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Innovation Management An Integral Part of the Business
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October 2019
Drive dynamic interactions between your business and partners. Rich Katz President
Elemica A PIONEER IN SUPPLY CHAIN DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
EDITOR’S NOTE Supplying Everything Everywhere!
T
he business landscape is getting large everyday; small businesses are moving for global approach whereas established businesses are competing to strengthen their consumer base. To transform small to big and big to large businesses have to monitor every minor and major change which can affect their process. There are many factors which affect business process but globalization, outsourcing, competition, technology advancement and price pressure are primary one. These factors are forcing businesses to evaluate their whole process related to every area but the major one is supply chain. From manufacturing, distribution, materials, invoicing and returns have all been significantly impacted by the increased integration of a global customer. Companies and supplier base find that current processes and technology are not competent enough for this new business environment. Nowadays, business expansion is became necessity where a company’s supply chain management system is not limited by the geographical region of a particular area or nation but addresses a company’s global operations. The desire to supply and establish product line is the driving force that makes a company to expand and start global operation. However, to have effective supply chain management is critical as it has to be low-budget, flexible, and efficient way of doing business. The starting of process from acquiring raw materials to the distribution of the finished product should be in budget. The SCM system should operate in way that it cash profit not only for the parent company but for also each trader so that the entire chain works in a coherent and seamless manner.
Best Performing
SCM Companies in 2019
“Effective Supply Chain is the Backbone of Successful Business”. CIOLook presents you, Best Performing SCM Companies in 2019, which are enhancing business processes in this fast growing business world with their advance SCM services and optimal solutions. The cover is featuring Elemica- It’s Digital Supply Network (DSN) gives clients control over their global supply chains. The network enables process manufacturers and their trading partners to connect efficiently and securely; automate their buy, sell, move transactions while managing product quality; anticipate demand and reduce the risk of uncertainties. It continually enhances how its network captures customers, buyers, suppliers, and logistics providers data irrespective of the format it was transmitted. The Elemica network is based on Cloud technologies to help manufacturers, customers, suppliers, and logistics service providers to connect efficiently and securely. The innovative network automates their buy, sell, and move transactions for their products throughout the supply chain while managing product quality. Also, while flipping the pages, don’t forget to go through the articles and CXOs written by our in-house editorial team and industry experts respectively. Enjoy the read....!
Rohit Chaturvedi
Articles
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Industry Insights
Innovation Management An Integral Part of the Business
32
Chalk - Talk
Digital Marketing Programming the Human Life
40
Executive Voice
The SigniďŹ cance & Vitality of a Leader
Cover Story
Elemica A Pioneer In Supply Chain Digital Transformation
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CONTENTS 26
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A Promising Tech Solution Provider
Streamlining Business Process through Digital Transformation
CHAINSEQUENCE INC.
Arviem AG
Impacting Supply-Chains with Innovative Services
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NiceLabel
42
Muggie van Staden
Preksha Kaparwan
Open Source Trends To Watch For 2019
The Fuss about AI
K. Roy Editor-in-Chief
CONTENT
Senior Editor Alan Swann Managing Editor Bhushan Ghate Executive Editors Sourabh More
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November, 2019
A PIONEER IN SUPPLY CHAIN DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
“
DRIVE DYNAMIC INTERACTIONS BETWEEN YOUR BUSINESS AND PARTNERS.
COVER STORY
Rich Katz President
‘‘GO
DIGITAL. TRANSFORM
I
n an interview with CIO Look, Elemica emphasizes digital transformation of supply chain processes with more efficient and predictive networks using their leading Digital Supply Network for Process Manufacturers. Led by Rich Katz, the President, the company has achieved many milestones on its way to success. Below are the highlights of the interview: What led to the inception of the company? Elemica was established in 2000 by the world's largest chemical companies who wanted a neutral place to seamlessly unite supply chains and automate the interbusiness processes for the products they were buying, selling, moving, and managing the quality between one other. Describe your company and its cutting-edge solutions which address all the needs of your customers. Elemica's Digital Supply Network (DSN) gives clients control over their global supply chains. The network enables process manufacturers and their trading partners to connect efficiently and securely; automate their buy, sell, move transactions while managing product quality; anticipate demand and reduce the risk of uncertainties. In conjunction with the network, Elemica offers supply chain solutions that enhance specific objectives: Ÿ
Ÿ
Ÿ
Ÿ
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Elemica Buy: Leverages benefits of digital procureto-pay process automation to build collaborative supplier relationships, so products arrive at the right place at the right time, driving ideal balances of inventory, and service levels. Elemica Sell: Increases customer satisfaction by automating the order capture in an omnichannel approach and providing visibility from customer order through invoice/payment. Elemica Move: Digitizes the inbound and outbound shipment processes and data with a network of carriers, forwarders, terminal operators, warehouse providers, and logistics service providers for quality and execution data and management. Elemica Quality: Aligns supply chain quality objectives with suppliers, customers, and manufacturing to achieve visibility, higher quality, improved traceability, and compliance. Elemica See: Provides real-time monitoring and
exception-based management to world events and applies them to supply chains to understand others or locations impacted. How do your services differ from the other companies offerings? Elemica continually enhances how its network captures customers, buyers, suppliers, and logistics providers data irrespective of the format it was transmitted. The data coming in from disparate sources and different channels are converted into a unique common structure. The Elemica DSN then "cleans" this data by standardizing the format. The network then digitally links the data using proprietary technology on the Elemica cloud-based platform. This final aspect of the data requirement leaves every competitor behind. This cleansed and now linked data is sent back into our clients' systems through APIs for logistics, customer service, and procurement. The data also interoperates with third-party data, such as weather or risk information to enrich analytics for more informed predictions, such as what can happen if a port is closed. The data is enabled by machine learning capabilities that ultimately provides holistic decision-making capabilities and enables customer concentricity to maximize the value for all supply chain trading partners. Unlike our competitors, we also offer the Elemica Quality Management solution. This aligns Total Quality Management (TQM) rigor deployed within the manufacturing process to the extended supply chain. It improves product and process quality with suppliers, customers, and logistics providers for supply chain compliance, track, and trace. Describe in detail about the work culture and the values that drive your company. The Elemica work culture drives innovation into its solutions by being obsessively attentive and agile to client and market needs. As a result of culture, our approach means venturing out where others have not, encouraging team members to take measured risk, and instead of punishing mistakes, use them as a learning experience for all members of the team. What marketing activities do you implement to reach out to your potential customers? Elemica uses public relations, social media, a dynamic website, and targeted online and offline digital
