It’s no longer enough to just know where a shipment is. Can you access the number of containers, orders and line items? The reality is, global supply chains operating in today’s unpredictable environment are more like complex networks than chains. All of the players need to be able to share information at a more granular level while creating processes of mutual benefit – something the traditional concept of visibility won’t get you. Join Karin as she discusses the urgent case for supply chain #transparency with Infor’s Monica Truelsch.

Episode highlights:

The difference between transparency and visibility in global supply chain management

How to create transparency in large global networks with less digitally sophisticated suppliers

Where to start when enhancing supply chain transparency across your network

Proven areas of ROI like optimized working capital, protecting supplier investments and more.

Intro (00:01):

Welcome TekTok digital supply chain podcast, where we will help you eliminate the noise and focus on the information and inspiration that you need to transform your business impact supply chain success and enable you to replace risky inventory with valuable insights. Join your TekTok, host Karin Bursa, the 2020 supply chain pro to no of the year with more than 25 years of supply chain and technology expertise and the scars to prove it. Karin has the heart of a teacher and has helped nearly 1000 customers transform the their businesses and tell their success stories. Join the conversation, share your insights and learn how to harness technology innovations to drive tangible business results. Buckle up is time for TekTok powered by supply chain now.

Karin Bursa (01:13):

Well, welcome back supply chain movers and shakers Karin Bursa here and I am your host for TekTok, the digital supply chain podcast. The thanks so much for tuning in, you know, as supply chain leaders, we need to be nimble. We need to leverage the available resources. We have the capacity available and focus on service to the customer. All of us are trying to increase efficiencies and where possible control cost. And don’t forget one of the compelling messages we hear time and time again is we’ve gotta mitigate risk. So one of the core benefits of investments in digital supply chain technology is the ability to replace risky inventory with valuable information. And today for the first time on tech talk, we have with us today, Monica Truelsch and Monica is with Infor and she’s in the role of senior director of strategy for supply chain management. Monica, thanks for joining us today.

Monica Truelsch (02:14):

Thanks so much for having me Currin. It’s not her. Yeah,

Karin Bursa (02:17):

It’s great to have you here now, before we dive into our topic today, which I think is really interesting, and we’re gonna talk about the urgent case for supply chain transparency, but before we dive into that topic, Monica, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do in your role within four. Happy

Monica Truelsch (02:36):

To do that. Certainly some of your audience may know the third largest E R P software maker in the world, but is not widely known as a potentially a supply chain management solution provider. There is a, a group within Infor that was formally known as GT XUS. Now it’s the Infor nexus group that actually has a tremendous legacy in global trade and, uh, global, uh, supply chain networking that I’ve been closely associated with since I joined in four in 2016. So as a supply chain management platform in four nexus, uh, works closely with our demand planning and, and production planning and forecasting as well as our, uh, WMS solutions on the logistics side of things. But we are the, the extension, if you will, the E R P for supply chains, because as we all know, uh, ERPs were never really designed to work with, uh, the relationships, uh, companies need to constitutes the supply chain for them.

Monica Truelsch (03:39):

Uh, and so nexus as a cloud-based platform for engagement with suppliers and with forwarders, with carriers, with end customers with receivers, your customs brokers is designed fundamentally as a platform for increasing transparency across those global, uh, supply chain networks. Uh, my role in a strategy position is really in the sales organization, but I’ve done a lot of skating back and forth between the product management side of things and the sales organization. And I see my role primarily as making sure that our product direction is aligned with the needs of our customers with different directions in the mark place, with where there’s an unrealized, uh, need or a gap in capability, uh, and just making sure that we continue to focus on driving value for. So tell

Karin Bursa (04:32):

Me that last part, just about what, um, you know, what your role entails as you work with your sales and go to market teams, but also with customer needs. Give me just a quick, um, a, a quick comment about that part of your role. Cause I think that’s something that, uh, the tech talk listeners will find. Very interesting.

Monica Truelsch (04:52):

Thank you. Um, yeah, as a, um, person responsible for a solution strategy, uh, it’s a, uh, hybrid role if you will, that skates back and forth between product management and the product development teams, the marketing, the sales organization, uh, and my focus is on, uh, making sure that our product development roadmaps are aligned with the, uh, developing trends in the marketplace. Uh, we’re addressing a net meet needs that, uh, we are responding to what is driving decisions and supply chain technology today. Uh, and that tends to differ based on economic conditions, market conditions, disruptive competitive entries, that of thing. Uh, but ultimately it is focused on keeping in touch with our customers and making sure that we maintain sufficient intimacy with their challenges that we can act as a partner in helping them solve their solutions rather than merely as a vendor to be managed.

