user interface Archives

5 Reasons Why Excel is Champ of Supply Chain Apps

Logistics Technologies | By Adrian Gonzalez • 11/20/2013

Earlier this month, I participated in the CONECT 12th Annual Northeast Cargo Symposium where I gave a talk on Hours of Service and shared some words of advice with CONECT’s Young Professionals group, which had their own session at the conference. During that session, a young professional from a medical device company gave a great presentation about free trade agreements — what they are, why they are important, and how to use them effectively as part of your global trade operations.

During the Q&A session afterwards, a young professional seated next to me asked the presenter if she was using any type of software at her company to manage free trade agreements. “No, we use Excel,” she said. “We bring in attorneys and trade experts to help us understand the regulations and develop the formulas, and we just enter everything into Excel. I wish we had some software designed specifically for trade, but it’s not something our company has decided to invest in yet.”

The young professional who asked the question, who works at a leading toy company, replied back, “Yeah, we use Excel too.”

So, here you have two leading companies in their respective industries, managing a highly strategic and risky supply chain process, with Excel spreadsheets.

Why?

Part of the answer, I believe, is that some companies still view certain aspects of supply chain and logistics as “cost centers” and, therefore, rank them low on the IT priority list. Historically, trade compliance has fallen in this category, with some companies viewing it as simply paperwork. This “cost center” perception was certainly more prevalent 10-15 years ago, but it persists at some companies today, regardless of size.

Aside from that, I believe there are five main reasons why Excel remains the reigning champ of supply chain applications:

1. It’s is easy to learn and use. If you can type numbers in a cell, have some basic math skills, and can cut, paste, and insert, then you’re 90 percent of the way toward using Excel effectively. You can learn everything you need or want to know about Excel in a few hours, whereas learning to use a supply chain application might take you weeks or months. And you don’t need a PhD to use Excel — or even a college degree, for that matter.

2. You can quickly and easily configure it to your specific needs and preferences. Excel, so blank and empty when you first open it, is the ultimate in user configurability. If you were to give ten transportation analysts each a blank Excel spreadsheet and asked them to start using it to manage their day-to-day activities, you would end up with ten unique-looking spreadsheets. Some analysts might prefer to have costs on the x-axis, while others would prefer it on the y-axis. Some analysts would create bar charts to analyze the data, others would create line graphs and pie charts. Some would opt to keep the spreadsheet simple, others would develop complex macros. Simply put, Excel allows users to define and create their own user interface, and to work the way they want to work instead of having to conform to a pre-built and fixed approach.

3. It’s highly portable: you can use it almost everywhere, and share it easily with others. Wherever there’s a computer — at work, home, school, library — there’s likely a copy of Excel on it. Export data from your enterprise app to Excel and you can work on it almost anywhere. And if you want to share the spreadsheet with someone, just attach it to an email. Sure, the cloud and mobile technologies are making enterprise applications more portable today too, but Excel was the original portable application, and old habits die hard.

4. It’s ubiquitous: Almost everybody has it and knows how to use it. You can email a spreadsheet to a supplier, customer, partner, colleague, or anybody else, and it’s almost guaranteed they’ll be able to open it — and they’ll know how to use it too. In contrast, if you ask suppliers and customers to use a Web portal or online application to provide you with information, you would need to train them first on your system. And if 100 companies ask your trading partners to use their portals and applications, that’s 100 different systems they would have to learn. Excel, however, is the common denominator of software applications — everybody has it, everybody knows how to use it.

5. It’s inexpensive. Sure, software-as-a-service and cloud applications are more affordable than traditional enterprise apps (at least the upfront costs are lower), but Excel is still at least an order of magnitude less expensive than most SaaS applications.

Of course, Excel has some significant drawbacks that limit its usefulness and value as a supply chain application, such as…

You’re working with static data
A macro is not the same as an optimization engine
It’s not integrated with execution tools
You often end up with multiple versions of the truth

The bottom line is that enterprise software vendors should take a lesson from Excel and make their applications easier to use and learn. They should also invest in enhancing their user interfaces, make their applications easier to access from anywhere, and make them more affordable for the masses. As I wrote about yesterday, enterprise software users are gaining power and influence in selecting the solutions they want to use at work. And what they want to use looks more like Excel (and Facebook, Google, and iPad apps) than what enterprise software vendors have traditionally offered.