marketing activities to deliver account and role-based engaging content to potential clients. Elemica also participates in webinars, conferences, and industry trade shows. As per the company, what is the significance of digital transformation in an organization? To succeed in the process industry, leaders realize that the digital transformation of the supply chain is a journey, not an instantaneous fix. Digital transformation helps companies achieve operational excellence and sets them apart from the competition. A proven Digital Supply Network is part of the digital transformation journey, providing the tools to connect partners, automate the inter-business processes, anticipate and react to risks and markets quicker through better visibility, and enable the business to transform and adopt new business models. What technologies are you leveraging to make your solutions resourceful? The Elemica network is based on Cloud technologies to help manufacturers, customers, suppliers, and logistics service providers to connect efficiently and securely. The innovative network automates their buy, sell, and move transactions for their products throughout the supply chain while managing product quality. The network is based on smart contract rules that run a consistent canonical model that is also completely APIdriven. With this base, rationalization of business processes is modeled to take advantage of machine learning and blockchain quite easily. The result is endto-end supply chain collaboration based on all parties speaking the same language. Elemica integrates with the Internet of Things (IoT), capturing data from transactions, devices, sensors, and third-party networks. To derive meaning from the data, the data is cleaned, then digitally linked using proprietary technology on Elemica's cloud-based platform. Elemica has implemented blockchain with clients to address specific use cases for the supply chain industry. The blockchain allows third parties to leverage the technology to build, host, and use their blockchain applications, smart contracts, and functions on the blockchain, which benefits all users of the Elemica network.
Elemica accelerates digital transformation by connecting, automating, anticipating, and transforming inter-business supply chain processes for the products clients buy, sell, move, and comply with. Being the world's leading digital supply network, what is your contribution to the digital evolution of the supply chain? Elemica's Digital Supply Network for the past 20 years is a core part of the Digital Transformation journey, providing a technology foundation for improving interbusiness processes and expanding supply chain relationships. The Digital Supply Network has created more exceptional opportunities by integrating client's suppliers, customers, and logistics service providers in more cost-effective and efficient methods over time, depending on the level of business activity. What are your company's future aspirations? What strategies are you undertaking to achieve those goals? Elemica plans to continually add functionality to the network and its supply chain solutions. Nextgeneration technologies like blockchain, machine learning, IoT, and others are being tested, implemented, and integrated into the network and Elemica offerings. The company is working on Networks with other vendors to expand its reach. Give a detailed description of the featured person's influence over the company and the industry Rich Katz has been with Elemica for over 16 years in roles as President, Chief Technology Officer, Senior Vice-President of Product Management, and VicePresident of Research and Development. Rich is responsible for setting the overall direction of Elemica's Technology Roadmap, Market Positioning, and oversees Corporate and Product Marketing.
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| November2018 |
Muggie van Staden
F
ollowing several mergers and acquisition this year, 2019 will see open source investments starting to pay even more dividends. Given how it has become the driving force behind much of the world’s cloud-based systems, companies need to keep a close eye on the open source trends that could impact their strategies for the months to come.
Providing even more impetus for this is the recent launch of what many consider to be South Africa’s first truly digital bank. Focusing on ‘behavioral’ banking, all its systems are cloud-based highlighting the security, availability, and redundancy of going this route. Moreover, it is built on open standards all but giving the death knell to those who think proprietary is still the preferred method of doing business.
With deals such as Microsoft and Github as well IBM and Red Hat, this open source-driven environment will see organizations in a position to take the best aspects of these businesses and come up with something truly great. Thanks to the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the resultant explosion in data points, companies understand that they need the resources of cloud-based systems to extract the most relevant insights.
Next year will be an intriguing one to see where the cloud and the open standards approach will be heading. Strap in and enjoy the ride.
t
i ian
te
Obsidian Systems is an established supplier of Open Source software solutions. The company was started in 1995 as a services provider targeting businesses and organizations looking to integrate and leverage off Linux infrastructure. Obsidian Systems has expanded its knowledge base in partnership with subsidiaries Cape Town based Autumn Leaf and GuruHut.
The days of relying exclusively on proprietary solutions to do this are long gone. Open standards have become part of the approach many organizations take towards implementing technology innovation. And those that have not done so yet, will soon follow as they seek to find relevance in an increasingly digital (and connected) world. This will also likely impact the cost of solutions. Using open standards is resulting in products being developed faster as data is analyzed in virtually real-time. Understand what customers want and providing the customization to do so, have become integral to the operating environment today. And the secret to this must be the open source foundation on which this is built.
The expansion of skills is now a formidable team with Java™ expertise aligning our Enterprise Open Source solution for retail, supporting technology and consulting services across enterpriseready open source infrastructure, big data, collaboration and agile IT strategies for your business. Obsidian Systems and its subsidiaries strive to bring three legs to the South African market: the first being vendor-certified products, the second bein g local skills providing consulting, development and support and the third being vendor-certified training and certification. With these three elements, any organization can trust the enterprise open source solution provided.
