Ken Wood is Senior Vice President, Product Strategy at Descartes.

As a service organization, our success can only be measured by the successes of our customers and partners. That is why we are thrilled to share the recent success of Descartes’ telematics customer New World First Bus and Citybus, who has been presented with the Technology Innovation Awards, “Best Public Service Application Grand Award” and “Best Public Service Application (Transformation) Gold Award” in the Hong Kong ICT Awards 2013. You can read about their win on the Hong Kong ICT Awards website. The award is based upon the implementation of technology for more effectively managing buses in transit and for providing riders with accurate advanced notification of pending stops. NWFB and Citybus has achieved this success utilizing the Descartes Telematics solution.

Descartes’ advanced telematics hardware and fleet management software gives customers the ability to uniquely configure their solution to improve customer service and fleet safety while reducing costs.

We would like to congratulate NWFB and Citybus on their award and continued success as an innovative public transportation organization.

For more information about NWFB and Citybus, read the press announcement on our website.

Visit our website to learn more about the Descartes Telematics and Compliance™ solution.

Dejin Liu is the Director of Asian Operations at Descartes

Descartes has been busy working with the Nippon Automated Cargo and Port Consolidation System (NACCS) to prepare ocean carriers and forwarders for the upcoming Japan Advance Filing Requirement (AFR) by hosting a number of educational sessions around the world, supplemented by online web seminars for those who cannot attend one of the hosted sessions.

NACCS is responsible for the operation of the AFR system for Japan’s Customs and Tariff Bureau and has been working with the Canadian government through its trade mission to help raise awareness of Descartes’ support for the AFR program.

Descartes has already hosted educational sessions in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Ningbo, with fantastic turnout in each city. Several future sessions are scheduled in other port cities around the world. More information about Japan’s Advance Filing Requirement (AFR), in addition to the full schedule of available educational sessions, can be found on our website at www.descartes.com/japan-ocean-afr.

Have you attended one of our sessions or do you have plans to attend a future session? Would you like us to visit a city near you? Share your thoughts in the comment section below or email us at info@descartes.com. 

Descartes’ Japan Ocean AFR Educational Seminar was held in Shanghai on March 27, 2013.

Descartes’ Japan Ocean AFR Educational Seminar was held in Ningbo on March 28, 2013.

Guest Blogger Ann Grackin is the CEO of ChainLink Research, a thought leader in Supply Chain Management.

With all the buzz about same day, it is time to look at the time of delivery issue.  

Though same day will be popular with some consumers, the real issue is: is your logistics process up to meeting the customer’s expectation, no matter what the service delivery expectation?

We (ChainLink Research) recently wrote a research report where we looked across the whole global market. Our research included many Descartes customer cases to review the variety of methods—from B2C same day grocery or B2B service response delivery across the world, to free shipping multi-day (or longer) time frames.

Home delivery has become an intense competitive issue that retailers and service providers must respond to. Many companies are researching and implementing improved methods in order to meet customer expectations and stay in step with the competition.

Some interesting conclusions we made from exploring both the companies that are raising the bar on home delivery, the technologies they use as well as many consumer surveys on consumer requirements:

1.  Scheduling is a collaborative decision between the provider and the consumer in that both have goals they need to meet.  Incenting the consumer to make a decision that reduces the cost of delivery or actually offers revenue is a very effective method for the providers.

2. Most consumers will opt for lower price than same day- but they want an agreement made for the provider to meet that whatever the ‘deal’ is.

3. Same day costs more for the provider and the customers.   Time sensitive service contracts such as auto or service repair costs are built into the service contracts or cost of goods sold.  Analyzing this before you set up your pricing and service options will preserve profits later on.

4.  Much of the home delivery is what is called attended delivery, which requires someone to be home at the time of arrival.  To make that work, it requires more than ecommerce and routing software, but software features such as automated delivery confirmation and mobile communications not only between the driver and the dispatch, but between the driver and the consumers.

5. In-home/office service models need to be thought through as part of the overall business model based on a variety of factors such as competition, customer, products offered, pricing and profit.  A cross functional decision-making endeavor can assure the model works for the customer and the providers.