Ariba: At the Intersection of Social and Business Networks

Logistics Software Vendors | By Adrian Gonzalez • 05/15/2013

Last week at the Ariba LIVE 2013 conference, I led a discussion session titled “At the Intersection of Social and Business Networks” with about fifty senior executives in supply chain and procurement. I made the case that we are currently seeing the rise of supply chain operating networks, the business equivalents of Facebook and LinkedIn, which are enabling communities of trading partners to communicate, collaborate, and execute business processes in more efficient, scalable, and innovative ways. We then explored several questions together, including:

What are the most promising opportunities business networks have to offer companies?
What are the main obstacles and concerns companies must overcome to further adopt network-based business processes — and how do they overcome them?
What can business networks learn from Facebook, LinkedIn, and other mainstream social media sites in terms of user experience?

The timing of my session was perfect because it followed a keynote presentation by Sanish Mondkar, Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer at Ariba, where he showed (via a demonstration of a new solution called Ariba Services Procurement) what’s possible at the intersection of social and business networks. Here are some highlights from his presentation:

Sanish highlighted one of the hidden values of a business network: the creation of a Commerce Graph, which maps the business relationships between companies. Ariba believes that Commerce Graph-aware business apps are inherently more intelligent than traditional applications, and they will drive the next wave of business productivity and effectiveness. I completely agree, as I outlined in “Facebook Graph Search, Through a Supply Chain Lens” earlier this year.
The ability to provide users with network-based intelligence is arguably the most important attribute of a business network. As I’ve written about many times, what sets a network-based solution provider apart from a traditional software vendor is their ability to leverage the vast quantities of data flowing through their network to provide customers with timely insights and intelligence that they otherwise couldn’t get. In the Ariba Services Procurement demo, for example, the system automatically presented the user with network-based intelligence and recommendations (based on real-time data from the Ariba Network and various third-party data sources) about labor rates, lead times, job skills, and other information to help the user make smarter decisions about the task he was performing.
In a posting last month, I argued that supply chain solution providers will start to compete on design, with the “consumerization of IT” being a key driving force. The UI presented in the demo was a perfect example — simple, intuitive, and similar to the look and feel of consumer sites and applications. The most interesting part, however, is how Ariba is integrating its online user community (Ariba Exchange) into its user interface and leveraging it as another source of network intelligence. As a user is performing a task, related content from the user community is automatically pushed to the UI to provide the user with insights from other customers about the task he is performing.
Ariba plans to expand into supply chain, logistics, and inventory management processes, with the first solutions coming out in 2014. No details were provided, but clearly SAP and its customer base will play an important role in defining the roadmap.

I had the opportunity to interview Sanish afterwards to discuss the points above in more detail. Watch the video below for Sanish’s comments on:

The three important attributes of a business network
Why Ariba is looking to expand into supply chain, logistics, and inventory management
The role and value of network intelligence
The biggest misconceptions and questions companies still have about business networks

Even though I’ve been talking about supply chain operating networks for more than a decade, in many ways we’re still in the early stages of making the vision a reality. Thanks to the consumerization of IT and the growing recognition by technology companies and customers that “software is not enough” when it comes to supply chain management, I predict we’ll see more innovation and market adoption of supply chain operating networks (or, if you prefer, “social business networks”) over the next 2-3 years than we’ve seen in the past decade.

Ariba is certainly not alone in pursuing this path. Descartes, E2open, LeanLogistics, Elemica, and others are also pushing the envelope in this area (see my interview with Descartes CEO Art Mesher from earlier this year). How these networks will continue to evolve and interoperate remains an open question — but I’m very bullish on the future. Stay tuned because I believe the best is yet to come.

(Note: Descartes, LeanLogistics, and SAP are Logistics Viewpoints sponsors)

This Week in Logistics News (April 22-26, 2013)

This Week in News | By Adrian Gonzalez • 04/26/2013

With no time to waste this morning, let’s go straight to the news that caught my attention this week.

