Supply Chain - August 2022

August 2022 | supplychaindigital.com

Teleperformance:

Meeting diversity & inclusion challenges

Supply Chain: How retail is seeking agility through tech

NNR Global Logistics:

Why the logistics industry is outmoded

P2P software platforms

Searching for perfection Google Supply Chain Director Supriya Iyer on what it takes to lead

12 - 13 OCT 2022 STREAMED & IN PERSON QEII CENTRE, LONDON

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Join us at PROCUREMENT & SUPPLYCHAIN LIVE LONDON Showcase your values, products and services to your partners and customers at PROCUREMENT & SUPPLYCHAIN LIVE LONDON 2022.

Brought to you by BizClik Media Group PROCUREMENT & SUPPLYCHAIN LIVE LONDON, the hybrid event held between 12th-13th October is broadcast live to the world and incorporates two zone areas of SupplyChain LIVE plus Procurement LIVE in to one event.

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The SupplyChain Team EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

SEAN ASHCROFT EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

SCOTT BIRCH

PRODUCTION DIRECTORS

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CREATIVE TEAM

OSCAR HATHAWAY SOPHIE-ANN PINNELL HECTOR PENROSE SAM HUBBARD MIMI GUNN JUSTIN SMITH REBEKAH BIRLESON JORDAN WOOD DANILO CARDOOSO CALLUM HOOD VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGER

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FOREWORD

Net-zero CO2? You need Electricity 4.0 “Sustainability is most promising at the point renewable energy meets digital” STEVE SMITH ENERGY MANAGEMENT CHIEF, SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

The need to make progress on cutting carbon emissions in supply chains is pressing. Is ‘Electricity 4.0’ the breakthrough that will catapult us towards our net-zero goals?

The near-global pledge to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 has left many governments and businesses scrambling to make progress, seeking to stay on track with sustainability roadmaps and initiatives.

And, with supply chains accounting for as much as 80% of organisations’ total carbon footprint – in the shape of Scope 3 emissions, no less – the challenge faced by multinational businesses is, quite frankly, enormous.

So, as time ticks on, where is the headway being made?

In this issue, Schneider Electric’s Energy Management Chief, Steve Smith, says the biggest single factor in helping us hit global net-zero targets will be “electricity 4.0”. This, he explains, is the point at which “renewable electricity meets digital innovation”.

It was the first time I’d heard mention of ‘Electricity 4.0’.

But – with businesses wrestling to keep on-point with their supply chain’s sustainability targets – I suspect it won’t be the last.

SUPPLYCHAIN DIGITAL MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY

SEAN ASHCROFT

sean.ashcroft@bizclikmedia.com

© 2022 | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

supplychaindigital.com

5

CONTENTS

Our Regular Upfront Section: 10 Big Picture 12 The Brief 14 Timeline: RFID goes back to the future 16 Trailblazer: Dr Chris Caplice 18 Five Minutes With: Mauricio Coindreau

42

Supply Chain:

Retail seeking supply agility on all fronts

24

50

At Google, Supriya Iyer is asking the right questions

The complexities of inclusion & supply

Google:

Teleperformance:

76

NNR Global Logistics:

Approach to a Pragmatic Digital Transformation

68

Logistics:

Green light for increase in rail freight

92

Sustainability:

'Electricity 4.0' is the future of sustainability

100

Tech and AI:

Analytics & automation changing the face of supply chains

108 Top 10

P2P software platforms

M ARCH8.COM

IS HERE Telling the stories of driven, ambitious women in business and society...

V I SIT NOW

E D U C AT E • M OT IVAT E • E L E VAT E

VI SI T NOW

BIG PICTURE

The world’s biggest food fight Buñol, Spain

La Tomatina is a food-fight festival held on the last Wednesday of August in the Valencian town of Buñol, in the east of Spain. Up to 50,000 people each year chuck an estimated 12 metric tonnes of ripe tomatoes at one another, with some people travelling across countries for the unusual extravaganza.

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August 2022

The overripe tomatoes are shipped in from the Extremadura region in southwestern Spain – the country’s leading grower of the fruit. Overall, Spain is the world’s ninth largest producer of tomatoes, growing 5.2 million tonnes a year. This is dwarfed by top producer China, producing 55.5 million tonnes.

David Ramos / Stringer Getty gettyimages.co.uk/DavidRamos supplychaindigital.com

11

THE BRIEF “I’m inspired by seekers – anyone who is committed to learning, growth and giving back” Supriya Iyer

Director of Supply Chain and Commercial Operations, Google 

BY THE NUMBERS Firms looking to reshore chip manufacturing are choosing Europe over other regions because of its greater access to renewable energy.

(Figures show renewable energy as a share of total electricity generated.)

(McKinsey)

China

13%

READ MORE

“What we've found is that logistics is way behind in its modus opernadi!”

Mac Sullivan

Head of Tech & Digital Production, NNR Global Logistics US 

READ MORE

“The hardest thing for women in technology is finding a way to achieve equality” Diana Monterrubio

US

Europe

31% 14% 15% Japan

EDITOR'S CHOICE ASIA HOLDS KEY TO FUTURE SUCCESS, MCKINSEY TELLS CEOS

McKinsey urges CEOs to make Asia central to their business strategy, with geopolitical uncertainty, inflation, and supply chain disruption the new normal.

READ MORE

PUT PEOPLE AT HEART OF SUPPLY CHAIN TRANSFORMATION – LOSEBY

Procurement Global Strategic Director, Teleperformance 

Speaking at Procurement & Supply Chain LIVE: The Risk & Resilience Conference, consultant CPO David Loseby urges firms to prioritise people over technology.

READ MORE

READ MORE

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August 2022

Ukraine retail supply chains' response to war - Part 1 of 5 LEAFIO AI Retail Solutions is an Estonia-based company that has an office in Ukraine, as well as many clients located there.

In the first of a five-part series, LEAFIO Product Director Helen Schepanyk tells how its customers in Ukraine are adapting their operations in the face of war.

“In everyday conditions, retail people hardly ever work on nightmare scenarios across their business functions. Mostly, it’s to cover liability for breach of contracts and nothing more,” she says.

“So it’s hardly surprising that, for retail supply chain managers, there are no detailed instructions headlined: ‘How to keep your business afloat during a war’.”

But if there were, Schepanyk says it might include the following scenarios: • A missile flies into one of your supermarkets on the first day of the war.

• Half of your employees flee with their families from bombardment.

• Your key distribution centres are under occupation.

• Your HQ is destroyed by a bomb.

“Sadly,” says Schepanyk, “all of the above has been a bitter reality for thousands of businesses across Ukraine.”

 ASIA

Asia will hold the key for many organisations looking to navigate through ongoing supply disruption, climate emergencies and geopolitical uncertainty, says McKinsey. “Asia is set to take centre stage in this reinvention,” it says in a report.

 ESG IN US IMPORTS

US Customs is now enforcing the Uyghur Forced Labour Protection Act (UFLPA), banning all imports from Xinjiang Province in China.

Penalties for violation will involve civil or criminal penalties, or both.

 SMART FACTORIES

Industry 4.0 technology has made smart factories a prominent target for cyberattacks, according to a new report from multinational consulting company, Capgemini. The report found that, in 2021, manufacturing overtook financial services as the most attacked sector.

 GERMAN PORTS Labour strikes in Germany left ports across the country paralysed as trade union Ver.di staged a “warning strike” over pay.

W I N N E R S AUG 22

L O S E R S

supplychaindigital.com

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TIMELINE

RFID GOES BACK TO THE FUTURE 1940

1948

1959

Radar

RFID invented

Long-range RFID launched

RFID has its roots in the radar technology that emerged during World War Two, which was used by the British, American and German military to identify whether aircraft were friends or foe.

Sweden-born scientist and inventor Harry Stockman is credited with the invention of RFID. In 1940, Stockman moved to the United States and, in 1947, began experimenting with communication via passive reflected carrier waves – one application being a ‘Number Identification System’ that was a rudimentary form of RFID.

Long-range RFID tags – which are ‘active’ instead of ‘passive’ – have a range of up to 100 metres and are designed with low-power consumption to give longer battery life. Long-range RFID tags enable the user to track assets across large areas and spaces.

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August 2022

For a technology that has been with us for more than 80 years, RFID (radio frequency identification) is as fresh and vital as ever

1973

1987

present

RFID first patented

RFID goes public

The first patent for commercial RFID tags was granted in 1973 to Mario W. Cardullo, whose RFID tag had a rewritable memory.

The same year, California entrepreneur Charles Walton received a patent for a passive transponder used to unlock a door without a key.

France introduces an RFIDbased ‘electronic toll collection’ system to its road networks, which is still in use today. This is a faster alternative to traditional toll booths, where vehicles stop and the driver manually pays the toll with cash or a card.

Thousands of such systems are now in use globally.

Ecommerce and omnichannel RFID tech is pivotal to the Internet of Things and, with the pandemic seeing a seismic shift to ecommerce, retailers are using RFID to track inventory and deliver the flexibility, convenience and choice consumers increasingly expect in an omnichannel world. supplychaindigital.com

15

TRAILBLAZER

Dr Chris Caplice

JOB TITLE: FOUNDER & C0-DIRECTOR COMPANY: MIT FREIGHT LAB

Dr Chris Caplice of MIT is one of the most decorated and influential thinkers around freight and logistics.

D

r Chris Caplice is a pioneering freight academic at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he has established a reputation as one of the world’s foremost authorities on logistics.

Dr Caplice founded and co-directed MIT FreightLab, a position he held for 14 years.

The purpose of the FreightLab is to drive innovation in freight transportation planning and operations, and then drive them into practice.

The ultimate goal is to reduce cost, minimise risk and increase service levels.

“Freight transportation is subject to highly volatile demand and costs that are typically outside of a firm’s ability to control or even influence,” Caplice is on record as saying. “This is compounded by a dominant design in terms of how freight is historically procured and managed. FreightLab research focuses on working with companies to develop and implement real-world solutions to these challenges.”

FreightLab many achievements include developing methods for forecasting both short-term spot-market rates and longerterm contract rates.

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August 2022

“ Freight is subject to volatile demand and costs outside a firm’s ability to control or even influence” FreightLab pioneers industrychanging practices It also evolved alternative contract forms between shippers and carriers that increases the level of trust in the relationship, and yields better results for both parties.

“Working with a wide range of shippers, carriers, and third-party providers, the FreightLab team develops and delivers better ways to design, procure, and manage largescale freight transportation systems,” Caplice said when still at the helm.