Karin Bursa (05:59):

Yeah, that’s a great point. You know, and Monica, in my 25 or more years, I stopped counting at 25, my 25 years in supply chain. You know, I’ve met literally with thousands of supply chain executives over that period of time. And the one thing that they all tell me from every investment that they’ve made in solutions or technology, I hear all the time that one of their goals is to gain visibility. It’s cited time and time again, especially in the current situation in global logistics and inbound, the visibility. Now you’ve got a premise that I think is kind of compelling. And I wanna understand that more because you believe that we should be focusing on transparency instead of visibility. So first of all, tell us what you mean by transparency. And then let’s talk about the value proposition around, around transparency versus visibility.

Monica Truelsch (07:00):

Excellent question. Uh, you’re absolutely right. Visibility shows up year after year is the first or second most desired thing by chief supply chain officers, uh, in virtually any survey that I’ve ever seen. And it seems however much they get, there’s never quite enough. Hmm. And in recent years, the concept of, of visibility and especially in, in supply chains has been, I think co-opted a bit by the rise of real time visibility providers. So the idea that marrying my goods to my distribution center, to my end customer, and I can give my customer access to that. And that’s really been transformative, I think for, for, for customer service, uh, to be able to, to share that visibility to time of arrival from a, a delivery standpoint. But when you talk about supply chain issues and particularly in global, uh, supply chains where you’re sourcing from overseas, you’re talking much, much longer timelines than in the outbound fulfillment and process to an end customer.

Monica Truelsch (08:01):

You’re talking about multiple modes being involved, um, the challenges of cross border commerce, the customs brokerage, the paperwork, the, uh, solos filing for the weight and, uh, dimensions of your, uh, ocean going, uh, container goods and so forth. There’s such a, a diversity of information that’s required. There are so many different parties involved that need to be collaborated, uh, informed of, uh, as you think about from the suppliers dock to the, uh, inland drainage, to the freight consolidation, to the ocean transport, to the, the, uh, final port and terminal unloading in the country of destination, the inland transportation, the again, customs approval and clearance, all of these things make the inbound supply chain problem, not just a matter of visibility, you don’t, you’re not just interested in where that ocean vessel is with a container at any given point in time. It’s critical that, you know, how many of those containers on that vessel are holding your goods and in these days of inter aligners and alliances and so forth, that can be a very challenging thing to track for you.

Monica Truelsch (09:17):

Um, you wanna know what the orders are within those containers. You wanna know what the line items are, so that if you’re facing a critical stockout or a production that is reliant on what you knew from the supplier standpoint, that they were including that particular component on this particular shipment and in what quantity, so that you can arrange your expectations downstream for that. So the issue of visibility becomes not just, you have to ask visibility to what, and that’s where my thesis about transparency comes in, that you don’t necessarily know in today’s chaotic environment, what you will need visibility to in your global supply chain. If you have a, uh, ship backed up in the sewers canal, because something is run ground, uh, it may be important for you to know just how many shipments are on the water and backed up in that particular range.

Monica Truelsch (10:13):

And how many of those orders are affected. It might be crucial for you to know that you have orders that are about ready to leave the supplier in Asia and get onto, uh, the ocean vessel that you may choose to have move via air cargo and avoid that blockage on the water for eight weeks or more. So, uh, transparency is the approach to thinking of your global supply chain from highly connected standpoint, that you’re not looking in a fragmented concept to, uh, turn on lights here and there to specific siloed processes or, or movements or transactions within the supply chain, but that you are, uh, gaining a big picture, know into the operations of your global supply chain that allow you to delve into the level of detail that you need, uh, to mitigate whatever risk or avert any crisis that you might be facing. And also to assure that things are moving as expected, once things finally do stabilize and the supply.

Karin Bursa (11:18):

So, so is the, is the difference if you will, in visibility versus transparency, I, is it trying to understand what the impact of those signals are, or the impact of those updates are on your overall goal or, or how should a practitioner, um, you know, a supply chain and professional think about it differently than the way they think about collecting those data points along the, um, the progression of either production or sourcing or transportation of those goods.

