I’m sure everyone’s Facebook feed has been jammed with friends and family members (and links to celebrities) taking the ice bucket challenge. For those of you who don’t know what the ice bucket challenge is, I’ll explain. If you are challenged, you have 24 hours to either dump a bucket of ice water on your head, film it, post it, and challenge some friends to do the same, or you are to donate $100 to the ALS Association. For those that complete the ice bucket challenge, a $10 – $25 donation to the ALS Association is recommended. To say that the challenge went viral is an understatement. It swept the social media landscape by storm. As of Thursday, August 21, The ALS Association has received $41.8 million in donations compared to $2.1 million during the same time period last year (July 29 to August 21). I applaud everyone who has accepted the challenge and donated for a great cause.
And now, on to the news.
- TMW Systems announces strategic partnership with 3Gtms
- Oracle takes TMS and GTM to the cloud
- Amazon in the news:
- Global supply chain risk at 18 month low
- Uber launches same day grocery delivery
TMW Systems announces a strategic partnership with 3Gtms. This partnership includes a significant – but minority – equity investment by TMW Systems parent company, Trimble Navigation Limited. They get a seat on the board based on this investment. TMW, a market leader in the fleet management space, will sell the 3Gtms solution into their installed base of asset-based transportation providers. 3Gtms will continue to sell their planning and execution solution to shippers and non-asset based logistics providers. This partnership was driven by increasing momentum of brokers and carriers seeking to move up the value chain and provide managed transportation services. Integration between the products has begun and there is one customer with both solutions that will serve as a beta customer for the integration.
At last week’s Oracle Transportation Management Special Interest Group meeting, Oracle announced that beginning in September, customers can purchase a cloud-based offering of their TMS and GTM solutions. This move is in line with Oracle’s investment in cloud-based solutions, and will likely bolster their position in the market. The solutions are all pre-configured, including work flows, user roles, and reports. Oracle is claiming that they can achieve rapid, cost-effective implementations of core OTM / GTM functionality in 8 – 10 weeks with a private cloud solution. While Oracle will still offer its OTM and GTM as on premise, licensed solution, the cloud offering can open a new market of smaller companies for Oracle.
Last year’s development of a Free Trade Zone in Shanghai has opened the doors for Amazon to try to seize some market share away from local giants Alibaba and JD.com. Amazon will open a new logistics warehouse in the 11 square mile zone. It is a market worth going after; according to data from iresearchchina.com, Amazon has barely 2% of a B2C market that was worth some $75 billion in the first quarter of the year alone. According to Amazon’s senior vice president for International Consumer Business Diego Piacenti, “Amazon must seize this strategic development opportunity. We’re going to have lower shipping charges, faster delivery coming into the free-trade zone, so there are going to be many benefits.”
In other Amazon news, drones are back. After a lot of news coverage and debate, the use of drones for home delivery had slipped into the background for many people. But according to anonymous sources, drone deliveries are close to becoming a reality. However, India, not the United States, will be the launch pad for drones. Sources indicate that Amazon will debut its drone delivery service with trials in Mumbai and Bangalore, cities where it has warehouses. While Amazon itself would not comment, sources say that the drones could be deployed as early as Diwali, which is October 23.
According to latest CIPS Risk Index, global supply chain risk fell to an 18 month low. The Index, which tracks the effect of economic, political and social factors on the security of global supply chains, has fallen from an all-time high of 82.4 in Q3 2013 to 78.1 in Q2 2014.
“Nevertheless, global supply chains still face significant risks. The Ebola outbreak in West Africa, combined with, political unrest in the Ukraine, Iraq and Libya, have the potential to create significant risks to global supply chains. These risks must be monitored and managed and where necessary contingency plans must be developed.” – John Glen, CIPS economist and senior economics lecturer at the Cranfield School of Management.
Taxi and car service company Uber has launched a test of same-day grocery delivery in Washington, D.C. The service, named Corner Store, allows users to choose from more than 100 products, excluding fresh food, through the Uber app. The exclusion of fresh food is a departure from the norm for tech companies investing in last mile technology, such as Amazon Fresh and Google Express. The key question is how can Uber make this model profitable and sustainable.
That’s all for this week. Enjoy the weekend and the song of the week, The Smashing Pumpkin’s 1979.
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