March 2013

MS Dynamics World
Layering S&OP on Top of ERP: Options that Bring Data into View
In a recent blog post, John Westerveld discussed how the right sales and operations planning (S&OP) software can help companies streamline the S&OP planning cycle and reduce it from weeks to mere days. A business management process that helps firms ascertain optimal manufacturing output levels, S&OP plays a key role in balancing supply and demand, avoiding waste, enhancing top-line revenues, and optimizing production resources.

March 2013

Supply Chain Movement
Increased Agility in European Supply Chain Software Market
The interest in S&OP has grown to such an extent that this year’s IT Subway Map has had to be expanded. Moreover, S&OP has also been given its own subway line, with two new American players on it, Kinaxis and Steelwedge, each of whom have recently opened offices in Europe. They both supply an S&OP solution in the cloud, with functionality for workflow and financial scenario planning in S&OP’s periodical review cycle.

February 2013

Econsultancy
Five Examples of B2B Companies Achieving Success In Social Marketing
Supply chain management company Kinaxis launched an online social video campaign with the lofty aim of doubling leads and web traffic numbers. To achieve this it created a series called Suitemates – a comedy following two businessmen that get sent to jail following a shady corporate merger.

February 2013

The Ferrari Group
Kinaxis- A Continuing 2013 Lead Sponsor of the Supply Chain Matters Blog
Supply Chain Matters is pleased to once again announce to our readers that supply chain technology provider Kinaxis will continue as one of the Lead sponsors of this blog. Kinaxis was the very first sponsor of this blog in 2008, and we look forward to continuing our close relationship that has occurred over the past four years.

January 2013

Eye For Transport
What Could 3D Printing Mean for the Supply Chain?
The thought that someday I could be printing out my new pair of skis in the comfort of my own home is pretty amazing. If business embrace the transition and leverage the tools to manage this new supply chain reality, that day may be sooner then we think.

December 2012

Business2Community
Create Engaging Content for Any Industry, Even “Boring” Ones
Kinaxis and many other high-growth professional services firms are proof that creating educational content is key to attracting eyeballs — even in dry industries. With the right knowledge, a little creativity, and an open mind, you can transform your web presence into a leading community.

December 2012

Technology Evaluation Centers
RedPrairie and JDA Software Merger, Part Three: What Does it Mean for Manhattan Associates and Other SCM Players?
Manhattan, Kinaxis, and Logility deserve credit for being three of the best managed and run enterprise software companies: no debt and a decent investment in R&D and innovation (without a burden of integrating acquired companies, since Manhattan’s last acquisition was seven years ago, while Logility’s Optiant acquisition has long been successfully assimilated and was miniscule in size). In addition, these companies’ customers are generally a happy bunch. See my most recent reports on Logility and Kinaxis.

November 2012

TechTarget
Why integrated business planning is relevant -and how to automate it
S&OP vendors concentrate on the very important problem of balancing demand planning and supply planning, with links to sales, operations and finance. Based on a recent briefing, I found Kinaxis' capabilities impressive.

November 2012

OptimizeThis
Marketing is Not a Department
Customer service staff should be empowered to communicate with customers in social channels. I don’t suggest moving customer service entirely to social media. I do however suggest that some (or all) customer service professionals should be proactive and reactive to customer issues through social channels by listening and engaging where appropriate. These interactions should be “H2H” or human-to-human. As a consumer, I want to deal with a real person at a business, not the company logo or a faceless form. In B2B companies another type of customer service engagement is the people who deliver a professional service. Often, these are highly skilled staffers with titles such as “consultant,” or “engineer.” These employees should be willing to engage H2H with customers and prospective customers in social channels including blogs, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter. Two outstanding B2B examples of “customer service” engagement through engineers or consultants include Indium and Kinaxis.

November 2012

Supply Chain Shaman
How Did We Get it All Wrong?

It was clear that Steve wanted advice. The wonderful thing about the work I do at Supply Chain Insights is that I can now connect to people I do not know through my blog, and they are able to reach out to me directly to have a discussion. In my prior jobs as an analyst, the research reports were locked behind a paywall; and even though I would have liked to have been able to talk directly to Steve, the commercial model of the prior positions prohibited it. I like being able to do my own thing and to give “frank advice” to people that need it. And, Steve needed it...

