All posts by Amick Brown

What you should consider when embarking on an Advanced Analytics journey?

March 25, 2016 Amick Brown Leave a comment

By Paul Pallath, PHD, Chief Data Scientist & Director Advanced Analytics, SAP

In my previous Predictive blog, I introduced four main considerations that organizations need to keep in mind when they’re beginning that journey. Today, I’ll cover them in more detail.

1. How Do We Measure Business Value and Return on Investment?

An advanced analytics solution must make a measureable impact. If not, the solution doesn’t get noticed, never mind appreciated. This holds even more true, if the return on investment (ROI) can’t be realized as a significant opportunity to drive business growth or new market opportunities.

Take the example of a marketing campaign. The ROI is in having the intelligence to target the customers who are likely (if persuaded) to buy your product rather than finding customers who would have bought the product without any marketing required.

An advanced analytics solution will be short-lived if it creates a “wow” effect, but nothing else. The solution must generate recurrent value, revenue, and business opportunities.

2. How Do We Use Advanced Analytics Effectively?

For your business, good questions to ask at the start of the journey are:

Is the enterprise truly digital?
Is there a single source of truth of all the data that is generated/captured by various functions of the enterprise?

These questions are important considerations. Why? Because businesses often approach advanced analytics in an ineffective manner.

Remember, advanced analytics drive value to every business function, be it marketing, finance, human resources, and so on. However, enterprise functions want often to embed advanced analytics into their business workflow and embark on advanced analytics initiatives in silos. Though there is value in doing so, the results can be underwhelming.

This is because they’re using adoptions of various technologies, methodologies, practices to address the use cases that might exists— but without an enterprise-wide vision for advanced analytics. Therefore, walls rather than bridges are built between the various functions.

The problem becomes self-perpetuating. With increasing adoption of advanced analytics solutions in various business units, the business as a whole finds it difficult to consolidate all the activities into a central initiative and have proper discipline and governance.

The solution is to create the vision and execute it across all functions— even if the pilot starts from one or two activities. The functions must agree that advanced analytics is an enterprise-wide mission. Leadership must demonstrate belief in an analytics-driven business that it is going to provide competitive advantage. In this way, advanced analytics becomes a true company asset.

3. Is Advanced Analytics Just Another Technology Project?

Advanced Analytics is not just another technology project. If considered to be a technology project, the business understands only the technical feasibility and not its business impact.

As mentioned, an advanced analytics initiative is the means by which a business gains a competitive advantage. It follows that outcomes provide the data to help make well-informed decisions.

A lesser or confined approach is a step in the wrong direction. There is no ROI associated with technology-only thinking, because no tangible results are expected as an outcome. An initiative to embrace advanced analytics must be inseparable from your business strategy.

4. Is Big Data Equal to High Quality Insight?

Big Data is not equal to high quality insight. A traditional business approach is to think, “We’ve captured huge amounts of data, but how do we make sense of it?” This is a wrong start.

The right approach is to start with a business question in mind. That way, you can ask if the data that you have is sufficient enough to provide the answer.

These are several pieces of the puzzle that need to be put together for one to find meaningful, actionable insights from the data. This is, after all, the quest that we embarked on.

As we now know, advanced analytics is about business change, insight and value.

“The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data”-Sunset salvo. The American Statistician 40 (1).

Follow Amick Brown on LinkedIn for the best SAP Analytics and Reporting topics.

Analytics, SAP

Are you Planning to Embark on an Advanced Analytics Journey?

March 10, 2016 Amick Brown Leave a comment

by Paul Pallath, PhD, Chief Data Scientist & Director, Advanced Analytics, SAP

Welcome to the new world! The manner in which data is generated and captured today has come of age. Traditionally the way of generating data for the most part from B2C/B2B2C business processes, was by having interactions captured as part of transactional systems in a highly structured format. But with changing technological landscape, much has changed in how data is generated and captured.

What data supports this view?

According to the ESG Digital Archive Market Forecast, the growth in data volumes that is driven by unstructured data amounts to more than 88% as compared to structured data. What’s more, Computer World states that unstructured information may account for more than 70% to 80% of all data in organizations.

The change has come because we in the 21^st Century have redefined the way business is conducted. Significant advancement in internet technology has forced the need for digital online presence for most businesses to stay relevant. Likewise, every interaction that a customer has in the digital online ecosystem leaves behind a digital foot print containing huge amount of information.

