Author: Janice Marquardt
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Contracts in Focus: Understanding Contracts as Instruments of Purpose
This morning as I checked my inbox, I had a survey waiting for me from World Commerce and Contracting. The survey sparked me because it asked a set of questions about the purposes of contracts, and I found my answers highly varied across the questions. I will note that I am a believer in contracts… Read more
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Guide to Dubai for the Female Professional
Before I went to Dubai on a business trip last week, I went hunting for a “woman professional’s guide to Dubai” and turned up short. So after networking with a friend of a friend who had been to Dubai before the pandemic and gathering my own data, I decided to write the quick guide I… Read more
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Stuck in Supplier Diversity Limbo? Get Real Results
Many supply chain teams have supplier diversity initiatives, targets, and goals. These are typically not even new programs, as many of them have been on the agenda for ten, thirty, or even fifty years. They have survived multiple supply chain leaders, multiple CEOs, and multiple CFOs the way few things do other than cost savings… Read more
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Hidden Tax Trap: How Shipping Costs Are Costing Your Business Money
Sometimes in the supply chain we need quick wins. One potential source of a quick win is in paying sales taxes on shipments. While this may seem to be the responsibility of the tax department, how the supply chain structures agreements and invoices has a big impact on whether a company pays freight taxes. Taxable… Read more
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Navigating Supply Chain Worries: Turn Concerns into Action
The award for “most eye-catching headline of the week” in my news feed goes to sponsored content from GS1. The headline was “Stop doom-scrolling your supply chain” and (as sponsored content) is advocating for increasing visibility tools. The article cites three main areas of supply chain concern remaining: geopolitical factors, climate change/natural disasters, and logistics… Read more
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Robots vs. Relationships: Will AI Wipe Out Supply Chain Jobs?
A Visual Capitalist article on the impact of artificial intelligence on various job categories wandered across my news feed a couple weeks ago, and I’ve been pondering it ever since. Following the data trail, this data was a visualization of a white paper by the World Economic Forum (WEF) from September 2023, focused primarily on… Read more
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Mastering the Supply Chain Triad: Delivering Excellence in Delivery, Savings, and Efficiency
How often do you hear or think of the old adage “You can have it fast, you can have it good, you can have it cheap: pick two”? Do you think it’s true? In supply chain, the variation on this “iron triangle” is the conflict between the priorities of Delivery, Savings, and Efficiency. This article… Read more
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The Power of Brevity: Crafting Impactful Executive Summaries for Supply Chain Success
One of my clients had a communication problem. It wasn’t the usual “not enough” problem that so often comes up, it was an executive summary problem. The supply chain leader was doing beautiful, in-depth bid analyses with long spreadsheets and each supplier’s column in a different color. They looked like every bid analysis I’ve ever… Read more
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Understanding the Significance of Perfect Orders in Supply Chain Excellence
What is a perfect order? And why is it relevant? Of all supply chain metrics, the pinnacle metric is the perfect order. It serves as a comprehensive measure, encompassing critical components that lay the groundwork for supply chain efficiency. A perfect order is an order that is delivered on time, in full, with no edits… Read more
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Unveiling the Dynamics of the Supply Chain Cycle: Enhancing Delivery Assurance and Performance Assessment
Unveiling the Dynamics of the Supply Chain Cycle: Enhancing Delivery Assurance and Performance Assessment In the intricate dance of the supply chain cycle, the pivotal roles of delivery assurance and performance assessment come into focus. While often discussed as the concluding components, they seamlessly loop back into the cycle, reinforcing the importance of a well-coordinated… Read more