Local changes The imminent arrival of several international data centers in South Africa (two from Microsoft and one from Amazon Web Services) will have a significant positive impact on the local market. This not only shows those skeptical of the cloud that investments are being made, but, more importantly, South Africa is viewed as a platform for growth into the rest of the continent when it comes to the cloud (and open source). The evolving landscape is seeing business requirements also shifting. Next year will see a veritable land rush for position in the cloud environment. More C-suite decision-makers are open to going, well, open, and vendors and service providers are clamoring for market position.
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| November2018 |
Arviem AG
Impacting Supply-Chains with Innovative Services
C
loud computing and software programs have significantly improved product tracking, with real-time updates on the movement of goods globally. It allows business firms to adjust production schedules and inventory levels on a real-time basis. Such systems are being used for diverse management functions like inventory management or transportation management and they are ensuring the elimination of blind spots and inefficiencies. One such cloudbased platform is Arviem AG. The company solves the challenges of obtaining visible and intelligent trade by offering real-time end-to-end cargo monitoring services. Arviem provides visibility and insights into the flow of goods and finances within the supply chain, enabling supply chain, logistics, security, and finance professionals to have a real-time, holistic overview of the movement of their assets. The company is offering a full, carefree service to customers that allow them to track all their global shipments, regardless of the transportation mode or the logistics service provider, on one single platform. Below is their story, Seeing the inefficiencies in global supply chains, the arising security issues after 9/11 and the lack of visibility and control supply chain professionals had over the movement of goods globally, Arviem realized that with the emerging new technologies it is possible to improve the status quo and bring transparency into how supply chains operate. The company aspires to become a ’one-stop-shop’ for services when it comes to optimizing various aspects of the supply chain, whether it is
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| November2018 |
Stefan Reidy CEO &Founder 19
| November2018 |
about inventory management, working capital, carbon footprint, or demurrage and logistics costs.
It aims at implementing supply chain visibility and cargo monitoring services as easy as possible. Having the collected cargo monitoring data in the core of Arviem’s new service offering, the company has already developed new services that rely on the data hidden in supply chains. The company makes sure that the customer has the right amount of monitoring devices at the right time and the right location of the shipment, from the start till the shipment has reached its destination.
Arviem offers’ IoT enabled supply chain visibility services by monitoring the location and condition of goods in transit in real-time with sophisticated sensor devices. Besides real-time event notifications and alerts, supply chain professionals can also rely on Arviem’s cargo monitoring platform to manage their goods in transit. While the company’s IoT based services help clients to digitalize parts of their supply chain without the need for investigating into new technologies, hardware or staff, Arviem’s scalable, payper-use service offers a possibility of a quick ROI by reducing costs and enhancing efficiency. With this service, customers can monitor their shipments with ease, reap the benefits of the gathered data while Arviem takes care of all the rest.
To demonstrate, the company’s carbon footprint reporting and emissions monitoring solution reveals where carbon emissions are concentrated in the clients’ supply chain. Clients can leverage the collected data when making key business decisions with regards to the supply chain; such as, how to reduce energy use and how to lower the carbon footprint of logistics operations. With the aggregated data, supply chain and logistics managers can develop less intensive supply models to reduce the energy consumption of the supply chain and lower the company’s carbon footprint.
The company sets itself apart from the competition by being the only provider of supply chain visibility as a hassle-free service.
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Stefan Reidy is the CEO and Founder of Arviem, he is a supply chain enthusiast, and a visionary. Stefan has over 20 years of experience with innovative technologies & business models in the supply chain, which he gathered both by working for corporations and in the startup environment. Before founding Arviem, he was responsible for IBM’s Secure Trade Lane Solution, developing innovative solutions to improve security in international trade. Stefan’s passion and industry expertise have been important for Arviem’s development ever since. He often shares his knowledge with university students professionals periodically at various events.
Thanks to Arviem’s services, clients know where their cargo is located in any given moment, the environmental conditions it is exposed to and if it’s security has been breached. If disruptions arise (cargo experiences shocks, unfavorable temperature or humidity conditions, an intrusion or door opening or unexpected transshipment is detected) clients are noted immediately so they can take corrective action. Arviem’s monitoring platform provides an overview of all shipments in an easy to use, visual, user-friendly management dashboard, making it possible to access any information of the cargo’s journey at fingertips. Another innovative service leveraging the power of cargo monitoring data that Arviem has developed is focusing on optimizing the working capital management of organizations. The company enables the optimization of the financial and physical supply chains by making goods in transit financeable through monitoring the location and condition of the cargo in real-time. The company provides traceability from ’doors closing to doors opening’ serving as an independent verifier for regulatory purposes as well for real-risk mitigation.
Arviem’s goal is to provide visibility and insights into the flow of goods and finances within the supply chain, enabling supply chain, logistics, security, and finance professionals to have a real-time, holistic overview of the movement of their cargo. By having access to data and insights, clients are enabled to make educated decisions to optimize their physical and financial supply chain, eliminating blind spots and inefficiencies. The company’s vision is to maximize the value of the insights it can generate from the collected data and help their clients to bring their supply chain to the next level.
We provide traceability from ‘doors closing to doors opening.”