Steve quickly confirmed that they did not have that level of expertise. We also discussed that the Oracle SCP model did not have a data model for DRP. The technology was built for a make-to-order or configure-to-order supply chain. My question for Steve was how could he model his S&OP process without a DRP data model? He quickly stated that this was not possible. So, my question was, “Why was he considering Oracle?” His response was, “Because that was the only option that IT would allow, and that the marketing of S&OP solutions was just too confusing to understand the pluses and minuses of what was possible.” He thanked me for the report, Putting Together the Pieces, and we then discussed the merits of the SaaS solutions from Kinaxis and Steelwedge.

November 2012

Postano
5 B2B Social Media Case Studies

When you manage marketing for a supply chain management software company, the opportunity for success in the social media world may seem dismal at best. But the CEO at Kinaxis saw things differently, coming to his team back in 2007 and asking them to look into the opportunities that might exist in social.

Five years later, and Kinaxis has become a case-study for successful social and digital marketing campaigns. In fact, the firm now gets 35-40% of its leads from web. The key to success according to the company’s VP of Marketing? Patience and a dedicated, sustained effort over time – it took Kinaxis several years before they started to see measurable returns on their social media marketing investment.

November 2012

Spend Matters
JDA and RedPrairie Merge: Financial-Driven Supply Chain Rollup or Something More?
I asked my fellow blogger Trevor Miles and he had this to say. Agreeing more with me than the spin, he wrote "Show me one roll-up play that has had both sustainable growth and innovation. Remember when i2 Technologies bought Aspect Development for $9.3B in March 2000? Aspect had some really good stuff, but, as with any acquisition, whether in the software industry or not, if you can't show both an increase in sales due to product synergies (1+1=3) and a decrease in costs due to development efficiencies (1+1=½) the merge is not going to be successful. Remember the $5B write-down of the Aspect purchase by i2 just 18 months later? What all the roll-ups are struggling with right now is that the end user is looking for end-to-end horizontal process capability, and they are not going to get that from a mish-mash of loosely coupled functional modules. With the RedPrairie purchase if JDA I just don't see how they are going to reduce their cost base without a radical reduction in the number of individual modules while at the same time how their combined revenue will increase above that of RedPrairie and JDA right now. They are caught between a rock and a hard place."

October 2012

Supply Chain Matters Blog
Coverage of 2012 Kinexions Conference - Summary Observations
The event itself continues to reinforce year after year that software provider conferences do not have to take on a high gloss sales-driven image, but rather an event that attendees can conclude that they truly enjoyed attending and gained knowledge. Kinexions continues to blend humor, enjoyable experience as well as education. Don Gaspari of NCR Corp. coined the true essence of Kinexions: “Crazy Canadians Creating Change.” Well stated, Don. We thank Kinaxis for the opportunities to participate in this annual event.

October 2012

Supply Chain Shaman
Three Lies and a Truth
As growth flattens and commodity pressures escalate, market-to-market orchestration and the building of outside-in horizontal processes is the next frontier. The momentum to build market-driven value networks with bidirectional orchestration of demand and supply variability is the aspiration. Today’s supply chains were built assuming that manufacturing is the primary constraint and that oil was a $10/barrel. West Texas crude is now selling for 3X the price in the 1990s. Materials and commodities are becoming the new supply chain constraint, and there are few technologies to guide direct procurement visualization and optimization. This was the roots of Kinaxis, and new players like SCA, Signal Demand and Triple Point are entering the fray.

October 2012

Ottawa Business Achievement Award
Company of the Year Finalists!
Congratulations to all of this year's Ottawa Business Achievement Award Finalists! With a record number of nominations, the 2012 Finalist selection was the most competitive ever seen in this history of these awards. Company of the Year Finalists: General Dynamics, Halogen Software, Hydro Ottawa, Kinaxis, Ross Video, The Minto Group, The WORKS Gourmet Burger Bistro and Willis College.

