It's the implementation, silly...
Every year Sterling Commerce organizes Sterling Customer Connecion that is a gathering of Sterling Commerce's customers and partners across their various product lines. (Visit http://webapps.sterlingcommerce.com/connection10/home.php for more details).
I have attended the past few years focusing on their supply Chain Execution suite of products, around which I lead consulting and package implementation engagements for Infosys. It's also an occasion to meet old friends from Sterling Commerce and from different clients, and to hopefully start new friendships.
I will be speaking in one of the sessions there about a Multi-Channel OMS implementation for a leading specialty retailer. I was part of that implementation for two years and it was an interesting journey (more details about the session here)
While flying to Sterling Connect 2010 at Dallas, I was reminiscing about the last year's event while reading through some of the presentations/white papers that we plan to show case at the event. Multiple lines of thought intertwined while I was reading a white paper by Guneet (the essence of which is captured on his blog post) about Multi Channel Commerce. These multiple lines of thought were:
While putting together the presentation I will speak to, I was talking to the client we implemented for, and they wanted to be very careful that we don't disclose any trade secrets about Multi Channel Commerce. That had started a line of thought on what could be considered a trade secret in this space? Doesn't everybody know how MCC works?
• I was chatting with my practice head Gopi (who will be speaking on MCC at the event along with Guneet) about various MCC stuff some weeks back, and he had casually remarked, "Well the steps towards MCC are not a secret; it's the implementation of the steps that's the real challenge". That started another line of thought on the implementation aspects of such projects.
• I just read the MCC white paper, and another line of thought was about how conceptually simple and practically impossible MCC was for most retailers.
Effectively, MCC is largely about aligning merchandise and making inventory globally visible across all fulfillment channels, adding in a good OMS and returns management across the enterprise and ensuring the financial systems are well aligned. That's it, right? :)
Well, it's the implementation, silly...
Anyway, over the next few days, I intend to talk to folks here about what they did right (or wrong) as they went along their MCC journey.
Comments
Right on !
Conceptually things looks so 'simple'...however, the implementation specifics vary drastically !
A feature like Inventory Management, Payment processing etc. should be similar across every retailer.. conceptually ! But when it comes to implementation, there are so many variations of this.
Hence we say no 2 implementations are the same :)
Posted by: Samant | April 20, 2010 7:29 PM