Social media presences, for individuals and businesses, have increased the speed at which information travels. This has made it possible to share opinions as blogs or multimedia content. The result is the constant generation of large amounts of unstructured data.

All that Unstructured Data Is Good News for Data Scientists

However, this is good news for data scientists.

The previous figures imply that we have now Yottabytes [10²⁴] of data at our disposal for deriving business value—and that amount of data is about to increase.

The Internet of Things with its emphasis on completely connected systems has resulted in the availability of high speed streaming data. This makes it possible for new innovations that use data to build technologies to enable machines talk to one another (and perhaps eventually become intelligent enough to remove humans from the loop)! Taking the trend into consideration, Brontobytes [10²⁷] of data to work with will soon be a reality for data scientists.

So, what is the best way for a business to capture and benefit from this information? Of course, capturing the massive swathes of data available is an important part of the Big Data story. But it’s not the most important part.

The most vital activity is to generate insights that add value to your business. This takes vision, it takes change, it takes…advanced analytics.

For organizations embarking on a journey into advanced analytics, it’s vital to keep in mind these important considerations:

How Do We Measure Business Value and Return on Investment?
How Do We Use Advanced Analytics Effectively?
Is Advanced Analytics Just Another Technology Project?
Is Big Data Equal to High Quality Insight?

In future blogs, I’ll discuss each one of these considerations in more detail.

Let me know what you think. Did I leave one off the list?

Amick Brown would sincerely like to Thank Dr, Pallath for his contribution today .

Uncategorized

Context Awareness: Online or Real Time in Digital Transformation?

March 8, 2016 Amick Brown Leave a comment

By Iver van de Zand , Business Analytics Leader, SAP

Excuse me? Online instead of real time; isn’t that the same? Well, have I got news for you: It is not.

Driven by enterprise needs and technological capabilities, enterprises are massively going online. Why do they and how accurate is online? Why do I read about going online in the news sites all the time? Let me explain wearing my analytics glasses.

Definitions

First, let’s get some things straight: explaining the difference between real time and online starts with a discussion on latency. Latency is a time interval between the stimulation and response, or, from a more general point of view, as a time delay between the cause and the effect of some physical change in the system being observed. Online means that there is some kind of interactivity involved, but doesn’t enforce limits in latency. Real time means that there are limits on latency. Pfff, need to re-read that a few times before it starts clearing for me.

Let me give an example: If you move your computer’s mouse, you expect the pointer to react immediately and precisely follow your actions. That’s real time. Another example is playing on a music keyboard controller and have some synthesizer program generating the sounds. Online, however, is when your actions show some response in some timely manner, but there’s no timely relationship enforced to it. For example, starting a video stream from a (remote controllable) webcam may show you the pictures with less than one second latency, or even up to several minutes, yet be online.

My phrasing “difference” should thus be adjusted—real time and online don’t differ, they relate to each other.

The Market Out There: Context Awareness and New Business Models

According to Gartner’s recent Big Data Trends for Business Intelligence, by 2017 more than 30% of enterprise access to broadly based Big Data will be via intermediary data broker services, serving context to business decisions. These are massive amounts and it proofs that digital business require real-time situation awareness. That covers full insight into the things going on inside and outside the organization. Retailers, for example, need to know in real time how weather patterns impact the buying behavior of their customers. The inventory manager requires real-time information when his supplier is in trouble delivering his goods, so he can immediately adjust and use analytics to find alternatives, re-plan and re-adjust for example his forecast.

The issue that occurs is that more and more the enterprises corporate data is insufficient to get the necessary context awareness required to adequately respond to digital business. Think of it; to compete in digital business, a combination of non-corporate data coming from outside the organization is required all the time. This—often unstructured—data could be about social behavior, environmental influences, and government or market trends, to name a few. Some of it is even from premium data brokers preparing data from specific industries or use cases.

We could say that the ability of enterprises to adopt digital transformation and digital business for a big part is influenced by their capabilities of curating, accessing, and interpreting their data to obtain context awareness.

Context awareness is crucial for any enterprise that wants to compete in digital business. Real-time availability of insights is the logical requirement to do so. We already recognized the need for real-time insights to corporate data, however we also now recognize the need for real-time insights in contextual information:

Curating Insights

Digital business is about the agility to respond to market, customer and environmental influences and actors immediately when required. Digital business requires enterprises to act and respond almost real time to activities not registered in their corporate data.