While at MIT, Dr Caplice was also Executive Director of the Center for Transportation & Logistics (CTL) where he was responsible for the planning and management of research, education, and corporate outreach programs.

While there, he created the MITx MicroMaster’s Program in Supply Chain Management, the very first MicroMasters credential ever offered.

In 2015, more than 430,000 students from 196 countries have taken these online courses, and to date a total of 2,976 MicroMasters credentials have been awarded.

Caplice is one of logistics’ most decorated thinkers Caplice was MIT’s first ever Silver Family Research Fellow in 2016, in recognition of his contribution to supply chain education and

research. Also in 2016, he was presented with a Distinguished Service Award by the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals, and inducted into its Hall of Fame, as a mark of his influence on the global logistics industry.

As well as his work at MIT, Caplice is also currently Chief Scientist for DAT Freight & Analytics, the largest truckload freight marketplace in North America, with US$120bn in market transactions.

In this role, he pioneered the concept of freight-rate modelling that became Chainalytics Freight Market Intelligence Consortium. There, he leads the development and deployment of innovation and insights into the transportation industry all of which is included in the monthly FMIC Pulse Signal Report and the bi-weekly Freightvine Podcasts.

Prior to joining MIT, Dr Caplice held senior management positions in supply chain consulting, product development, and professional services at companies including Logistics.com.

Dr Caplice received a Ph.D. from MIT in 1996 in Transportation and Logistics Systems.

His dissertation on optimisation-based bidding for transportation was selected as the winner of the Council of Logistics Management Doctoral Dissertation Award Prior to this, Caplice taught at the Virginia Military Institute and served five years in the Army Corps of Engineers, achieving the rank of Captain.

His writing has appeared in numerous academic and business journals and publications.

As well as his PhD, Dr Caplice earned a Master of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from the Virginia Military Institute. supplychaindigital.com

17

FIVE MINUTES WITH...

MAURICIO COINDREAU Mauricio Coindreau is Head of Procurement and Sustainability for Budweiser Brewing Group (BBG), which is part of AbInBev – the world’s biggest brewer

Q. TELL US A LITTLE OF YOURSELF...

» I’m an entrepreneur and experienced leader

currently focused on sustainability, strategy, and procurement. I have an academic background, holding a degree in chemical engineering and also an MBA. I’ve led various projects across different industries and have expertise in change management, stakeholder management, growth strategy and social impact investing.

Q. …AND YOUR ROLE AT BBG

» The biggest challenge of my role at BBG is

making sense of supply chains and finding ways to make efficiencies, especially with prices expected to go up even further. My role consists of two parts: procurement and sustainability.

The procurement side is taking a beating, because commodity prices are continuing to increase. Mitigating those costs through negotiation and supplier relationships has never been more important.

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August 2022

supplychaindigital.com

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FIVE MINUTES WITH...

We're constantly looking for smallto-medium sized vendors to add to our portfolio of suppliers, but we also know we're heavily reliant on technology and innovation to help get us there. On the sustainability side, the challenge is how can we move faster to net zero?

We're working on ways to get closer to net zero. Here at Budweiser Brewing Group, we’re using technology and diversity to get us to that end goal.

Q. H OW IMPORTANT IS SUSTAINABILITY TO YOU?

» Extremely. Two years ago, I co-founded

a company called Ocean Bottle, which is designed to prevent 7 billion plastic bottles 20

August 2022

from entering the ocean. To date, we’ve collected more than 450 million plastic bottles.

The idea is to create a waste infrastructure in communities that lack it. In impoverished communities, there's no garbage truck to pick up rubbish. People have no solution other than to throw it into a river, which then takes plastic bottles out into the ocean.

With the sale of every Ocean Bottle, 11kg of plastic – the equivalent of 1,000 oceanbound plastic bottles – is collected in impoverished coastal communities where plastic pollution is worst. Plastic collectors can exchange plastic waste for money or credit via blockchain technology to spend on tuition, tech goods, health care and micro-finance.

Q. WHO DO YOU FIND INSPIRING?

» I've had some great mentors throughout

my career. I'm originally from Mexico, so that's where my career started. Under my first boss, I got the opportunity to launch the Amazon Mexico store. There were 10 of us stuck in a room trying to figure out how to build the biggest ecommerce store in Latin America. Gloria, my boss, was a revolutionary feminist in executive empowerment and showed me how to lead by example.

Then, when I joined BBG’s global procurement and sustainability team in Switzerland, I had another female boss and mentor called Annabel, and she sparked in me the passion to find solutions for a circular value chain to our breweries, and so we

began working closely with more startups and innovation solutions.

Q. B EST PIECE OF ADVICE EVER RECEIVED?

» In my first job after college, working

with a small consulting firm, I was advised that you need to focus your efforts on the 20% of activities that solve 80% of your problems. I've tried to follow that advice throughout my whole professional career.

You get a lot of noise at work, and there are problems left and right. But there are also opportunities and solutions left and right, so you need to keep focused on that 20% that will change the future of the industry that you work in. supplychaindigital.com

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DISCOVER WHO MADE THE CUT. Top 100 Companies in Supply Chain Read Now

A BizClik Media Group Brand

Creating Digital Communities

AT GOOGLE, SUPRIYA IYER IS ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS 24

August 2022

GOOGLE

WRITTEN BY: HELEN ADAMS PRODUCED BY: MIKE SADR

supplychaindigital.com

25

GOOGLE

Supriya Iyer is the Director of Supply Chain and Commercial Operations at Google. Here, she explains what it takes to lead and who inspires her

R

esearch from SEO Tribunal suggests that there are over three million Google searches every minute. But behind the familiar question tab is Supriya Iyer – the Director of Supply Chain and Commercial Operations at Google.

Born in India, Iyer went on to complete her schooling there, all the way through to postgraduate study. After completing a double Master’s in Mathematics and Information Systems from B.I.T.S Pilani India, Iyer then moved to Melbourne, Australia, where she became a formidable player working in global supply chain and operations roles across a variety of industry sectors, such as automotive and high tech.

“My work at General Electric was especially pertinent to my growth as a professional,” she explains. “It was there that I truly learnt about managing change and driving transformation.”

In 2016, Iyer moved to the Bay Area with her family and started working at Google Cloud in the global partner programmes team and subsequently in the professional services organisation.

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August 2022

supplychaindigital.com

27

GOOGLE

“ Compassionate and competent leaders have always inspired me to challenge the status quo and invite diverse perspectives” SUPRIYA IYER

DIRECTOR OF SUPPLY CHAIN AND COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS, GOOGLE

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August 2022

“In October 2019, I took on my current role in the Google networking team as the Director of Supply Chain and Commercial Operations.

The Google networking supply chain & commercial operations team is structured to effectively manage procurement and supply of networking equipment to sites, overseeing significant investment in assets and services across the business.”

The challenges in this role range from supporting Google Cloud’s enterprise customers to ensuring effective procurement and delivery to complex countries.

“The shift over the past 40+ years to just-intime inventory and global manufacturing has helped to optimise costs,” says Iyer. “However, the pandemic added a new set of unforeseen challenges. On the supply side, border closings combined with lockdowns constrained the manufacturing and shipping of key components and goods, significantly increasing lead times. Juggling supply to meet growing demand has therefore posed new challenges.”

Hiring supply chain and project management talent globally in a labour constrained environment has been more of a challenge recently.

“As a leader, supporting team members to take care of their health and overall wellbeing during the pandemic has been critical, but not always easy to do. The last two years have been a marathon and it isn’t over by any stretch of imagination!”

Iyer and her team are working hard to overcome these challenges.

“We have developed frameworks, processes and metrics to help better understand and quantify these challenges.

For example, working with business stakeholders on an emerging market roadmap, developing a materials supply playbook for these markets and investing in planning ahead to support timely deployment in these markets have helped. supplychaindigital.com

29

Juniper Networks - keeping cloud providers operational Juniper Networks on how it provides infrastructure to cloud providers, including the largest hyperscale networks

supply chain and the man who oversees it – Mitch Haynes, Supply Chain Planning & Fulfillment VP at Juniper.

Juniper Networks might just be one of the biggest companies you’ve never heard of.

A US multinational corporation, Juniper offers networking products including routers, switches, network management software and security products and solutions.

“What’s super important is our ability to scale-up with a customer. We have to physically produce all of the hardware that makes that possible.”

Its customers consist of service providers, enterprises, and cloud providers, including the largest hyperscale cloud providers, as part of its Cloud segment.

“Our customers are building clouds that serve businesses and the public globally,” says Jason Fritch, Senior Vice President of Global Sales, Juniper Networks Cloud Segment. He adds that the company also provides “high-end, high-performance, high-scale networking solutions” that not only connect clients’ data centres to one another, but also connect them directly to their end-users. “Tens of thousands of products and hardware components are required from us to do this at planet scale, like we do for some of our global cloud clients.”

Such vast quantities of components and products demand a great deal of both Juniper’s

This requires an ecosystem of partners, says Haynes: “There are the customers, and the operation of their data centres, and then there are our manufacturing partners, and their suppliers.”

It’s a difficult job at the best of times, but over the past two, pandemic-hit, years, it has been inordinately challenging - which is when Juniper’s strong relationship with their customers came into its own.

“We work with customers so that together we can make the best operational decision we can at any given point in time,” says Haynes.

“That might be whether to place a new order for a product earlier than we typically would, or looking at a design or use-case and making early-stage decisions on future engineering.”

Learn more

GOOGLE

SUPRIYA IYER TITLE: DIRECTOR OF SUPPLY CHAIN AND COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS LOCATION: PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES

EXECUTIVE BIO

Supriya leads Supply Chain and Commercial Operations, with a focus on predictable materials supply and operations to operate Google’s network at scale. With 20+ years experience transforming value chains and growing small teams into mature organisations to deliver high quality products and services, Supriya enjoys fast-paced and dynamic environments while fostering people-first culture and stakeholder engagement. Previously, she has held global leadership positions at VMWare, GE and Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI).

Supriya holds a Master's degree in Computer Science and a Master’s degree in Mathematics. In her free time, she enjoys reading, hiking, cooking, and travelling.

At Google, Supriya Iyer is asking the right questions

supplychaindigital.com

33

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GOOGLE

“ I’m inspired by seekers – anyone who is committed to learning, growth and giving back” “Similarly, developing a two-year capability roadmap has helped not only supply chain but also our partner teams to work on the right tools, data structures, reporting and processes to enable scale and velocity.

