Learn to Focus
Sometimes you just feel like a hamster in a wheel spinning round and around, doing the same thing day-in and day-out. You need a little shake-up now and then to make you stop and focus.
As one of the Elemica Solution Architects, I provide support and supply chain advice to approximately 75 ‘Fortune 500′ process industry clients per year. This type of schedule can make a person feel very blasé, moving from discussion, to conversation, to process analysis with hardly a blink.
Recently, I received an RFI from a >$20billion process industry company. They had a simple request, “Provide three case studies related to Supplier Management”. Within seconds I rattled off four examples, from the pool of big projects we have completed over the last 10 years. These spanned different industries, different stages of maturity, different regions, and different business processes. Some of them have won awards for the company and Elemica, some of them have been presented at Elemica conferences, and every one of them has been transformational. It was great to be able to respond like this, but it occurred to me that it was my hamster response. It was my knee jerk response… so as a former Elemica Regional Manager used to tell me I decided to “focus”.
I’m usually drawn to the biggest transformational projects we have completed. But if you focus on all the projects, big or small, you realize how each is part of the ‘big picture’. And why over $230 billion of process industry transactions go through the Elemica QuickLink Network each year.
Examples in Supplier Management:
INCLUSIVENESS - We have small regional distributors who transact with a billion dollar chemical company in exactly the same way as the #1 chemical company in the world does.
SECURITY - We have clients who have been sharing information with suppliers for over 10 years without any loss of data.
COLLABORATIVE - We have some suppliers who have transferred over 10,000 pieces of value added information to a key “plant loading” customer over the last 10 years, telling them when their vital “plant stopping” product will arrive.
BUSINESS AS NORMAL - There are over 6,500 companies on the QuickLink Network that send or receive an order message.
GLOBAL - We have projects running in countries I would struggle to find on a map. In the last 3 months, I have personally been involved with business relationships in Argentina, Finland, India, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, Uruguay and remember I sit on the coast in the UK.(Broadstairs, UK – a beautiful sea-side resort, where Charles Dickens wrote Bleak House).
Now when you ask me for three case studies, I will stop thinking like a hamster, focus on what we really do, and answer with the collective results from over 1,700 case studies. When you ask me for a project value, I will respond with the value of 10,000 ship notices over 10 years (I will easily be able to find $1 million of savings, let alone the 3,650 days of confirmation that the plant stayed running). When you ask me for a business case, I will let you know how a company would be not be able to survive if the 50 suppliers now doing VMOI (Vendor Managed and Owned Inventory) stopped tomorrow. Ask me for a project set-up, I show you how we took a crazy thought about collaboration and industry standards and 14 years later are integral to over 6,500 trading partners across the process industry supply chain, with companies who keep the world spinning.
At our inSIGHT EU Supply Chain conference a couple of weeks ago, I pondered on how many companies have systems to measure response to “supply chain shock”. I would say they need measures to create a bit of shock and surprise to help them step out from their hamster wheels. It’s time to get into the sawdust, fill your cheeks with the kernels of opportunity which are available to you, and shake your tail with the excitement of it all!