Accessing data and insights

Digital business is about the agility to recognize and access information outside the enterprise that is necessary for curating insights immediately when it occurs.

Interpreting and act upon insights

Digital business is about the ability to interpret insights and act upon them instantly. This is not only about interacting with the insights, but especially about applying the closed loop portfolio of analytics: insights often generate follow-up actions that affect business planning, finance budget allocation, or require new predictive models to argument on influencing variables of the contextual information.

An interesting side effect of contextual awareness is the new business models that come with it. A new category of business-centric cloud services enters the market space that delivers data to be used as context in business decisions, whether human or automated. These information services (or data/decision brokers) will become an essential part of intelligent business operations and smart business decisions.

The Case for Online Analytics

Online analytics is primarily about cloud-based analytics. If we narrow down to business intelligence (BI), the cloud BI market will be worth $4 billion by 2017 whereas the current full BI market (software and services) is estimated at $86 billion.

But how important is the aspect of “being online” for context awareness? Well, it’s quite important:

Contextual information is very often residing on websites. Your company’s biggest database isn’t your transaction, CRM, ERP or other internal database. Rather it’s the Web itself and the world of exogenous data now available from syndicated and open data sources.
Products like SAP Cloud for Analytics connect to various cloud-based solutions like SAP S/4HANA, and others. It is obvious that online analytical tools integrate more easily with other cloud-based applications.
Reduced or eliminated capital costs. Because BI systems are managed on the cloud service provider’s hosted architecture, a user company has no up-front capital investments or multi-year equipment leases with depreciating value. It also stands to benefit from improved cash flow. The subscription fees charged by cloud vendors are treated as operational expenses and don’t incur additional interest charges, which can lead to better cash management and debt avoidance.
The simplicity of the online, cloud-based analytical applications is key when it comes to user adoption. If we realize that the people creating insights on contextual awareness are business users, you’d agree with me that simplicity makes the difference when it comes to adopting the applications and leverage there power.
Streamlined system design and increased elasticity. In the cloud, companies can rely on a provider to architect the BI environment, select the technologies that will power it, assemble systems and manage the hardware and software stacks. That frees them to focus their attention on running BI and analytics applications and interpreting the results.
Fully-integrated business analytics components into the so called closed-loop portfolio. Analytical environments hosted in the cloud comprise a complete end-to-end architecture. SAP Cloud for Analytics for example, spans the ETL, data management, analytics, planning, predictive and risk spectrums, simplifying and speeding the deployment process for users. Cloud BI systems should be ready to use out of the box, so to speak, and the standard setups can quickly be augmented with templates that vendors have developed over the course of different customer engagements.

The Case for Real-Time and Online Analytics: Context Awareness

Man, does Digital Transformation bring us interesting times! There so many aspects of it, with contextual awareness being just one of them. For me, it’s crystal clear that real-time contextual awareness is key to any enterprise that wants to be competitive in digital business. Given the flavor and behavior of the contextual information, online analytical applications can make a significant difference.

Follow me on Twitter @ivervandezand.

Uncategorized

You need to watch this Predictive Analytics video from SAP

March 3, 2016 Amick Brown Leave a comment

You’re Welcome ! Amick Brown

Resourcing

Five Tips for New Recruiters

March 1, 2016 Amick Brown Leave a comment

By Alyanna Espina, Business Development at Amick Brown

When my bosses told me that I was getting trained to become a Recruiter, my heart started racing and the feeling of panic started to sink in. All these questions were floating in my head, where do I begin? Is there a cheat sheet to becoming a recruiter? How do I learn about all of this technology? I have to talk to strangers? In other words, I had no idea of what I was getting myself into or what I was going to do.

Moving forward a year later, I found that recruiting is not as difficult as it seemed to be, it’s actually enjoyable. If you are willing to learn and are ready to put in the hard work, then you are on your way to becoming a successful recruiter. Yes, it is challenging at first because you are talking to complete strangers and trying to convince them about the job offer you have. But, it’s all worth it in the end knowing that you are actually making a difference in someone’s life.

