On Monday morning, I was a speaker at the 2010 Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) annual conference being held in San Diego. Nearly 3,500 supply chain professionals are in attendance at the conference which ends today. This was Enterra Solutions® first real participation in a major Supply Chain Management Conference, and as the day’s session unfolded, it became evident that we selected the right place to start. In a panel moderated by nationally-recognized supply chain technology expert Lora Cecere, we were featured as one of two innovative technologies that are dynamically changing the supply chain technology landscape.
Dan Gilmore, Editor-in-Chief of Supply Chain Digest, and guest commentator Jim Barnes give a concise overview of the first day’s events in a video that can be accessed by clicking this link [CSCMP 2010 Day 1 Video Review]. I encourage you to forward the video the 9:20 minute mark where you will see Gilmore and Barnes spotlight the segment on Jon Harding, Global Chief Information Officer for Conair Corporation. Jon discussed how the Enterra Supply Chain Assurance Platform™ (ESCAPE™) is helping save a substantial percentage of Conair’s revenue previously lost in retailer charge back fines and penalties while increasing customer service. Barnes commented that if Conair (using the Enterra® ESCAPE™ platform) “can crack the Wal-Mart nut, they’ve got a goldmine there.” This informal industry validation proves what we believed all along: Enterra’s ESCAPE™ offering provides our clients a real, sustainable supply chain solution.
If you have the time, the Supply Chain Digest overview video is about 24 minutes long and is worth listening to get a good overview of the first day at the conference. To hear what Jon Harding of Conair had to say about ESCAPE™ at this week’s conference, please click on the attached link and you can watch the video of John Harding’s Monday presentation [Jon Harding’s Presentation]. It’s a large QuickTime file, so please be patient as it downloads. Additionally, if you would like to listen to a previous webinar to learn a little more about ESCAPE, click on my post entitled Reducing Retailer Compliance Penalties. There you will find a link that allows you to listen to an entire webinar on this topic.
What is ESCAPE™? ESCAPE’s Retailer Compliance Module works in partnership with an organization’s existing management and IT architecture to ensure that its supply chain operations comply with retailer imposed compliance rules, contractual requirements and procedures relating to order processing. Enterra automatically monitors retailers’ compliance manuals to keep these requirements current, accurate and complete, and checks carriers to track shipping related forms and data. We also provide clients with critical information and tools to manage and reduce costs in the end-to-end compliance process, beginning before orders are even entered into their system, and continuing after an order is shipped. Furthermore, we help clients make the most of their reduction recovery.
ESCAPE is a Solution-as-a-Service offering hosted at a secure data center. It can be rapidly deployed and operational, and under certain circumstances, in as quickly as 90 days. The first ESCAPE module (Retailer Compliance) contains three components:
As I have noted in previous posts, retailer compliance penalties are becoming an increasing challenge for manufacturers and distributors. ESCAPE can help reduce compliance penalties and make a company’s supply chain more efficient and effective. We are continually looking to expand ESCAPE’s capabilities and are currently implementing our second module, which we call the Pre-Inventory Prediction Module.
These are exciting developments. Enterra’s staff has been focused on the ESCAPE platform for more than a year now, and we are excited about how the market is receiving and experiencing the results of the Team’s excellent efforts.