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| November2018 |
Industry Insights
Innovation Management An Integral Part of the Business
I
nnovation Management plays a crucial role in businesses, as it assist an organization to strengthen its roots and, flourish promptly in the markets. It mainly involves managing processes regarding an organization’s innovation procedures, from initial ideation to execution. It’s a cyclic loop structure starting with ideation followed by the auditing, prototype testing and full implementation. Either it may be decision making or a drafting innovation strategy, this type of system manages all. It bestows some fruitful benefits to organization and allows its employees to bring forward their ideologies, which can be filtered depending on the errors while execution. This significantly increases the quantity and quality of input ideas empowering specific organization’s objectives and goals. Moreover, many innovation management tools enable employees to initiate a germ of an idea, and share it for gaining varied perceptions from every aspect of the enterprise. Through such systems, accumulating ideas from each and every unit of the organization becomes quite easier. And the source of idea collection is not just left inhibited with R&D and marketing but to every sector. These ideas could be stored in a shared repository, allowing respective employees to gain more transparency within various business processes. By maintaining transparency, a business person can look through the outcomes of all the ideas submitted
into the repository, which increases the participation of employees in the innovation campaigns. Moreover, theses database-driven tools assist in analyzing the effect of an implemented idea for the benefit of an organization. In an attempt to admire employee contribution, a company can also present rewards to the winning ideas. Idea Management systems a.k.a. Innovation Management systems basically help companies to share best practices further capitalizing them efficiently. It narrows down the bridges between the different locations of shared ideas and brings them together under the best practices. Known for the quick processing analogies, innovation management systems delivers cost-effective practices that multiply the bottom-line benefits of the company. One of the best practices is to implement a cloudoriented idea management system, which will allow access to the database from any region breaking the geographical and organizational barriers. Even though the system is self-efficient, it does require some manual input to carry out repetitive changes in its complex programming. This carries out the identification and evaluation of potential ideas from the pile of innovative ideas. Outlook on Achieving Innovation Management It is quite necessary for a company to install and support innovation culture so that, employees can
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put forth their participation in generating quality ideas. Also, making employees feel valued boost up their enthusiasm and confidence in order to take part in the idea campaigns. Digitalization is the rolling stone in the market which is single-handedly creating a change in the traditional method of business practices. Integrating one such subcategory—social networking, with idea campaigns also helps in gaining customer-oriented perspective of the idea and product. This feedback through social media platforms, generate a steady stream of ideas within and outside the organization.
and implementing intelligence, creating and maintaining relationships, identifying and nurturing talent, and comprehending the demands of a disruption. The way of performing tasks varies from one manager to other. Every individual work on their own terms and managerial ethics, and thus reinvents the methodologies of organization. Processes such as capital auditing, hiring and promotion, project management, internal communications, strategic drafting and knowledge management are the foundation on which the management is taken into practice. Such managers mainly focus on implementing operational inventive ideas for the business processes such as logistics, consumer’s requirement, and procurement.
As described earlier, an organization must follow a cyclic approach for comprehending and processing innovation management systems. Ideation stands first in this cyclic structure, which encourages the generation of unique ideas. Followed to the ideation, comes the well-managed innovation process in order to identify and differentiate the viable and authentic ideas from others. In the end, it is essential to evaluate the results and come to a conclusion for its successful implementation.
Implicating innovation management for one’s business could be an issue at an early stage. But with a complete knowledge and an adequate guidance, one can easily overcome the issues and establish an efficient innovation management system. Either an organization could reach out and outsource their innovation management to a promising company or it could in-house the management on their own. Both ways facilitate with same reimbursements and determine a unique future approach for the company.
In addition, engaging with C-suite in discussion over innovation management will help an organization to ensure that the shortlisted ideas are as per the business goals and norms. Organizations must hire innovation managers with a keen knowledge and skills to drive innovation and monitor on over-all management process. Managerial work includes setting goals and deploying plans, motivating other staffs, collecting and allocating resources, acquiring
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| November2018 |
Superior supply chains continuously improve processes and evolve with technology, resisting stagnation and eventual failure. —Bill Mrzlak
President & Founder
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| November2018 |
CHAINSEQUENCE INC.
A Promising Tech Solution Provider
T
oday’s unpredictable global marketplace makes supply chain systems much more complicated to quantify and control. For many organizations, this creates new, uphill challenges in supply vs. demand that require education and training in the art and science of best-practice supply chain planning. For business teams that don't have the necessary in-house resources or indepth expertise in supply chain planning, ChainSequence offers game-changing guidance. Through facilitated training sessions and on-site process development engagements, ChainSequence teams help companies better understand and align all the moving parts that must work together in order to achieve and manage a truly functional supply chain system. In addition, ChainSequence’s Process-toSystem Integration services provide client teams with the strong support, documentation, and expertise they will need to best reinforce the planning effort while maintaining the integrity of the process design.
their combined 50-plus years of experience. When Morrissette unexpectedly passed away several years later, Bill vowed to carry on the legacy he and Mike had created. “Mike was a mentor, business colleague, and friend. His experience and knowledge helped shape ChainSequence’s philosophy and core values, and I will always be grateful for his guidance,” he recalls.
Below is their story,
ChainSequence takes a multi-tiered approach, beginning with an assessment of a client’s current environment to understand root-cause issues. Walking through this process with client team stakeholders, the team defines targeted solutions that can provide the highest return in the shortest amount of time. “As the saying goes, ‘don’t boil the ocean,’” says Mrzlak. “It’s unrealistic to expect to solve all problems at once.” In many instances, he maintains, process corrections that are combined with the introduction of rules and controls can be the solution. In other environments, building staff proficiencies through education, and introducing technology solutions, like ML, AI, and/or data analytics components can also align business process improvements with long-term goals. In each engagement, the hallmark of ChainSequence’s success
ChainSequence addresses its clients’ supply chain and sales and operations planning (S&OP) challenges through various pragmatic, business process-oriented solutions. Many companies are quick to look to technology in order to solve ongoing problems, often without taking the necessary time to understand what is causing these issues in the first place. Bill and his teams stress that technology—as a tool—can certainly help, but by ignoring or not resolving the underlying process issues, organizations will only achieve a bad outcome more quickly.
