Coordinating response across the supply network
You may have seen our recent announcement (it’s also covered here at SupplyChainer.com) describing a partnership with Solectron to promote greater coordination of responses across distributed supply networks. I think this is pretty interesting and significant so I wanted to comment a bit further.
Several years ago our primary customers were companies doing internal manufacturing. Many of these evolving leaders at the time were the large electronics manufacturing services (EMS) providers like Solectron, a global leader in the space. As companies increasingly were outsourcing their manufacturing to companies like Solectron, they found themselves right in the eye of the storm. That storm was one of constant change, demand changes coming from their brand owner customers, supply changes coming from their suppliers and product changes coming from all directions. As a result, our Response Management solutions have provided a significant competitive advantage by empowering the front-line decision makers in these organizations with the visibility and tools they need to quickly and accurately collaborate and respond to these changes.
If you switch to the brand owners, I witnessed that as many took their first steps into outsourcing, there was a bit of an implicit mindset that said “it’s not my problem anymore, that’s why I’ve outsourced it.” Over the years, as these brand owners have increased their outsourcing and seen rapid increases in the amount of change they themselves are experiencing, they’ve awakened to a much more involved and coordinated relationship with their outsourcing partners. They are, in essence, responsible for managing a virtual enterprise now with quality, customer satisfaction, shareholder accountability and, ultimately, their brand on the line based on their performance.
Along with this realization came the insight that brand owners need to be in a position to coordinate effective response to change across these virtual enterprises. Coordination is the key, as brand owners don’t want to micro-manage or take responsibility for the work they have outsourced. But they do want to ensure the outcomes that support their business objectives are realized.
Companies like Solectron are realizing this as well and taking proactive steps to ensure that happens. Solectron realizes that not only will their brand owner customers benefit by having greater visibility into their supply networks and better tools to respond to change, but so will Solectron who operates “downstream” from their customers and feels an even greater impact of changes that trickle down to them.
By working together, we can ensure that Solectron customers can not only leverage our product capabilities to respond better to change, but that they can do so with access to the key data they need from Solectron to gain the necessary visibility that their front-line decision makers need to coordinate a response.
At the end of the day, it’s all about increasing the effectiveness of both parties to improve customer satisfaction and reduce costs.