October 2012

Supply Chain Matters Blog
Supply Chain Matters Interview with Kinaxis - Supply Chain Control Tower Readiness
In this posting, we are pleased to highlight an interview with Monique Rupert, Vice President of Customer Services at Kinaxis, a provider of supply chain control tower support technology among other supply chain planning and response management capabilities. Monique and her professional services team support the global deployment, training, and other needs of customers with a mission to drive business value in their technology deployments. We have known Monique since Kinaxis became the first named sponsor of the Supply Chain Matters blog in 2008, and we often seek her perspectives on customer interactions with advanced technology. The following outlines are Q&A interchange.

October 2012

Business 2 Community
2 Things B2B Companies Can Gain From the World’s Most Valuable Brand for their Marketing
Kinaxis, a supply chain company, tossed the three letter acronym tech lingo that is often found in the marketing materials of B2B tech companies. Instead the company is using humor and sketch comedy to promote their business. The website features a section “Just for Laughs” that has different video series. The videos play with the formats of well-known TV series and talk shows, such as the David Letterman Show and The Office. For the “Married to the Job” video series, the company worked with the comedy troupe Second City. One of my favorite videos is New Kinexions – Simplicity , an encounter of a new couple with an “ex-girl friend” at a coffee shop with different takes on relationships. Kinaxis’ argument for simplicity and clear communications in (client) relationships is transferable to any number of services and products. Clear and crisp messages are also the basis of a good communications program.

October 2012

Supply Chain Insight Community
Late Late Supply Chain Show, 2012 Episode 1, Part 2
This Late Late Supply Chain Show was filmed in Las Vegas at IE Group’s Sales & Operations Planning Innovation Summit. Our Supply Chain special guests, Tiffany Cavallaro, Merck & Robert Powell, The Economist, were interviewed by host Bill Dubois.

October 2012

SupplyChainInsight Community
Late Late Supply Chain Show, 2012 Episode 1, Part 1
This Late Late Supply Chain Show was filmed in Las Vegas at the IE Group’s Sales & Operations Planning Innovation Summit. Our Supply Chain special guests, Michelle Davis, Cisco & James Merwin, Milwaukee Electric Tool, were interviewed by host Bill Dubois.

September 2012

Seeking Alpha
Why Wal-Mart Chose The Nook Over The Kindle
Over the last year Barnes and Noble has embarked on a fairly ambitious project. Barnes and Noble's Nook division uses RapidResponse software by Kinaxis to coordinate supply chain demand planning and inventory management. Shortly before the launch of the Nook Tablet last year, they connected the point of sale system at every store that carries Nook devices directly to the control tower management software. This makes real-time sales and inventory data instantly available to the Nook supply chain managers.

August 2012

Enterra Insights Blog
Kinaxis Continues Its SCM30 Series
In a post entitled Thirty Years of Supply Chain Management, I noted that Kinaxis bloggers are writing a series of posts looking back over the past thirty years of supply chain management. Trevor Miles, John Westerveld, and Carol McIntosh have continued the series by each contributing their thoughts on how supply chain management has evolved over the past three decades. Miles discusses what he considers to be the three greatest advancements in supply chain management, Westerveld discusses how technology has impacted the field; How Has Technology Changed Supply Chain Management Today?; and, McIntosh discusses what she sees as supply chain management's top ten worries.

August 2012

Logistics Week
Kinaxis Honored At 2012 International Business Awards
Kinaxis®, provider of RapidResponse®, a cloud-based solution at the heart of planning and response management for value chain operations, was named the winner of a Gold Stevie® Award in the Live Events category in The 9th Annual International Business Awards. The International Business Awards are the world’s premier business awards program. With over 3,200 nominations, the Stevie Award winners were selected by more than 300 executives worldwide.

July 2012

Supply Chain Shaman Blog
TIME TO PAINT OUTSIDE THE LINES
In a similar way, I feel that this bias limited the potential of vendors like Kinaxis. The overzealous coverage of i2 Technologies by AMR Research did not allow for others to shine, and Kinaxis did not fit into the “nice and neat” boxes. Quite frankly, understanding the value proposition of new technology vendors is hard. As analysts we have to sort through a lot of hype to find out what is real. Many come and go. It took me two years to understand the value proposition of Terra Technology. I was dubious when I first encountered the founders of Open Ratings that was then bought by Dun and Bradstreet. I was also skeptical when I first met the founder of Enterra Solutions. All of these vendors have had the courage to paint outside the lines.

