SourceCast: Episode 52: Green with Envy
SourceCast: Episode 48: Making Green Clouds
News You Can Use: 3/30/2016
- Design for the Supply Chain Pt 5: Understandable
I think it’s obvious to all of us that supply chains are continuing to become more and more complex. This is due in part to the ever changing number of nodes/links in the supply chain as companies become more global. That in turn impacts processes (internal and external), interactions with suppliers and customers, focus on metrics and risk analysis, etc. The volume of data necessary to manage these interactions from end-to-end is staggering. We generally create all kinds of reports and applications to sit on top of databases, ERP systems, and spreadsheets to capture the data. The challenge though is not so much how to capture the data but how to get our arms around it in a meaningful way. The goal is to help the supply chain professional understand the situation quicker so they can make better decisions.
http://blog.kinaxis.com/2016/03/design-for-the-supply-chain-pt-5-understandable/
- Is It Okay to Cry at Work?
Personal opinion: Nope nope nope
http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/474195/is-it-okay-to-cry-at-work/ - Rewiring the Supply Chain to Improve Results
Alignment plagues the functional organization with large gaps between operations and commercial teams. Closing this gap is paramount to start the journey for supply chain excellence. As long as we hire consultants that advocate harvesting the “low-hanging fruit” in operations and driving growth in commercial teams, we perpetuate the gap. Instead, we must build operational competency cross-functionally with a focus on market sensing, shaping and customer satisfaction. The supply chain needs to be redefined outside-in with a focus on the customer. Pitting operations and commercial teams against each other is detrimental to driving business results.
- Four Things To Do When Your Team Is Smarter Than You
I would think any manager would WANT this…PRESENT OBJECTIVES, NOT STRATEGIES
Throughout his 21-year career, Siegel has managed teams that were filled with smart people. Recently, he managed a computer engineering team from Israel who were working to complete high-level systems architecture programming for ZipRecruiter. “Many had come out of the Israeli military and were beyond elite,” he says. “They had been writing code to save lives. They were the best of the best—off-the-charts smart.”Instead of being intimidated, Siegel tapped into their motivation and changed the way he delivered his tasks. “I would start each project with the mission,” he says. “I would say, ‘This is the goal. This is the strategy. This is what success looks like.’”
- Why Dropbox dropped Amazon’s cloud
Not every company has the scale Dropbox operates at. And most companies would not see a huge benefit from customizing infrastructure to tailor it to their specific needs, Gupta says. Dropbox’s journey took two and a half years and required investments in personnel to figure out how infrastructure should be customized and other workers to manage their data centers.
http://www.cio.com/article/3045641/cloud-computing/why-dropbox-dropped-amazons-cloud.html#tk.rss_all
- People Want Power Because They Want Autonomy
That people would value autonomy over influence jives with self-determination theory, a psychological theory that suggests autonomy is one of humans’ basic psychological needs, along with relatedness and competence. Influence is not aneed under this theory. Another study suggests that while striving for power lowers people’s well-being, once they have power, they really are happier, because they feel more authentic—the power makes them feel like the circumstances of their lives are more in line with who they feel they are inside. That may be because the power gives them the freedom to make their own decisions, and their sense of well-being grows when they do what they want.
- Why Your Next Procurement Vehicle Should Be a Bus
In San Francisco, under our Startup In Residence program, we’re experimenting with how to remove the friction associated with RFPs for both government staff and startups. For government staff, that means publishing an RFP in days, not months. For startups, it means responding to an RFP in hours not weeks.
So what did we learn from our experience with the airport? We combined 17 RFPs into one; utilized general “challenge statements” in place of highly detailed project specifications; leveraged modern technology; and created a simple guide to navigating the process.
http://www.techwire.net/news/why-your-next-procurement-vehicle-should-be-a-bus.html
Copy of the procurement guide:
https://startupinresidenceorg.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/stircontractingguideocareviewed1-28-2016-docx.pdf
Photo: Scott Web
News You Can Use: 9/30/2015
- 10 Intelligence Insights For Category Managers in 2015
The demand for consultancy will depend often on the complexity of the processes and interactions involved with the sector and the individual business. For instance, sectors with a highly regulated environment will often use management consultants to help implement strategies with regard to new rules or to more effectively traverse the landscape of existing regulations.
- Healthcare firms three times more likely to see data breaches
Plus, healthcare organizations are in the process of moving all their data to electronic health records, and are increasingly sharing that data with healthcare providers, clinics, insurance companies, and other industry participants. That means that criminals have a broader attack surface, and the defenders aren’t as battle-hardened as those in other industries.
- Using Cloud Computing To Manage Global Risk Of Doing Business
There has been no other technology development that has had a greater impact on the reduction of risk of operating a supply chain than cloud technology. Cloud computing has made it possible for companies to stay in touch on a real time basis with thousands of their suppliers spread all across the globe round the clock. The conventional ERP-based solutions configured to manage supply chain systems internally by inter-connecting departments within the organization do not prove to be very well positioned to handle the business processes required to manage suppliers. This is largely because supplier networks can be extremely complex and have a very large geographical footprint making them susceptible to developing faults with great ease. Supplier networks that are cloud-based are in a position to yield more options and offer additional risk management capabilities for smart companies that have switched to this technology.
http://www.hostreview.com/blog/150923-using-cloud-computing-to-manage-global-risk-of-doing-business
- The 20 jobs with the biggest salary increases this year
Nothing shocking here, but interesting to review.
http://www.fastcompany.com/3051405/the-future-of-work/the-20-jobs-with-the-biggest-salary-increases-this-year - Dropbox wants shadow IT to drive enterprise adoption
There’s one key thing that Dropbox has going for it: users inside companies are already using its product without the authorization of administrators. When the company goes to pitch a large business like News Corp. on adopting Dropbox for Business, salespeople can already point to the thousands of users of its technology inside the company.
Photo: Christopher Campbell, unsplash