Management

Management (228)

Your Own Horror Story; How to Avoid It

EDI END 07 SABCAYou've read all five of my horror stories and I hope you've thought about your own business, and to make sure everything is in order. Are all of your systems running as efficiently and as smoothly as you would like? Are there areas that you now see could be a weak spot, areas that you should take a second look at? That's where your thoughts should be leading you at this point. Read more...

Customers Are Not Always Right - Until They Stop Being Customers

EDI STORIES 05 SABCAI was called in to facilitate a confidential EDI productivity meeting with a group of senior management officers from various medium size companies. The meeting was great, right up to the point that I uncovered an alarming similarity. It would seem, at first glance anyway, that these companies had little in common. Each of these companies operated in very different fields. Each one had very different operating budgets, and they all were working hard to meet very different goals. What they did all have in common was a very similar problem. Read more...

Ignore That Deadline - It Won't Hurt

thumb What You Dont Know Will Hurt YouA distribution company called me in to do a review of their EDI processes, and look for things that they might be doing wrong. The review was just a precaution. However, since the distribution company was doing well, they assumed that everything was going along smoothly as far as their EDI was concerned. Read more...

Outsmarting EDI's Built In Processes - Priceless

thumb Outsmarting YourselfThere's a recurring problem here as you may already be picking up on. Problems start small and get out of hand quickly. My next horror story takes place at a mid sized manufacturing company, whose problems snuck up on them when they least expected it. This company was sitting on top of the world. They had prepared themselves for EDI problems. They had done their research, and heard the other horror stories. They decided to take matters into their own hands, and circumvent their own technology in an attempt to "beat" any EDI problems that might arise. Read more...

Just Ignore the Problem - Your Company Will Go Away

thumb Costly DiscoveryPicture if you will, a small record company. The company was beside themselves with joy, with one of their biggest clients being a huge retail store. This was a high volume client, and the company was over the moon with joy to have such a huge customer account, especially since they were just a small business. A cloud gathers over the Accounts Receivable department and their mood darkens as they begin to notice a problem. Read more...

Cash Flow Disaster - How Would You Fix It?

thumb Cash Flow DisasterMy first horror story is about a company much like any other. A mid sized supplier; not at all out of the ordinary. The company had (or at least THOUGHT they had) a great EDI program that they had implemented, and things were going well. They were ahead of the game, using EDI when many other companies hadn't yet taken the leap. At first glance, things seemed to be going well. Customer demand was high, orders were coming in left and right, and shipments were up from the previous year. It was a time of great celebration, especially in such a rough economy. Things were looking good for these folks. Read more...

Tales of Horror - 5 Ways to Kill Your Business

Cecil introduces EDI horror storiesIf you're reading this you already know that EDI is no longer an option, it is an integral part of doing business with your trading partners. Besides that, if it weren't practically required, I would have been out of work a long time ago. Even so, not every participant in the supply chain believes that the days of paper invoices, phone orders, and human interaction to complete daily tasks has been relegated to the 8-track tape days. In the best environments, everything is automated, and computer to computer transmission of information is commonplace. Read more...

Interpersonal Skills and You

OfficePlease hold for a scene from the movie The Office “What would you say ya do here?”

Tom: “Well look, I already told you! I deal with the goddamn customers so the engineers don't have to! I have people skills! I am good at dealing with people! Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?” Read more...

Time for a Yearly Checkup

checkupOnly a couple weeks ago,  as I was looking at my calendar to schedule yet another meeting I realized that it was December! While I have looked at that same calendar a thousand times throughout the year, it never really sank in until that moment how fast 2012 has gone. Being heads down in project after project at work, while balancing getting the kids to every soccer practice and dance lesson on time at home, it becomes very easy to fall into a day to day routine of simply getting the next task done.

Read more...

'tis the Season... For Predictions!

In the roughly 10 months I’ve helped my buddy Buzz out with his daily ‘Supply Chain Buzz’ for the EC-BP.com site, I figure I’ve read close to 1000 stories, blogs, and articles on supply chain, ERP, ecommerce, and general management topics. Since this is the time of year that the ‘Big News of 2012’ and ‘Predictions for 2013’ stories abound, I thought I’d put together my own list with a little different spin. It’s more along the lines of ‘Biggest Topics With Staying Power That Have and Will Continue to Affect Supply Chains ‘. Here we go……

Read more...

Visit other PMG Sites:

PMG360 is committed to protecting the privacy of the personal data we collect from our subscribers/agents/customers/exhibitors and sponsors. On May 25th, the European's GDPR policy will be enforced. Nothing is changing about your current settings or how your information is processed, however, we have made a few changes. We have updated our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy to make it easier for you to understand what information we collect, how and why we collect it.