July 2012

Eye For Transport
Ask What Your Supply Chain Vendors Can Do For You!
As companies call from tighter integration between their plans and execution, vendors will have to provide such capabilities within their business offerings. This represents an evolution in supply chain, where there was a separation of church and state between planning and execution (granted there were plenty of vendors that looked to do both). What this really means is that users should start pushing their supply chain solution providers outside of their “comfort zones.” Just because your vendor is a planning vendor or an execution vendor does not mean they cannot nor should not have a strategy of how they integrate across these two worlds. How do they go about closing that loop? They do not have to do this across the entire supply chain, but within the realm they are dealing with.

June 2012

Ottawa Business Journal
Who's doing deals in Ottawa?
Kinaxis, Medical Data Carrier IM Inc., BTI Systems and Promaxis Systems among local firms recently announcing new agreements. Kinaxis technology is being used by a California-area company. Masimo Corp., which provides medical devices, will use Kinaxis' supply chain planning software to manage Masimo's growing operations. Financial and other contractural terms were not disclosed.

June 2012

www.celestica.com
Celestica recognizes Suppliers with its 2011 Total Cost of Ownership Supplier Awards
Celestica today announced the winners of its 2011 Total Cost of Ownership (TCOOTM) Supplier Awards. The awards honour suppliers who provide the best TCOO performance to Celestica and its customers by demonstrating excellence in quality, delivery, technology, service, pricing and flexibility. Best IT Technology Partner Award: Kinaxis

May 2012

Supply & Demand Chain Executive
Supply & Demand Chain Executive Reveals Its 2012 Supply & Demand Chain Executive 100
"Our goal with this year's '100' is to put the spotlight on successful and innovative transformation projects that are delivering bottom-line value to small, medium and large enterprises across the different functions that comprise the supply chain," Hochfelder added. "The projects featured in the '100' article can serve as a roadmap for supply chain executives looking for new opportunities to drive improvement in their own operations."

May 2012

Social Media for Business Performance Blog
Social Media and Supply Chain, Strangers in the Night?
Does Social Media have a place in the world of Supply Chain Management? Where do you see the possible integration of these two institutions going, what will the Supply Chain look like and when do you think Supply Chain will start reaping the benefits?

May 2012

Gartner.com
GT Nexus and Kinaxis May Make Supply Chain Cloud Easier for Many
Supply chain management cloud providers GT Nexus and Kinaxis have teamed up. This offers business process outsourcing providers and enterprises an opportunity to enable demand-driven value network planning and execution.

May 2012

CRN
This Week In The Cloud
GT Nexus and Kinaxis have teamed up to offer a cloud infrastructure service for multi-enterprise supply chain management and collaboration.

May 2012

Computer Business Review
GT Nexus, Kinaxis partner to introduce cloud-based planning, execution platform
GT Nexus offers a cloud-based platform that several companies use to drive efficiency and agility across the global supply chain while Kinaxis delivers a cloud-based application at the heart of planning and response management for value chain operations.

April 2012

SupplyChainBrain
Nine Experts on the Kinaxis Control Tower
Discrete manufacturing companies operating with highly complex supply chains in today's volatile business world need collaborative planning and the ability to quickly respond to variances in those plans. They often want to model "what-if" scenarios to better prepare them for those inevitable hiccups--or new business. Kinaxis designed its RapidResponse solution to help companies with demand and supply balancing, optimized forecasting, and improved supply chain performance. Recently it debuted an enhanced version called RapidResponse Control Tower. To get a better understanding of the product and responsiveness, SupplyChainBrain met with some Kinaxis representatives and customers at the company's annual user conference.

April 2012

DC Velocity
Should you build a control tower?
Risk mitigation is a major factor driving interest in a "control tower" strategy. Kirk Munroe, vice president of marketing at software vendor Kinaxis, says there's been a surge of interest in the concept during the last year, particularly among large global companies in industries known for having complex supply chains, highly volatile operating environments, and vast inventories of low-margin products.

