by Elizabeth Hines | Jan 6, 2016 | Blog, Logistics, Strategy, Supply Chain, Transportation & Trucking
Fronetics Strategic Advisors is a leading management consulting firm focused on the logistics and supply chain industries. Our industry and functional expertise enables us to fully support and guide our clients as they address critical business issues, take advantages of opportunities, and grow their company. Our clients rely on us to create and execute marketing strategies, capture value from their customer and channel strategies, identify opportunities for increased revenue, create and execute new organizational models, and lead transformational organizational change.
Supply chain talent is a salient issue. At Fronetics we not only provide thought leadership on this subject, we also engage with future talent. Each year Fronetics collaborates with MBA students from the University of New Hampshire Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics. I am excited that several of the most-read logistics and supply chain articles were written by these students.
Here are the 10 most read logistics and supply chain articles of 2015:
It’s difficult to accurately predict what Amazon will be doing fifteen years from now, but whatever they are doing, it will mostly likely continue to shape consumer expectations and impact the surrounding business and consumer markets in ways we had not thought of beforehand. Read the full article.
There is a common misconception that the majority of goods we purchase arrive via plane, or are transported via road. The reality is that 90% of everything we buy comes by ship — and it’s not likely that this number is going to decrease any time soon. Read the full article.
While many of us may be familiar with recent advancements in home automation, like the Nest thermostat, the real impacts of the Internet of Things (IoT) will be in supply chain management. Recent reports by Cisco, IDC and Gartner all claim that a significant increase in the number of devices making up IoT will have a profound impact on how future supply chains will operate. Read the full article.
Cathy Morris, senior vice president and chief strategy officer for Arrow Electronics, Inc., talks women in the supply chain and offers up career advice. Read the full article.
Regularly tracking your relationship with your suppliers and their performance toward your expectations is critical to ensure the success of your business. One mechanism for tracking this is the supplier scorecard — in essence, a report card for your supplier. Supplier scorecards, when used effectively, can help maintain a healthy supply chain and will benefit both parties. If not used effectively, supplier scorecards can damage the supplier relationship and hurt both businesses. Read the full article.
The pet food industry is a market that boasts $21.57 billion dollars in sales in the United States (2013). According to Trade Group, with 95.6 million cats and 83.3 million dogs owned in the United States, it is no wonder that there is such a large market for the food that the self-proclaimed “pet parents” feed them. However, it isn’t all good news for aspiring entrants, as they must first understand the supply chain that dictates this growing industry. Read the full article.
Uber, the on-demand driver-for-hire mobile service, has come to stand for disruption. The company has not only transformed the taxi industry, it has changed everything. Uber, Aaron Levie notes, is a “lesson in building for how the world *should* work instead of optimizing for how the world *does* work.” NY-based start-up Transfix is doing just this. With the launch of the company’s new app, Transfix is poised to disrupt the trucking industry. Read the full article.
“Man or woman, the Supply Chain of the future depends upon the perfect mix of talent. And, as we know, Supply Chain talent is experiencing a shortage.” Read the full article.
Looking at the manufacturing, supply chain, logistics, transportation, distribution and freight industries, there are a few companies that have emerged as leaders — companies that exemplify the business value of creating and executing digital, social media, and content marketing strategies. Cerasis, a freight logistics company, is one of them. Read the full article.
by Elizabeth Hines | Jan 5, 2016 | Blog, Leadership, Strategy, Supply Chain
Fronetics Strategic Advisors is a leading management consulting firm. We work with organizations to identify and execute strategies for growth and value creation.
Good leadership is invaluable. At Fronetics we offer: leadership solutions for organizations during times of transition; leadership development solutions; thought leadership on important news and trends; talent acquisition and succession management guidance and support; and M&A support to help our clients build and capture value.
Two of the most-read leadership articles of 2015 were interviews with top female supply chain executives. Interviewing these women, Arrow Electronics’ Cathy Morris and Bravo Solutions’ Mickey North Rizza, was a highlight for me. Thank you again to both women for taking the time to talk with me and to share your thoughts on leadership, the supply chain, career development, and women in the supply chain.
The following are top 10 leadership articles of 2015:
Cathy Morris, senior vice president and chief strategy officer for Arrow Electronics, Inc., talks women in the supply chain and offers up career advice. Read the full article.
The world has changed a lot in a century, but Andrew Carnegie’s ideas on leadership have endured. Read the full article.
Mergers and acquisitions are increasingly popular strategies toward growth; however, 40% to 80% of mergers fail to meet objectives. M&A is complicated, and goes beyond simply “the process of buying a company.” At its heart, it is a strategic selection of competencies that fill a void in a company’s offering, geography, technology, or industry area of focus. It’s wise to think about whether the time, money, and energy are ultimately going to pay off, literally and figuratively.
There are some critical things to consider before courting a merger or acquisition. Be a leader by asking the tougher questions internally rather than focusing your team on an outside “target.” Read the full article.
