For as much as the word collaborate elicits sighs and thoughts of “not that cliché word again!”, outside of the B2B integration space, most people don’t even know what it means.  Most of my family and friends tell people that I work in Accounting.  I guess the explanation that I help gather customer requirements for developing on demand software applications that allow trading partners to collaborate effectively and realize increased supply chain efficiency doesn’t really go down like a spoonful of sugar!

The power of collaboration within a trading partner community should not be underestimated.  Global Commerce Initiative (GCI) recently published a newsletter  updating the user community on the results of their first year’s work toward their 2016 value chain vision.  Two of the three key challenges they are attempting to address don’t surprise me, but maybe if you fall into the camp of covering your ears every time someone starts to say “collab…,” you might be somewhat shocked to know what they are:

1.       The industry should develop new ways of working together (emphasis THEIRS)
2.       The industry should more readily and freely share information (ditto)

The newsletter definitely warrants reading, as it touches on all the key buzz words and hot topics being bandied about in the B2B space today.  Many companies are concerned with social responsibility, sustainability, and bridging the cultural divide as well as cutting cost, increasing revenue, and improving time to market for new products and services.  GCI has done a great job of folding all of these disparate objectives into a unified vision.  And GCI set such a great example in the past several years of living the “working together” mantra, as they brought end user companies together to build input into the GS1 system of supply chain standards.

It’s not so much that they are giving us a new revelation – for example, they state that “information is the life blood of the value chain.”  I have always believed this to be true (anyone who’s read my past blog entries know this is an understatement).  However, when a group of companies meet together to talk about achieving a long-term value chain vision, and still arrive at this critical statement, it serves as a reminder that we often forget the basics as we try to blaze new frontiers in our B2B programs.  If we have fooled ourselves into thinking that we have already gotten it right – that information is always accurate across all of our internal systems, synchronized with all of our trading partners, and proliferating throughout all of our downstream supply chain transactions, we need to pinch ourselves a step back into reality.  We have a long way to go.  Just review the “current practices” bullets provided by GCI and you will see that a lot hasn’t yet changed in how we manage data.

What I take comfort in is that GCI and other groups have just as much passion about improving the foundations of supply chain collaboration as I do.  And they have participation from many multinational suppliers and retailers who join in their vision.  I look forward to 2016, when we have hopefully achieved the lofty goals they have set – and then perhaps I can retire early with a smile on my face!