Home delivery, for the businesses who offer this service, is a make or break proposition. If done poorly it may not only lose a long term customer but also it will cost the provider more to make amends. Conversely if done well, it is not only a customer delight, but builds loyalty. In both instances consumers are more likely to talk about the service delivery than the actual products they received in social settings. Direct and long term benefits accrue to companies who get serious about making home delivery an exceptional customer experience.

Mavi Silveira is the Vice President of Global Marketing at Descartes

We are excited to let you know that DC Velocity, the industry leader in information for logistics managers and executives, has extended Chris Jones, Executive Vice President of Marketing & Services, the opportunity to blog on supply chain and logistics best practices.

“Chris has a depth of experience and tenure in the market that gives him a perspective from which our readers will benefit greatly,” says Mitch MacDonald, DC Velocity’s group editorial director. “Our mission has always been to bring cutting edge, but practical thinking to our readers to help them get the best from their supply chains. Chris subject-matter expertise and engaging writing style fits that mission perfectly.”

Mitch MacDonald is the Group Editorial Director with DC Velocity

Chris Jones has over 30 years of experience in manufacturing and supply chain technology companies and as an industry analyst, helping hundreds of companies find innovative ways to make their operations perform at their best. DC Velocity has a rich history of providing thought leading and practical information to its readers to help them get the best from their operations. At Descartes, we are similarly committed to helping our customers to get the most from our logistics solutions and believe that DC Velocity’s perspective and Chris’ blog will benefit all the members of the Descartes Community. You can read Chris’ blog at http://blogs.dcvelocity.com/bestpractices and explore the DC Velocity site at www.dcvelocity.com.

Implementation of Descartes’ Transportation Management System (TMS) shows improvements over a five year period

Ken Wood is Senior Vice President, Product Strategy at Descartes

We recently had the opportunity to sit down with our customer, Bavaria, to discuss the successes they’ve experienced since implementing Descartes’ Transportation Management System (TMS). As the second largest brewery in the Netherlands, Bavaria produces 7 million hectoliters of beer annually and has offices in Italy, Spain, France and the UK. Marco Steijger, a consultant active in Bavaria’s IT department, shares with us that in five years as a Descartes customer, Bavaria has experienced fewer picking errors, lower stock levels that allowed a reduction in costs, and an increase in on-time deliveries.

Marco credits Descartes’ reliability and EDI communications integration capabilities with playing critical roles in Bavaria’s business success.

View this Customer Success video on our website in English, or view the video in Marco’s native language, Dutch, and share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Ed Ryan is Chief Commercial Officer at Descartes

Descartes’ Quarterly Employee Excellence & Innovation Award recognizes one employee each quarter for their contributions in helping make our customers and partners successful.

To be eligible for nomination, the employee must have demonstrated:

• Innovation – championing of new and valuable ideas to develop new or better processes, tools, methods, systems, products or services in support of Descartes’ mission.
• Excellence – performance with pride and to the highest professional standards, exceeding expectations, achieving exceptional result(s) for external and/or internal stakeholders.

We are pleased to announce the winners for the third and fourth quarters of fiscal year 2013.

Our third quarter winner of Descartes’ Quarterly Employee Excellence & Innovation Award is Tomasz Jasniewicz.  As Descartes Canadian Customs Brokerage™ (ITMR4) Deployment Manager, Tomasz is called on to create customized solutions to meet the unique needs of the customer, often under extreme time constraints. As part of the nomination process, we ask the nominator how the employee demonstrates excellence and innovation. The response was that Tomasz is reliable, upbeat, and energetic, despite a demanding travel schedule and limited resources. He is known for putting forth his best effort every day, oftentimes, lifting up the spirits of his coworkers at the Windsor office.

The magnitude of Tomasz’s projects support the vision of the Logistics Technology Platform, as many of his projects involve training customers to use the Descartes Canadian Customs Brokerage™ (ITMR4) application and offering support with the application as necessary.  Tomasz also implements cross-functional training of newly hired team members while continuing his unfaltering support of Descartes customers.

Tomasz defines “O.N.E. L.E.A.R.N.ing T.E.A.M.” When asked what challenges he faces in his role, he responded, “I am only a small piece in a puzzle of implementation of Canadian Brokerage, accounting and Freight forward enterprise solutions. My task is to review the clients’ needs, fit them in our solution and implement the software in their organization to help them service their clients.”