April 2012

CRM Magazine
Digital Media: How to Make Your Content Pop
It started as a dare. Bill DuBois, a consultant at Kinaxis, a supply chain management provider, is known for his sense of humor. When colleagues suggested that DuBois share his talent with more people, his response was, "Get me a camera and I'll do it," according to Kirsten Watson, vice president of corporate marketing at Kinaxis.

March 2012

Savvy B2B Marketing
B2B Videos: Go Beyond Humdrum to Engage & Enthrall
Kinaxis has taken B2B videos to an entirely new level with its humorous, entertaining, and self-deprecating takes on supply chain management software. According to a write-up on the Social Media B2B site, prospective customers says the videos make them feel they already know Kinaxis by the time they meet company reps at trade shows.

March 2012

Supply Chain Digest
Readers Respond: Metrics and Supply Chain Performance
The always thoughtful Trevor Miles of software provider Kinaxis largely agreed with me, and offered some related interesting ideas on the topic. The first was that "the craziest" supply chain metric is conformance to plan. "Measuring plan conformance shouldn't occur at more than a daily level, perhaps allowing that in fairly stable industries this could go out as far as a week," Miles wrote. Anything more than that "is crazy because of the assumption that the plan was correct in the first place."

March 2012

What's Next? Blog
A cure for boring marketing and white paper detritus
One thing so sorely missing from B2B communication is humor. People like it when you make them laugh or cry. They like it when you tell a story instead of hitting them over the head with a sales pitch. Business is afraid to laugh, especially at itself. But once in a while, humor shines through, as in the case of Kinaxis – a software company that competes against Oracle, SAP and other giants.

March 2012

Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) Blog
How Much Supply Chain Optimization Do We Really Need? – Part 2
Part 1 of this blog series introduced the concept of (Rapid) Response Management in the realm of supply chain management (SCM) via a software category pioneer, Kinaxis. The currently bullish Kinaxis has a number of customers that are SAP ERP customers too, and for a long time SAP was at first dismissive (or at least ambivalent) regarding the need for Response Management, as the company had its own well-known SAP Advanced Planner and Optimizer (SAP APO) product. In addition, Kinaxis has had to compete with other advanced planning and scheduling (APS) providers such as JDA Software (former i2 and Manugistics), Logility, and Oracle.

March 2012

Bangkok Post
Three decades on, debate on what constitutes SCM continues
You may not be aware of it -- nor was I, and I'm in the business -- but this year marks the 30th anniversary of the term "supply chain management". We have it on good authority from the newsletter 21st Century Supply Chain, which we regularly enjoy quoting.

March 2012

Ad Age
It's Time to Bring B2B Marketers Into the Social-Media World
Kinaxis is an example of a smaller company that has found new ways to innovate in B2B. It's a supply chain management company based in Canada that turned to comedy to help stand apart from larger competitors. Kinaxis has launched several online comedy series, but the one that received the most attention was Suitemates, which won the top B2B creative award in 2010 from BtoB Magazine.

February 2012

Canadian HR Reporter
HR's role in a business transformation
John Sicard, COO of Kinaxis in Ottawa, talks about the role HR plays when business is undergoing a major transformation, including getting employees involved and overcoming their resistance to change.

February 2012

InformationWeek
The Rise Of The Hybrid Enterprise
A good example comes from the ability to take the best of the new SaaS customer interaction models and use that data to create a vastly improved and nuanced demand model for the enterprise. This improved demand signal feeds directly into the very ERP and supply-chain management systems that are supposedly on their deathbeds. While much can be done in the cloud to improve that analysis--just ask Demand Solutions, Kinaxis, and E2Open, among others--the results of those cloud-based analyses will not only add value to existing on-premises systems but will extend their life spans.

February 2012

Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) Blog
How Much Supply Chain Optimization Do We Really Need? – Part 1
In a nutshell, the vendor delivers a multi-enterprise supply network planning and fast-acting “what-if” simulation solution for achieving best possible fulfillment decisions within the order-to-delivery lead time. The solution’s current name is RapidResponse Control Tower, which can be offered either on-premise or as an on-demand subscription service. Many customers use Kinaxis to solve issues outside of the lead time, but they gain a lot of agility and flexibility by using RapidResponse within the lead time.