“Strong partnerships with strategic suppliers has been pivotal to ensure smooth supply and early notification of supply constraints. Jointly, we have been able to develop solutions that have supported Google networking’s rapid growth.”

SUPRIYA IYER

DIRECTOR OF SUPPLY CHAIN AND COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS, GOOGLE

Vulnerability and authenticity in leadership The best piece of advice Iyer has ever been given is to “get out of the office and connect with customers, vendors, peers and team members” – pretty difficult to do in the pandemic, but not impossible.

“Only then can you hope to understand them and build relationships of trust and open communication,” she says.

This advice is in part inspired by an eclectic range of Iyers personal heroes.

“I’m inspired by seekers – anyone who is committed to learning, growth and giving back: Malala Yousafzai, Mahatma Gandhi, Greta Thunberg and Maya Angelou, they are some examples of people who inspire me by what they stand for and how they lead.

They demonstrate vulnerability, authenticity and standing up for the community. supplychaindigital.com

35

GOOGLE

“At work, I am inspired by the Google leaders, my peers and of course my team who have shown customer centricity, perseverance and teamwork despite the tough challenges of the last 2 years.

Compassionate and competent leaders – my first mentor (John Gafferena) and my father (Alak Sundararaman) – have always inspired me to challenge the status quo, invite diverse perspectives and focus on the customer.”

Making the Google supply chain resilient Google is a planet-scale network, but there are some figures that can provide a more easily digestible view of the organisation: • Google’s global network consists of a system of high-capacity fibre optic cables that encircle the globe, under both land and sea, connecting data centres to each other and to users • Globally, Google operates data centres in 23 locations, 34 cloud regions and 103 zones • The company has 147 points of presence and has announced 20 subsea cable investments around the globe • Google also has thousands of edge locations around the world in over 200 countries and territories, offering users and customers very low latency services such as Google Assistant and rich content such as YouTube and Google Photos

“ Strong partnerships with strategic suppliers have been pivotal to ensure smooth supply and early notification of supply constraints” SUPRIYA IYER

DIRECTOR OF SUPPLY CHAIN AND COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS, GOOGLE

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August 2022

Though undoubtedly a complex, multi-layered role, which elements of growing this worldwide network demand most from Iyer?

“Anticipation is key and asking the right questions to pre-empt the needs of a rapidly growing and evolving network is a challenge,” she says. “The only guarantee is the next 12 months won’t be like the previous 12 months, for sure!”

Innovating material supply in ways that enables responsiveness at short notice will be key in the coming years – most likely for all industries.

Part standardisation, rationalisation and in-region customisation are some approaches that Google is taking to reduce long lead-times. Iyer’s team invests considerable time in building on the strong partnership with their strategic vendors and jointly innovating with them.

Similarly, working with the engineering, deployment and network operations teams within Google, to ensure alignment, is a key part of Iyer’s work. Over time, the Google network hopes to be able to deliver greater predictably with innovative solutions to meet industry needs, while supplychaindigital.com

37

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GOOGLE

operating an autonomous network. Similar to a self-driving car, Google’s intent-driven automated network needs to evolve into an autonomous network.

“In addition to thinking about reliability as ‘How do we minimise failures?’, at Google we think as well about ‘How we can make our services resilient to failures when they happen?’. In our organisation, we spend as much time on systems and processes to respond to failures as we do in preventing them in the first place. Google Cloud has grown significantly, and we are continuously increasing the number of enterprise customers we support.”

Supply chain and digital transformation at Google Iyer has a roadmap for Google’s networking supply chain. She and her team have devoted considerable effort to optimise their supply chain tools and systems to reengineer across the end to end value chain and enable FLOW and agility.

“Revisiting processes and systems in light of both the demand and supply variability is essential to predictably deliver at scale,” she says. “The frequency and volume of change will increase and we are developing

“ Revisiting processes and systems in light of both the demand and supply variability is essential to predictably deliver at scale” SUPRIYA IYER

DIRECTOR OF SUPPLY CHAIN AND COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS, GOOGLE

processes and tools where we can react within a lead time that our customers need to sustainably succeed.”

Iyer plans to leverage AI and ML capabilities to further automate supply chain processes and simplify decision making. An example of this could be scaled invoice validation to support timely processing and payment.

“Integration with vendor systems and tools for timely information flow across the materials supply chain,” she explains.

“For example, integration with third-party warehouse providers is key to ensure the right information is available to make the right decisions in a timely manner.

“We are actively working to deliver an agreed capability roadmap. We are well progressed on all fronts and, in light of the recent supply constraints and demand growth, we have further refined our capability roadmap to predictably meet customer demand in the coming years.” supplychaindigital.com

39

“ Responsive and responsible supply of networking materials and services is our mission; that is what motivates us” SUPRIYA IYER

DIRECTOR OF SUPPLY CHAIN AND COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS, GOOGLE

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August 2022

This transformation will help Google to offer customers capabilities that it hasn’t been able to offer before, with the investment in enhancing tools, systems, processes and data frameworks helping Google to support cloud customers with new networking products and capabilities at scale. It will support customers’ growing businesses and help them to achieve their purpose and strategy.

GOOGLE

However, Google’s longterm strategy for the Google networking supply chain links right back to Google’s vision: ‘To organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful’. “My team’s vision aligns with this as we aim to provide access to networking materials and all material related information to our customers easily and simply,” says Iyer.

“Responsive and responsible supply of

networking materials and services is our mission; that is what motivates us.”

Such a mission would not be possible without a reliable partner ecosystem.

At Google, vendors are valued partners and the company actively collaborates with them at all levels to develop innovative solutions and products. Google networking engineering, product, supply chain and other teams regularly connect, discuss and work closely with vendors.

“They are vital to delivering our vision and strategy and, likewise, Google as a customer is critical for them and their organisations,” says Iyer. “There is mutual respect, trust and confidence in our ability to shape Google’s network in the coming years.

“Our relationship with our vendors has deepened in the last two years; we’ve been learning from each other.

We have also supported each other in developing innovative solutions and ensuring timely execution of critical projects.”

Increased digitisation; stronger partnerships with suppliers; working closely with governments; holding larger inventory buffers for critical components; bringing supply chains closer to home; and increasing optionality will be key to protect from future shocks.

The pandemic has given supply chain professionals a platform to appropriately influence design, engineering and deployment – and Iyer is ready for the next stage.

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Retail seeking supply agility on all fronts

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SUPPLY CHAIN

Disruption, uncertainty and the shift to e-commerce means retail supply chains are seeking agility in Industry 4.0 tech and innovative inventory strategies WRITTEN BY: SEAN ASHCROFT

I

f one were to create a word cloud to capture the story of supply chains over the past two years, then ‘agility’ would figure large. Organisations continue to face unprecedented and ongoing disruption, uncertainty, and rampant inflation, which is why supply chains must be agile if they are to meet demand.

Few sectors have needed to be more agile than retail. At the start of the pandemic, consumers flooded online to find the goods they needed, and retailers responded by expanding their e-commerce capabilities.

Online sales saw four years of growth in just 12 months, according to research from Experian.

“Few industries have been more exposed to the volatility of pandemicera business than retail,” says Lila Dorato, Senior Director of Solutions Engineering at MuleSoft, a leading API platform that allows businesses to use data to create “connected experiences”. “In the early days of the crisis, supermarkets saw shelves repeatedly stripped bare by panic buyers, while other parts of the sector saw sales plummet after lockdowns forced store closures.”

Uncertainty still rife among retailers and customers - MuleSoft Dorato says that, although things have improved since the early lockdowns, there is still a great deal of uncertainty – both among

“ Retailers are reducing inventory and placing smaller, more frequent, orders with shorter delivery times” LILA DORATO

SENIOR DIRECTOR OF SOLUTIONS ENGINEERING, MULESOFT supplychaindigital.com

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retailers and customers – and that “rapidly changing circumstances and fluctuating demand are continuing to take their toll on global supply chains”.

It’s not just uncertainty and disruption that have created difficulties for retailers.

Challenges have also come from the shift away from a multichannel consumption model towards omnichannel.

Dorato says digitalisation is the key not only to helping retailers navigate difficult times, but also to “putting themselves at the heart of growth by attracting more of today’s increasingly tech-savvy consumer base”.

She adds: “Retailers need to ensure that both bricks-and-mortar and online customers get the seamless experiences they crave. That means being able to buy what they want, when they want it, without being exposed to the supply chain chaos that has frustrated the industry for much of the past two years.”

She explains that this is why retailers are reducing on-hand inventory and placing smaller, more frequent orders with shorter delivery times, to avoid being left with surplus stock. But she adds that such a strategy comes with risk, because “if they’re unable to match inventory to customer demand, revenue is put at risk”.

“ A big blind spot for retailers is connecting store-assortment decisions to demand activity near the store” NIKKI BAIRD

VP STRATEGY, APTOS

Technology crucial to navigating supply disruption “This is why technology is becoming ever more critical to navigating disruption, as retailers look to optimise their supply chains through data-driven decision-making and capabilities such as predictive analytics,” Dorato explains. She adds that many retailers are also investing in automation to ease the challenges of operating as a lowmargin business.

“Automation can bring significant benefits throughout the supply chain, from fulfilment to check-out,” she says. “It helps retailers maintain competitive pricing, while still increasing their profit.

“Retailers need real-time visibility into customer demand as it ebbs and flows supplychaindigital.com

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SUPPLY CHAIN

“ Retailers will want the ability to transfer demand from online to stores during peak season” NIKKI BAIRD

VP STRATEGY, APTOS

across their entire supply chain. Only this wide-angled view will help them to detect early on the broader shifts in consumer behaviour that supply must adapt to, and enable, automated decision-making to meet the demand quickly.

“Many are restricted in these efforts by siloed data and legacy processes, such as manual restocking and batch ordering, which can be slow, inflexible, and error prone.”

Technology alone is not sufficient to give retail supply chains the flexibility they need; the ways that demand must meet supply are also vitally important.

One effect of the monumental shift away from brick-and-mortar shopping towards ecommerce and omnichannel is that warehouse capacity has become sorely limited, with demand far exceeding supply.

And building new storage capacity is far from straightforward, because facilities need to be close to major roads or airports, meaning available land is either in short supply or cost-prohibitive. Add to this the fact construction costs are extremely high right now and it’s easy to see why retailers are seeking new tactics to satisfy demand.

