Real-time, supply chain test marketing of new product lines

Assume that a retailer, a class of beef product pre-retailers (i.e., wholesalers, processors and vertically integrated operators), and a class of consumers are all multi-tenant members of a centralized personal data store for sharing supply chain information.

I gave an example of a multi-tenant Food Recall Data Bank in an earlier blog entitled Consortium seeks to holistically address food recalls. At the time I wrote this earlier blog I vacillated between calling it what I did, or calling it a VRM Data Bank. I refrained from calling it the latter because while the technology application is potentially very good for consumers (i.e., food recalls tied to point of sale purchases) it still felt too much like it was rooted in the world of CRM. For more about the VRM versus CRM debate see The Bullwhip Effect.

Below is a technology application whereby supply chain tenants may register their CPA informational objects with permissions and other instructions for how those objects may be minimally accessed, used and further shared by and to other supply chain participants. What one then has is what may more appropriately be called a VRM Data Tenancy System (VRM DTS).

So what can one do with this architecture? How can it get started in the marketplace of solutions? A reasonable beginning point is with real-time, supply chain test marketing of new food product lines. And by supply chain test marketing, I mean something clearly more than just consumer test marketing. What I am describing below is multi-directional, feedback loop for:

1. test marketing a new consumer product line for the purpose of driving retail sales, and
2. concurrently generating procurement and wholesale interest and support from pre-retailers.

Assume that a retailer has been receiving word of mouth consumer interest in a particular beef product class (e.g., "ethically raised" beef products). Assume that pre-retailers have heretofore not been all that interested in raising, processing or purchasing "ethically raised" meat products for wholesale.

An initial "test market" object is authored and registered by the retailer for polling consumer interest via asynchronous authoring by individual consumers of their store outlet preferences, likely beef product quantity purchases of the new product line per week, etc. This object is revealed to a consumer class via their tenancies in the VRM DTS. The object is concurrently revealed to a class of pre-retailers via their tenancies, too. Each consumer is anonymous to the other consumers, and anonymous to the pre-retailers. Each pre-retailer is anonymous to the other pre-retailers, and anonymous to the consumers. But each consumer, as is each pre-retailer, is nonetheless privy to the consumers' real-time poll and the pre-retailers' real-time poll. The retailer watches all, being privy to the actual identities of both consumers and pre-retailers, while at the same time the retailer’s customer and pre-retailer client lists remain anonymous.

With this kind of real-time sharing of information, one can begin to imagine a competitive atmosphere arising among the pre-retailers. Furthermore, there is no reason the retailer's object could be further authored by the retailer to solicit real-time offers from the pre-retailers to procure X quantities of the beef products for delivery to identified outlets of the retailer by dates certain, in the same specific beef product class, etc. And there's no reason the "test market" object could not be further used to finalize a procurement contract with one or more pre-retailers ...

... which at the moment of execution shares real-time, anonymized information over to consumers as to dates of delivery of X quantity of beef products at identified retail outlets.

The "test market" object could be further designed for the consumer class to asynchronously provide real-time feed-back to the retailer regarding their experiences with the purchased product, and to perhaps do so even back to the pre-retailers based upon GLNs and GTINs. Depending on the retailer's initial design of the "test market" object, this consumer feedback to pre-retailers may be anonymous or may specifically identify a branded product. And, because food safety regulators are seeking "whole chain" traceability solutions, the government can be well apprised with minimal but real-time disclosures.

The dynamic business model for employing a VRM DTS includes greater supply chain transparency (increased, ironically, with consumer and pre-retailer anonymity), food discount incentives, real-time visualizations, new data available for data mining, and new product outlets for pre-retailers who have not previously provided products to the retailer. Perhaps most significantly there is the identification by the retailer of best of breed pre-retailers and loyal, committed consumers via an “auction house” atmosphere ...

 

... created from the sharing of real-time, sometimes anonymous information, between and among the pre-retailers and consumers.