February 2012

Supply & Demand Chain Executive
Supply & Demand Chain Executive Announces 2012 Pros to Know
Provider Pro to Know: Mark Mototsune, Kinaxis

February 2012

Supply & Demand Chain Executive
Stay Out Of The Supply Chain Trouble Zone
Globalization has led to longer supply chains, with many hand-offs between companies and modes of transport, which translates into greater fluctuation in lead times. What’s more, globalization has coupled with outsourcing, which leads to less visibility and less control within the supply chain. “The quality standards in BRIC countries [Brazil, Russia, India and China] and nations such as Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand that focus on outsourcing are often not up to Western standards,” said Trevor Miles, Vice President of Thought Leadership, Kinaxis, Ottawa.

January 2012

SupplyChainBrain
Keeping Up with Supply Chain Innovation at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics
As important as ERP and MRP systems may be to a company, supply chain visibility is critical to employ what-if analysis in a controlled environment, says Mike Keltz, IT integrator at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics.

January 2012

Bangkok Post
PM in our SCM, SCM in our PM
Adding to that, not just one but two current clients are realising that a major reason why they are not improving the way they should be in managing their supply chain is that they are so poor at managing the projects. This includes both internal improvement and customer projects. And then, in the middle of this musing, came an item from our regular favourite blog, The 21st Century Supply Chain from Kinaxis software...

January 2012

Business 2 Community
YouTube Killed the TV Star: Why Online Video Marketing is Essential for Marketers in 2012
Entertaining videos: Kinaxis, offering on-demand software for supply chain management, showcases a series of videos poking fun at the challenges associated with large supply chain environments. As of April 2010, the company had more than tripled its leads, and was able to increase the number of registered community members by 38%.

January 2012

ServiceVantage blog
Top 10 Client Focused People
Rob Bell, VP Support & I.T (www.Kinaxis.com) Rob is one of a kind. He has managed many different groups at Kinaxis and the client is always front and center in everything he does. For Rob, the client (rightfully so) is the center of the universe and he ensures that his entire team understands the importance of being their “trusted advisor”. He has a solid, client-focused reputation within Kinaxis and throughout their entire client base. ........... John Sicard, Chief Operating Officer, (www.Kinaxis.com) Kinaxis is a world-class, client-focused, technology company with an incredible team. Being one the original members of this team, John has worked in many, many capacities throughout the years and is one of the driving forces behind Kinaxis’ industry leading reputation. He has tremendous subject matter expertise and ensures that the various teams that report to him zero in on what is best for their clients. Development, Marketing, Support, Services, Training, etc., all think “client” in everything they do and produce. Kinaxis’ reputation is well deserved – and John’s client-centricity and ability to surround himself with excellent client-focused people is at the heart of it.

January 2012

Supply Chain Digest
Supply Chain Comment: Are Boeing's Supplier Stress Tests Defeating the Point of Outsourcing in the First Place?
Duncan Klett, VP of Analytics Research at supply chain software provider Kinaxis, sent in a letter based on the article with a simple question: If this is the kind of effort it takes to get the supply base to perform, is the outsourcing strategy even worth it? "The original arguments for outsourcing/contract manufacturing were lower cost and allowing the customer to focus on its primary business and not need to manage production processes outside its core/critical competence," Klett wrote. "For new and/or state of the art production processes, it sounds like the risks and management requirements have not been reduced by outsourcing."

January 2012

SupplyChainBrain
Celestica's Supply Chain Collaboration Center (free registration required to view video)
Celestica's collaborative initiative comprises three elements – inventory visibility, much closer relations with suppliers, and optimized inventory management, says Erwin Hermans, vice president of supply chain solutions at the contract manufacturer. [Run Time (Min.): 12:22]

January 2012

SupplyChainBrain
Streamlining Global Sales and Operations Planning at D&M Holdings (free registration required to view video)
D&M Holdings, a collection of disparate electronics companies with different ERP and S&OP processes, needed a global approach to sales and operations planning, says Lalit Panda, the company's chief information officer. [Run Time (Min.): 12:59]

