by Fronetics | Mar 21, 2016 | Blog, Leadership, Strategy, Supply Chain
When Arrow Electronics came across Kendrea Durr-Smith, senior leader of export control audits, training, and communications at Honeywell Aerospace, on LinkedIn, the company was impressed with what she had accomplished in her nine years there. Now Arrow’s Director of Global Trade Compliance for the last four years, Durr-Smith has led a group that is both unique and diverse, and has helped to shepherd in significant changes.
Durr-Smith’s department is unique. “The majority of functional departments at Arrow are regional- or site-specific,” she says; “however, because trade compliance is global by nature, our department is global in scope.” This means that Durr-Smith’s team is diverse, and “not just in terms of gender, but also in terms of background and culture. Learning about these differences and learning how we can best work together has, at times, proven challenging, but is critical to success,” she explains.
Success is something Durr-Smith has achieved. Arrow has made significant changes in the last few years in an effort to better support the needs of customers and suppliers. Durr-Smith and her team have assumed new responsibilities with respect to trade management and compliance in order for these new efforts to be ushered in.
To support these corporate changes and her department’s new responsibilities, Durr-Smith’s department has changed. Three of the most recent hires are women. What is exciting to Durr-Smith is how these women got to where they are today.
“Two of the three women we recently hired are self-educated,” she says. “They were interested in trade compliance, and they educated themselves on the field and took steps to make a career change. This is exciting — exciting that they actively wanted to be involved in this field, and exciting that they were proactive in getting to where they are today.”
Durr-Smith’s enthusiasm for these women’s accomplishments is genuine and speaks to her general ethos. When asked what leadership advice she could provide to others, she offered the following:
“Take on new or different responsibilities whenever possible. Place individuals in different functional areas, and focus on the benefits afforded to both the company and the individuals. Also, focus on helping people grow, and focus on supporting others.”
Thinking about pursuing a career in trade management and compliance? Durr-Smith offers this advice:
“Be flexible. Be patient. Have a good sense of humor. In the field of trade management and compliance, these characteristics are essential.”
by Jennifer Hart Yim | Mar 17, 2016 | Blog, Leadership, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy, Supply Chain
Source: Library of Congress
This is a guest post written by Tania Seary, founder of Procurious. Procurious, the world’s first online social network for supply chain and procurement professionals, has acquired more than 12,000 members in less than two years.
I’m trying to use a baseball analogy here, but appreciate that my headline does have other connotations!
Another analogy might be to say that we’re “getting the flywheel spinning” here at Procurious – the world’s first online network for supply chain and procurement professionals.
Now, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the flywheel analogy, it is a metaphor created by author Jim Collins in his famous business manifesto, “From Good to Great,” to explain one of the key drivers for creating long-term success in business.
A flywheel is a heavy disk on an axle used to smooth a machine’s operation to generate momentum and maintain a constant rotational speed.
It takes much effort and persistence to get the metaphorical flywheel to move, but consistent energy in one direction over time helps build momentum and ultimately leads to a breakthrough. In the case of Procurious, as with Collins’ companies, there has been no specific event, decision, action, or lucky moment that single-handedly helped us to successfully break through the “beta” stage, to where we are today.
Over the last two years, we have remained committed to building something truly special for the procurement profession. Step by step we have stayed focused on our goal of building a very credible and content-rich community for our members.
Now with more than 12,000 members in 135 countries, Procurious has cemented its position as the secret weapon for professionals wanting to be part of the movement toward creating the new face of procurement.
Getting back to our headline analogy with baseball, I wanted to share some of the key decisions we have made along our journey to date to build Procurious.
Agreeing on the MVP
Just to confirm, we are talking about Minimum Viable Product here, not the Most Valuable Player. In the early days of designing this business, everything was up for grabs. Among a long list, we considered building a procurement news aggregator, a pure-play training repository called Procurious TV, and a procurement lifestyle magazine.
What we ended up with was a community platform that included a community feed, member profiles, discussions, eLearning, a worldwide calendar of procurement events, twice-daily blog, and private groups.
The end result was a powerful combination of career advancement, skill development, and professional networking opportunities to help propel today’s procurement professionals forward.
To have open or closed membership?
Once we had agreed on the core features and functionality of Procurious, we had a lot of heated debates over whether we should have an open or closed network. That is, should it be closed exclusively to highly pre-qualified procurement professionals, or open for the whole world to join?