Monica Truelsch (11:52):

We talk about upstream and downstream, um, stakeholders and supply chains. Of course, um, there’s a fundamental value in being able to find out as far as possible upstream, if something is going to go wrong or something is starting to go wrong, is the supplier going to miss the ship window? Um, are they struggling with raw materials? And so they can’t make the production schedule that they committed to when you place the order at the start of the year. Is there a, uh, problem with empty container availability in the ports that you normally ship from? Right. All sorts of unforeseen problems that we haven’t really had to wrestle, uh, with before in such massive concurrency as we do in our, our current environment, but the value in transparency, uh, that is an increasing visibility to a much broader spectrum of supply chain processes and, and partners, uh, is that you can either automatically update or adjust downstream nodes in the supply chain so that you can mitigate risk, avoid that disruption, um, find alternatives, if you will, or at least adjust expectations downstream for labor, for production and so forth. So that, um, it’s not when the container finally arrives at your deconsolidation center or your warehouse and you open the doors and you read, realize, oh, they didn’t include that particular shipment that then everyone’s scrambling. Well, you have far far fewer options to resolve the problems, right? So, uh, transparency is about gaining, uh, visibility much, much earlier, much farther upstream in the supply chain to potential in developing problems so that you have more options to resolve them.

Karin Bursa (13:38):

Yeah. So when, when we talk about that, right, we’re, we’re talking about trading partners, providing visibility or providing transparency to each other. And, and I was involved in the, in the VIX collaborative planning, forecasting, and replenishment in of which, you know, is 20, 25 years ago. And, um, and had some real, tangible benefits associated to it, right? Because they were agreeing to really a shared process for the, the trading pair or the organizations, suppliers, and retailers, most of the time. However, I will tell you that there was often concern shared about offering that insight into the trading partners business. So there were things that would come up like competitive insights or perhaps, um, having data used in negoti in the future, or, um, sometimes even confidence in one trading partner’s ability to plan effectively or commit to their customer that these things would come up time and time again. So how does, and I’m sure that we’ve moved well beyond that now that, that, that

Monica Truelsch (14:57):

I wouldn’t be so sure Karen <laugh>, you know, a little more comfortable maybe than

Karin Bursa (15:02):

They were 20, 25 years ago, but how does supply chain transparency work Monica in an environment where, you know, trust is such a critical factor.

Monica Truelsch (15:15):

That is probably one of the biggest challenges to supply chain transparency, uh, or to visibility for that matter. Uh, there’s a history, a legacy of adversarial relationships between buyers and suppliers between shippers and carriers. Those are difficult things to overcome, but I believe as we’ve become a more globalized worldwide economy and particular, when we are facing something like this, COVID 19 global health crisis, where everyone is struggling, uh, it is not just a, a single relationship between one large consumer package goods provider, perhaps, and, and their suppliers, uh, but it is a universal problem. And we see how broadly it affects all of the parties to our global, uh, supply chain net works to the service providers, to the ports, the terminals from a, a resource and capacity planning capability down to, to labor considerations as well. It becomes, uh, a way or an opportunity perhaps for us to break through some of those traditional adversarial positions and realize that we’re all in the same ship together, uh, to, to borrow a metaphor, if you will, if we do not cooperate and all row in the same direction, we won’t get anywhere.

Monica Truelsch (16:47):

Uh, so we are facing extraordinary constraints on, on resources, on capacity, um, very unexpected demand patterns. Everything seems to be in flux at once in global supply chains today. Uh, and everything seems to be in crisis. And it’s the opportunity for people to look beyond traditional positions, uh, and just thinking of that next contract negotiation, uh, and understanding that they is true value to partnering with your supply chain trading partners, not simply to use the designation as a, another name mm-hmm <affirmative>, uh, for someone I’m, I’m trying to try to reduce costs with, but ultimately you have to find virtuous cycles of mutual benefit. It’s a, it’s an old term. It is in wide use by, in four, as parent company, uh, Coke enterprises and so forth as well. But I think it is, uh, the real value proposition that we have to pursue in business today. There has to be win, win for all parties involved. So trust is not something you can take something you have to earn. Um, but this is an environment I think that has raised the stakes for all parties to reconsider what they have to gain from moving past those concerns, uh, and testing what trust can do to move everyone forward to improve the, uh, um, the opportunities, the economic returns, the, um, efficiencies, the survival of all parties in the, in the supply chain.