January 2012

SupplyChainBrain
Addressing Demand Volatility in Today's Business Environment (free registration required to view video)
Without a doubt, demand volatility is the number one challenge for companies today, whether they are in the CPG, electronics or industrial products verticals, says Kevin O'Marah, senior research fellow at the Stanford Global Supply Chain Forum. [Run Time (Min.): 7:16]

January 2012

SupplyChainBrain
Turning Supply Chain Risk Into Opportunity at Jabil (free registration required to view video)
The cost of managing risk can't be allowed to outweigh the value of the supply chain, says Joe McBeth, vice president, supply chain, at Jabil. But there are unknowns that have to be planned for. [Run Time (Min.): 8:58]

January 2012

SupplyChainBrain
Responsiveness, Flexibility & Scalability at Qualcomm
Qualcomm found that its old planning solution didn't permit the rapid response or the ability to scale required to meet volatility of demand, says Tom Tael, the company's senior manager for business processes. [Run Time (Min.): 8:56]

January 2012

SupplyChainBrain
Multi-Enterprise Collaboration: The Next Generation (free registration required to view video)
For decades the focus has been on planning better, but that isn't good enough anymore, says John Sicard, chief operating officer at Kinaxis. Response to plan variance is what's required now. [Run Time (Min.): 8:54]

January 2012

SupplyChainBrain
Managing Supplier Partnerships at Varian Semiconductor (free registration required to view video)
Customers want shorter lead times for products, and suppliers want to be leaner, says Thomas LeBlanc, master scheduler at Varian Semiconductor. That requires a balance if one is to have a successful supply chain. [Run Time (Min.): 6:09]

January 2012

SupplyChainBrain
The Control Tower: Breaking Down Enterprise Barriers! (free registration required to view video)
There are no more silos when everyone works with the same data and the same enterprise planning and simulation platform, says Doug Colbeth, Kinaxis CEO. [Run Time (Min.): 10:27]

December 2011

Supply & Demand Chain Executive
Keys to Making the Financial Supply Chain More Efficient
According to John Sicard, chief operating officer, Kinaxis in Ottawa, Canada, profitability management must become a priority for every part of the operation—not just for finance. Multiple functions must be able to model costs across various dimensions to enable real-time profitability management. “By running ‘what-if’ scenarios using real operational data, key stakeholders can understand the financial implications of supply and demand changes both before and when they happen,” he says. “Companies that adopt an operational control tower model, which integrates multiple business processes with supply chain operations, will be able to instantaneously analyze the financial effects when reality deviates from the plan.”

November 2011

Ottawa Business Journal
Kinaxis: Ottawa's Next Cognos?
John Sicard thinks he can top Ottawa's biggest software success story....OCRI's 2011 Company of the Year is debt-free, profitable and has seen revenues grow in each of the last five years.

November 2011

Ottawa Citizen
Last chance for high-tech?
- Douglas Colbeth, the CEO of Kinaxis, a 16-year-old Kanata firm that develops software that allows firms to manage their supply chains. Colbeth is the former CEO of Spyglass, the U.S. pioneer whose technology underpins Internet Explorer, the search engine owned by Microsoft.

November 2011

InformationWeek
The Supply Chain Challenge Never Ends
I spent an extremely entertaining and informative day with Kinaxis at their user conference last month, and it struck me how much supply chain management seems to be stuck in the past, even as it increasingly occupies one of the hottest of hot seats in the corporate world, and even as companies like Kinaxis strive to bring the supply chain into the future.

November 2011

Bangkok Post
Experiencing and handling volatility and complexity
Readers will recall that in recent months we referenced a posting from one of our favourite supply chain oriented blogs, "The 21st Century Supply Chain" from Kinaxis. Their thought-leader, Trevor Miles, shared content from a presentation by Jane Barrett at this year's Gartner Supply Chain conference in which she used VUCA to describe the current business environment and its effect on the supply and value chains, saying that companies are thinking about how they cope with this volatility and uncertainty in the supply chain so that they can respond profitably.

