morris Intel Corp.'s first-ever chief information officer, she is also responsible for the company's 2,000-person e-Business Group, which has the heavy responsibility of making Intel a "100 percent e-corporation." The numbers she's generated, and continues to generate, speak for themselves: Nearly 85 percent of the company's $26.5 billion in revenues were conducted online in 2001, reducing order errors by 75 percent. After Morris' group implemented real-time inventory management programs, Intel's factories can now make changes in as little as five days, as opposed to 35 days a few years ago. Also, the e-Business group enabled the company to reach a significant milestone in 2002, executing $5 billion in customer orders and supplier purchases using RosettaNet e-Business technology standards.
R. David Nelson
Vice President, Global Purchasing
Delphi Corp.
David Nelson is an industry veteran who began his career in the trenches at TRW where he gained foundational experience in various manufacturing, materials, sales and marketing positions, as well as purchasing. From there he served 10 years at Honda of America Manufacturing as vice president of purchasing, and later as senior vice president of purchasing and corporate affairs. During his tenure he saw the company's North American purchases grow from $600 million to $6 billion. However Nelson is probably most noted for the time he spent at Deere & Co., implementing world-class supply management processes and best practices. Today he is not only the vice president for global purchasing at Delphi, but Nelson is also a member of Delphi's Strategy Board and the executive champion for the company's purchasing task team.
Ron Nussle Jr.
Managing Director, Global Materials and Supply Chain
Lam Research Corp.
When Nussle joined Lam in October 2001, one of his first steps was to sequester his executive staff for a series of 10 back-to-back, half-day strategic planning sessions. The result: a five-step supply chain re-engineering process, a new four-pronged supply chain strategy and an 18-month implementation plan targeting cost and inventory reductions, organizational development and e-business implementations. To ensure the success of the company's supply chain initiative, Nussle has taken a "first things first" approach: "Lam did not put the cart before the horse. We worked on our people, business processes and objectives before beginning our e-business implementation." Nussle's prediction for the future of supply chain? Outsourcing. "Lam has outsourced things that people have only talked about," he says.
Helmut F. Porkert
Chief Procurement Officer
ChevronTexaco
At Chevron Corp., as well as the newly formed ChevronTexaco, Helmut Porkert has been consistent in his pursuit of cost savings and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) reductions. While at Chevron, Porkert leveraged the company's global buying power and established procurement and supply chain processes to realize major savings on Chevron's $10 billion to $15 billion annual expenditure for materials and services. Today he directs ChevronTexaco's global procurement, strategic sourcing, supplier management and integration activities, as well as supply chain management activities, for all of the company's worldwide operations. On top of that he is responsible for supporting all operating companies in delivering sustainable cost reductions for operating and capital expenses. In his free time? Porkert is a member of the board of directors at the National Minority Supplier Development Council, and also a member of the board of trustees for the Center for Advanced Purchasing Studies, among other pursuits.
Larry R. Smeltzer
Professor of Supply Chain Management
Arizona State University
It's hard to phrase it any better than Larry Smeltzer has already said of himself: "As a professor involved in research, consulting, training, writing and serving on several advisory boards, my total commitment has been directed toward assisting companies find strategies and tactics for implementing technology to improve supply chains." One could hardly fit all Smeltzer's accomplishments in this area into such a small space but, among other things, he has developed an implementation feasibility model for reverse auctions and assisted many companies with their change management initiatives. He says that advanced technological systems are absolutely essential to integrate complex supply chain systems. He adds: "More success will emerge as the software companies develop better technical capabilities and the supply chain managers are willing to implement proven capabilities."
Mark D. Steele
Vice President & Director Purchasing and Supply Management
Kennametal Inc.
Budget constraints haven't stopped purchasing and supply management model architect Mark Steele and his Team PSM at Kennametal from implementing "must have" solutions, making the company's supply chain highly competitive. By deploying a global Shared Services Purchasing and Supply Management structure, they we able to generate 5 percent aggregate price reductions that yielded $30 million in savings in under 30 months. Steel and Team PSM have also deployed a global matrix reporting structure, global data warehouse and reverse auction technologies, all of which have earned the company critical acclaim in the industry. Steele said he and his team have consistently pursued application service provider models that minimize capital investment and increase returns, generally in 12 months or less. "We as supply chain professionals are & expected to apply the best available technologies to achieve form, function and cost effectiveness in a defined environment."
Milton Young
Global Director, Strategic Sourcing Strategy and Planning
Whirlpool Corp.