There’s a great deal of buzz about social media in the business world — and for good reason. Marketing and communications professionals have made it de rigueur to tap into the popularity of social media networks to extend their brands into the digital world. But when it comes to executive use of social media, the field seems much more divided. Domo and CEO.com estimated that of the 500 leaders of the biggest companies in the US, 68% have no social media presence whatsoever. By leaving the social media management to marketers, these leaders are missing opportunities to connect with followers and expand their influence. Read the full article.
Businesses don’t fail; leaders do — a lot. Studies have shown that the rate of failure of executives coming into new companies ranges from 30 to 40 percent after 18 months. The costs and implications of a poor leadership hire are enormous. Given the odds, how can you hire a leader — a true leader? Read the full article.
When leaders fall prey to the busyness trap, time devoted to thinking and reflection is often minimized or eliminated; the result can be catastrophic. Freek Vermeulen, associate professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at the London Business School, cautions: “If you can’t find time to think, it probably means you haven’t organized your firm, unit, or team very well, and you are busy putting out little fires all the time. It also means that you are at risk of leading your company astray.” Read the full article.
Mickey North Rizza, VP, Strategic Services at BravoSolution, holds the distinction of Top Female Supply Chain Executive. She has 25 years of senior-level procurement, sourcing, and supply management experience. Mickey has also been an award-winning supply chain analyst with Gartner and AMR Research. In this interview, Mickey talks women in the supply chain. Read the full article.
The inability to delegate effectively is a principal reason why executives fail. According to London Business School Professor John Hunt, only 30% of managers think that they are able to delegate well. Among these individuals, only one-third are considered to be good delegators by their subordinates. Read the full article.
Women hold just 4.4% of CEO positions at S&P 500 companies, and this number is set to drop when Carol Meyrowitz steps down as CEO of TJX Companies, Inc. and moves into the role of executive chairperson. Looking globally, just 8% of companies with revenues of at least $500 million have a female CEO. Here’s the thing — the dearth of women in leadership positions is not just an issue of equality; it is also one of economics. When women are in positions of leadership, companies perform better — much better. Read the full article.
Whining. Just writing the word makes me cringe. Whining is a truly unattractive characteristic. It is unattractive in children, and it is even more unattractive when adults partake. One of the reasons why whining is just so unattractive is that it is ineffective and it can make a brilliant leader look like, well, like a blithering child. Read the full article.
by Elizabeth Hines | Jan 4, 2016 | Blog, Logistics, Marketing, Social Media, Supply Chain
Companies within the logistics and supply chain industries are revolutionizing their marketing strategies by leveraging social media. They are using blogs, in particular, to establish their position as thought leaders and to drive business to their sites.
Fronetics is, once again, looking to uncover the top industry blog of 2015. We need your help by voting for your favorite blog in the logistics and supply chain industries. Vote here! Answers will be collected through January 15, 2016.
See last year’s top blog and honorable mentions!
Your nominations are confidential and will be reported in aggregate with no identifiable information (individual or company) attached. Please contact [email protected] with any questions.
by Elizabeth Hines | Nov 5, 2015 | Blog, Content Marketing, Data/Analytics, Leadership, Marketing, Strategy
We all want to see the fruits of our labors. Whether launching a product or a new social media campaign, we look for instantaneous numbers that will affirm we made the right choices. But here’s the problem: not all metrics are created equal.
So-called vanity metrics are measurements that have no bearing on your bottom line but can give you an inflated sense of success. Generally, they are easy to calculate but are influenced by too many factors—and are too vulnerable to random external events—to be reliable.
Website visits and number of subscribers are two classic examples. A spike in homepage hits may be the result of your marketing efforts, or it may be because of ghost spam. (Or, both.) Regardless, more visits do not necessarily correlate to increased revenue—just more visits. In the same vein, having 100,000 email subscribers means nothing if only 1% are opening them. You actually could be losing money in terms of resources allocated if the emails aren’t helping drive sales.
That’s why it is crucial to focus on return on investment instead of vanity metrics. You could waste hours reviewing a hundred different analytics that tell you nothing about how revenue was affected by a particular effort. Or, worse, you could use vanity metrics to justify decisions that don’t achieve their ROI.
As a simplified example: say you spend $100 on a banner ad for a new product on an industry conference website, and your analytics report that 100 people clicked through. This sounds like success! But don’t celebrate just yet. When you dig past the vanity metric, you find an extremely high bounce rate. That means most of those click-throughs left your site immediately, neither engaging with your brand nor moving any closer to becoming a customer. In fact, you find that only one click-through converts. Was it worth paying $100 for this one customer? Probably not.