With that, we would like to thank Tomasz for his teamwork and dedication and to offer our congratulations on his Descartes’ Employee Excellence & Innovation Award win.

Descartes’ Employee Excellence & Innovation Award winner for Q4 is Johanne Knowlton. Johanne joined the Descartes Global Logistics Network™ Execution Research and Development team in June 2012, with the acquisition of IES. Johanne exhibited excellence and leadership by ensuring a successful debut of the Descartes Community framework at Evolution 2012.  As the Descartes eCellerate™ Development Manager, Johanne worked with product and marketing to meet the tight schedule for delivery, without any documentation.  Johanne completed this innovative work while still managing customer deliverables for the Descartes eCellerate solutions.  With conference deadlines nearing, she had to respond to urgent production issues resulting from Hurricane Sandy and initiated contingency plans for keeping the applications operational.

As part of the nomination process, we ask the nominator how the employee demonstrates excellence and innovation. Cindy Yamamoto, Senior Vice President, Global Logistics Product Strategy, said, “Johanne had high-level descriptions of what we wanted to debut for the Descartes Community and cloud technology.  She had to exemplify our core value of ‘entrepreneurial spirit’ by researching some of the security models utilized by social networks as well as secure transactional processors.  She also investigated available enabling technologies to integrate in the Descartes Community framework to quickly add features and functions, such as self-registration, directories, dashboards and mobile access. Johanne exceeded expectations through her exemplary performance in keeping our external customers satisfied while ensuring the Descartes Community framework demo was executed flawlessly.”

When asked about the challenges she faces as a developer, Johanne says, “I recognize that technology is moving at an incredible rate and enjoy learning new concepts and technologies that can be used to enhance our business experiences. I look forward to the next phase of the Descartes Community development and next year’s User Group Conference!”

Johanne will continue to lead the development of the Descartes Community framework, and we thank her for her continued dedication to this transformational model for the logistics community. Congratulations to Johanne on her Descartes Employee Excellence & Innovation Award fourth quarter win.

Natural Selection in a New “Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide” World

Art Mesher is Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer at Descartes

This piece is dedicated to Verna Miller, mother of my beloved wife of 22 years, who passed away December 28, 2012.

I find myself today at the Eagle’s Nest. For those of you who don’t know me well, the Eagle’s Nest is my home on the cliffs of Wisconsin. It’s where I have done all my business writings over my career. In 1992, I finished my definitional work on federated networks for benchmarking partners there. From 1995 to 1997, I wrote the 3 “V”s of supply chain and all my Gartner work there. And, in 2004, the Descartes strategic plan and its “one learning team” culture framework which guides the company to this day was written at the Eagle’s Nest. For the last 20 years plus years, it’s where I have gone to think and write.

Today, I find myself remembering my mother-in-law. For me, I am not one to feel so sad about what has been lost, but rather I try and remember how lucky I was to have the time that I had with someone. I sit here remembering something that she said to me twenty years ago when I was penning my first Gartner scenario and was agonizing over the question, “How will logistics technologies impact corporate competitiveness?” She said, “Art, what I like about you is that if you see a problem that you can’t figure out, you’ll never stop thinking about it until you have an answer. I’m not worried about you and your new job at Gartner. You’ll figure it out and you won’t stop until you do.”

Now, for those that have mother-in-laws, I think we all can appreciate when you find that rare moment when you realize that you’re endeared by your mother-in-law.

So today twenty years later, powered by her thoughts and memories, I find myself asking the same question as in the past, “How will logistics technologies impact corporate competitiveness?” And I realize that she was right – I was just fine in my career and, most of all, I’ve never stopped thinking about how to answer this question.

Article Synopsis: The Next Big Thing in Supply Chain and SaaS – The Rise of the “Entrusts”
This article defines a new business model which advances the author’s 22 year history of theorizing and forecasting the computing models of federating networks. This work is an update to his initial 1992 writings on federated logistics 1992 enabled by a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) grant for Benchmarking Partners. The initial work was subsequently updated in a series of papers from 1995 to 1997 for the Gartner group and, again, in 2008 for the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals. This article picks up where his last writing left off by suggesting that both business relationships and IT systems will see an end to “permanence” as we know it today and that this will lead to the emergence of a new business model dubbed “Entrusts”.