Update on Thursday, November 21, 2013 at 8:31AM by Steve Holcombe

Consumer Control: Coming To A Store Near You 
Alessandra Lariu
7 November 2013

Alessandra Lariu, co-founder of SheSays, argues that people if take charge of their data, it could fundamentally change advertising dynamics

Update on Saturday, August 30, 2014 at 3:42PM by Steve Holcombe

Interesting ...

An open letter to Jeff Bezos: How to generate an extra $2B for Amazon

by Jasper Kuria on 8/29/2014 at 3:45 pm

http://www.geekwire.com/2014/open-letter-jeff-bezos-generate-extra-2b-amazon/

The Bullwhip Effect (Part II)

Return to Part I

I ended Part I stating that industry had been essentially leaving the customer out of the equation, too. What I meant was that enterprise class systems like the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems offered by so many companies ...

... are a significant part of the problem.

Customer Relationship Management is about companies trying to manage their prospect and customer relationships. CRM systems contribute (or, maybe I should say, reinforce) one-up/one-down information sharing in supply chains and ipso facto the Bullwhip Effect. And Michael Hinshaw makes the point that even though billions have been spent on CRM over the last 15 years ($9+ billion in 2008 alone), overall customer satisfaction has remained flat. To the right is a simpler version of CRM.

The flip-side to CRM is envisioned to be Vendor Relationship Management (VRM). VRM would provide to people – individuals who recognize their value as customers, and wish to better define the terms of their relationships – the software, tools and ability to manage their vendor relationships, as well as their interactions and experiences.

To the left is a simple picture of VRM in which a consumer is able to conveniently manage multiple vendor relationships. The critical thought leadership for VRM is found with Doc Searls and the VRM Project at Harvard's Berkman Center but VRM in the marketplace still largely remains a vision.

Picking back up from Part I on the concept of viewing food safety regulators as a kind of consumer, and mashing together VRM (from the perspective of customers) with a whole chain traceability system for supply chains (from the perspective of food safety regulators) it would more or less have to look like this:

"OK," you say, "that's a nice, neat, REALLY simple picture but isn't this already happening on Facebook? Can't the Customer, Producer, Wholesaler, Retailer, and even the Government Regulators all become Facebook friends and experience right now this mashed-together vision of VRM and whole chain traceability? And isn't this what Social CRM is all about?"

No, no and ... no.

The challenge is not one of fixing the latest privacy control issue that Facebook presents to us. Nor is the challenge fixed with an application programming interface for integrating Salesforce.com with Facebook. The challenge is in providing the software, tools and functionalities for the discovery in real-time of proprietary supply chain data that can save people's lives and, concurrently, in attracting the input of exponentially more valuable information by consumers about their personal experiences with food products (or products in general, for that matter). Supply chain VRM (SCVRM)? Whole chain VRM (WCVRM)? Traceability VRM (TVRM)? Whatever we end up calling it, we know we will be on the right track when we see a flattening out of the Bullwhip Effect, won't we?

On the one hand, Facebook is highly relevant to this discussion because (a) it has over 500 million users, many of them businesses and government agencies, and (b) because it has helped to raise the expectations of its users regarding the availability of - and their hunger (no pun intended) for - real-time information. On the other hand, we are a long way from seeing headlines that read "Facebook immediately identifies and confirms source of salmonella contaminated peppers" or "Facebook tracks food ingredients in dioxin scare" or "Facebookers receive real-time e. coli food recall notices based on their hamburger actual purchases".* For that to happen, we need a few more ingredients added to the mix and one of them is the metadata ...

... by which each of the participants may be empowered to keep the degree of control over their data that will free it up for real-time access (and analysis) by others. Yes, it's ironic. Give more control to consumers so as to get more, better quality data from them about their experiences with food products? Makes perfect sense to Doc Searls and the VRM folks. They get that VRM is the ironic reflection of CRM.

The other ingredients? I'll finish up with those in the next - and final - journal entry. But I will say that I'll be returning to those interesting comments made by Walmart's Frank Yiannas .....

Continued in a final Part III.

_________

* Actually, for an example of an implementation that is technically achievable right now, see my earlier blog Consortium seeks to holistically address food recalls. Substitute in "Facebook" for "Food Recall Bank".

