I spent a few days this week at the SAP Insider Logistics and Supply Chain Management 2010 conference. I’ll share my takeaways from this event next week. In the meantime, here’s some of the news that caught our attention this week:

• RedPrairie to be acquired by New Mountain Capital
• Walmart Announces Goal to Eliminate 20 Million Metric Tons of Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Global Supply Chain
• WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy says trade can have a positive impact on job creation during economic downturn
• Integration Point & Samjong KPMG Advisory Form Strategic Relationship to Address Growing Free Trade Agreement Automation Needs in South Korea
• Descartes Unveils Latest Solution for Importers
• Crossgate Announces Global Reseller Agreement with SAP; Relationship Encompasses Next-generation B2B Strategy

When RedPrairie (an ARC client) announced back in November 2009 its intention to issue an IPO, some folks saw this as a signal the company wanted to get bought. RedPrairie (RP) maintains that it was serious about going public, but the company also confirms that several suitors knocked on its door after the IPO announcement. Francisco Partners had owned RedPrairie since 2005, and since the investment cycle for many VCs is five to seven years, the time to exit had come.

Over the past five years, Francisco Partners had financed several large and small acquisitions to broaden RP’s footprint, including RangeGate (retail-to-store home delivery technology), ALTA (build-to-order manufacturing planning technology), MARC Global (warehouse management), BlueCube Software (a retail operations management provider), StorePerform Technologies (a store execution management provider), and GEOCOMtms (a fleet management solution provider).

New Mountain Capital currently manages private and public equity funds with approximately $8.5 billion in aggregate capital commitments. The focus for RedPrairie and the new investor remain the same: drive growth, not just via acquisitions, but also organically. No management changes are expected.

Walmart continues to push the envelope with regards to sustainability and green supply chain management. No time today to fully analyze the company’s announcement this week, but my initial impression is that Walmart is making progress in defining a workable methodology to achieve its goals. How this impacts its trading partners is another question. From the press release, here are the three main components of Walmart’s program to reduce GHGs:

• Selection: Walmart will focus on the product categories with the highest embedded carbon. This is defined as the amount of life cycle GHG emissions per unit multiplied by the amount the company sells. To find the embedded carbon, the ASC reviewed the GHG emissions associated with all Walmart product categories. This approach ensures the project team focuses on the categories that have the greatest opportunity for reductions. Reductions can come from any part of a product’s life cycle.
• Action: For a project to be included as part of this goal, it must reduce GHGs from a product in either the sourcing of raw materials, manufacturing, transportation, customer use or end-of-life disposal. Walmart must demonstrate it had direct influence on the reduction and show how that reduction would not have occurred without Walmart’s participation.
• Assessment: Suppliers and Walmart will jointly account for the reductions. ClearCarbon will perform a quality assurance review of those claims to ensure methodology, completeness and calculations are correct. When the claims meet the quality assurance check, PricewaterhouseCoopers will assess under consulting standards whether the defined procedures were followed consistently to quantify the reduction claim.

“Trading Our Way Out of the Recession” was the title of the speech Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the World Trade Organization, gave this week in Brussels. And that’s music to the ears of global trade management vendors like Descartes Systems Group (an ARC client) and Integration Point. Simply put, to tap into the benefits of global trade, you need a GTM solution to effectively manage the risks, costs, and complexities (e.g., regulatory requirements) associated with moving goods across borders.

Finally, the announcement from Crossgate is yet another example of how customers and enterprise vendors are finalizing starting to recognize the value and importance of “network connectivity” as part of a complete supply chain solution (for related commentary, see “Revisiting Supply Chain Operating Networks” and “An Overlooked (But Critical) Component of Transportation Management Systems”).

Have a great weekend!