Pioneers Still Welcome
I was reading the Daily Telegraph newspaper today (for my younger readers, the newspaper is something that us oldies use to swat flies and line cat litter trays). As usual I flick over the obituaries page. The Daily Telegraph obituaries is a bit of a British institution, it has a habit of highlighting some of the more eccentric members who populated the twilight days of the British Empire. You normally get stories of matronly types who have saved a score of Tibetan children, while losing four pints of blood from a tiger attack, who then in their Octogenarian years go on to invent a novel new way of curing leg blisters in pachyderms.
But today, I saw something that was more in line with our own experiences. It was about a gentleman called Jeremy Gotch, the Daily Telegraph stated “Gotch pioneered the use of tank containers for the transport of chemicals, grain, and china clay between Britain and the Continent. He also chaired a group which produced best practice for the transport and storage of anhydrous ammonia”, click here to read the obituary.
This got me thinking, partly of all the solutions that Elemica has that communicate about containers (Elemica SmartLink Logistics – Ocean Transport Solution), or track containers (Elemica SmartLink Supplier Management – Global Supply Management), but also about the concept of being a pioneer. One of the problems of being a Generation X child is you can sometimes feel that everything that can be pioneered has already been pioneered, unless you are working in highly specialized (and typically expensive) fields like nanotechnology or genome mapping.
Well fear not, Elemica is looking for pioneers. Our new technology platform with its unique Universal Business Concepts will create a step change in the use of data across the Supply Chain Operating Network. Over the next few months Elemica will be discussing what we are doing across the logistics space with our users in the process industry. We will be communicating the huge savings realized by our clients, but we will also be offering the chance to be pioneers. The technology leap that we have done will allow people to think about the use of information. Of course we can solve the issues you have, this is a given, but let us solve the opportunities you do not know you have yet. Tell us about the things that you have always wished you could do, but never had the chance. You gave up because your ERP system was too rigid and straitjacketed by change management. Or you lost faith because the EDI systems were blinkered and definitely not plug and play. Or you started positively but then ran out of steam after the first half a dozen partners because the value seemed too far away and your resources got sidetracked.
Those of you who have sat through presentations from me, know that I have a tendency of falling back on a group of philosophers from the late 20th century. So, as the Spice Girls said, “tell me what you want, what you really, really want”. I would say that most people gave up on the “really, really” … I am now asking you to be a pioneer and tell us about these things. You may just be pleasantly surprised.