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Stores taking on distribution centre role in omnichannel world One such tactic is to use existing stores as warehouses, says Nikki Baird, Strategy VP at Aptos, a retail technology specialist that provides omnichannel solutions.

Baird says back-of-stores can be used to fulfil click-and-collect orders, as well as orders that are shipped from the store, to speed up customer fulfilment.

Pandemic ‘left firms looking for fast supply chain solutions’ - SAP

She adds: “A big blind spot for retailers is connecting store assortment decisions to demand activity near the store. When a retailer chooses not to carry an item in a store, they have created a self-fulfilling prophecy, because that item will never sell in the store.

“But if that item is selling like hot cakes online and being shipped to homes around the store, that’s a hint that you can save

Dave Vallejo, Global Head of Digital Business Planning at SAP, says that although most businesses realise supply agility requires digital transformation, many are simply not ready to make that change.

“We’re looking at different maturity levels of supply chain planning,” he told Supply Chain Digital. “For example, some companies still plan offline using spreadsheets. They're not at a stage where they can predict anything. They're simply reacting.

“In a case like this, helping them to move to a digital environment where they have all the information on a single platform will be the starting point.”

He adds: “But then we also support customers who want to use intelligent technologies to better predict their business, so they can be more resilient and prepared, as well as more profitable and sustainable in the way they operate their supply chain.

“In the past, when people talked about supply chain planning they’d think of a transformation that takes years and that’s an IT-intensive effort.

“But during the pandemic, companies began to look for digital-planning environments overnight, and they discovered it could be done much quicker – especially if it involved a cloud product. We’ve SEEN companies launch an integrated planning environment within a matter of weeks, both in large companies and smaller companies.” supplychaindigital.com

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“ Digitalisation is the key to helping retailers put themselves at the heart of growth” LILA DORATO

SENIOR DIRECTOR OF SOLUTIONS ENGINEERING, MULESOFT

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SUPPLY CHAIN

on logistics costs by holding that item in the back room for faster fulfilment and that you should also be carrying that item in-store.”

While few stores offer the capacity of warehouses, space is less of an issue than one might think, says Baird.

“For store-as-warehouse decisions, space is a consideration, but most retailers have too much selling space, so rather than consolidating stores they should consider whether it’s more cost effective to reduce selling space and increase storage space, knowing that the back room will be used as a supplement to the ecommerce distribution centre.

“The savings mostly come from being able to promise something like two-day shipping, but without having to pay expedited shipping fees.”

Looking to the future, Baird feels that these changes to how stores are used by retailers to fulfil orders is here to stay.

“I don’t think this is a temporary thing,” she says. “I think retailers will have an inventory strategy based on online fulfilment from distribution centres during off-peak but have the ability to transfer demand from online to stores during peak season.

“When you think about the festive season alone, the shipping cut-offs seem to get earlier and earlier every year. Retailers must still physically move inventory to get it into a customer’s hands, whether it’s a package on a porch or a customer with a trolly in-store.

“Retailers have for too long operated as if these things are disconnected decisions and operations.

“There’s a lot of money to be made, costs to be saved, and customer satisfaction to be gained by considering them as one process – as a single pool of inventory.” supplychaindigital.com

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THE COMPLEXITIES OF INCLUSION & SUPPLY WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON

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PRODUCED BY: MIKE SADR

TELEPERFORMANCE

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TELEPERFORMANCE

Diana Monterrubio, Procurement Global Strategic Director, Teleperformance, on diversity and inclusion in technology and the challenges of supply shortages

F

ounded in 1978, Teleperformance is a global omnichannel organisation headquartered in France. Serving 170 markets in 88 countries, Teleperformance provides a variety of services, including customer acquisition management, customer care, technical support and social media services.

“Our motto at Teleperformance – which I love – is that ‘each interaction matters’,” says Diana Monterrubio, Procurement Global Strategic Director at Teleperformance.

“Teleperformance has grown into a global scale organisation that connects the biggest, most respected brands on the planet with their customers. Today, the company has doubled its number of employees compared to when I joined in 2011, transforming its operations while remaining true to its core mission.”

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Diana Monterrubio, Procurement Global Strategic Director, Teleperformance supplychaindigital.com

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TELEPERFORMANCE

“ I hope that I will be able to help others figure out their place in the world.

To do my part for women to not feel like minorities or that they don’t belong” DIANA MONTERRUBIO

PROCUREMENT GLOBAL STRATEGIC DIRECTOR, TELEPERFORMANCE

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Increasing diversity and inclusion in the technology industry Across many industries, women continue to be a disadvantaged minority, and Monterrubio emphasises the truth of this in the technology industry. “It’s very common and very visible. Quite often in meetings, it will be 10 men and me.

I have been in situations where others assume that the males in my team are

DIANA MONTERRUBIO TITLE: P ROCUREMENT GLOBAL STRATEGIC DIRECTOR INDUSTRY: PROCUREMENT

my boss when, in fact, it’s the other way round,” explains Monterrubio.

To combat this, Monterrubio is dedicated to educating herself and representing her gender within the technology industry. “I hope that I will be able to help others figure out their place in the world. I try to do my part to ensure one day, women no longer feel like minorities or that they don’t belong.”

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: GUADALAJARA, MEXICO Diana Monterrubio’s career is deep rooted in Teleperformance.

11 years ago, Monterrubio joined the telecommunication company as an agent in the lead up to her graduation.

Since then, she has worked her way up through the organisation from Recruitment Specialist, to Procurement Co-ordinator, and Procurement Category Manager, before taking on the role she holds today - Procurement Global Strategic Director.

Monterrubio is dedicated to applying her talents and knowledge on a personal and professional level. To apply the tools she has gained along her student and professional years, in order to keep on striving for excellence, looking out for her own and her teammate’s development to promote success.

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TELEPERFORMANCE

“ The hardest challenge for women entering into the technology function is finding a way to achieve equality” DIANA MONTERRUBIO

PROCUREMENT GLOBAL STRATEGIC DIRECTOR, TELEPERFORMANCE

Monterrubio believes that the key to increasing diversity and inclusion in the technology industry is listening. “I think it’s important that we all – not just males – continue to listen and continue to keep on learning. It is important to give everyone the spotlight and a chance to sit at the table.

Doing so can change everything for the better, fresh thoughts can only improve the way we operate,” says Monterrubio.

“The hardest challenge for women entering into the technology function is finding a way to achieve equality, acknowledging our differences and embracing what brings us together,” she adds. “For example, I have found that negotiation is an art; if men like to do business golfing and a woman doesn’t golf, is she automatically out of the negotiations because of that? Some people may say yes, some may say no, or some may say she needs to adjust.” supplychaindigital.com

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TELEPERFORMANCE

One piece of advice Monterrubio has been given and would like to pass on: “Do not be afraid to speak up, to express yourself, highlight the challenging work that women are doing in the industry, silence is not a tool that we need.

“Something that I love about Teleperformance is its awareness of the issues women face not just in 58

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procurement, but across all industries.

Teleperformance is committed to a fair workplace that respects its people and strives for equality. We have a global initiative called TP Women where we address challenges faced by women in the workplace, so I’m very grateful for that. It makes me feel that the company backs me in what I do.”

Teleperformance: The complexities of inclusion & supply

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TELEPERFORMANCE

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“ Statistics will never lie, they can tell us the percentage of women and men in leadership roles to help increase the proportion of women in leadership” DIANA MONTERRUBIO

PROCUREMENT GLOBAL STRATEGIC DIRECTOR, TELEPERFORMANCE

How can other organisations drive greater inclusion?

There are many strategies for driving greater inclusion, but what does it take for such strategies to be effective?

“These strategies should be supported and gain participation at all levels of the business. It is also important to track promotions – statistics will never lie, they can tell us the percentage of women and men in leadership roles to help increase the proportion of women in leadership,” says Monterrubio.

“We also need more female mentors, this is something that I think is still lacking in the industry, we still don’t have that many senior female role models.” supplychaindigital.com

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TELEPERFORMANCE

Navigating the complexities of component shortages For those in the technology industry, component shortages have been a significant challenge. “I can honestly say this has been a hard challenge, something that has kept me up at night. The supply of components is a chain that needs to be restored and one that we need to make work,” explains Monterrubio.

“For the last two years, we have been developing a forecasting and negotiations plan: to supply our clients with the technology needed, even with the current shortage. This has certainly been the biggest challenge of my career for the last two years, which is why we have great partners that we work with to help navigate these storms.”

The evolution of global purchasing For a long time, global purchasing has been evolving. When Monterrubio began working in procurement at Teleperformance she only worked for the sites in Mexico. Back then, the company’s operations were decentralised, operating separately within their borders. Today, Teleperformance operates on a global and centralised governance demanding the need for global executives and directors to take care of negotiations.

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“With our partners, we have been able to plan for the future, as well as develop new ideas and strategies for the coming years” DIANA MONTERRUBIO

PROCUREMENT GLOBAL STRATEGIC DIRECTOR, TELEPERFORMANCE

supplychaindigital.com

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TELEPERFORMANCE

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“For example, I negotiate with all our global technology partners, which I then pass on to our regional and local teams to continue the negotiations internally in their own countries,” says Monterrubio.

“Negotiating 10 laptops is not the same as negotiating a 100,000, this understanding has helped us to organise our operations to negotiate better pricing and standards, as well as volume so that we spend what is needed on hardware and software rather than overspending,” she adds.

Why ‘partners’ and not ‘vendors’ Insisting on calling collaborators ‘partners’ instead of ‘vendors’, Monterrubio highlights that this is something she learned during her time at Teleperformance. “This mindset has helped me so much in my career. While a vendor is someone that will be with you in business as they look to develop their own operations, a partner is an organisation that you trust and that will grow with you, they want to understand your needs and the value they can bring.”

Monterrubio adds: “We have many partnerships with both hardware and software companies. The pandemic required a huge jump in technology and remote supplychaindigital.com

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TELEPERFORMANCE

“Growth waits for no one, so we need to start planning and we need to get better at forecasting” DIANA MONTERRUBIO

PROCUREMENT GLOBAL STRATEGIC DIRECTOR, TELEPERFORMANCE

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1978

Year company was founded

420K+ Number of employees worldwide

170

Countries served

265+

Languages and dialects

working, and our partners have helped us to meet that need, to keep up with the industry and to meet customer demands.

“With our partners, we have been able to plan for the future, as well as develop new ideas and strategies for the coming years – our partners are definitely important to us and our success in achieving our goals.”