Bill Mrzlak, President and Founder was an essential player in the management consulting arena for many years, with managing partner roles at two previous consulting organizations. In 2009, Bill and his long-time colleague, Mike Morrissette, jettisoned from their consulting group after 10-plus years and launched ChainSequence. “I’ve always enjoyed consulting because of the variety of engagements, industries, locations, and unique challenges I encounter,” says Mrzlak. “By 2008, Mike and I felt the risk/reward ratio wasn’t there and recognized we needed more control over the direction of the business.” Through ChainSequence, they were able to develop and deploy a much more nimble and effective supply chain business model, which is entirely based on
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| November2018 |
in international business trade forums, and provides subject matter expertise at supply chain- and S&OPrelated conferences throughout the U.S. Mrzlak says that every supply chain-driven business entity should think of its supply chain as the engine that both supports and drives the organization’s machine. A company can have a highly successful sales team, but without a robust, nimble supply chain structure, bad things will inevitably happen: product demand will be forecasted poorly; products won’t be built in a timely manner; and inventory will end up in the wrong location, with the wrong products, and in the wrong volumes. Most important, products will not be delivered to customers when and where they want them. The inevitable outcome will be huge negative revenue and bottom-line implications to the organization. ChainSequence’s primary service offerings focus on business processes around supply chain planning and S&OP. However, it’s people first, then process, and finally the management of change that drives business process transformation. Technology, which continues to evolve, is without question a huge enabler in making those people and process changes a success. ChainSequence incorporates Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and the Internet of Things (IoT) into its process solutions to improve forecast accuracy and better handle the volatility and irregularities of the overall supply chain network.
is its ability to take a surgical approach to evaluate each client’s problem, and then apply years of insight, experience, and proven change management guidance to directly impact positive transformation.
At its inception, ChainSequence focused heavily on the high-tech sector, specifically in semiconductor companies. Because growth in this market was unsustainable due to M&A activity and consolidations of semiconductor companies, the firm began to expand its services into new markets. It can be difficult to break into a new industry without having explicitly worked within it. ChainSequence overcame that obstacle through its breadth of knowledge in sound, rules-based foundational supply chain principles. These principles can be applied to almost any industry, ranging from electronic goods, clothing, food and agriculture, and CPG to education and other service-based sectors in which no physical product is actually being produced. The theory of constraint-based planning is universal to solving and balancing an excess of demand with limited supply, whether that supply is electronic components, cloth, or people.
ChainSequence recognizes the influence that organizational, geographical, and cultural differences can have on the success or failure to implement change, and factors this dynamic into its approach. The firm’s clients learn quickly that ChainSequence consultants are true partners who are wholly invested in their success. At the end of many engagements, clients forget ChainSequence’s consultants are only embedded for a short time. Mrzlak says the driving philosophy has always been, “We are jointly defining a solution with you, and not to you. When our client partner ultimately owns and embraces the solution, then the likelihood of its success will be much higher.” ChainSequence’s professionals have all been on the front lines of the war on business chaos. ChainSequence’s successful projects have resulted in numerous follow-on engagements as business climates evolve over time. While word-of-mouth has been a large part of ChainSequence's client activity, its strong online presence also drives new business and introduces new markets to its services year over year. As thought leaders, ChainSequence publishes articles
As the team successfully increases its reach to encompass more industry sectors, the firm has also been partnering with other organizations to expand its presence in the U.K. and European regions.
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| November2018 |
Chalk - Talk
Digital Marketing Programming the Human Life
G
lobalization has helped enterprises to dive into open international market. While companies are heading beyond the boundaries and are settling overseas, digital marketing on the other hand is helping the same to make a good consumer impact. With open and diversified business market, competition has also reached the peak. Additionally, the start-up firms from developing countries have also been incentivized from the expansion of digital marketing. The primary aspects which are required to lead a company towards success include marketing and sales. Companies should make smart digital marketing strategies while keeping globalization in context in order to get better opportunities in the market.
with big multinationals. It is imperative business as the internet has become the unstoppable trend. There are some baselines which will help the digital marketing sphere move forward. Artificial Intelligence (AI) Innovation has reached beyond imagination. AI (Artificial Intelligence) predicts every move of consumer. By focusing more on personal rather than professional front, AI truly shines in the arena of business. AI makes every customer feel important and produce a next level customer experience by analyzing the data of customers, helping businesses to gather their insights and deliver enhanced services. For instance, Netflix and Amazon help with recommendations by viewing history of billions of hours of content streamed. With the help of algorithm, they look after the entire experience of individual subscriber. Depending upon their taste, users get recommendation of other movies. AI will become the model of digital marketing because of its accurate ability to analyze consumer behavior and change the experience of online business.
Digitally Globalized Future Digital marketing with its versatile and constant changing potential has changed the face of traditional marketing. Making things available at fingertips have increased the desire to adapt digital marketing over time. Mobile devices have helped to grow the demand of digital marketing. Today, traditional marketing is being replaced with digital marketing. The demand is increasing day by day as every minute new website link is generated; everyday new update enters into digital market with more advance features. To grab the pulse of the customer, company should understand the needs and requirements of its customers. With the increasing internet population, digital marketing will be a business platform which will help companies to grow globally.
