by Jennifer Hart Yim | Mar 22, 2017 | Blog, Leadership, Logistics, Supply Chain, Talent
By calling them “soft skills,” are we shortchanging competencies that are critical for supply chain and procurement professionals to succeed?
This guest post comes to us from Argentus Supply Chain Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm specializing in Supply Chain Management and Procurement.
One of the biggest stories in the world of Supply Chain and Procurement talent over the past few years has been the emerging importance of Soft Skills. Time was, the business world saw Supply Chain and Procurement as highly analytical fields, where the ability to organize and interpret data was paramount. Analytical skills are still important, of course. But as the field has become more strategic — with a greater impact on wider areas of business — professionals in the field have had to become stronger at advocating for it. No senior Procurement professional is going to get very far into a Procurement transformation without being able to advocate for their Procurement method and what it can deliver. No one is going to transform their organization’s Supply Chain without being able to explain whatever insights they’ve gleaned from data to senior management.
When we say “Soft Skills,” we generally mean:
- Verbal communications
- Written communications
- Relationship-building skills
- Presentation ability
- The ever-elusive and hard-to-define-but-you-know-it-when-you-see-it “polish”
There’s no doubt they’re important, especially when it comes to moving into the senior ranks of leadership. But by calling them “soft skills,” are we really shortchanging them and treating them as ancillary to the “main,” “vocational” skills we ask for? Maybe it’s time to put them front and center.
They may be skills, but they’re not soft
Marketing guru and entrepreneur Seth Godin had an interesting post about the concept of “Soft Skills” and whether the way we think about them needs a revamp: “Let’s stop calling them ‘soft skills.’ They might be skills, but they’re not soft,” he says.
Godin’s basic point is that soft skills build a great workplace culture. And workplace culture isn’t an ancillary bonus to a business’s core function. It is a business’s core function. Godin doesn’t discount the importance of vocational skills. You can’t make a Supply Chain run without data. But for all the talk about strategy, a truly successful company succeeds not because of its strategy, but its culture — just like a truly successful career in business is often driven by soft skills rather than vocational skills.
His point is also that we don’t put as much effort into training soft skills as we do vocational skills, which might be because vocational skills are easier to measure. For example your typing speed (or for a Supply Chain role, your facility with SAP or JAD software) is much easier to measure than the kind of empathic awareness that makes a team sing. The result?
“Organizations hire and fire based on vocational skill output all the time, but practically need an act of the board to get rid of a negative thinker, a bully or a sloth (if he/she is good at something measurable).”
Rebranding soft skills as real skills
Godin’s suggestion is to rename soft skills “real skills” and break them down into new categories by which we might assess them:
- Self Control
- Productivity
- Wisdom
- Perception
- Influence
He breaks these categories down into an exhaustive list of skills (“diplomacy in difficult situations,” “etiquette”) that’s definitely worth checking out, and worth assessing in new hires. It gets a little abstract, but we couldn’t agree more with Godin’s core point: It’s time to put “soft skills” front and center.
In Supply Chain and Procurement, which are the areas we recruit for, soft skills are taking on more relevance as automation begins to handle the nuts and bolts of how products come to market, and how companies work with suppliers. The function is becoming more nimble and more strategic, and the future belongs to those who are able to be strategic advocates — and the companies that prize this in their hires.
Yet in a field that is, by its very nature, obsessed with efficiency, measurement, and data, soft skills sometimes take a back seat.
We think it’s time to change that.
Related posts:
by Fronetics | Mar 21, 2017 | Blog, Diversity, Leadership, Supply Chain, Talent, Transportation & Trucking
The founder and president of Women In Trucking discusses bringing gender diversity to transportation.
Ellen Voie is successfully breaking down barriers and changing the perception of the trucking industry. As founder and president of Women In Trucking (WIT), Voie and her team work to promote the organization’s mission “to encourage the employment of women in the trucking industry, promote their accomplishments, and minimize obstacles faced by women working in the industry.”
Voie has been named a Transportation Innovator Champion of Change by the White House, a Fleet Owner Dozen Outstanding Woman in Trucking, and a Supply & Demand Chain Executive Magazine Pro to Know 2016. Her blog was recently named one of the top three logistics and supply chain blogs in 2017 by Fronetics readers.
I spoke with Voie about her experiences in the transportation industry, as well as her hopes for WIT and the future of women truckers.