Manhattan Associates reported total revenues of $96.6 million in Q1 2013, a 6 percent increase from Q1 2012 and a new quarterly record. Services revenue grew 6 percent in the quarter compared to the same period last year, while license revenue declined almost 9 percent, despite closing three deals of $1.0 million or more in recognized license revenue. About 65 percent of total revenues came from WMS deals, and about half of the non-WMS revenues came from Order Lifecycle Management and Store Commerce Activation. “While it remains somewhat difficult to predict the effect of the sluggish global economy, we are well positioned for a solid year in 2013 and beyond,” commented Manhattan Associates President and CEO Eddie Capel in the press release. Manhattan is still projecting total revenues to grow between 9 and 10 percent this year.

UPS also reported Q1 2013 results this week. Diluted earnings per share were $1.08 in the quarter, compared to $1.00 for Q1 2012. According to the press release, “The quarter benefited from a stronger than expected post-holiday season in January as UPS e-commerce solutions resonated with customers. In the U.S. Domestic segment, daily package volume grew 4.4% and operating profit improved 9%.” UPS also reaffirmed its full-year 2013 guidance for adjusted diluted earnings per share; an increase of 6-to-12% over 2012 adjusted results.

Here’s what I see as the common thread between the results reported by Manhattan Associates and UPS: the heavy influence of retail and B2C supply chains, especially e-commerce and omni-channel fulfilment.

On the technology front, JDA Software announced the release of its latest version of JDA Transportation & Logistics Management, “the company’s most significant transportation management system (TMS) release to-date.” The press release includes some details about the new release, but the quote below by Fabrizio Brasca, vice president, global logistics at JDA Software, sums it up nicely:

“The new JDA Transportation & Logistics Management is game-changing for our customers in several key areas. We’ve re-engineered the way end-users interact with our solution [emphasis mine] allowing them to leverage greater amounts of actionable data quickly and intuitively to make better decisions. From a capabilities standpoint, JDA has broken down silos across intercontinental and local transportation patterns, allowing customers to drive the most value out of their available assets, increase agility and ensure the optimal balance between customer service and cost in complex, global supply chains.”

The bolded comments in the quote underscore the point I made earlier this week about how supply chain software vendors are starting to compete on design — i.e., they are investing more to improve their UIs and user experience.

Along the same lines, Infor announced the general availability of Infor 10x, “an enterprise release that marks a major step forward in achieving the company’s vision.” Here are some excerpts from the press release:

All major applications feature a reinvented HTML5 user experience, the new Infor Ming.le collaboration platform, and pervasive in-context analytics embedded throughout workflows that are packaged within the Infor ION integration framework. The release combines innovation with a consumer-inspired user-experience [emphasis mine] to make business software flexible, agile and easier to use.

“Infor 10x marks the evolution of Infor’s technology platform, which features purpose-built middleware, as well as social, mobile, analytics, and cloud solutions,” said Duncan Angove, president of Infor. “Moreover, Infor 10x represents a major step toward achieving our vision, to integrate Infor’s mature, proven, and industry-driven applications with modern, innovative technologies to make them beautiful, collaborative, mobile, fast, smart, and seamless.”

We’ve written a lot about how retailers (both online and brick-and-mortar) are testing same-day delivery services. But we’ve also questioned whether consumers even want same-day delivery, or if they prefer, instead, to have greater choice in selecting delivery times and locations. An interesting new service announced by FedEx this week called FedEx Delivery Manager “allows package recipients to customize home deliveries to fit their schedule.” Check out the short video below for an overview.

It’s interesting to note that FedEx is viewing this service as a revenue generator — i.e., in many cases, consumers will have to pay a fee to select the delivery time or change the delivery address. And if FedEx is really smart, it will offer consumers incentives (e.g., not charge a fee) to choose specific delivery times and locations that will result in the most cost-efficient routes for the company based on other deliveries it has to make that day. Several of Descartes’ customers, for example, are using its Reservations application to enable this type of capability.

Finally, if you’re dependent on UPS for your shipments, you can breathe a sigh of relief this morning. According to an announcement made last night, UPS and the Teamsters have reached a tentative agreement on two, new five-year contracts in the small package and freight business units. The tentative contracts still have to be ratified by UPS Teamster-represented employees, but it looks like the risk of a strike in July is going away.

Have a happy weekend!

