The big news this week was IBM’s planned acquisition of Sterling Commerce. We shared our viewpoint on this news earlier this week, so today we’ll focus on other interesting developments.
- Federal Highway Administration Launches New Technology Tool to Pinpoint Freight Congestion
- U.S. Small Businesses Can Seize Opportunities Using Lessons Learned from their Exporting Peers
- SAP and the Greening of a Service Business (from Harvard Business Review blog)
- At UPS hub, touch a package, pay for college (from Reuters)
The news from the Federal Highway Administration is yet another example of how real-time location and sensor data will transform transportation, logistics, and supply chain processes. This is a topic that we’ve written about many times before (see “Everything Will Be Tracked Wirelessly in 10 Years” and “Fleet Management and ‘Connected Vehicles’” and “Mobile Internet and Supply Chain: Bigger Than Most Think” and “A 3:00 AM Random Walk”).
According to the press release, “The new Freight Performance Measures web-based tool, FPMweb, measures operating speeds for trucks at any given place and point in time along 25 interstate highways that are considered significant freight routes. Developed through a multi-year FHWA research initiative with the American Transportation Research Institute, a 501 (c) (3) not-for-profit research trust, FPMweb is a first of its kind effort to capture information on truck travel speeds from around the country through on board GPS and satellite technology. Low speeds reflect congestion levels at a particular location and time of day.”
The FPMweb site provides additional info: “One element of the FPM [Freight Performance Measures] initiative is a data processing tool that determines average operating speeds for trucks that travel on interstate highways; these averages are calculated using confidential onboard data from several hundred thousand trucks. By accessing this system, transportation data analysts, researchers and other practitioners can determine where, when and how efficiently trucks are moving on selected interstate highways.”
This is also an example of how network data—i.e., data aggregated from multiple companies—drives enhanced business intelligence. The large trucking companies can all track this type of information themselves for their own fleets. But JB Hunt, for example, only has about 8,000 trucks across its business units, a sample size that is way too small to determine what’s really happening on the nation’s highways. It takes real-time data from several hundred thousand trucks, from hundreds of trucking companies, to obtain a more complete and accurate understanding.
The power of network data is also evident in software-as-a-service solutions, especially transportation management systems. Network data is what I’ve called “the hidden value” of SaaS. As I wrote last year in “More Questions About Software-as-a-Service”:
Companies should not view SaaS only as a software deployment and pricing option; they should also view it as a platform for benchmarking and continuous improvement. By default, a software-as-a-service TMS creates a “connectivity network” of shippers, carriers, suppliers, consignees, and other trading partners, executing millions of transactions through a single system. All of this data enables network-level benchmarking, so companies can compare, for example, their rates and performance against an external benchmark and quickly pinpoint problem areas. The ability to identify and bring on new carriers, either as part of a strategic procurement engagement or a spot buy, is greatly facilitated by being part of a network. And if collaborative transportation processes are ever to take hold in the industry, I believe SaaS TMS networks will play an important role.
(Side note: Related to mobility solutions, Descartes is hosting a “Mobile Resource Management 2.0 Strategy and Technology Event” in Toronto next week that I’m attending, and I’ll be conducting a workshop on “Mobile Technologies in Supply Chain Management” at The Logistics & Supply Chain Forum the week after.)
The press release from UPS highlights some of the key findings from its 2010 Business Monitor United States survey. Researchers interviewed 600 small and medium-sized businesses in the United States earlier this year to “better understand the global mindset of small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and uncover the challenges and issues impacting global trade.” You can download the survey results here.
The report contains a lot of interesting information beyond the ones highlighted in the press release. Here’s one that caught my attention. Sixty-nine percent of the respondents are currently looking for assistance with growing sales, but only twenty-one percent are looking for assistance with supply chain management (ranked last out of eight categories). Apparently, almost 80 percent of the respondents don’t see the link between improving their supply chain management capabilities and growing their sales. I guess we’re not doing such a good job educating the market after all.
Finally, if you’re interested in SAP’s initiatives around sustainability, read Andrew Winston’s blog posting. Mr. Winston is the co-author of the best-seller Green to Gold and the author of Green Recovery. He also spoke last week at SAPPHIRE. Mr. Winston highlights three paths that SAP is pursuing that he believes are a good framework for other companies to consider.
Have a great holiday weekend!
(Note: SAP and Descartes are ARC clients)
