Supply Chain Management

The massively attended "Smarter Commerce Mini Main Tent" on day-1 afternoon made the future intentions clear in terms of dividing enterprise supply chains into buy-market-sell-service, but what's clearly needed are focus on two themes (a) vertical flavors which is what smarter commerce owners - the industry solutions group intends to do in alignment with their name and (b) next level details on these four basic supply chain functions beyond mapping which product goes where. Today, Smarter Commerce was more about Retail, CPG & Logistics, for tomorrow, banking definitely seemed to be a big bet, though it's anything but a traditional supply chain function.

Smarter Commerce is a very interesting take on the supply chain market and the theme would obviously evolve as we go along, but the vision clearly exists. On top of core websphere commerce, Sterling Commerce, Unica & Coremetrics, one also adds the interesting piece of ILOG's optimization engine that can influence the supply chain planning space, right from supply network design to specifics like transportation or inventory management. IBM seems to be really gunning for an end-to-end supply chain portfolio in alignment with the oft-quoted maxim that all differentiation happens on the fringes (which means addition of CRM also to a good measure).

I enjoyed Guneet Paintal's flawlessly delivered session on our long running theme on the importance of MCI or Multi Channel Integration (as against MCO or Multi Channel Operations) being the foundation on which all Multi Channel Commerce (MCC) programs can be launched. A videocast on the same session can be viewed here. The joint client session with Target gave an opportunity for Giridhar Kuppili to share the podium and bring out real-life nuances around go-live planning. I also could catch up again with Bob Ferrari of Supply Chain Matters, who is always a delight to speak to, especially around all things SCM. We discovered we do have a fair amount of convergence around the possibility and open issues around the Smarter Commerce pitch.

That said, I felt IBM Impact could be better served by grouping itself around functional or technology based tents so that everyone doesn't have to go everywhere & talk to everyone to figure out who or what is relevant. I would hope that by this time next year, Smarter Commerce would have its own showcase event and the product components would have melded among themselves into a more seamless whole with some real life customer stories to back up.