Trade and Logistics Management
Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is Supply Pipeline Management?

Supply Pipeline Management provides a coherent picture of the supply chain by linking the purchasing, logistics, and compliance functions. It also provides users the ability to intercede in these processes in real-time.

Within the modern Supply chain, responsibilities are often shared by many organizational departments and partners. With each of these defining their own processes and data requirements, it is inherently difficult for management to form a comprehensive understanding of where the costs and the risks are within each supply pipeline. A much more efficient manner of managing the people and processes in a supply chain is to create a process plan that will allow all supply chain partners to communicate in a common language. Within the framework of an integrated communication platform; supply chain processes and costs can then be understood, monitored and measured against expected performance in real-time.

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2. Why is a Supply Pipeline Management Service necessary?

The modern supply chain has traditionally involved a linear movement of goods and interactions between a small number of trading partners i.e. supplier, customer, financial institution, and agent. As outsourcing and globalization have become more prevalent, the Supply Chain has evolved to a more complex Supply Network. Unfinished goods and information now move from one trading partner to the next or even back up the chain before the final product arrives at its intended destination. What was once only a supplier could now also be a customer, and logistics provider.

According to numerous studies (Price Waterhouse Cooper, Aberdeen, AMR Research) this complexity has lead to substantial risk and costs to most organizations, tasks are often repeated, errors are propagated, and information is lost. According to these studies, the potential exists for up to a 30% reduction in inventory and 50% savings in Supply Chain Transaction Costs for most organizations.

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3. What are the elements of this service? What makes it valuable?

To fully take advantage of the large savings described above, advanced supply chain strategies (i.e. Lean, Supplier Managed Inventory, and other Collaborative models) must be successfully implemented. A minimum requirement for the success of these strategies in a global supply chain is a marriage between technology and process to provide certain basic tools to the supply chain managers. These include

  • Supply Chain Visibility
  • High Data Quality for Transmission and Storage
  • Performance Dashboards
  • Tracking and Accountability
  • Continuous Improvement Plan

These 5 tools are in fact all a consequence of implementing the Supply Pipeline Management service.

With this service TradeMerit has shown that there are supply chain savings of 5% to 10% even without implementing some of the more advanced strategies. At its most basic level, the service brings discipline to the supply network and removes some of the redundant manual processes that lead to errors at its most powerful the service is a platform by which to create superior supply chain performance. 

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4. What is a Supply Pipeline Engine?

TradeMerit's Supply Pipeline Engine is a technology that graphically represents a unique set of supply chain processes by defining:

  • Partners involved, which could be suppliers, customers, logistics providers, custom agents…
  • The physical goods that are being traded between Partners.
  • Geographic Locations which include not just the origin and destination pair but all dwelling points where the goods will be flowing through.

These three elements are then linked through the Tasks and Management Rules that are needed in order to complete the requirements of the process and create the Supply Pipeline.

With the supply pipeline there exists the actors, resources and rules needed to define a unique process that will bring product P from Supplier A to Customer B. In order to build the engine, we need to define the communication channels between the actors and then all transactions in that Pipeline can be followed.

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5. How does the TradeMerit Pipeline Engine work?

As seen in the diagram below, the TradeMerit Supply Pipeline Service is a continuous improvement plan that follows four proven steps, they are:

  • Define the Supply Pipeline.
  • Execute, in which partners are integrated into the supply pipeline process.
  • Measure the expected business targets against actual performance.
  • Improve upon the process by evaluating "what if" scenarios.

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6. How is this service offered? What is a Publish and Subscribe model?

TradeMerit uses Software as a Service (SAAS) through a “Publish and Subscribe” model to deliver this service to users. In this model, TradeMerit hosts the application on our servers and users can access the information and data as needed. There is no software to install and no hardware to implement; users simply require an internet connection.

The user defines the supply pipeline as described above including all of the rules and actors that take place in the process. This information remains on the TradeMerit system and then according to the management rules, the system notifies the intended user and role responsible for handling the task.

Before that can happen, the communication channel for each trading Partner connection must be defined. As shown in the diagram there are two main ways that partners can communicate, through electronic means i.e. EDI, XML (and non-electronic i.e. fax, telephone, email).

Electronic feeds move through the TradeMerit Pipeline engine and are easily linked with all other partners who use the same technology. Non-electronic feeds can also be handled by either keying the data into the system through the TradeMerit web portal or if some companies continue to use faxes the data can be read off the fax or keyed in by TradeMerit.

