Where's that order?
How VisibleLogistics makes collaboration easier by making shared information accessible
My wife is a customer representative for a major chemicals vendor. It means that she is managing orders that customers send to her. The key of her success is being organised, which she is, until she remembered that she forgot to enter an order into their system this weekend.
Her main problem is that orders come in through different channels: telephone, fax and e-mail. This is fine when she is dealing with her own customers, but can be very problematic when dealing with her colleagues'. We started talking about it, and she told me that she missed the order because it arrived in her mailbox too late to be entered into the main system.
What if all of the incoming orders were in the same place, directly entered by the customers themselves? Then, she would only have one place to look for orders that need to be entered in the main system. It would also be fantastic to have a dashboard that shows which orders should be processed first, and if the customer got a notification that his order is being processed and has not been lost somewhere.
Our solution to this problem is VisibleLogistics, which lets you share order information on-line. VisibleLogistics also provides a unique dashboard that lets you know which orders need attention.
Crucially, VisibleLogistics encourages your customers to enter their own orders by giving them more visibility. This means that all of the orders are now centralised: no need to look into a pile of faxes, log in to other people's e-mail boxes and spend too much time on the phone.
VisibleLogistics allows your customers to enter only the information for the original order. You are then free to enter extra order information in VisibleLogistics or in your internal system.
In this scenario, VisibleLogistics does not replace your internal system, but, used with efficiency, will complement it. After all, you do not really want to share internal data with your customers. Using VisibleLogistics as a complementary system allow this, and opens up a new way to collaborate with your customers and ensure that your orders never get lost.
New VisibleLogistics release
VisibleLogistics now lets buyers and carriers manage their orders
We just released a new version of VisibleLogistics, which now lets you manage orders that you create as a buyer or a carrier, rather than just as a seller. This means that you have more flexibility in what you use VisibleLogistics for, and how you use it.
If you want to try it too, just sign up for a free account.
To celebrate, we just created our first purchase order for a case of wine, from a distributor we met at a recent wine tasting. They can now see the order details on-line, so we do not have to spell out our address and the wine's name over the telephone. This also means that our colleagues can look at the order to see what we ordered.
Meanwhile, we will continue developing VisibleLogistics to make it even more useful for small businesses.
What if…
An example of the communication problems that VisibleLogistics solves
Last week, I ordered a new battery for my laptop. I was really surprised when I found a note yesterday (Wednesday) saying that the shipping company already came to my house. On the note, I could read that they have tried to deliver it at around 12 o'clock. It was a working day, so of course, nobody was there. Usually the neighbours would pick it up for me, but, on that delivery, a signature was needed.
To my greatest surprise, the note also informed me that they would try again tomorrow at around the same time. That is, they would come again for nothing: nobody would be there.
On the note, they kindly provide a phone number and an unique ID. I tried to call, but it was already too late, their office was closed.
This morning, I called, and after spending 10 minutes on the phone, I could change the delivery address: I live in the Netherlands, so the street name's pronunciation is a bit harsh for me. But, I did manage :).
Of course, they informed me, that the truck was already gone with my package. The driver would go to my place for no reason, and I would not get my package until the next day. But that was to be expected.
Now, what if… they were using VisibleLogistics? I would have received an email informing me that the package was on its way. I could then have logged in and added a comment saying that I would not be there, and that it would be nice if they could change the delivery address, or deliver on another day/time. Or, even better, I would have changed the delivery address myself! The the delivery would have been faster and better for the environment!
Simple trust, simple truth
Trading partners must develop trust between each other as a basis for any technology based collaboration
The key determinant is trust. Developing trust can only be done in stages and is established, over time, by starting with simple tasks.
This certainly goes against the prevailing opinion held by many of the supply chain software vendors. They hold that everybody should plug into a single planning engine or adopt a common process. Many of these exercises are very complex and so are hardly appropriate for building trust. They are also very expensive due to the implementation and configuration time scales. Is it any wonder that supply chain collaboration based on this approach has only involved a couple of first tier partners?
Also the premise that everybody can effectively plug into a single instance of an application is hampered by another misconception. Suppliers often work with a number of manufacturers, each having their own unique processes. It is unrealistic to assume that they can all use the same work flow. Also, suppliers would find it impossible to configure their process flows to each individual customer, as it would go against their need to consolidate operational processes in support of high volume throughput. The more customers they gained, the greater the problem becomes.
A more effective approach is to begin sharing the information that is readily available to trading partners via more traditional methods, such as phone and fax. If this information is made available through a more accessible mechanism such as the Web, it need not require lengthy integration exercises. By ensuring that clear benefits are accrued to the participants at an early stage, a strong basis for trust and information sharing is established.
Over time, companies will begin to align their processes to support increasing collaboration between themselves and their trading partners. This will eventually reach the point where interoperability becomes straightforward and this is when the collaborative community actually becomes an applications ‘platform’. On such a platform all manner of complimentary applications and services can be provided, each providing additional value and new opportunities.
The evolution of collaborative platforms such as described above, will resemble the emergence of the telephone networks. Interconnection generated an explosion in demand, but more importantly, provided a platform that now supports all manner of services beyond the imagination of the original designers. The extent of their ambition ran to expecting that ‘every town in America will have a telephone!’. Collaborative supply chain platforms should also be charged on a similar basis to phone bills, i.e. by a transactional or subscription based monthly fee.
An effective supply chain collaboration solution should therefore be available to all members of the community as a service via the web, rather than requiring the installation of dedicated servers with each trading partner. In essence, available through any phone or network socket.
So are such services available today? What might they look like?
Automatic order links
How VisibleLogistics supports ad-hoc links between orders
To keep things simple, VisibleLogistics does not currently give you a way to combine, group or link multiple orders together; instead, orders are kept separate from each other. In practice, however, you may want to use separate orders in VisibleLogistics for separate consignments that are part of a larger order, or refer from one order to another in some other way.
One of the ways that VisibleLogistics gives you flexibility is that you can simply add comments to an order, which can be seen by other people who have access to the order details. As well as using comments to send messages to these third parties, you can also use comments to record additional information about an order, such as its relationship to another order.
For example, suppose that I want to add a comment that mentions another order. In this example, we just use the other order's key, VL-1, which is a straightforward way to refer to an order in VisibleLogistics.
When you view this comment, after adding it, the order key automatically becomes a hyperlink to that order, provided that it is a valid key for an order that you have permission to access. This means that creating an ad-hoc link to another order is as simple as typing some text. These automatic links also work in most of the other places you can type, such as status descriptions and shipping instructions.