Luckily my team convinced me to keep our network open… and it’s been an important part of our success story to date.
Of course, the major advantage to our members is that on Procurious, they gain access to a wide range of thought leaders and industry experts which then exposes them to diverse opinions on the hot topics in procurement.
Finding our fans
Every club, or community, needs a strong support base. We have been very fortunate to have a number of “early adopters” from around the globe support the building of the Procurious community. And, of course, we now have our “poster child” — Siddarth Sharma — who was surprised to learn he was our 10,000th member. Siddarth is representative of so many of the exciting procurement professionals around the globe — an MBA working for KPMG managing a small team of indirects buyers in India.
Securing our sponsors
Like a baseball club, we needed some big-brand sponsors to keep our operations humming. We have been fortunate to create partnerships with the profession’s leading institutes, associations, analysts, and technology companies. The Hackett Group has supported Procurious from the start, and The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) has joined the team this year. These relationships enrich Procurious in many ways and, most importantly, provide our members with access to world-leading research and resources.
Fielding a winning team
Lisa Malone, Euan Granger, and Jack Slade have been a powerhouse behind building this community, covering all the bases, and getting runs on the board.
Handling the curveballs
The biggest threat to our success is the introduction of a fierce competitor. But we are fortunate that we now have a loyal community that has been built on a substantial foundation of trust and commitment. This will be difficult to shake.
Our next biggest hurdle to success is to overcome the procurement profession’s hesitancy to create social media networks.
Despite the well-publicized benefits, we still meet procurement professionals that tell us “they don’t believe in networking” and don’t accept LinkedIn invitations from people they don’t know. We need to convince the profession of the multiple benefits of using social media, and then provide them with the skills to leverage the opportunity.
One base at a time
Our plan is to continue building Procurious based on our members’ needs, one base at a time.
We will be hosting our Big Ideas conference in London on Thursday, 21 April, for which you can register as a digital delegate on www.bigideassummit.com.
We are also currently beta-testing our new app, which can be downloaded from the Apple App store.
We are asking as many procurement professionals as possible to sign up to the network at www.procurious.com to join this new era and — as we like to say — get involved and get ahead!
Tania is the Founding Chairman of three companies specializing in the development of the procurement profession – The Faculty, The Source and Procurious.
The Faculty is recognized as one of Australia’s leading advisors on procurement development. Established twelve years ago, The Faculty works with leading organizations to transform and elevate the role of procurement, build high performance procurement teams and create professional knowledge networks.
Under Tania’s leadership, The Faculty has instigated a number of “firsts” for the procurement profession in Australia, including the development of a Procurement Executive Program through Melbourne Business School, the establishment of a Procurement Roundtable which includes many of Australia’s leading organizations, creation of an annual Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) Forum and attracting leading global procurement thought leaders to teach in Australia. She also initiated the Corporate Board for Social Procurement, which has created a foundation for leading corporations to dedicate appropriate areas of spend toward social enterprises.
Four years ago, Tania founded The Source, a specialist recruitment firm for the procurement profession. In 2013 she moved to London and founded Procurious, the world’s first online community for procurement professionals to connect, share and learn.
Tania’s fascination and commitment to procurement development started around fifteen years ago in the United States. After finishing her MBA at Pennsylvania State University, Tania became one of Alcoa’s first global commodity managers.
Prior to moving to the USA, Tania’s career was focused on marketing roles within Alcoa and Rowland in Australia, and the Walt Disney Company in the UK. Tania has an MBA and a Bachelor of Business.
by Fronetics | Mar 16, 2016 | Blog, Leadership, Strategy, Supply Chain
Men hold 85% of all executive officer positions within Fortune 500 companies, despite research that consistently shows when women are in positions of leadership, companies perform better. In the supply chain industry, 20% to 30% of positions are held by women, but the dearth of women in the C-suite is astounding; just 5% of top-level supply chain positions within Fortune 500 companies are held by women.
As I have written about previously, the lack of gender diversity in the supply chain is not because women do not have the skillset and ability to succeed within the industry:
“Women are as capable as men when it comes to working within the supply chain industry. Indeed, it has been put forth that women are better suited for roles in supply chain management than men. Research conducted by SCM World found that the majority of men (63%) and women (75%) believe that the natural skillsets of women differ from those of men and that these differences are advantageous for supply chain management.”