In the IT industry, finding the right fit candidate is one of the biggest hurdles when recruiting in this specific field. There are tons of positions available, but not a large enough pool of candidates to choose from. This goes against the norm of our society in which finding the right kind of job is also an issue for people outside of the IT world. Regardless, getting that call from a recruiter is just exactly what you are waiting for. There are recruiters out there who truly enjoy their work and there are others who are doing it for the paycheck. Needless to say, we can all tell the difference between the two. Of course, it is true, that the job provides a huge opportunity to earn a good amount of incentive when your candidates gets placed, but you have to work really hard to get to that point. If you have sales skills and can provide excellent customer service, then that is something you can apply to recruiting. Who knows that may even earn you a spot at the top one of these days. Perhaps, you may even own a recruiting business in the future.

Here are five pointers that will help you, if you are just starting out as a recruiter.

It’s basically match making – you take the requirement that the job position has and match it with the qualifications of the candidate. If it doesn’t match, let them know that you will contact them when there is a more suitable job offer that matches their skills.
Time management and organization is a must – When you are recruiting for a job, it is very important to manage everything that needs to be done within the stipulated time period. Not only that, you must have everything organized, documents, contact information, etc. You are most likely going to be working with people in different time zones. So, you must be mindful of their time when you set up a call. It helps to be prepared, that’s when organization comes in.
There is no “I” in TEAM – you will have to be a team member all throughout the entire process. As a recruiter, you are not only working with your immediate co-workers, you are also working with numbers of people out there. It could be your clients’, candidates’ employers or the candidates themselves. Different people, mean different styles and personalities. So, having the ability to work in a team will make your job easier.
Communication is key – I can’t emphasize enough how important communication is in the recruiting world. So many things can go wrong, if you don’t hone in on your communication skills. Heck, it may even be the reason why you lose a candidate to the next recruiter. Having the right communication skills is the key to building a relationship with others in the market. It is by far one of the most important factors in business of any kind, in this case, recruiting.
Be tech savvy – there are many aspects of recruiting that requires you to use technology. Therefore, it is important that you know how to make use of computer technology. There are job boards, database systems, and networking tools that you will have to use when recruiting. So, if you aren’t tech savvy, then it will be difficult for you to keep up with the job requirements.

I’ve only listed out 5 pointers, but there are far more beyond than what I have written. Some skills are meant to be learned as you get yourself situated in your recruiting position. No matter how much research or studying we do for a position, nothing beats learning from doing the actual job. Keep in mind that staying positive and working hard has no alternatives, there’s no shortcut to get to the top.

Resourcing, SAP

Is Bench Strength a Valid Differentiator ?

February 23, 2016 Amick Brown Leave a comment

By Karen Gildea , Managing Partner, Amick Brown

Just over five years ago, with four of my long-time colleagues, we started an IT consulting firm specializing in SAP and Business Intelligence. Together we had led teams that designed and built an integrated BI solution for AT&T’s SAP implementation before being outsourced to a large consulting firm. Over a 10 year period, we had developed and supported a system that served and was secured to hundreds of thousands of people. This was no easy task and we learned a great deal along the way as building anything that serves a population that large with the varying security and usability requirements that go with it requires an enormous effort on many levels. We knew and still know….that we have unique experience that other companies implementing large SAP BI solutions would benefit from.

So we left the large consulting firm and created Amick Brown – a certified small business, woman-owned business and minority-owned business.

We decided we would try to expand our business in the government sector. The government has small business programs and set-asides for small business. It is a lot of work to respond to a Request for Proposal with the government, but each time we respond we get better at representing what we have done and what we can do. We are achieving success, but we are still sometimes questioned about our “bench strength” – in other words, the number of consultants we have employed.

Because we have been the big company client and we have also been one of the big box resource providers as well, we have a perspective on bench strength that some others may not.

While many big companies or government agencies may feel that bench strength is an indicator of a company’s ability to provide resources when needed, what they really need to know is – can a company provide the specific expertise needed for their unique situation. In order to truly gain the outcome desired from any new project, the specific expertise or experience of each consultant should be the focus.

All consulting firms, big and small respond to the unique requirements of a company or agency similarly. They determine the specific expertise and experience that is required, they look at their available resource pool to determine if that expertise is there and available, and if not they begin their search for that expertise in the market. The resource pools of big and small consulting firms alike are also very similar in makeup – the respective pools invariably contain partner consultants as well as employees.