User Experience With the increase in internet users, demand for User Experience has increased. Intelligent algorithm helps to analyze huge number of data. It is generated from a single user’s location, demographics and device. User Experience has gained positive response from the consumer by making a personalized experience on a website. It has also increased conversion rates and
Digital marketing will help the small firms to compete with big multinationals. It is imperative business as the
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Digital Advertising Digital Advertising is a part of the dynamic “Digital Marketing” industry. Digital marketing strategies have been changing depending upon the fluctuating consumer behavior, seasonal change and changing rule of digital marketing. Digital Advertising platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads have gained importance in marketing field. They have started making use of analytics to find more suitable consumer for the company through analyzing its consumer data, interest of consumer and demographics. Email Marketing It examines the best time and day of the week to contact the consumer, content which will show their involvement, the email subject and title to generate more click. Thus AI has become friendly user in personalizing email content for every internet users by reducing the margin of error. Content Generation and Content Curating Words play a vital role in communication. Good content can bring more business to a brand. Every work conducted is based on the data and information. Likely, AI generates content on the basis of the data and information it has. Using templates and keywords, AI creates a unique content which attracts more visitors to the website. Apart from generating content, AI also curates it. By showing relevant content it increases the traffic on website and connects with visitors in a better way. It showcases the relevant content to the visitors depending upon the topics they had searched. ChatBots Communication has experienced a huge change. From making phone calls to simply texting, communication has evolved technically, increasing the desire of the users. Brands on the other
hands are making use of the social apps to promote business. Thus, AI has powered the Chatbots with the ability to answer open questions. With the help of natural learning processing and machine learning, Chatbots find the correct response. Chatbots ask frequent questions to the potential buyers and answer it in simplified way. It also helps the buyer, a way to search for the product or service they are looking for. Chatbots also serve clients 24/7 and retain their data. Customers may get angry, but Chatbots always stay calm and friendly. It also responds to several requests from different customers at a single time, thus taking less time. Gaining Utmost Importance Having AI in the digital marketing strategy will give a lot of benefits. Digital Marketing has provided a platform to conduct business globally. Its demand is increasing
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day by day. It has also enhanced the growth of the companies. To maintain the efficiency and effectiveness of the company, marketer has to keep on thinking, learning, testing and implementing ideas to stay on the top of competitive market. Instead of spending more on digital marketing strategy, the company needs to come up with smart planner to bring more clients. Digital marketing has helped in improving and maintaining the quality of performance of a product. It has made very easy to segment, target and position the product for marketing with the help of huge available database and user information. With the continuous advancement of technology, practice of digital marketing has improved. Developing perceived knowledge about a product, digital marketing helps to achieve the marketing objectives.
| November2018 |
NiceLabel Streamlining Business Process through Digital Transformation
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igital transformation is taking over businesses by storm. Over the course of last few years, the world has been witnessing a rush of companies looking to modernize systems and processes in an effort to keep pace with customer demands, regulatory requirements and shrinking budgets.
NiceLabel is a technology company focused on creating value for its customers and business partners. The company employs a very diverse team of 150 people based in 12 countries. The headquarters is in Slovenia. Sales and support offices are in the USA, Germany and China. It’s CEO and several senior managers are based in the UK. It operates as one virtual global team.
Meet NiceLabel—a leading global developer of label design software and label management systems, who understand the significance of digitization and attained a successful stature in the cutting-edge competitive markets. In an interview with CIO LOOK, NiceLabel emphasizes on leveraging digital transformation to primarily focus on creating value for its customers and business partners.
NiceLabel helps companies of all sizes improve the quality, speed and efficiency of their labeling, while reducing cost. With the help of our label management systems, organizations are able to digitally transform their entire labeling process, from design to printing to label management. The result is a leaner, more agile operation that enables companies to respond more quickly to changing market conditions and requirements, get products to market faster and compete more effectively in the sectors where they do business.
CIO LOOK admire and appreciate the contribution put forth by such avid leading establishments, and takes pride to feature NiceLabel in ’Best Performing SCM Companies, 2019’ edition. We recently spoke to Chris Walsh, NiceLabel CEO.
How do your services differ from the other companies’ offerings? NiceLabel focuses on providing solutions that create value for end users. NiceLabel technology is strongly differentiated targeting users focused on creating value and sustaining competitive advantage through improved print productivity. With NiceLabel, companies really can do more, faster, with less and they can sustain this advantage over time.
Below are the highlights of the interview: What led to an inception of the company? NiceLabel was established in 1993 by Slovenian entrepreneur, Zvone Duplancic, to develop software solutions for local businesses. After successful completion of a challenging project for a Japanese printer manufacturer, NiceLabel recognized the barcode label printer market was growing quickly and offered an opportunity for it to meet the demand for the development of Windows printer drivers and barcode label design software for these new specialty printers.
NiceLabel’s label management solutions maximize value for businesses and their partners by giving them a single, scalable platform to manage all their global labeling and marking management needs. NiceLabel technology addresses the needs of the widest range of end-users and optimizes the performance of the widest range of printing and marking devices. At the forefront of market demand, NiceLabel seeks to use its domain expertise to proactively give customers what they
Describe your company and its cutting-edge solutions which address all the needs of your customers.
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Chris Walsh Chief Executive Officer
“Digitally transform your “
entire labeling process. 35
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Digitally transforming labeling offers another benefit, one that many companies overlook. By digitizing the labeling process, companies are able to turn both direct and indirect costs into visible savings. Going digital also allows companies to capitalize on otherwise missed opportunities to speed up time-to-market and sell more. NiceLabel not only digitally transforms other companies’ labeling processes, but also digitizes its own processes in order to accommodate rapid growth and provide innovative products, solutions and services. As an example, we have made significant investments in new IT platforms on company and functional levels to enable faster and more effective collaboration between our offices on different continents, our global reseller partner network and clients from around the world.
need. What marketing activities do you implement to reach out to your potential customers? NiceLabel combines traditional and modern marketing techniques in order to reach various customer segments. The company has invested heavily in building a large, well-qualified marketing team with expertise in product, digital, communications and vertical marketing. The team is diverse and works virtually from several international locations. The marketing team takes an integrated approach aiming to share domain expertise both within and across vertical markets that can help end users create value. It uses customer success stories to illustrate how value can be created. It aims to leverage its channel and alliance partners to reach more end users. As per the company, what is the significance of digital transformation in an organization? Digital transformation is taking business by storm. Over the last few years, we have been witnessing a rush of companies looking to modernize systems and processes in an effort to keep pace with customer demands, regulatory requirements and shrinking budgets. We expect the digital transformation trend to continue. For labeling this means modernizing legacy systems to improve quality assurance processes, increase speed and drive efficiency.