Song of the Week: “Here’s Where the Story Ends” by The Sundays

Note: Descartes, JDA Software, Manhattan Associates, and SAP are Logistics Viewpoints sponsors.

Will Supply Chain Software Vendors Start Competing on Design?

Logistics Technologies | By Adrian Gonzalez • 04/24/2013

One of the things supply chain software users like to complain about the most is the user interface (UI). This was true 15 years ago when I started as an industry analyst, and it’s true today. Simply put, many user interfaces…

are crammed with too many features and too much information that users don’t need or want to accomplish their tasks;
have non-intuitive workflows that don’t align with the way users are accustomed to working (or the way they want to work);
force users to open multiple windows and tabs, and click countless times, to accomplish what should be a straightforward task.

Sound familiar?

There are various reasons why user interfaces fall short of expectations, including:

Software vendors and those involved in the purchasing decision have always viewed “function” as more important than “form.” Their focus has been predominantly on checking off the feature/function list (“Can the software do this?”), with only passing consideration on the user experience (“How easy and intuitive is the software to use?”).
The people making the software purchasing decision aren’t usually the ones who will be using the application on a daily basis. In some cases, the CIO dictates the purchasing decision — “You will use this vendor’s application because we’ve already spent a gazillion dollars with them.” But what does the CIO know about how a transportation analyst, demand planner, or warehouse associate works? And even if a senior supply chain executive is involved in the decision, he or she is usually not “in the front lines” of executing tasks; it’s the employees further down the org chart that are the power users, but they rarely get a say in the purchasing decision.
The majority of supply chain software applications are designed by IT people who have never worked a day in supply chain. It’s like having a plumber choreograph a ballet.

But the tide is starting to turn, driven by various factors. First, we’re seeing the “consumerization of IT” as a generation of workers who have grown up in the Web/Mobile/Social era enter the workforce, take one look at the enterprise systems they have to work with, and collectively say, “Are you kidding me?!”

(For more on this trend, check out the short video clip below from my Talking Logistics episode last week, where I use a cell phone analogy to make my point).

Second, it is becoming increasingly difficult for supply chain software vendors to compete solely on features and functions anymore. In short, unless you have very specialized or complex requirements, the functional differences between vendor applications are minimal. And so software vendors are starting to compete on other fronts, including design. Infor is a great example. The company has invested heavily to enhance its user experience and make business applications “as easy to use, attractive, and inspiring as personal technology.” Another example is C.H. Robinson. The company briefed me recently about its new Navisphere technology platform, which includes some significant improvements to the user interface based on customer feedback. Start-ups like Cloud Logistics and others are designing solutions from the ground up with social and mobile in mind. And you can also argue that Microsoft’s acquisition of Yammer last summer was driven more by design than function. Yammer is often called “the Facebook for business” due to its user experience, while Sharepoint is often called…well, let’s not go there.

Another reason why software vendors and customers need to pay more attention to design and user experience is that there is a strong business case for it. Here are three examples:

Faster, more cost-effective training. We all know that a 5 year old can pick up an iPad and start using it within minutes without any training. The same goes for an 80 year old. Imagine how much time and money companies could save if supply chain applications were, relatively speaking, as easy and intuitive to use as consumer applications. Instead of days (or weeks) of training, you might only need a few hours.
Improved productivity. How much more can you get accomplished in a day, with how many fewer people, if instead of opening 5 windows and clicking 20 times to complete a task, you could do it all from one screen with just one or two clicks?
Enhanced business intelligence. Do you know what happens if a system is too complicated or difficult to use? People don’t use it, or they find workarounds, which means you’re not collecting all the data you need to make informed decisions. But if the system is easy to use and data entry is quick and painless, you’ll start capturing more information, which will enhance your business intelligence efforts.

The bottom line is that software vendors and customers need to think beyond features and functions. Of course, evaluating whether a software application meets your functional requirements remains critically important. But after that list has been checked off, you need to give equal time and consideration to evaluating the user experience. You also need to give power users, the people who have to work and deliver results with the application every day, a greater voice in the purchasing decision.

For more of my thoughts on this topic, including my view of what makes an ideal UI and the role of mobile, social networking, maps, and voice recognition, watch the rest of last week’s episode.

(Note: C.H. Robinson and Cloud Logistics are Logistics Viewpoints sponsors).

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