So – is bench strength really meaningful? I say no. A firm’s ability to evaluate and understand the project requirements and challenges, determine the expertise and experience required and then to identify the most qualified candidates to successfully respond is key. As well, the firm should be vested in the long term success of their client.

A question we often get is “is your consultant an employee”? Again I believe the question should be – who is the best candidate for the position? We have found that the very best and most experienced consultants may be interested in coming on board to work on a project, but aren’t necessarily interested in changing “employment”.

There are numerous reasons why a consultant may not want or be able to be hired as an employee. Perhaps they are tied to their current company through an H1B visa, or personal relationship. It may be due to wanting the freedom to grow at the pace which they prefer. It might even be about not wanting to lose accrued vacation at their current company. If all federal and state requirements regarding payroll and payroll taxes are being adhered to, and if insurance and contracts are in place – does it really matter?

For every engagement, we assemble a team of the best experts with the most relevant experience for the unique requirements presented. We hire consultants as permanent employees when it makes sense for all and subcontract when it does not. Regardless of employee or subcontractor designation, the placement is done only after thorough cultural matching and a vested commitment to long term success.

Over the past 15+ years, we have worked with many consultants and small business consulting companies. We continue our relationships with only the best and through those relationships we are introduced to others of the same caliber. For each consulting partner we ensure agreements are in place, insurance verified, and background checks done, and for those we are new to, full due diligence is completed. We work with only the verified best consultants and have developed long standing relationships for the ongoing success of all. We provide a team that can rival any big box organization.

A consolidated bench of consultants with the specific expertise required is what will provide a successful project team – regardless of where the individual consultants come from.

The reality is that the big box firms call smaller consulting firms on a regular basis to provide the expertise they need for their client projects.

After all, it really is all about gathering the best people to tackle the project.

Resourcing

How can Employers Increase Employee Engagement?

February 10, 2016 Amick Brown Leave a comment

By Jenna Rosdahl, Human Resources Manager at Amick Brown

When you think employee engagement, you probably think of employees who are involved, committed to the organization and satisfied. But what many people don’t understand is what employers can do to create employee engagement and maintain it companywide. Below are four key drivers that can be utilized to create, increase and maintain employee engagement which can positively influence both individual and business level performance.

Meaningful Work

In order for employees to be engaged, the work performed must be meaningful. This can be accomplished by creating a connection between work and organizational strategy. This shows employees how important their jobs are to the success of the organization. Employees want to feel that the work performed is valued and can open up doors for more opportunities. Opportunities for career development are extremely important to keep employees involved and headed in the right direction. Managers play an important role here because they are in direct contact with employees on a daily basis and are able to accurately evaluate employee potential. They should take time to ensure employees enjoy their work and help to keep employees on the right path to success.

Leadership

It is essential for employees to have trust and confidence in their leadership. Leadership should demonstrate honesty and integrity while encouraging employees to be successful. This can be done by creating a good reputation within the organization, demonstrating passion to succeed and building a relationship with employees based on trust. Without that, it is likely that employee engagement will not exist. When employees feel the support of leadership and are provided the tools necessary to be successful, the potential for employee engagement is vast.

Recognition

It is human nature to enjoy being recognized and rewarded, especially in one’s career. One way to increase employee engagement is by having management and employees work together on setting goals and by management providing the necessary tools to meet the goals. Then management must recognize and reward those individuals who reach their goals. Regardless of how large or small the goal is, it is beneficial for management to give positive and constructive feedback and offer praise and rewards of work well done because it motivates employees to stay engaged and keep succeeding.

Communication

All great relationships are built on communication, and the employee employer relationship is no different. One way to increase employee engagement is to communicate in a timely and orderly manner. This means discussing issues when they arise, communicating respectfully and listening to one another. Employers and employees should provide constant feedback, clarify expectations and promote open communication. This communication will result in employees feeling respected and valued which will increase employee engagement.

Having strong employee engagement companywide is crucial and can prove to be extremely beneficial for both the employer and the employee. It is a good idea to keep these drivers in mind when planning your employee engagement strategy.