Over the next 12 to 18 months, Monterrubio expects to see significant continued growth. “Growth waits for no one, so we need to start planning and we need to get better at forecasting and planning. We also need to keep innovating, creating and developing our strategies for negotiations, procurement, and our partnerships.”

Developing a centralised procurement team Reflecting on Teleperforamance’s development of a centralised procurement team, Monterrubio explains that the key

to success is communication. “We didn’t know any of our peers in procurement globally when the new governance took place. We soon realised that, to migrate into a central team successfully, we needed to communicate,” explains Monterrubio.

“But we found ourselves developing this centralised procurement team that required communication in the middle of a pandemic. No one could travel, everyone was at home, so our strategy became centred around the laptop requirements, the headsets, the cameras, the software, and the security of communicating remotely.

She adds: “As a result, communication and creating standards became our strategy. We still have a long way to go, but we have great leadership guiding us.”

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GREEN LIGHT FOR INCREASE IN RAIL FREIGHT When it comes to freight, rail is far greener than road, yet it’s far more complex, which is why a change in mindset – and the use of technology – will be needed if rail is to grow WRITTEN BY: SEAN ASHCROFT

E

uropean Union (EU) sustainability proposals include a plan to double rail freight across the territory by 2030, with the US also committed to increasing the role of rail as part of its transport infrastructure.

On a per-tonne-delivered basis, it’s estimated rail freight produces 75% less greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) than shipping by truck, so it is easy to see why politicians and business chiefs are keen to embrace rail more fully as part of the intermodal logistics landscape (with ‘intermodal’ defined as being two or more modes of transport being used to convey goods).

Some countries are doing better than others on making rail a major part of their intermodal logistics infrastructure, with the US leading the

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way. Unlike the EU, the US is a single landmass and has a single language, and around 40% of all US freight by tonne-mile is moved by rail – compared to around 15% in Europe.

Also, the States has a more-advanced logistics infrastructure than the EU, plus it boasts a large ecosystem of Intermodal Marketing Companies (IMCs) that make it almost as easy to book intermodal transport in the US as it is to book a truck.

EU playing intermodal logistics catch-up on US The EU’s bid to catch up with the US on the intermodal front will be dependent as much on port development as that of rail, according to a recent report from McKinsey. The report – Bold Moves to Boost European Rail Freight –

LOGISTICS

“The benefits of visibility across an intermodal supply chain are considerable” KEN SHERMAN PRESIDENT, INTELLITRANS

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LOGISTICS

“ I expect rail use to continue to increase because we recognise the need to reduce our carbon footprint” KEN SHERMAN PRESIDENT, INTELLITRANS

highlights how, in the past 70 years, European rail freight’s share of supply chain movements has plummeted from 60% in the 1950s to just 15% today.

The report outlines how several major European import and export port hubs have very low rail modal share. In Felixstowe in the UK, it’s 17%, just 8% in Antwerp, Belgium, and 7% in Valencia, Spain.

McKinsey called on European ports to “strategise hinterland activity”, urging them to follow the example of the Port of Hamburg,

where redevelopment has enabled it to increase its rail modal share from 30% to 51% in less than three decades.

“The targeted investment in infrastructure at the Port of Hamburg supply chains triggered a massive shift,” McKinsey writes, adding: “Ports play a major role in the transport of European goods, handling around 50% of imports and exports. Rail access to ports is therefore a crucial factor in fulfilling Europe’s aspiration for freight rail.”

It says, if the EU is to achieve its goals on rail, it will require “a massive shift in trajectory” – including a switch to new major long-distance freight flows, more key connection points, such as ports, and new industries able to replace volumes lost in declining sectors.

Another challenge, McKinsey points out, is that, although rail transport is better for supplychaindigital.com

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New intermodal rail route unveiled in US OceaNS Bridge Express is a new rail partnership in the US between Union Pacific Railroad and the Port of Virginia to provide an expedited rail service from the East Coast, giving shippers a new option to reach West Coast markets.

OceaNS Bridge Express will originate at the Norfolk International Terminal at the Port of Virginia and interchange with Union Pacific in Chicago, with connections to West Coast markets.

“The current environment has led shippers and carriers to think creatively about moving their goods,” said Shawn Tureman, VP Intermodal & Automotive Marketing for Norfolk Southern. “In response, we took a customer-centric approach by providing a new option for shipping to markets in the Western United States.”

Union Pacific said its intermodal network “is strategically positioned to provide container shippers an alternative with this overland service to the West Coast”.

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the environment, trucking is a supply chain favourite because it’s cheaper, more flexible, and has greater reach than rail.

Planning is biggest barrier in the shift from road to rail “The biggest barrier to shifting the emphasis from road to rail freight is planning,” says Ken Sherman, President of US-based IntelliTrans, whose SaaS-based solutions help businesses manage complex supply chain needs.

“Planning road transport is easy compared to other modes. You can potentially have numerous hauliers, brokers, and third-party logistics providers (3PLs) to choose from for your shipment.”

“Rail transport is greener, but trucking is a supply chain favourite because it’s cheaper, more flexible and has greater reach” KEN SHERMAN PRESIDENT, INTELLITRANS

Sherman adds: “You can also often book transport with a single phone call or email, and road haulage typically has the shortest transit time from origin to destination of all modal options.”

He also says there is the fact that some points of origin or destination might not be served by rail – particularly in Europe.

That said, Sherman sees rail playing an ever-growing role in logistics globally over the coming decade.

“I expect rail use to continue to increase.

I think most people recognise the need to reduce our overall carbon footprint, and that transportation drives a significant portion of GHG emissions.”

The overwhelming importance to companies of cutting emissions in their supply chains will, Sherman feels, far outweigh the more challenging nature of rail freight planning compared to road. He also says that the businesses will also accept that, to stay on top of such planning, they will need to invest in tech solutions that give end-to-end intermodal supply chain visibility.

Supply chain visibility vital for rail freight planning Companies can best achieve such visibility by partnering with a data aggregator or visibility technology provider, according to Sherman. He adds: “Such companies will supplychaindigital.com

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LOGISTICS

“If the EU is to achieve its goals on rail, it will require a massive shift in trajectory” MCKINSEY REPORT

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have pre-existing connections to many of the logistics services providers (LSPs) that are used for journeys, meaning they’ll have wellestablished processes for onboarding carriers that they are not connected to already.

“The shipper will need authorisation to provide services to the technology provider and will also need to strongly encourage some of the carriers to engage in the process.”

The benefits of such visibility across an intermodal supply chain are considerable, says Sherman: “It will improve customer service, by leveraging a technology provider who can provide updates and notifications to customers, who might be concerned about longer, and potentially more variable, transit times.”

Sherman says there are also cost reductions to be had. “Oftentimes, the cost of transport goes down with GHG emissions, so you can achieve both cost savings and emissions’ reduction by being able to effectively use these modes,” he says.

“Then there is asset utilisation. By having better visibility and the ability to take action on exceptions before they become more significant problems, you can keep asset velocity up and the number of assets required to serve your business down.”

Sherman believes that another appeal of rail is that it can already offer what autonomous trucking is promising to.

“In the US, it’s said autonomous trucking will take off only once each truck is hauling two trailers and there are dedicated lanes on the highways to improve flow and safety. Also, it will only be on the first and last mile that driving is done by a human driver.

“Well, that sounds a lot like a small intermodal train to me, so why don’t we leverage something that already exists today, as opposed to waiting five or ten years for autonomous trucking to have a significant impact?” supplychaindigital.com

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APPROACH TO A PRAGMATIC DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION WRITTEN BY: ILKHAM OZSEVIM

PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

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NNR GLOBAL LOGISTICS

Mac Sullivan, Head of Tech and Digital Promotion of NNR Global Logistics (USA), on the outmoded state of the logistics industry and NNR’s advancement

W

hen we think about logistics, when we picture the oceans being crisscrossed by thousands of gargantuan cargo ships with their huge multicoloured containers stacked sky-high; when we picture the multitudes of blimp-like cargo planes that saturate the stratospheres with their freight-in-tonnage; the land, the sea, the skies – we doubtless take it to be the very paradigm of efficient processes. It must be, surely?

With the entire business world – indeed, the entire human world – depending on its arterial and vascular traffic (‘vessels’ being named so for a reason), it must be the case that until now efficiency has been at the very pulse and feedback of this entire system.

Admittedly, then, it was a surprise to discover that this has categorically not been the case for central aspects of logistics or the supply chain as a whole, both in the past and in most cases, even the present.

Mac Sullivan, Head of Technology and Digital Promotion at NNR Global Logistics (USA), is the man who supplied this rude awakening. “I have cargo that I need to send from Dallas to London. In order to figure out all the different ways that I can get it there, all the relevant contracts as well as all the potentially different routes have to be centralised to a specific location. What we've found is that logistics as a whole, has 78

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Example of an image caption supplychaindigital.com

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NNR GLOBAL LOGISTICS

Title of the video

“ WHAT WE'VE FOUND IS THAT LOGISTICS AS A WHOLE HAS BEEN WAY, WAY BEHIND IN ITS MODUS OPERANDI” MAC SULLIVAN

HEAD OF TECH AND DIGITAL PROMOTION, NNR GLOBAL LOGISTICS

been way, way behind in its modus operandi.

A great number of logistics companies have, up until now, been working with paperbased (literally ‘written-down’) information.

This goes all the way through from the tracking of orders to the recording of sales receipts and information,” he says.

This must be a mistake of some kind – we have our eyes on Mars; we are at the forefront of quantum computation and have systems in AI and big data that are so sophisticated that, 80

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schematically at least, they know more about us than we do about ourselves. “Way, way behind.”

“If data isn't entered into a digital system, you simply don't have ‘visibility,’ which means that you don't have all the pieces to the logistical puzzle,” he says. This sounds like a crash-course in how not to run the global supply chain.

The ability to digitise elements of the supply chain and more specifically, the logistics chain, helps provide greater visibility to potential

MAC SULLIVAN TITLE: H EAD OF TECH AND DIGITAL PROMOTION INDUSTRY: LOGISTICS

solutions. In a globalised world, the use of paper is tantamount to the obfuscation of processes, whereas the digitalisation of data is equal to their elucidation. If supply chain is the realm, data is king.