Karin Bursa (18:20):

So, so Monica, what, and what you just shared with us, I is this drive for transparency, is this specifically related to kind of a pandemic crisis or pandemic response, or is this something that’s got some legs to it that we’re going to embrace in the industry as part of our standard operating procedure, right. Where we’re going to innovate and never go back. Right. So I, I don’t wanna go back to faxing information between my I trading partners, right. And I don’t wanna go back to email, how do I continue to kind of, to, to take this, you know, something that may be embraced a little more readily right now because of the disruptions that are taking place and how do we make that part of the expected engagement model in the future?

Monica Truelsch (19:12):

I do firmly believe that transparency is something that will survive, uh, and prove value long beyond the effects of the COVID pandemic on the, um, the global economy. As you say, it’s difficult to go backwards. You’ve realized the benefits of a, a, a particular change or an advantage. Um, there hasn’t been incentive necessarily to pursue transparency from a cost standpoint in the past when global transportation suppliers and so forth was relatively stable, freight costs, ocean shipping, air capacity, you what the trade offs were, if you needed to move something, if you, uh, were please with your, uh, suppliers, but you needed to drive out costs and transportation, maybe time to look for different set of freight forwarders, maybe time to pursue different relationships with, uh, other ocean carriers, the siloed optimization of all of these components and processes in the, the global supply chain is something that you can maintain when things are stable.

Monica Truelsch (20:26):

When you can just focus on perhaps optimizing one aspect of supply chain operations at to time, and you can see benefit from it when you realize the benefits of supply chain transparency and the info nexus group has been fortunate in working with many global enterprises that are very logistically mature and sophisticated in their understanding of the value of transparency and, and this globalness to their agility of that in your organization. It will be very difficult to go back, uh, to, uh, dealing without that there are benefits in terms of optimizing inventory to, uh, squeezing dwell and delay and transit times so that you can reduce your safety and buffer inventories. That’s not something perhaps you wanna pursue in today’s chaotic environment, but eventually we’ll reach some equilibrium. And you’re going to want to do a little bit of scooting and squeezing there to, uh, to, to bring those, um, uh, transit times and inventory levels down the ability to use inventory in transit to fulfill available, to promise projections, and to react more quickly when your demand forecast are beginning to tick upwards.

Monica Truelsch (21:41):

Well, how reliable is our expectation of delivery for this order? Our Southeast Asia supplier into our Western DCS and knowing reliably our carriers, we are fairly confident that within the three week time window, based on what we have on the water, uh, what’s pending, uh, overseas, we can get this material into our customer’s hands, uh, within desired window and not risk stockout or production halts at any other aspect of our supply chain. So it’s that, uh, that flexibility in responding to change the adaptability, to changing conditions in both demand and supply certainty, that, uh, is one of the, uh, the two benefits of transparency that I think companies, once they begin to realize this, uh, they’re never gonna wanna go back to faxing again. It’s it’s, it is the, the digital, right? It it’s that digital transparency it’s like shopping online and having pictures of the goods that you want to buy catalog was fine, but there was one pickup with it. It is a real transformation in supply chain management. When you start focusing on transparency for your global network, um, that I think, uh, companies are going to build on in the future post pandemic, uh, and create really agile operations in ways they couldn’t conceive of before.

Karin Bursa (23:16):

So, so let me ask you for maybe just a couple of really specific examples of transparency, because in any, in any global network, you may have a very large partner customer or supplier. Um, but then you’ve also got tons of smaller and less sophisticated partners in most global networks, right? Whether they’re a tier one or tier two or tier three, but help us kind of wrap our mind around how do we make this easy? So that technology is that enabler and that the technology is not the obstacle. Maybe it’s the business process that changes to take advantage of that. But give us a couple of examples of that, because I’m sure that you and the N four team have addressed that in a number of different ways, give a breadth of customers that you serve.

Monica Truelsch (24:06):

Absolutely. Um, Infor has a very strong footprint in the fashion and, and footwear, the apparel industry, which is marked by tens of thousands of providers, uh, across Southeast Asia that are often, as you say, rather, and sophist it from a digital standpoint. And when the nexus brand was established over 20 years ago, we determined that our solution had to be cloud based. And this was before cloud was actually a recognized term in information technology, right? But it was the collaborative ability from making all of your interactions, your, your visibility platform accessible online 24 7, that was a driver for that, that cloud based solutioning. But we found, um, that you can always constrain these smaller providers to connect to an EDI system, to feed the ER E R P as required. Especially if you’re working with many, many different smaller suppliers, they need to have different options.