Analytics, Big data, Business Intelligence, SAP

“Passionate on Analytics” , new book available

February 5, 2016 Amick Brown Leave a comment

from Iver van de Zand

My book “Passionate On Analytics” is available now

Driven by a deep believe of the value of business analytics and business intelligence in the era of Digital Transformation, the book explains and comments with insights, best practices and strategic advices on how to apply analytics in the best possible way. 25 Years of analytics hands-on experience come together in one format that allows any analytics userHow proud can one be?

My first book titled “Passionate on Analytics” is now available from the Apple iBooks Store via this link.

Since I am evangelizing on interactive analytics every single day, I decided to create aninteractive ePub book. It contains over 60 best practice and tutorial videos, tons of valuable links and galleries and 33 extended articles providing insights on various analytics related topics.

Passionate on Analytics (206p) has 4 sections:

Insights: 13 deep dive articles on various aspects of business analytics like industry specific approaches, embedded analytics and many more
Strategy: 13 chapters talking analytics strategy related subjects and topics like defining your BI roadmap or the closed loop portfolio
Best Practices: 10 expert sessions showing and demonstrating best practices in business analytics like using Hitherto charts, how to make a Pareto or visualization techniques
Resources: a wealth (!) of resources on analytics

Please find below some screenshots.

I am very happy with the book with has brought up the best in me. Everything I learned, experienced or discussed during my 25 years tenure in business analytics, is expressed in this book. The book is fully interactive meaning you can tap pictures for background, swipe through galleries or start an tutorial video.

Special thanks goto Ty Miller, Timo Elliott, Patrick Vandeven and Waldemar Adams who I all admire a lot.

Iver

Analytics, Supply Chain

How Real a Problem is Supply Chain Risk?

February 4, 2016 Amick Brown Leave a comment

by Matthew Liotine, PHD

Operations Management and Planning Expert

Professor at University of Illinois

Amick Brown Strategic Advisor

Risk is a pervasive force in business, and consequently, in the supply chain operations that are necessary to support business. Supply chains will always be exposed to some level of risk, and thus firms must have the ability to manage and live with continuous risk. Despite the plethora of adverse events that have occurred around the world in the past ten years, the nature of supply chain risk has not really changed. Such risk can be very complex in nature, but invariably, most risk is linked to the possibility of some level of disruption in the supply chain. A disruption is created when some kind of interruption occurs and ends when operations are restored as they were prior to the disruption. Depending on the type of disruption, effects can be usually interpreted in many ways such as time, cost, unserved demand, financial and reputational damages.

Supply chain disruptions indicate that there is a problem and that existing plans and operations require some kind of improvement. To specify any kind of improvement, a firm must understand the root causes of disruption and develop measures to reduce either the likelihood of the disruption or its impact. In this article, we will explore the extent of the problem of risk in today’s supply chain. This article is the first of a series of articles in supply chain risk – in future articles we will explore the definition and sources of risk in the supply chain, the current best practices that deal with this problem, the process of analyzing risk in the supply chain, and forward looking approaches on identifying and controlling such risk.

How big is the problem?

The supply chain risk problem is widespread.

More than 80% of companies are now concerned about supply chain resilience (World Economic Forum 2013).
76% of companies surveyed had experienced a supply chain incident that caused disruption to their organization (The Business Continuity Institute 2014).
In 23% of the organizations, the cost of a disruption was more than $1.4 million
80% of the respondents reported at least one supply chain disruption in a single year, while 42% experienced 1 to 5 disruptions per year (Alacantra 2015).
52% of organizations reported having at least 21 key suppliers and 50% of the disruptions involved a supplier below Tier 1.
75% of the firms studied do not have full supply chain visibility and 34% did not even record supply chain disruptions in 2014.
32% of the firms showed little or no commitment towards improving supply chain resilience and 53% did not even validate supplier assurance.
72% of participants did not even bother to assess supply chain vulnerabilities (IBM 2012).

The reason for this kind of neglect is rooted in the traditional clash between profitability and the costs of preparedness. In one study, 47% of procurement decision makers identified the most important key process indicators (KPIs) as being all cost related, with realized cost savings as the most important (Xchanging 2015). The respondents also reported that preparedness and resiliency to manage risks and disruption can constitute about 20% of costs. In general, most firms will try to manage risk from two distinct perspectives, using either strategic risk management or more tactical, field level practices, or both. Larger companies with greater revenues are more sensitive to risk and liability, and invest in more sophisticated enterprise-wide risk governance programs to manage risk from a strategic perspective. Some of the available approaches used for strategic risk management include using an executive level risk board to govern enterprise risk, a shared risk registry or online database, a real time dashboard or control mechanism, or a supply chain risk management plan (University of Maryland 2010). While about half of major firms employ these approaches, less than 20% of smaller companies use them. Studies have shown that only 50% of companies have written business continuity plans and only 41% have a recovery plan to rebound after a major disaster (Travelers May 2015).