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What technologies are you leveraging to make your solutions resourceful? As a company we have traditionally been close to Microsoft. We are a long-time member of their ISV program and our software is based on its technology stack, meaning it is developed in .NET and leverages its database (SQL Server) and server technologies (Windows Server, IIS). Our server applications interface is built in HTML5 and runs across all browsers and operating systems. Client applications closely resemble Office applications to ensure new users get productive as fast as possible. As our customer applications are mission critical, we have invested early and heavily into test driven development. Today we continuously run an extensive portfolio of real-life automated tests on top of maintaining 95% code coverage with unit tests. This results in NiceLabel being the most reliable labeling platform in the market. NiceLabel also pioneered labeling from the cloud as early as 2012. This head start allowed us to fully appreciate the value the cloud can create by digitally transforming compliance labeling so we doubled down on our cloud investment and released Label Cloud last year. Label Cloud runs off Microsoft Azure and is the only true multi-tenant, cloud-based label
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management solution on the market. This allows us to provision new customers in minutes rather than hours or days, greatly reducing the time and IT investment for our customers. In most cases our software needs to integrate with customers’ ERP, Manufacturing Execution or Warehouse solutions, so we invest in assuring ease of integration for all of these key applications. For SAP specifically we have certified the interface and developed a unique ABAP package that streamlines the integration while offering the most benefit to users. Our R&D team is working closely with Microsoft and other software solution providers—from the design phase and through the complete development process—to assure the best architecture and seamless integration with customers’ systems and software solutions. The team is constantly investing in education and new technology research to make sure NiceLabel solutions are future proof and use the best-in-class technology available in the market.
the longer term it sees the opportunity to apply its world class software development skills to adjacent high growth markets. Into the Shoes of CEO Chris Walsh is the CEO of NiceLabel. Before assuming his current position, he worked with the company on a founder succession plan over a seven-year period. Chris has over 30 years of experience as an international leader in both software and hardware technology businesses. Under Chris’s leadership, NiceLabel has seen substantial growth in its business both in Europe and also internationally (the company’s revenue has trebled both in the USA and EMEA regions; EBITDA increased significantly over the same period). Previously Chris was Managing Director of Zebra Technologies EMEA. Joining the business shortly after start-up, Chris led the team to $150m in revenue over a 9-year period. The business grew both organically and through a series of acquisitions and employed 250 people.
What are your company’s future aspirations? What strategies are you undertaking to achieve those goals? NiceLabel is ambitious. The company has grown rapidly in recent years as it has extended its product range, geographic presence and channels. Its core strength as an applied engineering team, is its ability to develop and deploy mission critical software solutions to enterprises globally. NiceLabel has an impressive list of major global enterprises as existing customers, but within its core served market it sees the opportunity to double its current business. NiceLabel is disciplined and focused on organic growth within its target market. It is investing in a balanced way across its development and commercial teams to extend its technology advantage and to increase global presence. NiceLabel’s core strategy choice remains differentiation based on domain expertise and superior technology. In
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Executive Voice
The Significance &
Vitality of a Leader
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ne of the greatest things about leadership is that we all bring something different to the table but, leadership is not just about having extra-ordinary skills, like integrity, confidence, team management, etc. A leader is always admired as a captain of the ship where he has to put all his efforts to guide the ship and mentor all his crew members. For instance, if a company has excellent employees but, they don’t have a good leader to lead the team of employees the success rate of the company will not increase at an ascending rate. We do believe that some people are born leaders and
learn throughout life to become better. Let’s take some examples of great leaders such as Abraham Lincoln, Tim Cook, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos. They all have given a tremendous contribution to their nation and the people of the nation, leaders think about their team-mates and the people behind them selflessly and always look forward to work in the welfare of their own. Leaders assist themselves and others to focus at right things and achieve it more efficiently. They set a direction, build an inspiring vision, and create something new. Leadership about mapping out where you want to go to “win” as a team or an organization
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and it is dynamic, exciting and inspiring. A Leader may possess the following for good leadership: 1. Creates an inspiring vision of the future. 2. Motivates and encourage people to engage with that vision. 3.Manages delivery of the vision. 4.Guides and builds a team, so that it is more effective at achieving the vision. Being a leader, one has a clear vision and is also familiar with the obstacles to success. The leader must have an inspiring personality and must be trustworthy since all the employees have a blind trust on their leader. A leader should have the capability to inspire people by different means, like the phrase “If your goal is 10th mile then aim for the 11th mile.” Motivation is not just a word, for that one should have a clear vision and goal to achieve, and these all are the responsibility of a leader to navigate the organization to the right direction and make it to the last.