Once elucidated through digitalisation, the data of course needs to be sifted-through and sorted – in a sort of vast problemsolving operation, and this is where Artificial Intelligence ‘traditionally’ comes in. But here again, in supply-chain terms, we have been

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: TOKYO Mac aspires to facilitate a retooling and upskilling of the logistics industry through promoting collaboration between education, business, and technology. His work in sales and marketing in the logistics industry prompted him to pursue his PhD in Political Theory from ECNU where he is finalising his dissertation on how government policies can deal with the disruptive effects of digitalisation and automation on the logistics industry. Self-study and a passion for this topic has helped him recently become the Head of Technology and Digital Promotion, where he is facilitating the digital transformation of NNR Global Logistics, a division of the Nishitetsu Group. Mac has an EMBA from Hult International Business School and a Bachelor’s degree in Communications from the University of Georgia. He is an adjunct professor at Tongji University and has taught at universities such as Texas Christian University (TCU) and Elon University in the past.

Mac spent nearly a third of his life as an ex-pat, living in Spain, Thailand and China during his 20s. His first book, “The Digital Transformation of Logistics: Demystifying Impacts of the Fourth Industrial Revolution” is available on Amazon as of early 2021.

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NNR GLOBAL LOGISTICS

“ IF DATA ISN'T ENTERED INTO A DIGITAL SYSTEM, YOU SIMPLY DON'T HAVE ‘VISIBILITY’, WHICH MEANS THAT YOU DON'T HAVE ALL THE PIECES TO THE LOGISTICAL PUZZLE” MAC SULLIVAN

HEAD OF TECH AND DIGITAL PROMOTION, NNR GLOBAL LOGISTICS

labouring under the misconception that, until now, AI has been doing its god-like work of solving all such humanly insurmountable problems in an algorithmic whizz, so that we can rest easy that our supplies will be efficiently delivered and that no complications will arise. But Sullivan says, “the truth is that independently, AI still hasn't been able to solve the problems that we actually have”.

So, the schema goes: AI needs human intervention, and humans need to digitise

their data in order that AI can then provide our goods through the supply chain and help us to breathe easy.

But then, in a much-needed cause for exhale, he provides respite to this unacceptable state of affairs: “This is however, finally starting to change,” he says.

“The technology and the availability of data that allows us to present the problems to AI - so that it can begin to solve those problems - is now at our fingertips. It’s a really exciting time in the logistics industry, because through the digitisation of data, we are starting to make solutions more readily available. But it will then be – contrary to popular opinion – about the further narrowing-down of those AI solutions through a human agent, enabling us to start assigning the technology to then solve the important issues.” supplychaindigital.com

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The exposition is interesting. Sullivan, while teaching Business English at university-level in Shanghai, met his present boss Jeff McDonald, who then introduced him to the world of international logistics. “I hit the ground running, with zero background in international business, and started learning how to move freight around the world,” says Sullivan – and he has come a long way since.

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he has been turning over in his mind for some time now.

“Many years ago, I began looking at logistics and the lack of technological adoption in this industry in the broadest sense. I started reading a lot on the subject, doing some of my Master's level work on this topic and then started my PhD work again (which was then on hold) on the thesis of how technology could disrupt the entire international logistics industry. That was in 2016. So then, with this insight, I aimed to

NNR GLOBAL LOGISTICS

“ THE TECHNOLOGY AND THE AVAILABILITY OF DATA THAT ALLOWS US TO PRESENT THE PROBLEMS TO AI – SO THAT IT CAN BEGIN TO SOLVE THOSE PROBLEMS – IS NOW AT OUR FINGERTIPS” MAC SULLIVAN

HEAD OF TECH AND DIGITAL PROMOTION, NNR GLOBAL LOGISTICS

get out of the commercial world of logistics and into the technology side of things,” he says.

Now Head of Technology and Digital Promotion at NNR, Sullivan’s role involves running a now 41-headcount team that is broken up into four sub-teams.

“Firstly, we have EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) and API teams, together making up 'connectivity', which deals with connecting with our vendors, customers, and agents. Secondly, we have a product

development and maintenance team for our homegrown global ERP. Third, we have two smaller programmes, one called NNR Connect, which is our new showcase product, and then a homegrown CRM system. We then have traditional IT, hardware, networking, cybersecurity, etc that falls into another (fourth) bucket.”

Of these, NNR Connect deserves a place in the spotlight. NNR Connect is a customer-facing portal that uses AI and cloud tech where customers can easily book, pay for, and track in realtime all their shipments through a truly frictionless, intuitive interface. This is where tech and data intersect to fulfil NNR Global’s vision of a streamlined, customerfocused logistics experience.

NNR’s corporate slogan is 'connecting your dreams', which means providing comfort, confidence and enjoyment for their customers, “and that means that your cargo is getting to the right place, at the right time and at the right cost,” says Sullivan. supplychaindigital.com

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HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY AND DIGITAL PROMOTION NNR GLOBAL LOGISTICS

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NNR GLOBAL LOGISTICS

NNR’s digitisation in the logistics industry On the conceptual issue of digitalisation in the logistics industry, Sullivan says: “I wrote a book on the subject that was subtitled: Demystifying Impacts of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, where we brought together a group of 27 authors from around the world, from different segments of the logistics industry, and gave them this broad theme, ranging from blockchain to 3D printing to digital platforms

“ WE'RE GOING TO BE QUICKLY EXPANDING OUR OFFERING THROUGH NNR CONNECT AND ROLLING THAT OUT TO OUR OFFICE AND GLOBAL CUSTOMERS” MAC SULLIVAN

HEAD OF TECH AND DIGITAL PROMOTION, NNR GLOBAL LOGISTICS

and rate management. We tried to drive home the idea of a pragmatic framework, so it’s neither your consultant's version, nor is it your academic version of digital transformation. It is a kind of ‘where top-down meets bottom-up’ approach – that is, right in the middle. It is about looking at big problems, while also solving them for the desk-level users.’

When asked what Digital Transformation means for NNR Global, Sullivan answers with a single word: tracking. He then unfolds this idea: “If you go on Amazon, you can order a $2 mug. It will show up at your door, either two hours or two days later, but with turn-byturn instructions and information on where it is along the way. ‘It's left the warehouse’; ‘it's nearing your location’; ‘it's been delivered’.

That visibility has not been found in the business logistics industry, even though the cargo could be worth upwards of $2 million.

So, tracking and shipment visibility is now a big push, and that is where a lot of people are spending their money, because that’s where the demand is – and that’s why we developed NNR Connect.”

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Global shifts and ratemanagement through tech With global occurrences such as the obvious 2020 pandemic and its initially not-soobvious supply-chain consequences, the US-China trade war and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, price fluctuations are at truly unstable levels. NNR has about 15 to 30 different ocean carriers, about 50 to 100 different air-carriers and about 2000 to 5000 different trucking carriers that they work with.

Sullivan says: “We make contracts with all these different carriers, trying to aggregate and then filter-through all the related contracts in order to find the right rates, for the right type of shipment, with the right validity. This is why Amazon has made so much money – applying the right filters in the right places.”

“Rate-management has really come down in price, in that the filters and the technology have been able to aggregate all that data, add some basic AI in terms of scraping through the different documents as they come in, and then centralising them. But post-2019, because there is so much fluctuation in price due to the inconsistencies in supply and demand, you can throw all of that out of the window. We are finding ourselves in a situation where we must pick up the phone and say, 'hey, what rate can you give me for this car, right now?', which has really made the environment a lot more competitive again – where it's not just all about big-buy. Now, it's all about local relationships and about picking up the phone and working hard to get it done.”

How technology is utilised for sourcing On the question of utilising technology for sourcing, Sullivan also expresses how large companies are having a transformational 88

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“ VECTOR AI CAME ALONG WITH A STRONG RECOMMENDATION, LED BY LOGISTICIANS, AND CO-LED

BY TECHNOLOGISTS – IT WAS THE RIGHT COMPANY AT THE RIGHT TIME” MAC SULLIVAN

HEAD OF TECH AND DIGITAL PROMOTION, NNR GLOBAL LOGISTICS

impact. “Alibaba, for example, has changed the face of globalisation by making products in mass quantities available through their site.

On the consumer side, between Alibaba and China, Amazon, and the US, and also on a global scale, we're starting to see how you can now track demand.

“Another example would be Jungle Scouts, a SaaS company that helps facilitate the sourcing of different product categories, where Amazon FBA sellers can go and find products that are undersold and under-priced, which will then help them to actually go upstream to the very sources of those products.”

NNR's customer facing portal In 2019 NNR were faced with deciding on whether to update their old customer facing portal, or to completely rebuild it. “We decided to start from scratch,” he says, “and to rebuild it from the ground up. We brought in a very young, aesthetically driven team to bring a product to market that is completely unique. We have handcrafted every button, every component, every page, and colour scheme, and we were able to do this with a fairly limited number of resources. We’re rolling out different modules as we speak and have already rolled out our shipment module, our billing module and so on. supplychaindigital.com

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Our accounting team said, 'we need our customers to be able to pay via credit card', so we reached out to different vendors and put together a smooth, user-friendly, frictionless customer-experience, where our customers can easily go and pay their invoices. We're releasing some pretty exciting stuff that relates to the partnership we have with vector AI, in terms of seriously starting to eliminate any redundant manual entry upstream and have many upcoming releases in the pipeline.”

NNR partner ecosystem This partnership with Vector AI has been an important one for NNR. Workflow automation and OCR technology has been used by big banks and big insurance companies for about two decades. But you had to have millions of remarkably similar documents that were being processed to be able to extract those different data elements to utilise, and so the cost was prohibitively high.

Sullivan says: “Even when I started looking at this just five years ago, you still couldn't get a solid pilot with any OCR company without a significant initial investment. Vector AI came along with next gen AI-driven automation, led by logisticians, and co-led by technologists – it was the right company at the right time.

What we've been working on with them is outside of their traditional service offering, as it's about going upstream and looking at what documents our customers can provide there, so that we can extract the data from those documents, pre-populate what we need in order to process the shipments, and then recanalise that information to flow downstream. So, we're aggressively partnering with Vector AI to go way upstream and extract the more difficult information from many different customers in many different formats.

“With NNR Connect, we're about to rollout our product called Quick Book, which has 90

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automation powered by Vector AI. They're also working with our accounting team on the more traditional avenue of getting better invoices via email, extracting the information, and then helping to facilitate that automation of accounts payable.”

