Mary Ann Holder and the rise of a supply chain business networks leader? MaryAnn Holder is Chief Marketing Officer at One Network Enterprises, a provider of the blockchain-enabled network platform, The Real Time Value Network. Back in 2002, Greg Brady, a supply chain visionary and Ranjit Notani a pioneer in multi-enterprise collaboration technology came to the conclusion that the traditional paradigm of business-to-business collaboration built around enterprise-centric software was fundamentally flawed. Businesses must take an outside-in network view and together serve the end consumer. In May 2003, they acquired Elogex, a cloud-based logistics software company, and founded One Network Enterprises with a vision to create consumer-driven business networks. They developed a network platform that enabled entire business communities to collaborate and work together to serve the consumer. Brady and Notani brought the network way of conducting business just as LinkedIn did so to managing professional contacts. They re-imagined how business software is built, delivered, and used for today’s dynamic and highly inter-connected world.
How many degrees deep do you think your buyer persona is? The same buyer group has multiple. A lot of times they’re at VP level, director level, C-level people. They have the same kind of educational background but do yours vary? For instance, if you’re trying to provide a solution to someone, are you dealing with multiple educational boundaries or any type of boundary like that? Well in a certain sense, yes. The office of the CFO is going to have a different, well, maybe not different educational status, but they’ll certainly have a different bent to their studies. They will have a different focus. We market to the whole organization when we’re looking at the supply chain. What we’re looking at the office of the CFO, the office of the CIO, the office of the CEO and then the office of supply chains. All of those buying units have their own individual needs that they have to balance within the greater organizational structure. When we build out our buyer personas, we look very closely at what are the things that are going to make that person a superstar even down to what are the types of people. I mean we look at the psychographics as well as the basic demographics that you get for a position such as a supply chain director. We might look at an engineering background and the way they make decisions so a lot of that factors into how we message to that.
One Network’s Real Time Value NetworkTM (RTVN) platform is a true multiparty network ecosystem enabling two or more parties to participate on the same transaction using a common business object. The RTVN supports critical processes ranging from supply chain planning (demand, supply, respond), store planning and execution, to supply chain execution (procurement, manufacturing, fulfillment, transportation) which includes knowledge of supply chain planning and Transportation Management System (TMS)systems of records. Unlike antiquated ERP-approaches, the RTVN optimizes internal and external partners so they can achieve common financial and operational goals on the network and build trust between parties.
Given this potential, many companies are exploring blockchain projects, as the technology can help simplify, secure and streamline the sharing of data, and provide transparency across the supply chain. However, Gartner estimates that most blockchain projects will stall and never reach production due to various reasons, including “technological immaturity, lack of standards, overly ambitious scope, and a general misunderstanding of blockchain’s ability to support supply chain.” Blockchain certainly has challenges when it comes to supply chain even despite the aforementioned benefits. This is largely because early versions of blockchain has several key flaws including: Lack of Scalability –Currently, Bitcoin manages about 7 transactions per second, and Ethereum about 20 transactions per second. This will have to improve significantly to support the speed and complexity of today’s global trade and logistics. Lack of Confidentiality – On public blockchains everyone can read everything. This limits both the number of companies willing to join a blockchain and the amount of information that they are likely to share.
Mary Ann Holder about One Network’s Intelligent Control Tower: One Network’s Intelligent Control Tower is not your typical control tower, that provides visibility to immediate trading partners only. The Intelligent Control Tower monitors, manages, and controls decisions and execution across functions and across companies to optimize the entire network. The Intelligent Control Tower uses AI and serves as a system of engagement across trading partners, and orchestrates companies, people and things to work together in real-time to serve the end consumer. Until recently, supply chain control towers have been all about providing visibility to your immediate trading partners. But with the development of multi-party, consumer-driven networks, advanced control towers now provide real-time visibility, collaboration and powerful AI capabilities to move beyond decision-support to decision-making and autonomous control.
In this Technology Value Matrix, Nucleus evaluates solutions that help organizations find the right balance between inventory and service levels while minimizing costs. This is important because the demand for solutions that enable organizations to plan around balancing service delivery with stocking levels is becoming more pronounced as the competitive landscape and shifts in consumer behavior present new challenges. Using One Network, customers can onboard their trading partners, giving two-way visibility to inventory levels, ability to serve, and forecasts. MaryAnn Holder-Browne, Chief Marketing Officer of One Network: “We are thrilled to once again be recognized by Nucleus Research”.