In either case, once the data has entered the system, it remains there to be accessed by all those parties that require it. There are no instances where the same data would have to be keyed in by other users. This dramatically cuts down on errors providing high quality data to every role in the process. Finally the transactional data can be brought together so that each user sees beyond simple transactional data to more strategic aggregated metrics that are then presented on fully customizable performance dashboards.

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7. How do we achieve supply chain visibility? What good is visibility if we are helpless to do anything with this information until after the problems have occurred?

By following the flow of data through the supply pipeline, users have real time visibility into issues arising with individual transactions. Alone this is not enough to affect any improvements in the supply chain, but the service also tracks  these transactions against expectations and sends alerts and tasks, demanding action of the individual responsible for the that role.

At TradeMerit we refer to this as Pro-Active Visibility because it necessitates a fuller understanding of the operational/ organizational issues that may arise in a supply chain. It requires an active participation in the process and not just waiting for problems to first surface to the attention of management before something can be done to correct them. When problems are dealt with retroactively costs will increase costs and scheduling conflicts are created throughout the entire Supply Chain.

A more efficient method of dealing with the various trading partners and supply chain problems would be for managers to have the tools necessary to anticipate areas of concern, propose a solution, and then act on it. Any exceptions beyond these planned scenarios will be sent as an alert to be handled by a responsible party in real time. Once the exception has been dealt with manually, the system will learn to recognize and automatically deal with similar events.

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8. Who is this service for? Is this simply a performance dashboard tool for senior management?

The TradeMerit service provides a toolset for all levels of the organization.

Supply Chain excellence can only be achieved if performance expectations are implemented and then monitored against actual data. A service that provides event alerts and dashboards can only be effective if the information that is being provided can be customized so that it arrives at the individual (or group), who can then act upon it. TradeMerit allows you to build tailored interfaces from a process and transactional data map. This implies that each level of your organization can then map its needs and will receive actionable information appropriate to their function without any loss in the information's integrity.

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9. Can this be used as a planning tool for developing operational strategy and improving supply chain efficiency?

Our service allows subscribers to test "what if" scenarios in order to further improve supply chain practices.

Within the context of an organization’s operational plan, there is an optimal set of processes that will reduce cost without increasing the risk to the organization and its existing partners. Organizations can also leverage these same supply chain processes to take advantage of new market opportunities or service new customers in existing markets. 

Once there is a firm understanding of the processes an organization uses to execute on supply chain, the Trademerit service can be used to perform process modeling of "what if" scenarios. Our service can then provide actionable recommendations that will reduce cost while allowing mangers to mitigate the level of uncertainty in the current and future Supply Chain.

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10. Does implementing this service require an expensive or disruptive implementation?

There is no capital investment required in your current systems or operational model.

TradeMerit is a tailored on-demand service that does not require any technology investments beyond an internet connection. TradeMerit's systems will host all of the transactions and information that you and your supply chain partners are willing to share. Our systems then provide the alerts, data, and dashboards via a secure internet connection to our systems. The service is also flexible enough that it works as well with organizations working in a paper environment as it does with those using electronic file transfers.

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11. Who are TradeMerit’s competitors?

There are quite a few technology companies that can build a similar service; these include such large integrators and technology companies as IBM, Oracle, and E2Open...etc.

However, there are some major differentiators between all of these companies and TradeMerit, they include:

  1. TradeMerit’s service is built upon a Cloud Computing platform using business process management; this means that there is No Software or hardware to install.
  2. There is no capital expenditure required.
  3. Simple user driven process configuration means that the implementation of the service and the training of the users is quicker with less risk.
  4. No changes to how you currently do business. Non-Invasive integration means that you can continue to use Best of Breeds systems for functional processes such as WMS, TMS etc.
  5. TradeMerit does not require any long term contracts; you simply use the service as long as you need it. 

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12. How long does a typical TradeMerit Implementation take?

A typical implementation of the TradeMerit Supply Pipeline Management service looks something like: 

With TradeMerit your users can be trained and fully operational in less than 5 weeks. This means, that rather than spending a large amount of resources getting the system to work as it was intended, users are almost immediately working on the system. The low cost and speed of implementation results in an ROI of less than 5 months.

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13. What are some of the other advantages of the TradeMerit Technology?

  1. Publish & Subscribe information gathering and sharing; using EDI, WEB, and non-electronic methods.
  2. Rule-based organizational access rights and user-level audit trails providing security and traceability.
  3. Scalability and high availability, using Cloud Computing architecture.
  4. Simple and responsive Rich Internet Application.
  5. Multilingual support and custom organizational terminology.
  6. Rule-based alert management.
  7. Business metrics and dashboards.

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