If you’re looking for the latest news and information about happenings in the industry, you should have these five supply chain websites on your radar. In no particular order:
DC Velocity is a multi-media magazine serving the informational needs of logistics and supply chain managers and executives. The website is updated on a daily basis with the latest in industry-related news and educational content, written by fellow supply chain professionals. Content includes:
Best practices/case studies
Emerging technology
Labor issues
Management trends
New products and services
New market research
Equipment profiles and reviews
Professional development and enrichment opportunities
Columns and Q&A interviews with industry thought leaders
Special reports, including:
Salary surveys
Best practices awards
Annual state of the industry spotlight
DC Velocity also regularly posts exclusive news, case studies, seminars, and user-content on their video channel, DCV-TV.
Also check out sister publication Supply Chain Quarterly. This high-quality source for industry intelligence offers cutting-edge ideas on all aspects of the global supply chain, from product design, procurement, transportation, and warehousing to human resources, information technology, and finance.
Electronics Purchasing Strategies is a vibrant online community and resource center for buyers, sellers, and suppliers of components, design, distribution, logistics, production, and other services to the global electronics manufacturing industry. Industry strategists and those that serve in the trenches share their ideas about everything from inventory tracking to supply chain planning. Specifically, EPS focuses on the following subjects:
Economy
Government and industry rules and regulations
Purchasing and manufacturing strategies
Contract manufacturing
Distribution
Logistics
Software development
Component manufacturing
Trends with a focus on interconnects, passives and electromechanical devices
LogisticsMatter is an independent supply chain news aggregator and blog covering industry trends and developments, written by founder Martijn Graat. Very conversational with a sleek, modern design, this site offers information about the many challenges one encounters working in the supply chain industry — from handling returns to emerging technologies. Subject areas include 3PL, logistics, supply chain, transportation, shipping, sustainability, and social media.
Be sure to follow Graat/LogisticsMatter on Pinterest, a rare industry presence on the social media platform, where he regularly shares infographics about the supply chain and logistics industries.
SupplyChainBrain is touted as the world’s most comprehensive supply chain management information resource, written by experienced industry professionals and trusted content partners. In addition to providing complete coverage of all fundamental supply chain principles, this site identifies emerging trends, strategies and best practices, forward-thinking ideas, cutting-edge solutions, and the latest innovations — and continues to write and report on these as they evolve and mature.
The website features 70 topics, over 2,000 videos, regular podcasts, a think tank of blogs, whitepapers, and research, as well as a list of resources, just in case all of that was not enough for you.
Supply Chain 24/7 is an informative online business resource for transportation, distribution, logistics, and supply chain professionals. Select from webcasts, whitepapers, news, and photos, or search for a company overview by industry or trending industry topic. Subject areas include transportation, manufacturing competitiveness, warehouse and distribution centers, and the latest trends from the supply chain industry and the technologies that serve it.
As part of our series on trailblazing women in the supply chain industry, I interviewed Barbara Jorgensen, co-founder and managing editor, Electronics Purchasing Strategies (EPS). Jorgensen has more than 20 years’ experience as a journalist, working for leading electronics industry publications such as Electronic Business, Electronic Buyers’ News, and EDN.
As a freelance writer, Barb wrote and managed an award-winning custom publication for Sager Electronics; was a leading contributor to Avnet Global Perspectives magazine; was a regular columnist for the National Electronics Distributors Association monthly newsletter; and wrote for industry associations such as IPC. Barb was also a featured blogger on the B2B Website Allbusiness.com and helped launch Electronics Sourcing North America, a start-up magazine serving purchasing professionals in the Americas.
Prior to her freelance career, Jorgensen was a senior editor at Electronic Business, the pre-eminent management magazine for the electronics industry, featuring world-class manufacturing companies such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco and Flextronics International. Before joining EB for the second time, Barb spent six years with Electronic Buyers’ News as managing editor, distribution, winning several awards for coverage of the distribution beat. A graduate of the University of Binghamton, Barb began her journalism career with the Gannett newspaper chain. She has worked for a number of local newspapers in the Greater Boston area and trade journal publishers Reed Business Information and UBM.
How long have you worked in the supply chain industry?
I’d measure my specific supply chain experience with the publication of my first feature on electronics distribution in 1989. After copy editing for a leading electronics industry magazine for a couple of years the editors suggested I use my journalism experience to do some writing. I profiled Marshall Industries, a top-tier distributor at that time, and its founder, Gordon Marshall, who passed away last year.
How did you choose (or end up) working within the industry?
In high school and college, I specialized in journalism and had been writing features and covering town government for a Boston-area daily newspaper. The schedule was grueling, so I applied for work at a trade magazine publisher. This eventually led to being assigned the electronics distribution beat. I made it my goal to understand the business inside and out, and that expertise helped establish my credentials in the industry.
Two of the leading distributors now generate revenue in excess of $20 billion per year; I was calling on them before they reached their first $1 billion.
Although I never expected to become an expert in the electronics supply chain, the growth of the industry and my expertise has enabled a solid career path.
Let’s talk about EPS. How did EPS come about?