The Bullwhip Effect (Part I)

There were interesting comments made last fall at the second annual meeting of the Arkansas Association of Food Protection. The comments made by Frank Yiannas, Walmart's Vice-President of Food Safety, continue to resonate with me.

The first thing that struck me was Yiannas' belief that the U.S. is currently experiencing several food safety incidents per year on the scale of the Jack in the Box incident of the early 1990's. That's a chilling perception. In the e. coli epidemic of 1993, four children died and hundreds of others became sick in the Seattle area as well as California, Idaho and Nevada, after eating undercooked and contaminated meat from Jack in the Box. It was the largest and deadliest e. coli outbreak in American history up to that time.

Another takeaway was Yiannas' belief that the food industry is consequently experiencing a "global trust bust" when it comes to food safety. 

I've been thinking a lot about Yiannas' comments and here are some of my conclusions .... 

A significant reason for the continuing series of food safety crises (notwithstanding the recent passage of the Food Safety Modernization Act in the United States) is that the food industry's global and domestic supply chains are increasingly experiencing the Bullwhip Effect. This effect is directly attributable to the inefficiencies of one-up/one down supply chain information sharing.   

What do I mean by one-up/one down information sharing? The requirement of one-up/one-down means that vendors must know what is going on inside of their four walls which means they must know what is coming in and what is going out. Representative laws or regulations requiring one-up/one-down information sharing are: 

• EU General Food Law
• Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) plans
• US Bioterrorism Act of 2002
• US Food Safety Modernization Act

Industry will tell you that one-up/one down information sharing is the way it's "always been done" in supply chains. It ignores, avoids or by-passes many or most of the efficiencies of computer networking and the Internet. It also avoids or by-passes many the thorny "data ownership" and privacy issues presented by the Internet. 

But the "global trust bust" in food safety is building a fire under the boiler, so to speak. And the boiler is reaching its boiling point. It's looking less and less like things can be done the way they've "always been done".

Food safety officials in a recall investigation are like consumers, albeit armed with law enforcement powers. The character above who is wielding the bullwhip could just as well be a consumer as a recall authority. The bullwhip, whether wielded by a consumer or a food saftey recall authority, is representative of a the effect of a demand.

When the Bullwhip Effect appears it is clear evidence of a less than optimal supply chain directly attributable to the inefficiencies of one-up/one-down information sharing. When a consumer makes a demand for a product, the Bullwhip Effect causes product restocking to take days, weeks, or longer ...

... similarly to how it takes days, weeks, or longer for a demand in a traceback investigation to provide the information required for determining (hopefully) the roots of the contamination and how pervasively contaminated a supply chain has become. A consumer who comes to a store to purchase a product that is out of stock causes a Bullwhip Effect in the supply chain. Similarly a food safety recall authority who comes to the store to find out why a customer became sick (or died) also causes a Bullwhip Effect in the supply chain.

OK, so you say, "What can be done about it?"

Well, the food safety recall authorities know what they want:

[T]he regulators want a traceability system that is consistent, speedy, covers the entire supply chain, has electronic records, has interoperable systems, and covers domestic and imported foods. ”

In other words, they want it all! The label they have given to what they want is a "whole chain" traceability system. A "whole chain" product tracing system consists of information elements provided by persons in the supply chain to other persons in the supply chain or to regulatory officials (e.g., during a traceback investigation). See Product Tracing Systems for Food, 74 FR 56843 (3 Nov 2009). To the right is a simple drawing of the real-time, "whole chain" monitoring that government regulators seek in order to overcome the Bullwhip Effect in food recalls.

To drill down a bit more, the government seeks to conduct real-time monitoring of the critical transactional events (CTEs) of supply chains.

And they want to see electronic one-up/one down transactional information sharing like this ...

... to become something more like this ....

The challenge for industry is that government wants "whole chain" traceability and, "[o]n top of that, [they want] industry to develop the tools and to pay for the system."

But that's a real challenge for industry if for no other reason than that the government regulators have left one critical player out of the CTE supply chain, that being ...

... the customer.

But then, come to think of it, industry has also essentially left the customer out of the equation.

Continued in Part II.