Early career
After a semester pursuing broadcast journalism, Voie unexpectedly moved back to her hometown in Wisconsin for family reasons and got a job drafting at a steel fabricating plant. The company soon asked if she had any interest in moving over to their new traffic department. Tempted by the offer that they’d also put her through school for traffic and transportation management, Voie gladly accepted.
Voie was responsible for bringing in all the raw steel and shipping out the finished product for three plants. But, as a young female traffic manager, she noticed that she was a bit of an anomaly. “I remember walking into the traffic fraternity meeting and realizing I was the only woman there,” she says.
While she proved herself extremely competent and capable, Voie still met some resistance. “I was 20 years old, hiring drivers that would tell me, ‘I’ve been working longer than you’ve been alive!’”
But to drivers who struggled with the idea that she would be their boss, Voie simply replied, “If you have a hard time taking instruction from a female, then don’t apply.”
Voie would move on from the plant to work as a freelance transportation consultant, executive director of Trucker Buddy International, and manager of recruiting and retention programs at Schneider National. Her industry knowledge and capability earned her great respect in the industry and beyond.
Women In Trucking is born
Voie’s role at Schneider involved helping the company attract and retain drivers. She was asked to focus on four groups: returning military, Hispanics, seniors, and women. “So I started doing research on what women look for in a carrier,” she recalls. “I began to realize that the trucking industry as a whole did not do a very good job of focusing on bringing more women in.”
At the time she was working on getting her pilot’s license and belonged to a group called Women In Aviation. Voie thought to herself, “Why is there not an organization for women in trucking?”
The idea for WIT was born.
After launching in 2007, Women In Trucking was well received. “Companies thought, ‘Yes we should get more women!’” Voie says. And as the driver shortage became more critical, carriers became even more enthusiastic about hiring women drivers. They began to realize that, generally, women take fewer risks and make really good drivers.
Removing obstacles
One of the pillars of the WIT mission is to minimize the obstacles women face in the industry. When asked about the biggest challenges, Voie is resolute: “The biggest obstacle is image. Women outside the industry just don’t think about driving a truck. We need to show them that it’s not the same old physically demanding job that it used to be.”
One of Voie’s strategies for changing the industry’s image is by educating young girls about trucking. WIT has partnered with Girl Scout groups across the country to develop a transportation patch, for example. And Voie says she’s close to getting a female truck driver doll on toy store shelves.
Equipment is another major obstacle facing women in the industry, so Voie works with truck cab designers on ergonomics and truck cab design. Whether it’s changing the slope of dash and the closeness of the steps or adding more safety equipment and other creature comforts, “they are very interested in learning what it is that women want in a truck,” explains Voie.
Truck stops are similarly invested in making their facilities more amenable to female drivers. “They are always asking: How are the showers? How is safety and security? How are you treated when you go in?” Voie notes.
Voie says that though the percentage of female drivers has held pretty steady (around 7%), increased awareness has helped the industry become more accepting of and accommodating to them through the years. That’s in large part thanks to Women In Trucking providing a voice and advocating for women in the industry.
Leaning in
Another shift Voie has noticed in recent years is that carriers have begun actively recruiting women employees. They’re also celebrating female drivers and executives through events and functions, and building retention programs specifically targeting their female employees. Voie points to one company that created a female driver liaison to handle all calls and concerns from women drivers. Steps like these are helping carriers to attract female talent and support existing employees in a very positive way.
Women within the industry, too, increasingly are supporting each other in their careers through networking events and mentoring relationships. Women In Trucking is helping to build these networks and provide mentoring opportunities. As a result, Voie has witnessed a growing number of women taking on leadership roles in the industry.
Voie also stresses the importance of relying on tools like social media to connect with each other. “The trucking community is very close, and social networking brings them even closer,” she says. “Physically they are away from home and their companies and are alone in a cab, and they really depend on social media to stay connected.”
Through mutual support and active engagement, women and WIT have changed the conversation about females in the trucking industry.
The future of Women In Trucking (and women in trucking)
Looking ahead, Voie is focused on growing WIT’s membership and attracting other verticals, like towing, warehousing, and manufacturing. “There are a lot of people in the industry who aren’t necessarily involved exclusively in trucking, and I’d like to be a resource for them as well,” she says.
She’s also working on developing a best-practices guide based on the successes of companies that have a high percentage of women at both the management and driver level. And she’s very excited about an upcoming partnership with Feeding America, in which carriers will donate delivery of a load to help relieve hunger.