Monica Truelsch (25:09):

They need to have portals that they can input. They need training and onboarding. If they’re, you know, they have turnover so forth in their organization, if there is a portal or a system that they are required to manually input information into, they need to have constant support in the system of record that they’re asked to engage with, or perhaps we’ll call it the system of engagement that they’re working with that, uh, keeps them finding value in it. They need to have incentive in terms of perhaps faster payment or the ability to finance, uh, invoices so that they can procure or raw materials after orders are placed. It is an ecosystem of support for your suppliers that comes with an, an approach to global supply chain transparency that nexus has been building out, uh, for years, uh, that we continue to work under, uh, with, uh, with Infor as well.

Monica Truelsch (26:05):

Uh, but it is a recognition that there are small, medium, and very, very, very large enterprises all involved in the supply chain. And to have that transparency, you have to have flexibility in technology for connecting with them. You have to make sure that there is benefit and incentive for all parties to participate in the network and share information. Uh, and it’s the, the promise of the cloud today. I think that is really coming to the, for that the old paradigm of E R P and Eddi, or, um, in-house, on-premise based TMSs to handle global transportation planning, mm-hmm <affirmative> and so forth. It’s those things that are falling by the wayside as people realize they’re simply not agile enough, they can’t let you make new connections can help you refresh connections. They flyers quickly enough. They’re too rigid. Uh, and so a supply chain platform that is, uh, designed for transparency, I think gives you that framework to expand and to change and to nurture all of your suppliers, regardless of where they are in technology and maturity, uh, to gain value from their relationship with you, and to make things easier from perspective to serve you as well, because their goals are to grow, to, uh, perform profitably.

Monica Truelsch (27:30):

Uh, anything you can do to ensure their survival also helps with a, uh, the brand owners assurance of supply reduces their supply uncertainty and helps to also push to goals like sustainability and traceability with these smaller providers. Right. Uh, it’s, it’s again, it’s an ecosystem way of thinking about your supply chain, uh, versus a transactional connection with your supply chain. Yeah, yeah.

Karin Bursa (27:58):

You you’ve just given us several areas of transparency. And I think some of them quite on ly Monica are that supply chain professionals don’t think about all the time. So when we think about cash to cash cycle, not for our business, but for our trading partners business, right. And, and especially if they’re a smaller provider, that’s tangible, being able to take a week out of a cash to cash cycle is huge. For many companies that, you know, are, are literally working kind of, you know, month to month I in hiring process and, and paying their suppliers or their personnel. If I

Monica Truelsch (28:35):

Can just touch on that as well, too, that is actually one of the benefits of transparency for small providers. So we talk about mutual benefit, but, uh, we’ve been able to arrange supply chain finance for overseas suppliers through the transparency and the visibility to transactions and orders and so forth that are provided by having them take place on the, the nexus platform, uh, so that these suppliers can gain financing based on the credit rating of the buyer versus necessarily credit instruments they have available within their own countries or their own history. So, uh, it is again, uh, the, the broader benefit of transparency, right? Mm-hmm, <affirmative>, it, it has value for all participants and bills towards that, that trust that you need to earn. Uh, but that you can also cement, once you put programs like this in place with your suppliers.

Karin Bursa (29:25):

Yeah, absolutely. That financial supply chain element is, is a real differentiator. I would think four and four, I in the capabilities that, um, that you’re bringing to market, so that you’re creating this win-win environment, because I, I totally get if I’m the customer and I have sourced or had contract manufacturers produce specific product to my specification, I wanna know the progress of that at every step of bringing those to market. But examples, like you’ve just shared make it a win-win for all of the trading partners who touch and factor and source and convert those goods and, you know, pack it and, and get it on the ships at every step of the equation. So I, I do think it’s interesting to think about transparency in that context versus simply visibility of, you know, did a and B start and finish. Okay, now I’ve gotta look somewhere else and somewhere else versus looking at, you know, the proverbial glass supply chain, that’s gonna give me visibility from, from end to end or transparency, excuse me, end to end my ability to serve whomever the end customer is right. Uh,

Monica Truelsch (30:37):

Or the end consumer. That’s always the goal right. Of the supply chain is how do you improve that customer experience? Yeah.

Karin Bursa (30:43):

How do we, so, so as you work with customers in the, in four ecosystem or sharing this in the marketplace with, with companies, how do you help them identify the right business process to start with, or the right partner attributes to look for? What are some things that come to mind around, you know, where to get started in a transparency initiative?