Acceleration is impacting business. The pace at which good and services commoditize is accelerating. The business transparency that can be gleaned from “big data” is accelerating. The rate of technological change is accelerating. Things are getting faster.

With things changing so quickly, it doesn’t make sense to have relationships or technology that can’t keep up. Business relationships and their supporting systems will see a striking end to their fixed, long-term nature or “permanence” as it has been known in the past. Businesses will protect their margins by demanding relationships that guarantee outcomes or insure against failure. A new breed of company will rise to meet this demand in various communities. These companies will be characterized by continuous investment in systems that network communities and authenticated community participation with credentials, leading to creation of “trust federations” or what is dubbed “Entrusts”.

This article will also briefly describe 4 businesses (Nulogy, e2Open, SPS Commerce and Descartes) and their characteristics as Entrusts.

The Next Big Thing in Supply Chains and “SaaS” – THE “ENTRUST”

Natural Selection in a New “Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide” World

We’ve entered a new era. This era is an “always on and always connected” and “nowhere to run and nowhere to hide” environment. This “big data” environment is creating a factorial increase in transparency (costs, prices, performance etc.) that is redefining the permanence of business relationships and supporting system requirements. In the new world, very little will last forever (or should be planned to last forever) and the best strategies will be based on the agility to configure and reconfigure partnerships within supply chains (suppliers, customers and logistics service providers). The key will be not to establish relationships, but to flexibly maintain them in a way that guarantees outcomes and insures against failure. The new “permanence” might be best described as doing lots of temporary and/or different things for long periods of time with the same people, as opposed to the old “permanence” of doing the same thing with the same people all the time.

This era of pace was predicted by many. We’re seeing rapid commoditization of services with the collision of computing power increases (Moore’s law), network strength and proliferation (Metcalfe’s law) and business evolution towards profitable specialization (Darwin’s law).

As a consequence of this new era, product life cycles and shelf lives are shortening – quickly. In today’s world, almost any product or service can be ‘gotten’ from anywhere by anyone. And, if you wait six months to a year, you can find it done better or cheaper by someone else. Just because you have it or can get it isn’t good enough anymore – so can everyone else. Having the product or service isn’t enough – you need to distinguish yourself by being able to guarantee the outcome (or insure against failure) from using the product or service. If you can’t, you’ll be passed over for someone who will and your margins will suffer over time.

Technology Outlook – Obsolesence of the Permanent Enterprise Platform and Evolution to Heterogeneous, Distributed Systems

From a raw technological infrastructure standpoint, many of the systems created in the last decade will become extremely obsolete over the next decade. They are much like a cassette tape player or VCR tape is to today’s methods of music and video distribution (please see Wikipedia for those who aren’t following me ‘talking about my generation’). The systems won’t go away, but they will not offer businesses competitiveness either. Why? Because these systems purchased in the last decade were purchased as “permanent platforms” that ignore the rapid ‘acceleration’ of technology and networks. Once they’re driven off the lot, they won’t be worth a bid on a locker at a storage war show.

To remain competitive, companies will need to continuously buy (or lease) new technologies that let them keep pace with this acceleration. Specifically, competitiveness will require businesses to be able to harness presence on networks, leverage ubiquitous wireless communications and the mass proliferation of distributed intelligent devices, and extend these legacy systems and platforms. The notion of replacement cycles for technologies will need to become replaced by continuous investment cycles.

What businesses need to invest will also need to change. The architecture of heterogeneous, distributed technology systems that businesses will need are very different than the pre-2011 enterprise platforms. Thinking simply, an architect of houses (your enterprise) follows different design principles than someone who architects multi-tenant apartments or office buildings (an inter-enterprise collaborative, network solution). Thinks like common areas and shared community services are much more understood by architects of buildings or apartments. This thinking is what makes enterprise systems and inter-enterprise systems different – so different that you can clearly distinguish between an apartment and a single-tenant house on your street. Even the first generation of single-instance, multi-tenant systems built from 2005-2010 (really just hosted software, not network solutions) have been made obsolete by the more nimble heterogeneous, distributed architectures that enable multiple instance federation and social network participation.

