Supply Chain news

NEWS IN BRIEF

Company recognition

TrueCommerce was recognized by Gartner Inc. as a Challenger in the May 2022 Magic Quadrant for Multienterprise Supply Chain Business Networks (MESCBNs). The evaluation was based on specific criteria that analyzed the company’s overall Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute.

“To us it’s exciting to secure the Challenger position in this foundational research – four years in a row,” said Mike Gross, SVP of Product, TrueCommerce. “Over the last year, we have made significant investments in our technology and people, expanding our customer base by 40 percent as a result. We also have exciting new product innovations underway including the utilization of APIs and leveraging our universal adapter to broaden both internal and external integrations as well as the greater utilization of data through artificial intelligence/machine learning.”

Gartner considers MESCBNs to be foundational technology for highermaturity organizations.

New capabilities

Plex Systems has announced new machine learning capabilities for Plex DemandCaster Supply Chain Planning (SCP).

“The days of steady and dependable supply chains that enable long-term lean and just-in-time replenishment to manage costs are behind us. Businesses now understand that planning and forecasting must include the assumption of disruption and rely on data to navigate this new normal,” commented Ara Surenian, Vice President, Product Management at Plex Systems. “Adding machine learning to Plex DemandCaster Supply Chain Planning empowers customers to overcome supply planning challenges and digitally transform their planning. By infusing the sales forecasting process with machine learning, customers can bring in a wealth of additional data as an input to the forecasting process that a human nor traditional statistical forecasting methods can discern. These additional inputs are used to help calculate and recalibrate the process to improve forecast accuracy.”

Delivering success

Shipster has formed a partnership with location technology company what3words. This is good news for Shipster clients who want to give their customers an even more seamless delivery experience, and good news for eCommerce businesses looking for a shipping integrator that will incorporate their customer what3words locations. The partnership will enable online retailers to automatically include their customer’s what3words address in their delivery information and print it onto the shipping label for the courier to use. This integration will remove the need for phone calls from lost delivery drivers going to complex locations, and means deliveries arrive at the precise location faster and more efficiently. Drivers will no longer have to ask customers for additional directions, optimizing the delivery process and providing a smoother customer experience.

Speaking from a technical standpoint, Tony Cheetham, Shipster Founder & MD commented: “Working with what3words has been very easy and the technology has been simple to add to our platform. It’s a feature that will make deliveries more successful the first time around for our clients with customers in remote, complex or unique locations.”

Prompt payments

Global-netting platform, Troc Circle, is launching a solution to unlock capital stuck in global supply chains. Powered by the ‘Plug-and-Play’ technology of embedded-finance providers, Weavr, businesses will soon be empowered to settle invoices up to ten times faster with the new streamlined process.

Supply chains are often costly and complex but with its new solution, Troc Circle will ensure that businesses get paid through the netting of invoices, in an open network - regardless of the business’ accounting software - avoiding hold-ups in the payment process.

Following the launch, invoices can be settled quickly and at the live-currency market rate, allowing control over cash flow thanks to an 80-per-cent-lower processing cost.

Troc Circle, an established innovator in the world of global supply chains, initially launched its circle-netting solution in 2019. However, it was quick to recognize that this covered only three per cent of open invoices, whereas ‘chain netting’ reaches around 70 per cent.

By partnering with a likeminded innovator, Troc Circle benefits from Weavr’s comprehensive Financial Plug-in, which provides the full technical and legal framework required to onboard merchants and sellers, while also enabling payments to be processed via virtual cards.

Supply chain appointment

Retired General Stephen R. Lyons, former Commander of the U.S. Transportation Command, is to be the new Port and Supply Chain Envoy to the Biden-Harris Administration Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force. Taking over the role from John D. Porcari, Retired General Lyons will work with the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), the White House National Economic Council (NEC), ports, rail, trucking and other private companies across supply chains to continue to address bottlenecks, speed up the movement of goods, and help lower costs for American families.

“The Biden-Harris Administration has made tremendous progress on addressing the supply chain disruptions we’ve seen as we recover from the pandemic,” said Retired General Lyons, adding he looked forward to rolling up his sleeves and addressing the role.

Strategic partnership

A strategic partnership has been agreed between Hurricane Commerce and AEB (International) to provide the complete cross-border eCommerce solution. The two companies will work together to provide efficient, high speed and accurate data validation for customs clearance.

AEB offers cloud-based global trade software to remove the barriers of trading across customs borders and controls, while Hurricane is the cross-border data specialist providing AI-driven, real-time data solutions covering the areas of data enhancement, duty and tax calculation, prohibited and restricted goods screening and denied parties screening.

“This partnership makes total sense, especially for high-volume eCommerce customers who will benefit from the high-speed data solutions provided jointly by Hurricane and AEB,” said Martyn Noble, CEO of Hurricane Commerce.

“Regulatory events in the last 18 months including Brexit, the EU’s abolition of the VAT exemption on low value goods, the introduction of the EU’s Import One-Stop Shop (IOSS) and the greater enforcement of the US STOP Act, have meant that complete, accurate and compliant data is now a must-have for anyone wanting to succeed in global eCommerce.”

Looking at transformations

On June 2nd, global management consulting firm Kearney released its newest supply chain and transformation paper, More than half of all CPG companies on track to grow below the market by 2027, which analyzes supply chain inefficiencies and gives strong guidance on how CPG companies can look to transformative models to win in the current climate of change and uncertainty.

“Top performing companies today have supply chains that are built around speed, resilience and especially customer service,” said report co-author Arun Kochar, a partner in Kearney’s Strategic Operations practice. “Most big transformations fail because people don’t like to change, but with $800 billion in top-line growth at stake, there’s a compelling case for CPG companies to make the necessary changes.”

The report lays out a model for supply chain transformation that includes an exhaustive three-step approach and a rationale for exactly what must change and why. It also analyzes economic supply chain opportunity in terms of: • Quantifying expected market size in five years • Identifying relevant peer sets by fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector, and dividing it into quartiles • Understanding quartile growth relative to market compound annual growth rate (CAGR) • Estimating gain or loss of market share by quartile over the next five years

“Transformations are rarely easy,” said study co-author Greg Portell, lead partner in Kearney’s Global Consumer and Retail practice. “Half of all transformations are stopped; 80 percent are proven ineffective. Success requires building the required support in the organization and, at every step of the way, ensuring that the proposed changes are still relevant along the entire 12 to 24-month journey.”