Monica Truelsch (31:12):

Every company, I think, uh, enters the journey for transparency from a different direction mm-hmm <affirmative>, so they may be feeling pain on the procure, erm, side of things. They may be experiencing, uh, personal credit issues that are affecting their ability to maintain their existing supplier base. And they know that, you know, once the economic cycles sort of turn the clock that they’re gonna be generating or, or working profitably again, but in the interim, they require some sort of a, a, a bridge financing solution or something. Or there are companies that, uh, are very pleased. Their suppliers are financially stable, but they have a spotty record in working with their forwarders and the, um, uh, the ability to get the necessary for information about what freight, how carriers are performing. Um, uh, are you getting value for the logistics services that you’re paying for? Um, we, we try to respond to companies wherever they come to us in that journey.

Monica Truelsch (32:20):

Uh, we have focused solution areas for instance, um, for supply chain finance refer to that as, as the financial supply chain side of things. I think of it as inextricable, honestly, from the, um, the physical side, the movement of the goods nothing’s moving without money being moved somewhere. Uh, but it is, uh, a higher order of perhaps supply chain and procurement and financial maturity thinking in a connected fashion about how all of these things play together, uh, to assure that you’re gonna have inventory and stock when the holiday season rolls around, right. Uh, all of these things working together, and then we have other, um, logistics experts within the organization. If the focus on, uh, simply gaining your, uh, key, uh, origin sources, uh, of goods and the, the, uh, concentrations of suppliers in different countries or different regions. Uh, but because each forwarder has their own technology platform and they’re giving you visibility, they’re giving you feedback, but it requires your staff to chase down log into every single forwarders portal.

Monica Truelsch (33:24):

They present things in a different format. How do you consolidate that and roll that up for management for the chief supply chain officer to know what the current health is, give a, a, a proper snapshot of how the supply chain is performing at any given point in time. So simply using a platform like nexus as the technology consolidation for managing all of these forwarders, that then your international carriers also can be, uh, fed into that your, um, suppliers can connect to so that you get the advanced shipping notices that you get the confirm of your order, that you can share an order within the request of timeframe, but 40% won’t be ready for another four weeks. How would you like us to arrange and, and, uh, manage the shipping plans for this kind of a, a, a complexity? Um, it is that type of multifaceted problem solving that we have to offer customers to a, that I think gives them, uh, a, a way to gain immediate value to solve immediate problems, but not in a, uh, a close or a dead end way, uh, but to bring themselves into a network environment where they have a tremendous path forward to expand transparency, wherever they find and can define the next, uh, area of value for the business.

Monica Truelsch (34:48):

Always there has to be ROI for making these investments and expansions, uh, for dealing with the change management that comes with, uh, with efforts like this. But, um, digital transformation has a bit of a bad app these days. Everybody wants it. Nobody wants to put up with the pain and anguish of the train, uh, the, the change management that’s involved, and when you’re putting out fires every day, as, as we are in today’s supply chain, somehow transforming doesn’t make any sense. You’re just trying to survive through the end of the day or the end of the week. Uh, but ultimately if you make your technology decisions with an eye towards what you eventually will want that goal to be, once we get past this current crisis, what will the world look like? What will the supply chain, uh, framework be? Uh, can we assume that the cost of ocean freight are going to be back to where they were for the past 10 years prior to, to, to 2020, uh, or are we going to have to deal with a, a freight expense in our cost of good souls that is much, much higher than we’ve ever had to, uh, to calculate around before?

Monica Truelsch (35:47):

And what’s that going to mean to our overall supply chain strategies? Our sourcing, our arrangements with our three PLS lead times. So many Ram companies, uh, supply chain professionals are going to be working through these new strategy, right? Uh, I think for the next two to three years, at least, uh, because all of our assumptions about how they were supposed to work kind of evaporated in 2020, and I don’t think they’re ever going back to the way that they were, they’re going to be different. There may be a new normal in the future, but it’s going to be very, very different from the normal that we operated under in the past. And if you have established supply chain transparency with the broader part of your network, even during this period of change and upheaval and uncertainty, you are in such a great position to thrive into surge forward. Once economies do stabilize and, and, and all of these, um, supply chain transport problems, uh, begin to resolve.