As far as the future of women in trucking, Voie sees only more good things to come. And she offers this advice for women facing naysayers who doubt their abilities or experience: “You have to prove yourself. Don’t be a victim. Don’t denigrate yourself or feel that you can’t do it — because you can. When you prove yourself, you’ll love it.”
Related posts:
by Jennifer Hart Yim | Mar 16, 2017 | Blog, Logistics, Strategy, Supply Chain, Transportation & Trucking
Try these affordable online tools and mobile applications to help the logistics professional control their business.
This guest post comes to us from Adam Robinson, marketing manager at Cerasis, a top freight logistics company and truckload freight broker.
Logistics professionals require exemplary international online logistics tools to help them carry out their daily businesses with ease and deliver the best for their customers. For any developing business, adopting the widely used and affordable technologies is more economical. Mobile phones can offer incredible services in any business from inventory tracking and shipments to the execution of procurement transactions. Let’s base our discussion on online trucking logistics and mobile applications that can be used in supply chain management on a global basis by the logistic professional to control their business.
Top 8 Online Logistics Tools For Logistics Professionals
1. The Scandit mobile application software
Scandit is one of the top mobile online logistics tools used in international logistics in supply chain management. It is an advanced barcode scanner that is capable of extending bar code scanning to technology savvy inventory manager. Unlike other scanners, the scan in Scandal doesn’t have to be perfect to process data as it can scan hard to reach the barcodes with ease. It is also cross-platform enabled to facilitate ease of data sharing across other networks online.
2. The Easy stock mobile application software
This optimization tool for inventories is cloud based. It systematically limits access from the warehouse locations to minimize cost while maximizing on the availability of highly profitable items. It is one of the essential online logistics tools that can help managers forecast, plan the inventories, and a budget for the available resources. Most logistics prefer integrating the use of this app to automate procurement and replenish other processes to raise the profit margins.
3. The Web fleet Android application
The web fleet Android application is an incredible mobile application suitable for retaining control of the daily operations of your workforce. This app can be accessed through web browsing, where the logistic professionals can manage their business in real time just from their phones or laptops at the comfort of their seats. This application will help you track the daily operations 24 hours to ensure the credibility of your workforce and efficiency in your operations.
4. Service Max mobile app
Service Max mobile app is one of the best and top-selling apps in service management field that every logistic professional should consider using. The app combines the integration of service contracts, management of orders, workforce optimization and monitoring of social media customers. It builds an end-to-end service organization view of your relations with the clients who help you analyze the quality of your services and the reactions of the customers towards them. The feedback shared through social media, such as Twitter, by the people using your services helps you to gauge yourself and point out the areas that require improvement.
5. The Co-pilot Android mobile app
Co-pilot Android mobile app is an incredible online logistics tool employed in international logistics. It offers mapping and direction routing. It facilitates navigation through online tracking of your vehicle for efficiency. The application has additional algorithms that help the truck drivers follow efficient routes to avoid traffic and other obstacles that can delay the delivery. It is with a 100% surely that every logistic will be interested in the quick delivery of his/her business services within the shortest time possible which can be catered for using this application. The app also gives the dynamic information of the various navigation routes such as truck height and weight to ensure smooth navigation in the designated routes.
6. The Logistics mobile app
Logistics is a multipurpose free on-line Android mobile application used for on-line tracking logistics. It can be used to track drivers, shipment of goods, vehicles and client’s operations. Every logistic professional should look for this app to increase the visibility of the entire supply chain with the use of a smartphone. This incredible app will help you monitor and track your logistic operations with ease and confidence.
7. The Evernote online mobile application
Evernote, as well as Eduzaurus, has been rated as the best tool used by professional logistics in organizing important files, documents and images and is, therefore, a widespread global application in the field of supply chain management. It is widely known and used in online filing and storage of documents used in the supply chain. It has an added advantage as compared to other supply chain mobile applications due to its ability to record voice memos when you are away through an inbuilt voice recording technology. This helps the manager to track the success of the workforce when away. With this mobile application, it is a guarantee of success to the managers and logistics in file organization field.