Electronics Purchasing Strategies – soon to be called EPSNews – was driven by several external events taking place in trade publishing. A few years prior to EPS, which started publishing online in 2013, the last purchasing publication in the industry closed its doors. Trade publishers were also laying off editors as they moved more content online. My two colleagues and I – Gina Roos and Bolaji Ojo – found ourselves unemployed all at the same time.
Given the under-representation of purchasing in the trade media, we decided to come together and start an online publication. Our reputation in the electronics industry helped us secure our first advertisers. We have been fortunate enough to support the publication primarily through advertising and newsletters since.
Where is EPS today?
While we were assessing our business model after three years we discovered we weren’t keeping pace with some of the dynamics of online publishing. Although our content has always been well received we weren’t getting as much ‘bang for the buck’ as we should have vis-a-vis SEO because of the way we developed our site. Although our content won’t change—we are focused on deep analysis of the entire supply chain from design through recycling – emphasizing the news aspect of our coverage will attract a wider audience and result in better organic growth.
Revenue-wise we have grown every year since our inception; 2015 was our best year so far, growing in the mid-double-digits.
What goals do you have for the company?
We’d like to expand. Our audience has largely been based in the U.S. because that is the market we know best, but clearly electronics procurement in the Far East continues to expand. The electronics markets in Europe remains steady and, let’s face it, the supply chain is global. So EPSNews would like to devote resources toward building an audience in the EU, the Far East, and relevant geographies in between.
Have you seen a change in the number of women entering the industry and/or contributing to the industry?
Absolutely. When I began my writing career in the tech industry there were fewer women in trade publishing – most of the women I networked with then were in marketing and PR. But that changed pretty rapidly at least on the media side during the 1990s. I’d say by then there was a 50-50 split between women and men in key editorial positions. In the electronics industry, however, there were few women executives. The first woman CEO of a major distribution company was Harriet Green, named CEO of Premier Farnell in 2006. Prior to that there were a handful of women in C-level positions – I know if I mention names I will forget someone – which was extremely encouraging. These days I see more women at industry forums such as EDS and at the ECIA conference than ever before, and they are in management positions.
Have you seen a change in the positions women hold within the supply chain industry?
Again, absolutely. Women are holding higher positions in management within my ‘world’—electronics distribution – but even more so within the online/social media companies such as Yahoo that have become so important to all of us. I also recently attended a presentation by a woman who headed the high-tech entrepreneurial business within Foxconn – a Chinese EMS company – who has since moved to Flex.
Any advice for women considering entering the industry?
My advice would be the same for anyone—learn as much as you can upfront. In business journalism, I had to interview CEOs and MBAs and at the beginning that was intimidating. I finally overcame that fear by reading everything I could about the company, the industry and the executive in advance, and I also asked ‘dumb’ questions of people I trusted. I also found that admitting what I didn’t know never hurt me: even the highest executives in the industry were willing to take the time to explain many of the things that make this industry unique. I think in general people are always willing to give someone a ‘hand up.’ I also found that companies like to work with writers that took the time to learn about their business. Knowledge and professionalism are guidelines I’d recommend for anyone.
On a broader level, what trends do you see within the industry?
I think right now there is a lot of turmoil regarding the supply chain as we know it and the implications of conducting business digitally. This applies to how companies work internally and how they are going to market. The supply chain has done a pretty good job at adopting technology to improve internal operations – we haven’t had an inventory glut since 2001. Externally it’s another matter. E-commerce unintentionally set off huge problems in counterfeiting. We are still trying to figure out where social media fits: it looks like ‘free’ advertising – you can generate a lot of attention with a tweet – but you don’t always control your message. Look at the mistakes people make that go viral.
Then there is managing the supply chain online. Business practices within the electronics supply chain haven’t kept up with technology. For example, supplier franchises are still granted on a regional basis – less so than before – but online business doesn’t have any boundaries. I think we are going to see common supply chain practices change as technology accelerates. Geographic boundaries are already crumbling, and there are practices such as ship-from-stock-and-debit; inconsistent global pricing; and demand-creation compensation that are simply inefficient. There’s little room for inefficiency in the digital supply chain.
Employ a content and social marketing strategy to nurture leads you meet during MODEX.
Hundreds of potential customers will be heading to Atlanta next week for MODEX, and you’re gearing up to gain lots of new business. That is, you and over 800 other exhibitors are hoping to gain lots of new business. So how do you plan to stand out among the competition?
Using content and social marketing to nurture leads surrounding the event will help maximize the benefits of attendance. You can bring more attention to your presence, which will help you find more new potential customers, and then you can increase your chances of converting them if you use these tools properly.
Here are some tips for before, during, and after MODEX for using content and social media to gain new business.
Before the show
1) Define your goals.
A trade show represents an opportunity to spread brand awareness, find new leads, and, of course, make sales. Decide what is most important to your business, and strategize around those goals. For example, if one of your goals is to increase your social following, make sure every handout, landing page, and face-to-face interaction includes a request to like you on Facebook (or elsewhere).
2) Promote your attendance.