Where are the deficiencies?

A key deficiency highlighted in the aforementioned studies was a lack of collaboration between firms and key suppliers (University of Maryland 2010). Nearly half of the companies surveyed did not use any collaborative platforms and less than a third did not joint monitor disruptions. In fact, the study showed that firms tend to collaborate more with their customers than suppliers in regards to monitoring and reporting disruptions. While part of the problem are time and costs, as alluded to earlier, enterprise risk management also involves risk identification and quantification, which requires the use of empirical data. It is evident that many firms will favor information sharing with customers versus suppliers. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems can provide a foundation for obtaining operational data that can be utilized to gauge supplier risk. However, even with such data, the ability to utilize it for the purposes of strategic risk management is lacking. There has been much research into the nature of supply chain risk, but little in evaluating strategic risk in complex supply chains, since supply chains have grown increasingly complex and dynamic due to product variety and complexity, technology, e-business, globalized outsourcing, among other factors. Altogether, there is still a need for methodologies and tools to aid firms in evaluating and managing strategic supply chain risk.

Conclusions

It has been established that concerns about supply chain risk not only still persist, but are ever growing due to the changing nature of supply chains. Several industry studies have made the following evident:

Supply chain risk is a major concern for most companies, large and small;
Most companies experience one or a few supply chain disruptions annually, each with a significant loss;
Many disruptions involve key suppliers or those below Tier 1;
Many firms still lack commitment to controlling supply chain risk for the reasons of the costs and complexity involved;
Larger firms will manage risk more strategically using a combination of executive governance and/or data driven approaches;
While operational data is increasingly becoming available, there is yet much work to be done in leveraging such data for strategic risk management.

In the next article, we will discover what supply chain risk really means, and the leading threats giving rise to supply chain vulnerability.

Please Join the Discussion by Replying Below

Bibliography

Alacantra, Patrick. Supply Chain Trends: Past, Present and Future. The Business Continuity Institute, 2015.

IBM. IBM Index Reveals Key Indicators of Business Continuity Exposure and Maturity. IBM Global Technology Services, 2012.

The Business Continuity Institute. Supply Chain Resilience 2014 – 6th Annual Survey. The Business Continuity Institute, 2014.

Travelers. Travelers 2015 Business Risk Index: Findings from a Survey of U.S. Business Risk Decision Makers. Travelers Insurance, May 2015.

University of Maryland. Assessing SCRM Capabilities and Perspectives of the IT Vendor Community: Toward a Cyber Supply Chain Code of Practice. University of Maryland, Robert H. Smith School of Business, 2010.

World Economic Forum. Buidling Resilience in Supply Chains. World Economic Forum, 2013.

Xchanging. Xchanging 2015 Global Procurment Study. Xchanging, Inc., 2015.

SAP, Uncategorized

25 years into a career and you are Outsourced – time to Panic or a Gift?

January 21, 2016 Amick Brown Leave a comment

By Karen Gildea, Co-founder and Managing Partner
Amick Brown

Karen Gildea

Like so many of my peers, and by that I mean those that
started their careers years ago with the plan to remain at the same company until retirement, the news that outsourcing will end your career there is shocking to say the least. When you must leave your company for whatever reason, and you aren’t really ready or old enough for retirement, it is quite distressing. You look at the many millennials who seem to so comfortably pick up and move to a new company when they see a new opportunity and you think, “what do I know and what skills do I have that would enable me to start again somewhere?”

What felt like the worst thing that could happen to my career…….WASN’T.

I spent more than 25 years working at a company that was so large that there was an endless amount of potential in terms of jobs, career paths and the ability to climb the corporate ladder. I loved my job as it was constantly changing and enabling me to grow. I loved the people I worked with and through the years they became a kind of extended family. This was my world – I never looked beyond it.