8. The Cerasis Rater — A Web-Based Transportation Management System with Companion Mobile App
The Cerasis Rater allows you to process shipments for the following over-the-road modes:
- Less than truckload
- Small Package, also known as Parcel
- Intermodal
- Full Truckload moves
The Cerasis Rater eliminates the manual process of booking shipments. Before using online logistics tools, you’ve most likely wasted time, energy, and money trying to maintain your carrier rates, calling carriers to try and get the best price, and lost efficiency from having to keep up with paper bills of lading. The Cerasis Rater offers many automation & efficiency benefits to include:
- Process your own shipment, at any time, 24/7 through our web-based portal.
- Upload, store, and maintain your shipper address book with pre-population to maintain accuracy and save time.
- Store your custom commodities, and over time the Cerasis Rater puts the most commonly used to the top of the list for faster processing.
- Choose from multiple carriers whose rates are negotiated specifically to your needs within the system, allowing you to not waste time or energy, and to not leave money on the table at the time of shipment.
- Choose carriers based on rate, transit time, and limit of liability to ensure your cargo and your peace of mind are covered.
- Print batch freight quotes, bills of lading, invoices, and labels all within the same system.
- Create, email, and print bills of lading when you are done processing your freight shipment.
- E-mail notification options customized to your needs.
Related posts:
by Fronetics | Mar 15, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Strategy, Supply Chain
A supply chain company published one more blog post per week and gained a new customer in one month.
Companies in the logistics and supply chain industries have been hesitant to adopt digital and content marketing because they are unsure about the benefits. We hear it all the time: Who is going to read a blog about my business? How is that going to get me more customers?
Something else we see all the time? How content marketing works for supply chain companies.
You see, the B2B buying process has changed. The vast majority of buyers now go online to research products and services they want to purchase. The proof is in the numbers:
- 94% of buyers reported using online research at some point in the purchasing process.
- 62% of B2B buyers say that a web search was one of the first three resources they use to learn about a solution.
- 95% of B2B buyers are willing to consider vendor-related content as trustworthy.
- 67% more leads were generated by companies with an active blog last year.
- 47% of B2B buyers consume 3-5 pieces of content prior to engaging with a salesperson.
- 51% of B2B buyers rely more on content to research and make B2B purchasing decisions than they did a year ago.
I could go on and on.
Blogging frequency matters
Here’s the rub: Blogging every once and awhile isn’t going to get you results. You need to publish quality content on a consistent basis to attract prospects to your site.
The reality is that the more often you blog, the more traffic and leads you’ll get. Search engines consider posting frequency in their rankings. What’s more, every time you post, you create a new opportunity to be found, to be shared, and to be linked to by other sites.
That being said, you don’t need to post five times a week to be successful. In fact, small steps can go a long way.
Try one more post per week
We often encourage our clients to increase their blogging cadence by just one more post per week. Though some are skeptical of the impact this will have on their traffic and lead-generation efforts, they inevitably find that such a small step can make a big difference.
Take one client of ours, for example.
We suggested moving from publishing one post to two posts per week. The client was unsure this would have any impact, especially for a company in the supply chain industry. But the immediate results spoke for themselves.
After just one month, the client saw the following successes:
- Web traffic increased by 23%.
- Social reach increased by 252%.
- Sales leads doubled. 90% of those leads were sourced from organic search.
- A lead converted to a customer.
All of these results were directly related to the increased blog frequency.
Test it out
The trouble in publishing more posts is balancing resources so that you’re publishing frequently but maintaining value and quality within your content. We’re big advocates of testing to find your personal sweet spot for the amount of posts your organization is able to publish to maximize traffic and leads.
Try publishing one more post per week for one month. Track your KPIs, calculate ROI, and assess whether increasing the blogging frequency is right for your business. You may be surprised at the results.
Related posts:
by Fronetics | Mar 13, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Supply Chain
Use these two strategies to help your blog generate leads faster.
Creating quality content for your blog that educates and engages consumers takes significant investment and resources. But, unfortunately, blog posts usually don’t deliver the immediate ROI that many companies are looking for.
A blog is an excellent lead-generation tool. But, as I’ve written about before, it takes time to generate leads and sales.
Like a fine wine, blog posts become more valuable with age.
Older content — likely, with more shares, likes, and referrals from other webpages — hold more credibility with search engines. The more credible the blog post, the higher it will rank in search engine results. What does this mean for you? The more time your blog has to circulate the internet, the more opportunity people have to read it, the higher it will appear in search queries. It’s that simple.
But your boss wants to see results in the form of leads and sales now. How can you bridge the gap between giving your blog the time it needs to become credible and boosting your lead-generating efforts for this sales cycle?