Logistics – New Superspecialists Eroding What You Thought Was Permanent

On the structural logistics service providers side, we’re now seeing the real impact of Darwin’s law as the logistics industry continues to evolve and specialize post de-regulation. For many years, the logistics system operated with a structure of “Whales” (multi-modal, end-to-end asset-owning logistics providers such as Deutsche Post and UPS), “Sharks” (specialized, best-of-breed in a particular mode, such as nationwide domestic truck carriers) and “Peddlerfish” (non-asset owning provider in a particular space/mode). But, the system evolved and we saw a smarter-than-normal Peddlerfish emerge that I consider a “Dolphin” … a very intelligent and likeable broader logistics specialist (a 4PL, like Menlo). And as Darwin predicted, the ecosystem continues to evolve. We’re now seeing a new member I will call a “Needlefish” … this smaller fish does one thing really well and has sharp teeth. One Needlefish doesn’t eat much food, but a school of them can easily pick away at aspects of the ecosystems. We’re seeing Needlefish that are lane specific, commodity specific or super-specialized in a market/geography (such as an oilfield in Canada or fresh seafood or flowers). Needlefish will erode areas of business that the traditional Whales, Sharks, Peddlerfish and Dolphins HAD always thought of as their own permanent feeding areas.

Rise of the Network Federators: The Entrust

As addressed above, to stay competitive, businesses will need to continually invest in heterogeneous, distributed technologies. Businesses involved in logistics need to recognize they are competing and partnering with a constantly changing ecosystem of increased specialization. Tomorrow’s successful logistics-sensitive business needs to stop focusing on forging tools to hunt and gather, and instead look to relationships and technologies that can guarantee a constant food supply.

I believe we’re seeing the birthing of new type of company – the “Entrust” – that will help businesses guarantee outcomes (and insure against failures) by maintaining the most competitive environment for process management and systems enabling best-in-class communication, collaboration and compliance.

An Entrust is a process-enabler, not just a technology or logistics service provider. An Entrust is trusted by a community to facilitate consistent, predictable transactions. An Entrust is a federator, bringing together other member enterprises and networks to streamline a process. An Entrust authenticates and issues credentials to participants to ensure there are no “catfish” or fake girlfriends in the ecosystem. An Entrust insulates its members from the continuous investments needed in the new era to modernize, harmonize and effectively harness new waves of technologies. An Entrust provides shared service environments for a community of players with varied technology capabilities. An Entrust provides broad access to a community to allow members to rapidly assemble, disassemble and reassemble its supply chain relationships with speed and grace. An Entrust will distinguish itself on consistency, predictability and fairness to a community. An Entrust will guarantee delivery of expected service and provide warranties in respect of failures.

Entrusts will start in highly-specialized communities and subcommunities, such as high-tech component manufacturers and suppliers, food distribution, CPG/copacker food production or freight forwarders/airline cargo. At its simplest level, an Entrust will be a trusted party that enables people of common interests to participate in a defined process of registration, authentication, encryption the issuance of credentials, standardized business process execution, certification and exception enforcement. Each Entrust will be like a Needlefish – it will be highly-specialized and have sharp teeth that take bites out of the traditional information technology enterprise systems industry.

Not everyone can, or will be able to, be an Entrust. Many existing businesses will lack the technological infrastructure or community trust to be successful or accepted as an Entrust. Entrusts will be powered by a commitment to newly-architected real-time distributed operating systems that facilitate the security, scalability, reliability and collaboration required in community-based distributed computing. The operating system will be designed to standardize transactions that automate multiparty processes across the community – both in the physical logistics supply chain sense and the technical business process management sense. We need only look at history to identify this as a fact rather than a hypothesis – just look at the Transaction Processing Facility (TPF) that was necessary for the success of the Sabre Entrust used in the airline community.

Needlefish are Already Swimming, Sharks are in the water – 4 Examples

As mentioned earlier, winners in this new era will be business models that network together, harnessing technologies to cleanly and elegantly assemble and disassemble themselves and their business processes/relationships with speed and grace. Winners will satisfy the need to continuously invest and reinvest in technologies by trusting Entrusts to unify its business partner networks.

As I look out at the market, I see 4 particular examples of developing Entrusts:

Needlefish

Nulogy – “Nulogy is an Entrust that integrates the community of CPG brand manufacturers with contract packagers (co-packers) and manufacturers. Nulogy co-packer community members provide CPG brand manufacturers the necessary real-time supply-chain visibility, traceability and transparency to process its transactions, allowing CPG brand manufacturers to have consistent guaranteed outcomes across their supplier network. Co-packers get the sophistication required to serve the CPG brand manufacturers, as well as business automation and direct access to reputable CPG clients using standardized “certified” business processes. The standardized and integrated business flow ensures best-practices are employed and guarantees the outcomes for the co-packer and CPG community, where all parties mutually benefit from the trusting relationship, with Nulogy as the enabler. Their federation increases efficiencies and visibility within the extended supply-chain of some of the largest CPG brands, while increasing their speed to market of personalized products.

Sharks

E2Open – E2open, Inc. develops, operates, and markets an integrated cloud-based platform for supply chain management. It provides cross-network analytics, multi-enterprise, business process management, and business-to-business (B2B) integration solutions for companies seeking visibility and control over their trading networks. The company’s E2open Business Network enables its customers to share product information, forecasts, inventory positions, sales orders, purchase orders, manufacturing work orders, quality and environmental data, shipments, invoices, and payments with their trading partners. Its products and services comprise E2open Collaboration Center that provides real-time dashboard visibility for various partners on the network into demand and supply changes; access to analytics to assess the operational and financial impact of changes; and offers decision support to preempt issues or resolve problems. The company also offers multi-enterprise software for demand processes, which allows enterprises to reduce the cost and complexity of order fulfillment for their products; multi-enterprise software for multi-tier processes that allows enterprises to manage the demand for materials, products, and finished goods; and multi-enterprise software for supply processes, which allows enterprises to fulfill their demand for material and products into their own manufacturing and distribution facilities. In addition, it provides E2 Cloud Connectivity, a multi-enterprise software for B2B integration allowing enterprises to integrate their internal applications and the applications of their trading partners.

SPS Commerce – SPS Commerce, Inc. provides on-demand supply chain management solutions worldwide. It offers integration, collaboration, connectivity, visibility, and data analytics over the Internet using a software-as-a-service model. SPS Commerce, Inc. provides its solutions through SPSCommerce.net, a hosted software suite that enables suppliers, retailers, distributors, and other customers to manage and fulfill orders. The company’s platform delivers various solutions to suppliers and retailers, including trading partner integration, trading partner enablement, trading partner intelligence, and various peripheral solutions. It also operates Retail Universe, a collaborative online Website that facilitates relationships and communications with members of the retail ecosystem. The company was formerly known as St. Paul Software, Inc. and changed its name to SPS Commerce, Inc. in May 2001. SPS Commerce, Inc. was incorporated in 1987 and is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Descartes – Descartes, selected as one of Canada’s most admired companies in 2012, operates the largest federated network for logistics, comprising a community of influential shippers, logistics intermediaries and carriers across multiple modes and geographies. In addition, Descartes inks in various governmental authorities to the federation. By standardizing transactions on published message formats and the provisioning of composite applications as a shared service to its members, Descartes is entrusted by the community for cargo security filings around the world. The community also completes numerous business processes relating to logistics movement on this Entrust’s shared service environment such as commercial transactions, shipment rating, cargo booking, shipment tracking, fleet routing, proof of delivery, freight audit and forwarder and broker operational systems. Descartes’ federation consists of over 146,000 organizations using its cloud based services. Its network is also interconnected to over 26 other networks processing billions of message annually.

About the Author, Art Mesher

A pioneer in the development of businesses that harness the integration of heterogeneous distributed systems and federation of business communities, Mesher was building technology to automate freight processes in the 1980s and helped grow logistics software company Vocam Systems, which went public and then sold to Pitney Bowes. Subsequently, Mesher was President of Advanced Logistics Research, where he helped companies develop and deploy emerging technology-based supply-chain strategies. He also launched the Integrated Logistics Strategies Services practice at Gartner Inc., a leading technology research and advisory firm, and built it into one of the premiere advisors to major global corporations. Now Mesher is the Chairman and CEO of Descartes Systems (NASDAQ: DSGX), where he has led the creation of the first on-demand logistics network that provides application and communication capabilities for truck, air, and ocean transportation. Mesher is also the Chairman of the Core Group, developers of the Core Recreational Complex and Elite Athlete Performance Centre in Kitchener, Waterloo.

Mesher is a regular keynote speaker at industry and academic events, and for his long standing contributions to the industry, was selected as the Council of Supply Chain Management Professional’s (CSCMP) 2008 Distinguished Service Award recipient. The Award is presented annually to an individual who has made significant contributions to the art and science of supply chain and logistics management. This award is considered by supply chain management professionals throughout the world as the highest honor bestowed upon an individual.

Chris Jones is Executive Vice President, Marketing and Services at Descartes

Com-mu-ni-ty (noun) a unified body of individuals – a body of persons of common and especially professional interests scattered through a larger society.  Merriam Webster Dictionary

Few words better describe logistics than community. To be successful, logistics-intensive companies need to work well together. They need to be able to efficiently connect, communicate and collaborate with each other. As markets evolve and business changes, they need to be able to find new partners and new ways to work together to improve their productivity and performance. But as the definition states, logistics organizations are “scattered.” So who helps bring them together? Descartes can.

Working closely with customers, we have learned that there are many elements to a logistician’s daily job. We’ve also found that these elements (detailed below) are also equally scattered, which can limit productivity. We asked ourselves, “How can Descartes help not only our customer’s productivity, but their entire ecosystem? Could there be one tool our community could use to have thousands of trading partners a click away, a broad range of decision support applications for use on a single dashboard, consolidated industry news and content from a variety of sources at their fingertips, and more … ?”

This is where the Descartes Community cloud-based service comes in to play. We are introducing new technology to our Logistics Technology Platform that helps members of the Descartes community to work more efficiently, be more agile and do more business.

We believe that there are nine elements that make communities and their members successful:

• Connect
• Define
• Transact
• Search
• Learn
• Collaborate
• Market
• Trade
• Evolve

There are numerous examples from cargo community systems, to messaging networks, global data pools, load boards, content aggregators, multi-party application providers and social networks that deliver some aspects of these nine elements. However, to date, no one has pulled them all together for the logistics world.

The Descartes Community cloud-based service is unique in that it provides industry-wide access allowing organizations and the individuals that are part of them to define their operational and electronic capabilities and roles. Leveraging the Logistics Technology Platform, the Descartes Community helps bring together the applications and content needed every day to make the best decisions possible across the logistics chain and execute them.

This may sound like a pretty noble and lofty goal, but we believe we have the proven technology and critical mass to make it happen. Our community now comprises over 63,000 connected parties, our Global Logistics Network manages billions of messages annually, and we have one of the industry’s most robust portfolios of logistics management solutions. Our new technology, called eCellerate, has a proven track record integrating supply chains. We are bringing all of these great assets together to take a step further in offering innovation.

The Descartes Community framework is designed to encourage other logistics solution and content providers to provide you and your partners with the platform you need to work better together. To facilitate the widespread adoption of the Descartes Community, Descartes is making its industry-leading Standard Messaging Format (SMF) publicly available to those wishing to streamline the execution of logistics transactions across the Descartes Global Logistics Network (GLN). Descartes has been working to standardize logistics transactions across the multiple modes of transportation with leading industry bodies such as IATA. The goal of making these 25 critical logistics and regulatory message standards available to all organizations free of charge is to make communication and collaboration between parties involved in logistics as seamless as possible. We are inviting not only transportation and logistics companies, manufacturers, retailer and distributors, but complementary and competitive logistics solution providers, to take advantage of the SMFs to improve their ability to communicate and collaborate.

The Descartes Community launches early in 2013, come join us on our journey to transform the world of logistics. If you would like to know more, please sign up at: https://www.descartes.com/crm/descartes-community-mailing-list .

Chris Jones is Executive Vice President, Marketing and Services at Descartes

Tuesday through Thursday, November 13 – 15, Descartes customers and partners from around the globe attended our busiest and most productive user conference yet. Held at the W Hotel in Fort Lauderdale, our Evolution 2012 Global User and Partner Conference provided an opportunity for attendees to learn about the latest technological innovations available in the industry, collaborate with other users, and network with partners, sponsors, and Descartes domain experts from around the world.

An emphasis of this year’s conference was placed on community, and we saw this during the Welcome Reception and Excellence & Innovation Awards ceremony sponsored by ExtenData, held the first evening of the conference. The attendees gathered together as a community to applaud their colleagues who were being honored for achieving great results in successfully launching transformational initiatives for their businesses and/or use Descartes’ solutions in innovative ways that delivered high return on investment and rapid time-to-value. This year’s winners included:

• Ferguson Enterprises
• John Lewis Partnership
• John S. James Co.
• WS Badcock
• Vandergrift
• Carson International
• MK Alliance
• Justin Marshall
• Joe Foley
• Tomasz Jasniewicz

Community was again a focus during the General Session on Wednesday, when Descartes CEO, Arthur Mesher, shared the message that Descartes’ success is only possible if we can help our customers and partners be successful. Frank Miller, Director of Logistics at W.S. Badcock, presented a case study where attendees could see first-hand how his company became more successful at narrowing the window for scheduling home deliveries by implementing a Descartes routing solution. The general sessions concluded with a presentation by Kevin Gavin, Vice President, Supply Chain Management Solutions and me, unveiling a cloud-based application for the entire Global Logistics Network called the Descartes Community. The day continued with breakout sessions for the following tracks: Routing, Mobile & Telematics, Transportation Management, Customs and Regulatory Compliance, Global Logistics Network (GLN) Services, Broker and Forwarder Enterprise Systems, and Transportation and Logistics Service Provider track sponsored by SAP. The day concluded with the Technology Fair and Networking Reception sponsored by MobileFrame.

Day three began with general sessions sponsored by SAP, showcasing keynote addresses by Vinnie Mirchandani, technology industry blogger and author of “Technology Excellence Redefined,” and motivational speaker on leadership and former NFL quarterback, Tom Flick. Breakout sessions continued, followed by lunch sponsored by QuestSolution and the conclusion of the conference.

Read Vinnie Mirchandani’s perspective of the event by visiting his blog:

http://florence20.typepad.com/renaissance/2012/11/descartes-innovation-awards.html

http://florence20.typepad.com/renaissance/2012/11/nice-touches-at-descartes-evolution.html

http://florence20.typepad.com/renaissance/2012/11/who-are-you.html

http://florence20.typepad.com/renaissance/2012/11/my-heroes-have-always-been-operational-folks.html

Additional photos of Descartes Evolution 2012 Global User and Partner Conference will be posted soon, so check back for updates!

George Manolis is part of the Product Management Team at Descartes

Descartes has been testing with the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) since Sept 2010 in preparation for the enforcement of the Canadian Highway eManifest program, the third phase of the Advance Commercial Information (ACI) initiative.

As per CBSA’s communicated timeline, November 1st marks the beginning of a 6-month “informed compliance” period.  During this six-month informed compliance period, carriers will not be denied entry to Canada or subject to penalties for reasons associated with eManifest non-compliance. In May 2013, requirements are expected to be mandatory for eManifest filings where non-compliant carriers could be subject to penalties.

Current CBSA Backlog – The Importance of Acting Now

To ensure your organization is ready, efforts to should be taken now to comply. Carriers across the industry have been submitting Letters of Intent (LOIs) and requests for Canadian carrier codes at a record pace which is affecting processing timelines at CBSA.

As a result CBSA has advised the following:

• 4-8 weeks to process new requests for Canadian carrier codes;
• 4-7 weeks to process new Letters of Intent. (In order to submit an LOI, it is a prerequisite to have a Canadian carrier code.  Those looking to obtain a carrier code can add this time to their request to process an LOI); and
• 5-7 days for email or phone-call responses.

As an example, if your organization started the process November 1^st, the is the possibility would not be able to begin processing ACI compliant shipments until January or as late as March, leaving little room to correct any company related processing errors.

Descartes has been in communication with CBSA in regard to the delay in processing requests.  They have informed us that they are working to get the backlog processed in the next few weeks. We are currently awaiting their go-ahead to “flip the switch” to move our customers from a test to a live environment.

In addition, Descartes has also been advised by CBSA that responses will be processed on a “first come, first served” basis.  For this reason, we strongly recommend that those who have not submitted their LOIs or requests for a carrier code to do so immediately.