Last year I was fortunate enough to interview Cathy Morris, senior vice president and chief strategy officer at Arrow Electronics, and Mickey North Rizza, vice president of strategic services at BravoSolution, about women in the supply chain. Morris was twice named one of the “Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Technology,” and North Rizza was named a “Top Female Supply Chain Executive.” Both Morris and North Rizza shared how they got started in the industry, and the steps they took to get to where they are today. They also shared their desire to increase diversity in the supply chain.
As a woman working within the supply chain industry, I believe that it is important to discuss the lack of gender diversity and point to research highlighting why the industry needs to increase the number of women in all positions, including the C-suite. Additionally, it is just as important to highlight the incredible women who already are working within the industry.
This year I’m turning my focus to showcase the work that these trailblazing women are doing. I spoke with Kendrea Durr-Smith, director of global trade compliance at Arrow Electronics, Kelli Saunders, President of Morai Logistics, Hailey McKeefry, editor and chief at EBN, and Barbara Jorgensen, co-founder and managing editor, EPS News. I also invited Tania Seary, founder of Procurious, to share what is happening at her company, and Jennifer Cortez, director of marketing and communications at Transplace, to discuss the role of quality content within the industry. These interviews and stories will be shared over the next couple weeks.
As I share the work of even more women in the future, I look forward to continuing a dialogue that will hopefully facilitate welcoming more women to the industry.
by Fronetics | Mar 15, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy
Cultivating a lead is just as important as finding it in the first place
If you have a solid strategic marketing plan in place that is generating a high volume of quality leads, tomorrow’s revenue should be almost assured, right? Not necessarily.
A lead is only worth as much as the effort your company puts into cultivating it. The next vital step is to convert those leads into new sales or clients. In other words, getting quality leads is only half the battle.
Your business grows through a steady stream of quality leads being nurtured and developed. If you have these precious leads in hand, it is vital that you also have a sales team that knows how to turn them into customers. If you don’t, that brilliant strategic marketing plan was a waste of valuable time and money.
There many moving parts to an effective lead-generation campaign, and often there are many steps required to cultivate those leads into sales. Your sales team should:
Conduct consistent, quality follow-up on all leads.
Committing to expedient and professional follow-up provides better conversion of leads into opportunities. This means that when cultivating a qualified lead, you don’t want your sales reps to make one phone call and simply leave a voicemail. You want real conversations to happen. What works best is having someone whose only job is to reach leads in person, overcome objections (identify and present solutions that truly meet your clients’ needs), qualify them (determining whether a lead should move into the sales process), and facilitate any needed connection to your sales teams to complete the sale.
Realize that time is of the essence.
Studies show the faster you contact the lead, the better your chances of conversion into a sale. According to a study by Franklin Covey, contact ratios improve 900% if web leads are called within five minutes of submission. While your sales team may not be able to act upon a lead with that kind of velocity, it is vital that they utilize proactive sales strategies, rather than reactive. Reactive is leaving a message and, if they hear back, responding to it. Proactive is going after the sale with confidence and commitment to engaging the lead in real dialogue.
Target the best window of time to call leads.
This, of course, has many variables and will be relative to your particular business and potential-client demographic. But, one study suggests that Thursday and Friday offer the highest productivity in lead conversion, and the hours between 4 and 6 p.m. often produce optimum results.
Have the ability to listen and offer viable solutions.
Your sales team needs to be well informed about the products, services, and solutions that they are selling. They also need to remember that it’s vital to take the time to discover and understand the potential customer’s needs and wants first, then make the move to match and sell the appropriate solution.
Capturing successful leads is only the first step in generating greater sales revenue. Your sales team must be able to follow up quickly with proven fundamental steps that turn leads into customers.
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by Elizabeth Hines | Mar 14, 2016 | Blog, Strategy, Supply Chain
There is no easy answer to the burning question why the onshoring movement refuses to truly take off.
The issue of onshoring is frequently painted in black and white. While the media often likens the return of companies to the United States from overseas to a stampede, skeptics may be too quick to downplay the positive impact of the recent movement in manufacturing.
Nevertheless, those who were looking for a true Renaissance of American manufacturing have reason, at least so far, to be disappointed. Even among some high-profile companies — most notably Apple and GE — that announced their return with great fanfare, reality has set in. GE has battled high turnover rates at its re-opened Kentucky plants, as workers reportedly refused to perform certain tasks, while Apple has been stumped by the shortage of engineers.