But say you ran another $100 banner ad on an industry publication website, one that targets a younger audience than you think your product fits. Only 20 visitors clicked-through, which sounds less successful than the other ad. But when you follow those 20 click-throughs down the sales funnel, you see that 15 ended up purchasing $1500 worth of product. Already, the ad has paid for itself 15 times over. You’ve also learned that perhaps a younger audience is more suited to this product. The ROI proves the vanity metric was quite misleading in this case.
Lean-startup pioneer Eric Reis, who coined the term vanity metrics, said, “The only metrics that entrepreneurs should invest energy in collecting are those that help them make decisions.” In other words, measure the things that will tell you if an effort was profitable so you know where to put your time and money.
While vanity metrics tell you nothing about your bottom line, ROI can help you determine whether it was worth spending your resources in a particular way. This is extremely useful on platforms like blogs and social media, where things are constantly changing. Using ROI as a litmus test, you can keep experimenting and making sure you’re using these tools effectively. Tracking a vanity metric like number of followers, which is likely to build over time regardless, gives you no indication of which experiments were successful and which weren’t.
Your resources are limited, so it’s crucial to evaluate your efforts with meaningful numbers that illustrate their effect on your bottom line. Calculating ROI might take some time—both in the few extra minutes to do the math and the amount of time that needs to pass before all the data is available—but that number will be infinitely more valuable to you than any vanity metric on your Google Analytics report.
What metrics do you report to your team?
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When it comes to marketing we work with our clients to create and execute strategies that drive success and elevate their brand position within the industry. Unlike other firms, we align marketing programs with business objectives and, through a data driven approach, are able to deliver results with a targeted ROI. Our team is comprised of strategists, marketing professionals, writers, designers, and experts in social media. Together we leverage our experience to increase brand awareness, position our clients as thought leaders, drive meaningful engagement with prospects and customers, and help businesses grow. Learn more
by Elizabeth Hines | Nov 4, 2015 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Supply Chain
3 things supply chain hiring managers should look for when hiring a copywriter.
Since 94% of domestic B2B buyers conduct research online to make purchase decisions, maintaining high-quality content on your company’s website is crucial for attracting new business. But who has time for web upkeep, much less for the generation of new blog posts, emails, and various other content? Enter the copywriter.
An effective copywriter can help drive consumers to your website, convince them of the quality of your products/services, and ultimately help convert those leads into customers. A lot of writers can do one of these functions. The gold standard, of course, is a copywriter with a proven track record in all three functions.
How do you know if a copywriter will be effective for your business? Here are a few specific skills and experiences supply chain hiring managers should look for in a potential hire:
Someone who understands SEO.
An SEO-savvy copywriter can impact your business by increasing the number of visitors (i.e., potential customers) to your site. That’s because 77% of today’s buyers use Google to research information about products.
A copywriter trained in search engine optimization (SEO) knows how to write and format your site so it gets prioritized by Google in web queries for your products. Three of four people will click on the top five search results. So the closer you can be to those top five results, the better your chances at driving a buyer to your site. That’s a crucial first step in converting that lead into a new customer.
Look for SEO training or experience on a potential copywriter’s resume. And ask for any metrics illustrating how his/her search-engine-optimized content has increased organic traffic to a client’s website. A copywriter who understands SEO can help achieve the same result for you over time.
Someone who understands branding.
Sure, it’s great if you can find a copywriter with experience in the supply chain — the vocabulary and industry knowledge are already in place. But, likely, a solid writer who has developed content for a variety of industries has the technical skills and resourcefulness to get up to speed quickly.
Consider the value of a candidate who also has marketing writing and branding experience. This person has the know-how to create content driven by your business objectives and a mind for strategy that can promote your image among consumers and other businesses.
A 2015 global study on B2B branding has shown its positive impact on the perceived quality of a product and creation of new market opportunities. Branding instills confidence and trust among consumers.
The marketing copywriter can craft a consistent, compelling brand narrative across all of your digital channels. That means your website, blog posts, white papers, social media, emails, etc., will work together to solidify and enhance your business’s reputation in the marketplace, which will serve you beyond any individual campaign.
Someone who understands user experience.
User experience plays a vital role in conversion: the more positive the customer’s interaction with your business, the more motivated s/he will be to purchase from you. Additionally, Gartner Research estimates that by 2020 customers will manage 85% of their relationship without talking to a human. That means your web content will bear most of the user-experience burden.
A copywriter who understands user experience anticipates what buyers are seeking at any given point on your website and adjusts the copy so that the answer is clear and easy to find. Paragraphs of dense, technical copy on a product page could easily turn a buyer away, for example. A well-placed, well-written call-to-action, however, could lead to a purchase.
To find a copywriter who understands user experience, look for content that is not only polished, but also helpful, persuasive, and, above all, accessible. Writing samples should reflect where in the sales cycle a user would encounter it. That candidate could play a vital role in helping you convert leads into customers.
Hiring a copywriter represents an opportunity to bring someone on board who can do more than produce content: they can help achieve your business goals.
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