With the trade show hashtag (#MODEX2016), use Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to let your followers know that you will be attending and when and where they can find you. Engage with other attendees who are using the event hashtag. Offer teasers — such as photos of the freebies you’re bringing — to entice visitors, and provide any longer-form information (e.g., an excerpt from a presentation you’ll be giving) in a blog post, distributing it through your social channels.
3) Set up a landing page/landing pages.
Create an event-specific landing page that includes a call to action (CTA), like reserving a time to speak with you at the conference or downloading a coupon to redeem a free sample. Make sure to ask for some information (such as a name, company, or contact information) in exchange. Monitor traffic and keep a running list of leads who visit and provide their information.
4) Research the attendees.
Perform prospect research using the list of attendees, paying special attention to those who have provided their information on your landing page or connected with you on social media about the event. Check out their social pages to see what they’re saying about the event, and like or follow them. Connect with high-value prospects on LinkedIn and try to arrange a time to meet up during the show.
5) Prepare to nurture.
Draft content that you can distribute during and after the show. Examples include lead-nurturing email templates, slides from presentations you are giving, and other offers you plan to provide visitors. Create another landing page, which includes a special offer or specific information you’ll be providing during the show, to drive attendees to during and after the event.
During the show
6) Keep chatting.
Reach out to the people you meet during the show on their social media handles. A nice-to-meet-you tweet and/or an invitation to connect on LinkedIn shows that you remember and appreciate the potential customer. Send the lead-nurturing emails you prepared in advance.
7) Monitor social media.
Continue using the show’s hashtag to monitor the conversations that are happening online, and see if anyone is talking about your company. Like or reply to anyone who does to show you’re listening.
8) Generate content.
Trade shows are a great place to generate content. Post photos of your booth and attendees from your company, and create videos of product demonstrations, presentations, or customer testimonials. Share your thoughts on the issues being discussed, and keep track of those themes, as well as any recurring questions that attendees ask, for future content.
After the show
9) Plan out your editorial calendar.
Develop posts for your company’s blog over the coming months around the questions and issues that were raised during the show.
10) Keep up the conversations.
Continue to engage the people you met on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Follow and like their pages, and invite them to connect.
11) Offer your leads something of value.
Make event presentation or speaking materials part of your lead nurturing activities by sharing them with prospects using Slideshare or email. Remind leads with whom you shared your special-offer landing page to visit. Make sure to segment your contacts based on their interests and send them only relevant offers.
How do you nurture leads around trade shows? Will you be attending MODEX this year?
These four supply chain companies constantly post fresh, quality content to their social media accounts.
When it excels at social media, a company’s opportunity for growth is as vast as the web itself. Today, even small businesses can compete shoulder to shoulder with their biggest competitors if leveraging social media properly.
When you think of social media masters, you may not think of companies in the supply chain industry. But there are a few excellent examples, and much can be learned from what they do. Here are four supply chain companies that excel at social media and the reasons why they stand out above the crowd:
1) Cerasis
Cerasis, a top freight logistics company and truckload freight broker, excels at social media because their content is fresh, posted daily, and of high quality. Simply put, they create engaging, informative content and are consistently active across all of the major social networks.
2) Kinaxis
Kinaxis, a global company offering advanced supply chain management systems to customers in a variety of discrete manufacturing industries, offers in-depth blog posts and is consistently active in social media channels such as Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn.
3) Transplace
Transplace, a provider of transportation management services, posts informative articles and incites topics of conversation on Twitter several times per day. The company is active across all social media platforms, including their own YouTube channel.
4) UPS Longitudes
Longitudes is a blog with insights on the trends reshaping the global economy by United Parcel Service, a global leader in shipping. The blog also engages true thought leaders on topics ranging from trade to transportation and ecommerce to emerging markets. Posts are consistently new, innovative, and informative. Longitudes also has its own social media accounts, separate from UPS’s primary accounts, which distribute the blog’s content and engage in related discussions.
Why do these four supply chain companies excel at social media? Here are three commonalities that help these businesses rise above the rest:
Consistent daily posts and content
Having consistent, reliable, fresh social media posts is essential. The more active you are, the greater your outreach to potential new customers.
Think of it this way: search engines pick up on social media activities — like when someone shares content from your website on Twitter or Facebook, for example. Search engines use this to weigh the relevancy and validity of your website and your company. So, fresh daily or weekly content gives people a chance to read and share every time you publish a blog post, ebook, buying guide, case study, testimonial, and other interesting content to your social media accounts. Your marketing efforts reap the benefits of better search engine rankings as a result.
Engaging readers
You want readers to connect and engage with your social media posts. Every time they leave a comment or share or like a post, your social media presence — and your digital footprint — grows.
Quality content
Posting anything just for the sake of posting is not a good social media strategy. Content that is boring and basic will not help your business grow. Content needs to capture the interest of readers and engage them to read, share, and follow your business. Posts should be timely and relevant. This is what builds your following and your brand and generates new customers.
With social media you can find new customers and fans, connect with existing customers who can help spread the word about how great your product or service is, and drive more traffic to your website, which creates new avenues into the digital realm of marketing, company branding, and lead generation. The most successful companies today work daily to improve their social media content and reap the benefits of consistent, quality content marketing.
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.”
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.