Although the number of companies bringing production back home has risen significantly in recent years — from 64 in 2011 to 300 in 2014 — they are still outnumbered by those going in the opposite direction.
However, the issue is more complex than net gains or losses. According to new research by Morris Cohen, a Wharton School professor of operations and information management, and Hau L. Lee at Stanford University, “There is an unprecedented amount of restructuring going on.” In some cases, departments within the same company are onshoring and outsourcing at the same time, each weighing the perceived pros and cons differently.
In a Knowledge@Wharton interview, Cohen elaborated on the trend: “I’m going to go to China. I’m coming back from China. The same company simultaneously is making what seemed to be opposing decisions. And when you asked them why, they would give the same reasons. It’s because of labor costs. It’s because of market access. It’s because of this and that.”
In fact, they found there appears to be no dominant reason why companies make one decision or another in favor of onshoring or staying put.
And barriers seem to remain the same as when the onshoring movement began to gain momentum: The lack of skilled workers, coupled with an aging workforce, still rank high on the list of negatives. The rapid pace of offshoring in 1990s and early 2000s made younger generations lose faith in the viability of a manufacturing career.
Patrick Van den Bossche, the Americas lead partner at A.T. Kearney’s Strategic Operations Practice — which released its inaugural Reshoring Index last year — explained the problem on Manufacturing.net: “Think about it — if you have a kid in school, with everything that happened in the last few years, with manufacturing moving overseas as fast as it did, would you feel comfortable to tell your kid to develop a career in manufacturing? I don’t think so.”
At the same time, countries like China, Brazil, and Eastern Europe, previously known for their low-skilled labor, are quickly improving and investing in high-tech industries. With a greater pool of skilled workers abroad, a move back to the United States will seem less urgent. And with the arrival of robotics, the issue of labor costs will likely take on even less significance.
So the big question is, how should the United States stand up to the competition? What do you think?
A version of this article previously appeared on EBN Online.
by Elizabeth Hines | Mar 10, 2016 | Blog, Manufacturing & Distribution, Strategy, Supply Chain, Talent
Manufacturing could offer a career with upward potential for STEM students at low-profile colleges.
The college graduates of 2015 were the most indebted ever — until the next round of grads wave their diplomas in the spring. But is sinking deep into debt really the ticket to a great career? If you have the means (and brains) to invest in an Ivy League degree, all stats seem to indicate you get ample payback for the $200,000-plus expense.
But among those high school grads who may not qualify for generous financial aid packages and at the same time cannot afford — or even want — an Ivy League degree, there are still lucrative options, especially if they study science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).
The skills gap in U.S. manufacturing, for example, is well known. While as many as 60% to 70% of executives say their current employees lack sufficient skills in technology, computer, and math, the problem is exacerbated by the lack of qualified job prospects — an expected 2 million manufacturing jobs will go unfilled due to the talent gap during the next decade, according to a Deloitte study.
As I’ve said before, herein lies opportunity. There is no reason seeking a career in manufacturing should break the bank if students weigh their choices wisely. Picking a low-profile school may “pay off big both in terms of getting a good job and salary,”according to John Walsik, a Forbes contributor and author of The Debt-Free Degree.
The opportunity is best illustrated by Business Insider’s recent list of underrated colleges in America in which the US News and World Report’s rankings of the best universities was compared with PayScale’s 2015-2016 College Salary Report. Rather than pursuing degrees from the highest rated schools, high school grads should also consider schools that, although ranked relatively low on the US News list, yield high mid-career salaries.
Interestingly, Missouri University of Science and Technology, New Jersey Institute of Technology, and University of Massachusetts at Lowell, known for their science and engineering programs, all ranked in the top 5 (Pace University in New York City topped the list), with mid-career median salaries ranging from $94,700 to $102,000. Within six months of graduation, for example, 80% of New Jersey Institute of Technology graduates were either employed — top employers include IBM and ExxonMobil — or enrolled in graduate programs.
A college degree from a prestigious school means little unless your earnings quickly make it worthwhile. If only manufacturing could shake its lackluster reputation, a growing number of students may discover it holds the key to a career with a lot of upward potential — without necessarily going into big debt.
What is your take on the cost of college versus the payoff?
A version of this post previously appeared at EBN Online.
