I’ve just returned from attending and participating in several supply chain conferences around the country. There’s a palpable excitement in our industry about the sweeping changes fundamentally altering supply chain operations. The drivers of these changes, such as e-commerce and omni-channel markets, are resulting in new and greater investments in the supply chain technology. Indeed, a recent study from ARC Advisory Group reports that, thanks to small, multi-line order requirements, retailers are increasingly investing in […]
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Author Archive for Chuck Fuerst
Do you have a March Madness bracket filled out for the NCAA basketball finals? Whether you do lots of research on each team or pick randomly, it’s a fun time of year to watch the highs, lows and upsets during the culmination of the college basketball season. As I filled out my bracket and prepared to dominate my coworkers in the office pool, I realized how much March Madness and the supply chain have in […]
Read More →The need for track and trace capabilities in industries such as food and beverage, manufacturing or automotive industries is obvious: the threat of contamination or recalls impacts public safety, and the responses to those events are highly regulated. Organizations need to know what goes into their products and their location at all times. But increasingly, companies in other industries are taking a fresh look at the need for advanced tracking and tracing capabilities that are […]
Read More →The growth of online shopping, direct-to-consumer shipping, and multi-channel distribution demands have led to big changes in the 3PL industry – to the point where many industry observers, such as Robert Bowman in a recent article for Forbes, noted that the number of 3PLs overall is shrinking due to a rising trend of mergers and acquisitions. And though the number of 3PLs is declining, the competition is fiercer than ever with greater pricing pressures and […]
Read More →You’re trying to do everything right to lure in online shoppers: You offer free shipping. Customers can return merchandise to a retail location. You even offer free returns through the mail. But this freedom for the customer can mean a lot of headaches and cost for you. The demands of the omni-channel marketplace are not only changing the way companies fulfill orders, but how they engineer reverse logistics processes. While you need to please the […]
Read More →Did you buy something with a credit card today? Are you working from a location other than your company’s headquarters? Did you check your bank account online this morning or download a file housed in an online data storage service? These are all examples of how we live our daily personal and professional lives in the cloud, often without even realizing it. Our data is stored in a secure location not physically near us, and […]
Read More →There are a lot of hot topics swirling around the supply chain industry right now, but one that seems to be permeating almost every discussion is “big data.” And big data is big: Put simply, it’s the collection and integration of massive amounts of information that can’t be processed using traditional data processing applications. This could include everything from inventory details to customer emails to fulfillment statistics. Just the thought of working with and integrating […]
Read More →In the supply chain software industry, uncertainty is certain and anticipating what’s next is what makes our days interesting. The innovations we develop must meet constantly shifting market demands and customer priorities, and it’s important to not only understand that the changes are happening, but also the drivers behind those changes. Here are a few of the macro-level lifestyle trends we are seeing influence supply chain management and software solutions. The consumerization of IT: Thanks […]
Read More →The Presidential election is looming, and even though the topic of infrastructure occasionally gets a brief mention, specifics are usually absent. Here are the three top challenges facing the logistics industry that the next president needs to understand in order to keep America competitive. Supply disruptions: The cost of oil, raw materials and many household items continues to climb. Unstable economies and political situations around the world affect us, such as the jump in oil […]
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Supply Chain Brief
Lost in Deployment Model Jargon?
The logistics world is full of jargon and sometimes we only have a vague understanding of what certain terms mean, especially when it comes to software. Some of the most confusing ones pop up in conversations about transportation management system (TMS) deployment model options: SaaS, private cloud, or on-premise are common ones. These terms are understandably confusing to the “normal” person who doesn’t live and breathe software every day. The best model for your organization […]
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