Karin Bursa (36:46):

So, so pick a few areas for me, Monica, and, and just share a couple of, you know, you mentioned ROI a couple of return on investment, um, points or examples that, you know, that, that you are aware of in the, in four network of, of customers and, and suppliers, just to give us a feel for, um, the benefit of, of getting started now, <laugh> right. We don’t have how the answers about what the future is gonna hold, but that’s why supply chain is such a great place to be, right. We’re never gonna get bored. There’s always gonna be absolutely opportunity in front of, in front of each and every one of us, but just gimme a feel for maybe a couple of areas where there’s been a compelling, um, payback message or return on investment message.

Monica Truelsch (37:36):

Absolutely. Um, we have, um, a major, uh, garment manufacturer in north America who has, uh, engaged in, uh, some financing for some of their at risk suppliers, uh, in Asia for the past few years that has really allowed them to, uh, assure lines of supply with very desirable companies who were otherwise, uh, under a fair amount of, uh, of risk from a financial standpoint in those areas. So it’s removed elements, ly, uh, a combination of self-funded and bank funded financing in some respects. Uh, so, uh, it optimized working capital for this organization. Well, to be able to have access to many different bank resources who are willing to participate in these programs for them. So they had the benefit of reinforcing, uh, the supplier health. Um, and again, these were suppliers that invested a great deal of time and effort into sustainability programs, traceability, uh, compliance with, uh, fair labor practices and so forth, and to protect those investments and those suppliers, this was really a critical, uh, financial effort for them.

Monica Truelsch (38:51):

Uh, we have other examples of companies that came at, uh, value strictly from a, uh, a carrier or an N V O C C, uh, procurement and contract management program. Um, their, uh, previous methods for going out for ocean freight or air cargo, uh, contracts involved, a lot of manual Excel, spreadsheets, us back and forth, uh, weeks of consolidation, comparison analysis. It was such a painful effort for them that they would only go out for, uh, contract re bids every three years or so well in an environment where, uh, pricing is not very stable, where it’s highly volatile, you might need to be going out for new contracts, um, quarterly every six months. I mean, we’ve seen a definite trend in the shortening of, uh, freight contract life cycles during COVID number one, companies are trying to minimize their, uh, exposure to these high prices that they’re being forced to pay, right.

Monica Truelsch (39:53):

And they wanna take advantage of those prices when they begin to come to, and we all hope that they will. Um, but, um, the access to capacity has been such an overriding consideration in this environment that, um, costs sometimes is not even an issue in moving the goods. We need to find some mode that has capacity to move it with the, the, the constraint and airlines. We lost rallies of these, um, passenger airlines, uh, and it simply hasn’t come back yet. And it likely will not until passenger travel around the world begins to, to recoup itself, but to go through the nexus procurement platform where you have a, again, a digital platform that carriers and the OCCS are used to participating in, uh, it not only, um, speeds up the response time, you can add many more providers to those procurement cycles, um, that might otherwise have been too onerous for your folks to manage.

Monica Truelsch (40:52):

Uh, so you have access potentially to more capacity. You can work with more of them, but also the, the evaluation, the optimization of your freight allocation commitments across all of these carriers allows you to balance your risk, to do the best sort of trade offs between, um, total lowest cost and the service levels that your organization really need to meet the market demands. So, um, two sort of different aspects of the supply chain, spectrum and transparency, the, um, the, the financial value and collaboration and supportive of supplier network. Mm-hmm <affirmative> when you’re dealing with the, the transparency and visibility that comes from transacting on a, a network platform, uh, and also on the logistical side of things, the ability to perhaps, uh, not necessarily reduce costs, but to find more available capacity, to be the, the process of, uh, finding new partners, uh, and certainly of measuring and negotiating with those partners that allows you to respond with, with greater agility as, uh, market conditions change. So all of this is done on the same platform, it’s the same nexus platform, different applications and solutions and so forth. But when you connect just once to a network platform, uh, and the same data can be used over and over again, this becomes a repository of tremendous supply chain business intelligence that also informs those strategic decisions going forward, which is another benefit of trans

Karin Bursa (42:19):

Yeah, yeah. Having that transparency, if you will, and thinking of it, not just end to end, but even much broader. So I, I think this aspect of the financial supply chain is a really interesting additional value proposition to simply the movement of goods or production sourcing of goods in, in the equation as well. It fascinating, fascinating, and, and something that I agree with you, I think will continue to accelerate. So I love this theme about the urgent case for transparency, really, to accelerate. And, and I’m all about tech talk is all about kind of replacing risky inventory with valuable information. And I think your thesis around transparency just extends that even broader, that there there’s more transparency that that can be gained that is going to allow me to have clarity around my inbound or clarity around the liability of a supplier in my network, so that I know what levers I can pull, right. As we, you know, continue to operate in a volatile market, absolutely we’re today, right. Or when we get to return to at least a little more stable