Another key partner for NNR is Snyder Technology. “Snyder has been with me since day one in this role,” says Sullivan. “Ben Snyder, the CEO, is somebody that I was introduced to by a friend of mine, also in the logistics and technology space. They have helped us move 100% to the cloud, as well as to rapidly accelerate our adoption onto Microsoft's 365 platform. They are developing NNR Connect – the customer facing portal – alongside us, as well as doing everything from data recovery

to API integrations with vendors. It's a broad partnership in terms of digital transformation, product development, infrastructure and they are our licensed Microsoft CSP.” What do the next 12 to 18 months look like for NNR? The next 12 to 18 months are going to continue to be dynamic for NNR. They are aiming to take on their technical debt through a massive database consolidation, aiming to go from the 52 databases that they either control or deal with on a day-to-day basis and instead reduce that number down to 12 to 15.

Sullivan says: “That's a big effort to reduce our technical debt, to make sure we're going to the new age with less baggage. We're going

to be quickly expanding our offering through NNR Connect and rolling that out to our office and global customers. We're also looking to rapidly improve our connectivity speed and efficacy, bring on new vendors and customers, and connect to them electronically at a much faster rate utilising everything from restful APIs to the toolkit that we have to keep around in terms of PDI integrations. We're trying to take 1,100 different screens in our ERP and get that down to really what it needs to be, to declutter as much as possible. In other words, it's not all about expansion right now, as much as it is about reduction and concentration.”

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SUSTAINABILITY

IS THE FUTU OF SUST

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URE TAINABILITY

Schneider Electric’s Energy Management Chief, Steve Smith, says sustainability is most promising at the point renewable energy meets digital WRITTEN BY: SEAN ASHCROFT

T

he near-global pledge to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 has left governments and many businesses scrambling to make progress, as they seek to stay on track with sustainability roadmaps.

And, with supply chains accounting for as much as 80% of organisations’ total carbon footprint in the shape of Scope 3 emissions, the challenge faced by multinational businesses is, quite frankly, enormous.

Digital transformation programmes are helping many organisations measure their carbon footprint, which is ground-zero on being able to reduce emissions across their value chains. But if commerce and industry worldwide is to meet net-zero targets, it will require a fundamental shift in how energy is both produced and consumed.

One business that is helping on this front is Schneider Electric, the French

Steve Smith Electric’s Energy Management Chief, Schneider Electric

Sheldon Mydat CEO, Suppeco

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SUSTAINABILITY

“ Electricity 4.0 is the point at which renewable electricity meets digital” STEVE SMITH

HEAD OF ENERGY MANAGEMENT THOUGHT LEADERSHIP AND COMMUNICATIONS, SCHNEIDER

multinational company that specialises in digital automation and energy management, aided by Steve Smith, who is Schneider’s Head of Energy Management, Thought Leadership and Communications.

Addressing BizClik Media Group’s Sustainability Live London event in February, Smith reminded his audience that the world was “only just beginning to learn to create energy by means other than burning stuff”.

Smith insists the biggest single factor in helping us hit global net-zero targets will be

“electricity 4.0”, which he describes as being “the point at which renewable electricity meets digital”.

‘Smart’ energy is visible, connected and controllable He told Sustainability Live: “This gives us new ways of thinking about energy, new ways of distributing it, and new ways of saving it.

Energy becomes visible, connected, smarter, and more controllable. It helps companies and individuals operate more efficiently and more successfully.”

Although conceding that green hydrogen will also be important in the drive to net zero, he reminded the audience that it requires “entirely renewable electricity to produce it, as well as quite a lot of water”, and that, because of this, green hydrogen alone “will never be as efficient as direct electrification”. supplychaindigital.com

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Electricity 4.0: Powering the New Electric World | Schneider Electric

He added: “Climate change is all about energy. The way we use energy today is incredibly inefficient – around 60% of today's energy is either lost or wasted, so we need to make it smarter. We need to use it smarter as well as making it cleaner.”

Schneider is a global leader in the digital transformation of energy management and automation. It operates in 100 countries and employs 140,000 people.

By 2050, the company plans to have helped its customers save around 800 million tonnes of CO2 and itself expects to be carbon neutral across all its operations in Scope 1 and 2 emissions. The company has also persuaded its top 1,000 suppliers to commit to the same target.

“It's about us taking our customers, our partners and suppliers on the journey with us,” says Smith, adding that, by 2050, Schneider expects “to be operating out 96

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“ Green hydrogen requires renewable electricity and a lot of water so will never be as efficient as direct electrification” STEVE SMITH HEAD OF ENERGY MANAGEMENT THOUGHT LEADERSHIP AND COMMUNICATIONS, SCHNEIDER

Tech firm collaborates on net-zero food initiative SINAI Technologies is a platform designed to help organisations – including the world’s largest agricultural companies implement cost-effective carbon-reduction strategies.

Using detailed environmental & financial data, SINAI’s customers are able to analyse, forecast and model decarbonisation risks and opportunities throughout the supply chain.

The company’s Value Chain Module combines relevant supply chain data into one platform to calculate Scope 3 emissions. The software also shows how to allocate emissions at product- and facility-level, without using outdated product databases.

SINAI is also working with key food retail, energy and commodities companies to collect, calculate, forecast and share primary-emissions’ data across the global supply chain to help drive industry mitigation and decarbonisation.

Companies including BRF, Raízen, Rumo, AMAGGI will collect emissions data using SINAI’s decarbonisation platform so that consumers can see which carbon-neutral food products are available at local supermarkets.

SINAI Technologies’ CEO & Founder Maria Fujihara said: “This first partnership will focus on the agriculture industry, but the goal is to accelerate the deployment of lowcarbon solutions across all supply chains.

“It is pivotal that we continue to collaborate across global supply chains. Initiatives like this set the tone for others to follow.” supplychaindigital.com

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of 150 net-zero sites globally, have an entirely electric fleet of vehicles and be operating a full net-zero supply chain”.

Schneider taking tier-one suppliers along with it on its sustainability journey is something of a template for other organisations to follow as they strive to meet their net-zero goals.

Collaborate with suppliers on sustainability, urges Suppeco Sheldon Mydat, CEO of Suppeco – a cloudbased dynamic supplier-data platform – believes tier-one suppliers hold the key to driving sustainable practices deeper into the supply chain.

Speaking at another BMG event – April’s Procurement & Supply Chain LIVE – Mydat said that, because supply chains are complex, “it requires a lot of work to bring smaller companies along on the sustainability journey”. He added that almost half of such companies don't track their produce at all once it leaves their premises.

He continued: “When it comes to sustainability programmes, I think a lot of smaller suppliers wonder what is in it for them. Inflation is high right now, and there’s a cost associated with doing things sustainably. Many smaller companies don't have the money to invest in new processes, and this is often why they don't track produce when it leaves their premises.

“Encouraging suppliers to embrace sustainability is about creating a willingness to support the cause. It's down to tierone suppliers, in collaboration with their customers, to drive those behaviours and to bring smaller companies on the journey.

Ultimately, it’s all about collaboration – about things such as driving shared R&D.” Schneider’s Smith feels that, ultimately, many of the net-zero challenges faced in 98

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supply chains – including Scope 3 emissions – will be met through the widespread adoption of ‘Electricity 4.0’.

Net zero solutions ‘already exist in shape of Industry 4.0 tech’ “All the solutions we need already exist in the shape of Industry 4.0 technology,” he said.

“Electric and digital is the best vector for decarbonisation because it allows us to bring more renewables into an increasing share of the mix. It allows us to see and understand how energy is being used so that we can reduce that massive 60% wastage that we see today.”

Smith says buildings are the biggest consumers of energy and that the ever-

“ When it comes to sustainability programmes, many smaller suppliers are left wondering what’s in it for them” SHELDON MYDAT CEO, SUPPECO

growing number of power-hungry data centres are a particular problem. “Although the use of data is part of the solution to so many problems in our daily lives, it is also a problem with regard to sustainability because too few data centres are energy efficient,” he said.

This is something Schneider is tackling by reimagining the power grids of the future. “At Schneider, we don't just talk about what we can do – we want to be able to demonstrate it,” Smith said Schneider’s flagship data centre project is the Eco Data Centre in Sweden, which is the world's first ‘climate-positive’ data centre.

Smith said: “Their site is so energy efficient that the heat they produce as a data centre

powers its cooling operations in the summer.

During the winter, they send that energy to a local network to help homes in the district area. It’s reusable, recyclable energy.”

Schneider is involved in more than a million commercial buildings around the world, half of all of the world's data centres, as well as 40% of the world's utilities and hospitals.

“We're touching mission-critical lives every day with what we do and how we’re doing it,” Smith said.

PROCUREMENT & SUPPLY CHAIN LIVE LONDON 2022 takes place at the QEII Centre from 12-13 October.

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TECH & AI

ANALYTICS & AUTOMATION

CHANGING THE FACE OF SUP WRITTEN BY: SEAN ASHCROFT 100

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Artificial intelligence (AI) and data-driven machine learning are helping organisations reimagine their supply chains at a time when resilience and visibility have never been more important

PPLY CHAINS

T

oday’s companies are using AI and analytics to mitigate risk and ensure continuity through global supply chain disruptions.

These powerful tools enable organisations to automate tasks they previously never could, while providing deeper insight for faster, better decisions.

John Matchette, Senior Supply Chain & Operations MD with Accenture, is also the organisation’s Data & AI Solutions Lead.

According to Matchette, digital twins are among the most innovative use-cases of AI in supply chains.

A digital twin is a virtual supply chain replica that represents assets, warehouses, logistics and material flows, as well as inventory positions. It can stress-test potential operational and financial risks and impacts created by major market disruptions, disasters, or other catastrophic events.

Matchette says: ”Scenario modelling has become increasingly important. Supply chain stress tests can enable companies to not only understand how resilient their

“ In the next five years, AI and analytics will be critical to the reimagining of supply chains” JOHN MATCHETTE

DATA & AI SOLUTIONS LEAD, ACCENTURE supplychaindigital.com

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TECH & AI

“ Automation basically turns a light onto master supplier data" STEPHANY LAPIERRE FOUNDER AND CEO, TEALBOOK

supply chain and operations are, but also to identify the weakest links and quantify the impact of those links’ failure to fulfil their role.”

He explains that digital twin-driven modelling allows companies to design a network to optimise cost and customerservice levels, “while simultaneously analysing their carbon footprints”.

“This ensures they meet sustainability targets, while delivering the best service

for their customers,” says Matchette. “For instance, a company can design a network that reduces shipping times by minimising the distances trucks drive and thus cutting fuel consumption and emissions.”

Digital-twin tech is a strong point of AI and ML In addition, Matchette says process re-engineering is another area digital twins tech excels in.