In Young's view, supply chains offering competitive cost, quality and availability enable companies to compete in the marketplace, but winning supply chains provide superior capabilities in fulfillment and innovation. "These capabilities are only developed through close cooperation, coordination and effort between a company and its supply chain," says Young, who heads a group responsible for providing direction, pioneering solutions and evaluating and recommending e-procurement applications at Whirlpool. The next wave of supply management, he believes, will focus on driving lean thinking throughout the supply chain. "This will be a much more difficult effort, requiring capabilities, tools and a mindset that many companies do not have," he says, predicting that the coming transformation, while painful, promises benefits too large to ignore.
Provider Pros to Know
It's the proverbial chicken and egg question: Which came first, the practitioner, or the provider? No matter which you choose, there's no denying the fact that there are many talented, innovative folks in the industry who are coming up with the technology, software and ideas that are revolutionizing the way practitioners view their supply and demand chains and the way they make their companies more competitive.
We received many e-mails and forms from people nominating professionals that work for the provider side of the supply and demand chain equation.
We asked the potential candidates questions like, How has your organization taken a unique and revolutionary approach to e-business? and Tell us how you've attempted to provide clear ROI for your customers. Subsequently, the ones that stood out are true leaders in their field.
Behold, 2003's Provider Pros.
Orville Bailey
President, CEO and Co-founder
B2eMarkets
David Clary
Senior Vice President of Delivery and Operations
ICG Commerce Inc.
Mark Ferrell
Senior Principal
Technology Solutions Co.
Brent Habig
CEO
Tigris Consulting
Lisa Hamblet
Vice President, e-Commerce
Staples
Gary Massel
Chief Information Officer
Boise Cascade Office Products
Joseph N. Monaghan
Vice President, Technology Sales
American Express Corporate Services
Marc Osofsky
Vice President, Product Management
Frictionless Commerce
Dr. Richard Powers
CEO and President
INSIGHT Inc.
Pete Quigney
Vice President, Global Purchasing
EDS
Jay Reddy
Founder and Executive Chairman
MindFlow Technologies
Ruby Sahiwal
Chief Operating Officer
Ketera Technologies
Sanjiv Sidhu
Founder and CEO
i2
SELECTION CRITERIA
Practitioner Pros to Know
1.) Have you been credited with bringing about a transformation within your organization's supply chain through today's technology? If yes, describe your pioneering role in developing and implementing a supply chain initiative and/or solution in your organization.
2.) Briefly describe the influential role you had in pushing for technical innovation within your organization, especially as it relates to supply management functions.
3.) Briefly describe your pioneering role and/or personal effort to teach/educate as it relates to supply chain management and B2B e-commerce.
4.) Have you established a program for continued innovation in the supply chain enablement arena for your company? Yes______ No _______. If yes, please explain.
5.) Explain how the current software market is impacting the e-business world, specifically as it relates to supply chain enablement.
6.) How has your organization taken a unique and revolutionary approach to e-business?
7.) How is your supply chain management initiative integrated into your business model?
8.) What's your philosophy about technology enabling the supply chain?
9.) Explain in your own words why you think companies should take their supply chains seriously.
10.) What do you expect to be the next major trend in supply chain management?
Provider Pros to Know
1.) Have you been credited with bringing about a transformation within your customer's supply chain through your company's enabling software? (Customer testimonials, positive analyst reviews, writeups in more than one magazine) If yes, describe your pioneering role in developing and implementing a supply chain initiative and/or solution in your organization.
2.) Briefly describe the influential role you had in pushing for technical innovation within your customer's organization, especially as it relates to supply management functions.
3.) Briefly describe your pioneering role and/or personal effort to teach/educate as it relates to supply chain management and B2B e-commerce.
4.) Have you established a program for continued innovation in the supply chain enablement arena for your customer's company? Yes______ No _______. If yes, please explain.
5.) Tell us how you've attempted to provide clear ROI for your customers.
6.) Explain how the current software market is impacting the e-business world, specifically as it relates to supply chain enablement.
7.) How has your organization taken a unique and revolutionary approach to e-business?
8.) How does the technology you offer your customers reflect your company's business model?
9.) What's your philosophy about technology enabling the supply chain?
10.) Explain in your own words why you think companies should take their supply chains seriously.
11.) What do you expect to be the next major trend in supply chain management?
Editor's Note: iSource Business recognizes there are Pros that exist beyond the list our editorial staff and advisory board have compiled. If you know of a candidate, we encourage you to nominate them for 2004 by e-mailing Julie Murphree, editor-in-chief of iSource Business, at [email protected].