to succeed in their goals, Even though the team has plenty of good players. The average age of the employable workforce is reducing and the senior leaders now look forward to managing people belonging to different culture and backgrounds. Leadership is the ability of a person to enhance his/her intellectuality and persistence. A leader should follow the thought, “Don’t wait for the perfect moment, take the moment and make it perfect”. Why do leaders fail? Everyone, at least once in life, has gone through the leadership task. Some are capable to balance it with their everyday normal life and some fail because of lack of skills, but there are some who grab the opportunity and prove themselves as great leaders. The entire success of a leader is based on sharing their success with others. “Life isn’t about giving up; it is
all about to give and to rise up”. The word optimism plays a major role in the life of a leader if a leader is optimistic towards his/her work and he/she will carry forward this attribute to the employees and make them more diligent about their work. Leadership and power are often mistaken for a synonym. The fact is that power is a part of the leader’s toolkit. In other word, power is a subset of leadership which comes in different size and shape. Critical thinking of a leader is all throughout life one’s inheritance has been a series of preconceived notion. These are so ingrained in the subconscious that one easily makes assumptions and ironically don’t even realize that he/she is making them. Requisition of leaders is in most aspects of society, from business to politics to region to community-based organization.
Sometimes it is also difficult to work under pressure and in a hectic schedule to provide quality work, so here a leader will help people to work with focus, and engage in that particular task. Motivation is the inner power or energy that pushes an individual to work hard at achieving his or her goals. An executive must have the right leadership Ideology to influence motivation. However, there is no specific blueprint for motivation. Without a potent leadership artifice, it is believed, that the organizational strategies do not work. If the leader does not follow an appropriate leadership strategy, similarly work team will not be able
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| November2018 |
The Fuss about AI I
need to start looking at ways to incorporate new technologies I mean it.
have been a strong advocate of conversational technology (VoiceTech/NLP) and AI and have pitched for it in various conferences, Guest Lectures at leading business institutes and to corporates and I am often being asked what will happen to our jobs? So this is true that Artificial intelligence seems like a big untameable monsters to most, and everyone is little anxious about future.
For enterprises there are certain imminent crisis that demand that they change rapidly and market is not at all as forgiving as it was a few decades back, someone is constantly rooting for you to make a mistake.This is leading enterprise to transform under the integrated environment of Digital Transformation Voice Technology has lately become a stable AI process and would completely change the way we interact with technology in the future. Visualization will remain at the heart of it however with conversational technology, we can expect a shift to more verbal ads, like radio, but more personalized and actionable, but still to make a decision on which product to buy you would want to see it visually. Also search will become more specific and hyperlocal, where we will be prompted to give verbal feedbacks, that would amount to popularity of products and places, how it happens with mobile applications today.
And that could be true sitting in 2010, but past few years new old research and young progressive companies and devision of enterprises are willing to make it their sole purpose that the infuse digital transformation in their company and provide assistance to others. But, with the prevailing reputation that comes at a cost of educating everyone, really everyone. They see it as a risk and any have burnt their hands trying to tame novice early stage AI models. But thats fine, thats how we grow. I believe that we are intellectual beings with curious minds, why would we want to do repeatable jobs which machines can do with greater efficiency. We can delegate these chores and teach the machines to help us better and imitate human decision making, innovate at personal level and “Democratise Artificial Intelligence”.
Siri, Cortana, Alexa have brought conversation technology to people for some time now. They come bundled up with smart phones and can be used to do basic searches, to look up certain things, cue up songs etc. Speech technology has come much further than that. With its advancement we can now control our oven, tv and other house hold devices, can search complex data from cloud or can make phone calls for ourselves. It can change the way we function in our daily lives, our time with our family, services we receive and the jobs we do. It can eliminate learning curve of devices, repeatable chores, and compiling excel sheets. And it will not happen eventually, it’s happening now.
Democratising AI through platforms for like voice technology - Natural Language processing so the technical algorithms can stay with specific user base while use of the AI algorithms can be made as simple as conversing with machines. Thats a sure shot way to upskilling resources for example: Team of Analysts can train dashboards and Business Intelligence tools to map business KPIs and generate Compelling Business Stories and Insights in natural language for everyone in the organisation to benefit from, and then keep building the training over it through machine learning. We are personally running trials with Fortune 50 companies on this, so when I say you
Developers will innovate to create more audio centric user interface, there will be discovery period for them to find out how to minimally prompt user to give inputs and implement voice modulated visual commands. We can see
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Preksha Kaparwan
About the Author Preksha Kaparwan is the Co-founder, CMO, V.UX Designer of Realbox.AI . The versatile IHM Pusa graduate initially served as the chef but got inclined towards technology and business analytics and founded RealBox in 2015. Within three years of its inception, they have raised $300k for Realbox and, their customers include fortune 50 and big 4 enterprises. As a thought leader she has been part of TEDTalk talk shows. She was awarded 'The sparks 2018' by your story for tech services for her exceptional contribution as a Tech Evangelist.
speech approaching a point where it would become so reliable that we can just use it, like how we do it with other humans, and not even think about it. I am personally inspired to bring acceptance for conversational technology globally and I believe that the real success for this would not be when big corporations and industries would be using it but when every small and medium business and every household would be using it and help us to get a hold of our receding grip on reality from visually attractive and distracting screens on our tv, on out laptops and our smart phones.
Preksha Kaparwan Co-Founder & CMO RealBox Data Analytics Private Limited
We have seen this kind of a shift with automated technologies and processes which has led to reduced laborious work, efďŹ ciency increased and averted accidents. Smart phones brought technologies closer to the end user. So, I took side with ArtiďŹ cial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies, that will aid seamlessly while co-existing in our realities. And impact is not just on us in our personal capacity but for businesses too and professionals who spend endless nights collating data and make pretty ppts to show to the bosses. I believe that spreading the word on changing technological demography is not our responsibility or our burden. But you know why I make it my purpose?? Because it is a major step in evolution of technology and I know we need to harness it, shape it now, before someone else does it for you.
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