“Processes have become increasingly complex due to global expansion and growing customer diversity, which means they are less efficient and more costly,” he says. “A digital twin can help businesses understand where bottlenecks and waste are bogging down work, and then model improvement interventions.”

Inventory management is a third digital twin strong point. Matchette says: supplychaindigital.com

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“Modelling can optimise inventory in a single warehouse, as well as across the entire network, and modify inventory levels according to demand. This helps ensure products customers want are in stock, when they want them. Twins can also minimise inventory shipping distances.”

Although digital twin tech is a powerful use of AI and data, Matchette feels “we’ve only scratched the surface of what analytics and AI in supply chain networks can do”.

He points to new research from Accenture, which reveals that just 12% of firms have advanced their AI maturity enough to achieve superior growth and business transformation.

Matchette says: “In the next five years we’ll see companies reimagining supply chain networks to orchestrate change, simplify life and positively impact business, society and the planet.” AI and analytics will, he believes, “be critical to that effort”.

He adds: “Companies will be able to collect data from across the supply chain network, consolidate it in the cloud and apply AI models to achieve a real-time view into the state of suppliers.”

Data-based AI modelling allows businesses to identify supply risk This, he says, will allow organisations to to proactively identify risks and predict impact across the supply chain. Examples of such risk might include: • Identifying a supplier’s inability to source a vital raw material, before it impacts production • Ensuring suppliers’ carbon footprints are in line with agreed-upon levels • Ensuring suppliers are sourcing materials sustainably and responsibly 104

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“ For digital procurement success, firms need complete and visible supplier data at speed and scale” STEPHANY LAPIERRE FOUNDER AND CEO, TEALBOOK

DANONE TURNS TO O9 FOR DIGITAL TWIN SUPPLY CHAIN VISIBILITY AI software platform provider o9 Solutions has partnered with food and drinks giant Danone to digitally transform its global supply chain with data-driven decision-making capabilities.

Danone’s products – which include well-known brands such as Evian, Activia and Actimel – are sold in 120 markets worldwide.

Danone will use o9’s AI-powered Digital Brain platform to enable collaboration between commercial, operational, and finance teams, as well as real-time scenario planning that drives faster, more data-driven decision making. o9 Solutions’ Co-founder and CEO, Chakri Gottemukkala, says: “Using our Digital Brain platform, Danone can build a digital representation of its entire value chain.

“This will allow it to run its planning processes across every function and time horizon on the same integrated platform, which will unlock substantial business value.” supplychaindigital.com

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TECH & AI

As well as AI and data success stories in supply chains, Matchette warns that businesses can also experience problems – particularly around data overload.

“Data is not useful unless it is collected and used effectively, and this is where the cloud comes in,” he says, adding: “The cloud can consolidate a vast range of relevant data sources, both external and internal, and make data interoperable across business functions.”

“Armed with data-driven predictions, supply chain leaders can then more intelligently and proactively decide how they should respond to and meet demand, including determining what are the most appropriate actions to take in production, pricing, promotions and fulfilment.”

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TealBook, which uses AI and machine learning (ML) to enrich and distribute supplier data globally, to help businesses make informed and strategic decisions.

Automation ‘turns light on to supplier data’ - TealBook Tealbook’s founder and CEO, Stephany LaPierre, says: “We basically turn a light on to the master data and provide enrichment of the information in a more complete, more insightful way that's continuously dynamic”.

LaPierre says that the problem for organisations is the abundance of solutions coming to market across all supply chain requirements, particularly around ESG. “A business might look to implement between five and maybe 15 solutions over time, but if these all require suppliers to

enter data via a portal, how can you possibly scale this?”

This, she says, is where the importance of dynamic supplier data comes in. The traditional way to collect such data was to use specialised services to clean, categorise, and supplement it. LaPierre points out that the trouble with this approach is the data tends to “decay as soon as you receive it”.

Another way to use dynamic data is to set up a portal in which suppliers can enter and update any relevant information. “The problem is, many suppliers simply won’t do this at the speed or scale you need,” LaPierre says.

She goes on to explain that the main strength of data harvested dynamically using AI and ML is that it “enriches data in an automated way and gives you complete, quality data across 100% of your suppliers”.

She adds: “Automated dynamic data reduces the dependency on services and on humans to maintain information across software solutions, and reduces the dependency on suppliers to visit multiple portals.

“To achieve digital procurement success, organisations absolutely need quality and complete supplier information at the speed, scale and visibility that meet these requirements. Tier one suppliers are already a challenge, but now we're talking about tiers two and three, as well as Scope 3 emissions.

“Once you turn the light onto your master data, you can see duplications, categories where too many suppliers are very similar, and where you should be driving consolidation and compliance among existing suppliers. supplychaindigital.com

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TOP 10

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TOP 10

P2P SOFTWARE PLATFORMS Procure-to-pay (P2P) solutions strengthen every step in the procurement process - from requisitions through to invoice payments - and here we look at the leading platforms

WRITTEN BY: SEAN ASHCROFT

D

igital P2P platforms can be transformative, not only in deriving greater efficiency and value, but in ensuring compliance, strengthening supplier collaboration, and surfacing actionable data insights for more strategic decision making.

Here, we look at 10 of the most innovative and broadly used P2P platforms that, taken together, account for the majority of spend across the world’s biggest brands and organisations. supplychaindigital.com

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TOP 10

10 Xelix

Positioned as an AI-driven companion for sourcing and finance professionals, Xelix aims to solve common blindspots in modern ERP systems. Its core platform is separated into two distinct modules: ‘protect’ and ‘insight’. Protect minimises risk, identifies hidden threats and prevents incorrect payments that are often missed by ERP systems. Insight provides real-time visibility over ERP data, automates reporting and provides predictive insights to help professionals take greater control over their spend.

“ Xelix aims to solve common blindspots in modern ERP systems” 110

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09 Medius

Medius’ full-suite of e-procurement solutions include P2P, as well as strategic sourcing, data insights and more. Founded in 2001 in Sweden, it now has 400 employees operating from offices across Europe and the US. The company says close to 4,000 customers and more than 500,000 unique users use Medius’ spend management solutions globally, managing transactions worth more than $160bn annually. Wax Digital, the cloud-based e-procurement company, was acquired by Medius in 2019, strengthening its end-to-end spend management solutions.

TOP 10

08 Basware

Basware’s tagline is ‘Simplify Operations. Spend Smarter’ – a mantra that underpins its Source-to-Pay (S2P) Ecosystem.

This ecosystem encompasses a full suite of P2P solutions, from electronic procurement to accounts payable automation and analytics. Its platform aggregates financial data from all of an organisation’s units, centralising it in one system for greater endto-end visibility and to empower professionals to make more informed strategic decisions. The company is routinely featured on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant Leader for Procure-to-Pay suites.

07

JAGGAER JAGGAER boasts more than five million global suppliers on its Enterprise Commerce Network, offering buyers access to its mountain of supply chain sources.

Using AI and machine learning, JAGGAER’s Digital Mind solution provides smartmatch recommendations that help buyers reduce their supplier risk and grow revenues by autonomously completing repetitive and time-consuming tasks. In turn, this frees employees to focus on highvalue activities.

JAGGAER’s platform is evolving over time, using AI to assist users in every step of the P2P process and provide valuable, actionable insights to professionals.

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Interos maps supply chain in 3D and real time.

You can know every single thing about how all your partners do business.

Or you can read it in papers.

TOP 10

05 Ivalua

06 Zycus Zycus has been pioneering cognitive procurement software for global enterprises for over two decades. With its revolutionary Merlin AI suite, Zycus empowers procurement and accounts payable (AP) professionals to focus on strategic projects.

It helps enterprises drive savings, reduce risks and boost compliance, says the company, being recognised by Gartner, Forrester, and other esteemed analysts for its S2P integrated suite. Zycus offers data-driven actionable insights “to allow for quicker and smarter decisions”, and its conversational-style AI offers a B2C-type GUI to end users.

Founded in 2000, Ivalua is a S2P suite dedicated to transforming spend and supplier management.

Used by more than 300 leading companies, Ivalua’s solutions manage more than US$500bn in direct and indirect spend. The solution is designed to help users optimise efficiency, lower risk, unlock supplier-led innovation, maximise profitability and improve sustainability.

Ivalua brings value by reducing maverick spend, enhancing visibility in tail spend, and invoice automation. In a recent case study, Ivalua’s solution helped a leading glass packaging firm save 19% on average over four years.

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04 Oracle

Procure-to-Pay is just one module in Oracle’s comprehensive Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP, which also features strategic sourcing, supplier management, a business network and much more.

The module streamlines purchasing by automating purchase orders (POs) from approved requisitions. It also improves revision management, offering a complete change history. Other features include: invoice matching automation – to free professionals from extraneous administrative tasks – and accelerated payment processing.

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03 Coupa Coupa’s P2P solution covers the transaction journey endto-end, from strategic sourcing and requisition to invoicing and payments. But it’s just a small part of the company’s overarching Business Spend Management platform, which also allows organisations to automate contract lifecycle management, manage supply chain design and planning, manage supplier risk, surface actionable insights, and more. It empowers organisations to source more sustainably, with a suite of ESG functionality to track supplier compliance and drive carbon emission targets. The platform empowers procurement teams to “evolve beyond the bureaucratic back-office function”, and instead provide data-driven strategy to meet business objectives

02 TOP 10

GEP

GEP delivers transformative supply chain solutions to help global enterprises become more agile and resilient, to operate more efficiently and effectively, and to gain a competitive advantage. GEP Smart is a S2P platform for direct and indirect procurement. The solution helps organisations to digitally transform their end-to-end procurement operations by harnessing the power of AI and cloud.

GEP SMART is a central platform for unifying the orderto-invoice process with the source-to-contract process.

A focus on UX and intuitive deployment, it gives stakeholders access to crucial visibility.

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“ It offers an intuitive user experience that the company claims is “as comfortable as online shopping”

SAP Ariba SAP Ariba is the gold standard for P2P solutions, connecting procurement professionals to the world’s largest B2B network. The platform centralises sourcing for indirect goods and services, and automates the purchasing lifecycle – from requisitions and POs to receiving goods and payment.

It offers an intuitive user experience that the company claims is “as comfortable as online shopping”, with customisable language, currency and dashboard settings.

SAP was recognised for the fifth consecutive year in the Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant for Procure-to-Pay Suites.

Ariba also offers to its customers the Ariba Network – a dynamic, digital marketplace for buyers and suppliers in 190 countries that can transact trillions of dollars in business commerce, annually.

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