If you want to accelerate lead generation, it’s going to take a greater investment. But if you’re willing to commit more time and resources, here are two things you can do to see results sooner than later.
Two things you can do now to get leads faster
1. Publish more frequently.
Search engines value posting frequency because it shows that your blog is a consistent source of content. The question is, how much can your organization publish without experiencing a decline in quality and relevancy? Those are other factors influencing search engine rankings, not to mention readership, leads, and conversions.
But “more frequently” doesn’t have to mean going from 0 to 60. Even publishing once more per week can make a dramatic impact. This story, for example, shows how publishing one more post per week helped a client’s web traffic increase by 23%, sales leads double, and a prospect convert to a customer — and that was just in just one month.
A HubSpot study showed a tipping point around 400 total blog posts — blogs with 401+ total posts generated twice as much traffic as those that had published 301-400 posts. And more specifically, B2B companies with 401+ total blog posts generated nearly 3X as many leads as those with 0-200 posts. The faster you can reach that 400 mark, the quicker your results.
2. Don’t neglect your old content.
It’s important to keep in mind that the majority of your web traffic (aka potential leads) will first encounter your older content. Looking at Fronetics’ most-viewed posts last month, for example, 80% were published at least six months prior. In fact, 50% were more than a year old.
What does that mean? For one, you should keep tending to your already published content, particularly those posts that prove to be a consistent source of traffic. Update information; add links to new related posts or other relevant resources; and seek opportunities to insert or update calls-to-action to current offers and campaigns. Making sure those older, consistently popular posts continue to serve and engage your readers will increase your chances of conversion.
Secondly, it’s crucial that you look beyond how the posts you published recently perform. Something that doesn’t get a lot of views in the first week may be a huge traffic source and lead converter in a little time. Many content management systems, like HubSpot, can generate attribution reports, which tell you which web pages users most often visit before converting to a lead. Compare these pages with your high-traffic pages that don’t make the list to see how you can create more opportunities for lead conversion on the pages earning the most traffic.
If you invest the time and resources to run a blog, you owe it to yourself to see it through to success. Doing these two small things can get you there faster.
Related posts:
by Fronetics | Mar 9, 2017 | Blog, Strategy, Supply Chain, Talent
When it comes to hiring and managing during turbulent times, one thing separates the wheat from the chaff: a progressive focus.
Despite an 8-year bull market, many businesses are still licking the wounds caused by the 2007 financial crisis. Add a volatile political climate and predictions of impending economic turbulence, and you can’t blame those growing wary of rapid growth or expansion opportunities.
But, as the supply chain is already suffering from a talent gap, can companies afford to slow or freeze hiring — or, even, to downsize? Research suggests that organizations that balance caution with a forward-looking talent-acquisition strategy may fair best through difficult economic times.
When risk pays off
Research by Harvard Business School faculty assessed the performance of 4,700 companies across three recessions, and found that only 9% came out in better positions. The success stories had in common a progressive focus, meaning that they were extremely selective about pruning investments and stayed on the watch for growth opportunities.
We’ve all heard anecdotes that support this research.
In the 1940s, when Hewlett-Packard was starting out, times were challenging for the nascent electronics company. But the founders took the tremendous risk of hiring legions of engineers, despite the economic downturn. Many, including the founders, credit the company’s success to this risky decision.
See the way forward by looking back
What does this mean for your business?
Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, senior advisor at the global executive search firm Egon Zehnder and executive fellow at Harvard Business School, offers a comparison to the Roman god Janos, the god of beginnings and endings. Janos is often represented with two heads, facing opposite directions. “His ability to look back is what enabled him to see way forward so clearly,” says Fernández-Aráoz. “His horizon was exceedingly long-term.”
Is your business accurately assessing risk and balancing caution with bold decision-making? Fernández-Aráoz describes how Egon Zehnder weathered the economic crisis following the dot-com bubble burst and 9/11: “A natural reaction would have been to obey the short-term signals and retrench and, indeed, that’s what most of our competitors did, dismissing up to 50% of their staffs. But we barely downsized. We continued to hire outstanding consultants and elected every single candidate who came up for partner during that period,” he writes.
Fernández-Aráoz credits these practices with his firm’s readiness to seize opportunity the moment the market began to recover. The take-away here is that while it’s crucial to mitigate risk during turbulent economic times, “it is those who stay calm, remember the past, and plan for the future who will triumph.”
Related posts:
