Eric, great post. But I think it side steps the most significant issue that faces supply chain and logistics providers, especially at BCOs (but similarly within LSPs). The biggest challenge with any integration is the dis-similarity between systems. Each system has a design/philosophy that is unique. When you try and integrate two systems, you need to overcome the fact while each system is trying to represent related data similarly, it isn't the same. And as a result, this data needs to be somehow normalized and remediated.
One such dimension that is most often ignored or forgotten about is that of time. Just about everything in the supply chain is temporal, and while one might think that an ETA in one system is an ETA in another (as an example), ETAs change in time and so they are not necessarily the same. This is but a simple example, and it applies across all data elements that are looking to be "integrated" across systems.
Most practitioners aren't sensitive to these nuances, and as they go down the integration path they are stymied by how difficult things are. Well...the difficulty is in the lack of understand of these nuances. And so, integrations ultimately fail, or at least fail to deliver sufficient value to continue.
The solution that most companies need is a supply chain backbone that deals with this problem holistically...but they instead choose their ERP as the backbone which is not appropriate. It is good news for Oracle and SAP, but bad news for the BCOs as they don't achieve the value they are looking for.
Eric, great post. But I think it side steps the most significant issue that faces supply chain and logistics providers, especially at BCOs (but similarly within LSPs). The biggest challenge with any integration is the dis-similarity between systems. Each system has a design/philosophy that is unique. When you try and integrate two systems, you need to overcome the fact while each system is trying to represent related data similarly, it isn't the same. And as a result, this data needs to be somehow normalized and remediated.
One such dimension that is most often ignored or forgotten about is that of time. Just about everything in the supply chain is temporal, and while one might think that an ETA in one system is an ETA in another (as an example), ETAs change in time and so they are not necessarily the same. This is but a simple example, and it applies across all data elements that are looking to be "integrated" across systems.
Most practitioners aren't sensitive to these nuances, and as they go down the integration path they are stymied by how difficult things are. Well...the difficulty is in the lack of understand of these nuances. And so, integrations ultimately fail, or at least fail to deliver sufficient value to continue.
The solution that most companies need is a supply chain backbone that deals with this problem holistically...but they instead choose their ERP as the backbone which is not appropriate. It is good news for Oracle and SAP, but bad news for the BCOs as they don't achieve the value they are looking for.