As I started to think about the situation at hand, some truths were evident. Through the years, I was afforded some very valuable training and experience. I managed a team that was responsible for building and supporting 24 x 7 applications for a user base that numbered in the hundreds of thousands. We learned, sometimes the hard way, that the right people, constant communication, process, documentation, and a strong focus on quality assurance and system performance are required for success. When you are there not only to implement systems, but to support them, you learn to be very thoughtful about design, testing and user communication and training. These are sometimes areas that are of little interest to those who implement and move on. We had a roadmap and a long term view of the solutions we were building and we had a lot of experience that would ensure our success in getting there – but that was over.

Make a Plan, Work the Plan, Be Accountable

Together with some of my colleagues, we decided to start a small consulting business. We realized that the skills and experience that we had acquired building and supporting SAP and BI solutions for such a large implementation would be of value somewhere. We believed we could make this work….but at the same time we definitely had moments of concern. We met and planned in our dining rooms. We understood from our long-term and collective experience the value of developing a detailed project plan, holding people accountable, and then working the plan.

As Amick Brown became a reality, we knew we had the expertise in SAP and Business Intelligence, but what about running a business? We had a lot to learn, but it turns out that there is a lot of help out there.

First, we found a mentor. This person had already done what we were trying to do. Her business was in another state with a different focus so competition was not an issue. She was a huge asset and we will be forever grateful. We asked her endless questions, took copious notes and still reach out to her from time to time for advice.

We then took advantage of all of the resources we could identify. The Small Business Administration provides immeasurable support to small businesses. Through the SBA, we connected with the Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs) in the three counties in our area. The centers are there to provide training, counseling and support to small businesses. We attended all of the training that we could about starting a business, marketing, payroll, legal issues, accounting, etc. We also discovered the Procurement Technical Assistance Center (PTAC) which is another valuable resource that has a focus on government contracting. We attended many PTAC training sessions where we learned about doing business with the various government agencies and responding to Requests for Proposals. Most of the training we attended was free and when there was a cost, it was minimal.

We worked with our bank to obtain an SBA backed loan to support our start-up costs. I can’t stress enough the value of a good banking relationship. I have to give a shout out to Wells Fargo for being such a good business partner and providing such terrific support through the years.

We pursued all of the certifications that were appropriate for us. We are a woman-owned business, we are a minority-owned business and we are a small business. It is a lot of work to complete each application and it may be a bit overwhelming as you begin the process, but it is well worth the time. Doors will be opened instead of closed because you are a supplier that holds a specific certification.

Conferences and business matchmaking events are one of the best places to learn and make connections. We connected with people in other companies and government agencies, and identified additional useful resources to call upon when needed. Each event helped us learn, grow and refine our marketing material and “elevator speech”.

Our first contracts were with companies we connected with through our already extensive network. Though they were small contracts at first, it provided us the opportunity to build up our support systems that included HR and payroll services, legal support, accounting processes, web support and recruiting systems and processes. Obviously, we grew very quickly beyond SAP Business Intelligence – a greater reach for our growing customer base.

So, was outsourcing a panic situation or a gift? Here are the lessons learned:

Starting a business is completely possible. We found support everywhere we looked and people wanting to see us succeed. We started with what we knew, and then looked for help and guidance for what we didn’t know. Help is out there.
Relationships are everything – We understand that without good relationships with our clients, our employees, our subcontractors and our other business partners we won’t thrive. We will always do right by each of them. They can count on us.
Continue to think long term – We make sure that we hire seasoned people who understand the long term impact of design, and in the event one of our hires needs additional assistance to ensure success we make sure it is provided. The long term success of our clients and the relationship we have with them is of utmost importance to us.
Be frugal – We have always had an eye on cost containment and we don’t spend money on things that don’t bring value. We are fairly modest with business purchases and we would rather offer better compensation and benefits packages to our employees and contractors – this way everybody wins.
Being a business owner is a completely rewarding and exciting experience. We have a renewed energy and enthusiasm toward all that we do. We learn something new every day and life is good.

To date we have made the San Francisco Business Times Fast 100 list which lists the fastest growing privately held companies in the San Francisco Bay Area two years in a row and the Largest Women-Owned Business list three years in a row. Our US focus is growing markets in the East and Central United States, as well as the West. Our detailed plans, working them carefully, and staying accountable are making a new business success our reality.

Keep an eye on Amick Brown. Good things are happening here!

Amick Brown Blog