Monica Truelsch (43:29):

Environment, some stability would be nice, even if it’s not. Yeah. So

Karin Bursa (43:32):

Monica, what, what, one thing would you want our listeners to walk away with today? Right. We’ve covered, um, a lot of touch points in supply chain operations around this theme of transparency. What one thing do you hope people will walk away from the conversation with

Monica Truelsch (43:51):

Supply chains? Haven’t really been chains for quite some time. There were really networks, right? And so sometimes we trap ourselves into the linear thinking that a, that a chain metaphor provides for us. And so when you think end to end, that’s still a, a linear metaphor. If you think, perhaps in terms of, um, 360 degree visibility, um, that is more the nature of transparency, right? It’s, uh, it’s looking in different directions. It’s not thinking about, uh, getting insight into one aspect of the supply chain, but about pursuing a, um, a connected condition with your trading partners and with your service providers that allows them to operate as a virtual extension of your business rather than simply opposing partners in a transaction. And I think that’s the promise that we want to move towards, as we try to visualize what the world will look like beyond the co at pandemic and national lockdowns, uh, and, uh, not meeting each other face to face for a very, very long period of time.

Monica Truelsch (44:59):

Um, it is what’s the world gonna look like, and how can we survive and thrive in that world of the future? Um, putting in place now, even the begin of the transparency capability, the, the network interaction with your supply chain partners, even if it’s from a small perspective of simply gaining visibility to your N V OCCS or your, your ocean carriers from an ocean tracking standpoint, that’s, that’s the first part of it, but then bringing your freight forward it so that, you know, you’re getting those ASNs and visibility into what your customers brokers are doing. You’re expanding then visibility to all of the, the parallel processes that are critical. Um, it is the, um, moving away from that focus on the last mile, what are we doing about getting into our customers car trunks or their, their, their porches, or, you know, having lockers in the city or something that really has consumed us all in the past five years is the Amazon effect has taken over. And thinking back to the first mile, how do we gain control of that first mile of our supply chains in a way that allows us to affect that customer experience that end customer of ours in a very positive fashion moving forward?

Karin Bursa (46:14):

Yeah, lots, lots of great, interesting, compelling opportunity in what you just described. Monica, what’s the best way for our tech talk audience to get in touch with you. If they wanna continue the conversation

Monica Truelsch (46:29):

We would love for them to go to in four.com and take advantage of our contact, us, our chat, uh, there to reach out, certainly explore what Infor has to offer there. Um, they can reach us on LinkedIn or on Facebook as well, uh, or they can reach me at my email, uh, Monica dot tri infor.com. I’d be very happy to put them in contact with the right of people that are gonna be pleased to talk with them and they can explore it there, um, at their leisure.

Karin Bursa (46:59):

Excellent. Thank you so much, Monica frill for joining us today and opening our minds a little bit to this urgent case for supply chain transparency. I think you’ve certainly given us some things to think about and consider as our listeners continue to drive innovation and look at the opportunity to replace inventory, uh, with information, but also to transform not just their business, but their network response in what sure. To be a continued, volatile global environment in the weeks and months. And, and hopefully, you know, hopefully it’s just months and quarters and not years ahead, but there’s always something. I mean, <laugh>, there will always be new options. There’s, there’s always something, as you say, supply chain is always exciting. Yeah. Always exciting. I think that, um, at our core, our supply chain professionals are quite honestly problem solvers. Um, so, uh, they, they are the ones that get to tackle new challenges or harness new opportunities.

Karin Bursa (47:58):

So I hope that today’s insights are gonna help you to navigate and prioritize some of your supply chain transformation initiatives. And I wanna encourage our listeners to reach out and, uh, check the resources that Monica mentioned on N four.com that’s I N O r.com and also to reach out to supply chain now.com. And while you’re there, please look for TekTok. That’s T E K T O K, and subscribe on TekTok. Our goal is really to help you eliminate the noise and to get the inspiration and information you need to transform your business and replace that risky inventory with valuable information. We’ll see you next time on tech talk powered by supply chain. Now