November 2011

360 ERP Blog
Top Ten Predictions for ERP in 2012
#2 Shake-up in the Tier I space. This coming year may be when we finally see a shakeup among the big Tier I ERP vendors. While SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft Dynamics certainly aren’t likely to lose their foothold as the Big 3 of the ERP software market, we do expect that some of the larger Tier IIs are going to pose legitimate challenges to their market share and reach. For example, after their acquisition of Lawson, Infor is just a couple steps behind the traditional Tier II players, while companies such as IFS, Epicor, Kinaxis, and QAD are continuing their aggressive growth, especially in the SMB space.

November 2011

Supply Chain Digital
Top 10: Supply Chain Blogs
Supply Chain Digital breaks down the Top 10 supply chain blogs that you should your eye on. #3 The 21st Century Supply Chain Blog

September 2011

Ottawa Business Journal
HONG KONG: Asia’s widening gateway
Along with selling to Asian-headquartered companies, it [the Hong Kong office] also collaborates with Kinaxis sales teams in other countries to land contracts with large multinational firms, a role that takes on added importance as companies move more executive control over supply chains into Asia.

August 2011

EBN
The Cure for Chronic Inventory Distress
...Segmentation will drive substantial operational changes in your supply chain execution, the most visible of which will stem from your planning approach. It's likely that 80 percent of your product will slot into the longer lifecycle/lower volatility segments, which is a great fit for highly automated ERP systems. This frees up resources to focus on the 10 percent to 20 percent of products with shorter lifecycles -- the ones likely creating most of your inventory distress. These products are better suited to complex predictive analytics, collaboration tools such as Kinaxis, and a high level of expert intervention...

July 2011

Supply Chain Matters
Kinaxis RapidResponse Spring 2011 Release is Impressive
Overall, we remain impressed with the progress and functionality enhancements of RapidResponse and believe that Kinaxis installed base customers and prospects should be impressed as well.

July 2011

SupplyChainBrain (free login required)
S&OP: What’s It Really About?
Video: The definition of the term can be hard to nail down, says Trevor Miles, director of thought leadership with Kinaxis. He offers his view on why so many companies seem stuck in the early stages of maturity with their S&OP efforts, and how they might move forward.

July 2011

Enterra Insights (formerly known as Enterprise Resilience Management Blog)
Have you heard about supply chain control towers?
From my perspective, the application of the control tower concept only to distribution is a fairly narrow use of a very powerful concept. A multi-tier control tower in the high-tech/electronics space that spans customer location, the OEM, several contract manufacturers, and component suppliers has much greater likelihood of both success and benefit. ...

June 2011

OCRI TV
Swimming with the Sharks - The Kinaxis Story
John Sicard, executive vice president, marketing, development and service operations and Mark Mototsune, vice president, R&D are interviewed about the company's history (including its bumps along the road); transition to SaaS; management model and style; marketing strategies; and future strategic initiatives.

June 2011

20/20 Pharma
Making a Sound Investment in ERP (see page 62)
Panel discussion facilitated by Merck's Senior Business Process Lead for SAP Supply Chain Master Data, Reid Graves. Experts in the field featured on the panel with Reid include Trevor Miles of Kinaxis, Joe Miles of SAP and Tom Heinricher of Sage. Related podcast: http://www.2020pharma.com/podcast/making-sound-investment-erp (free registration required)

May 2011

Gartner
Case Study: How Amgen Reinvigorated Its Supply Planning Process (client access report)
Long supply cycle times require life science manufacturers to balance supply commitments, capacity management and product expiry issues. One global biotech company, Amgen, centralized elements of its planning processes and deployed a rapid planning tool to more effectively balance these requirements.

May 2011

SupplyChainBrain
What Is This Thing Called S&OP?
Kinaxis “thought leader” Trevor Miles views quick responsiveness as a critical corrective to the errors that plague any demand forecast. Speaking at the IE Group’s recent High-Tech Forecasting & Planning Innovation conference in San Francisco, he noted that forecast errors by the top consumer packaged goods companies range between 19 and 43 percent. S&OP can help to offset that shocking gap by enabling them to plan for variance.

April 2011

OCRI.TV
2011 OCRI Company of the Year Award presented to Kinaxis
OCRI Company of the Year presented to Kinaxis in recognition for their successful core service, RapidResponse

April 2011

Ottawa Business Journal
Kinaxis named OCRI Company of the Year
Its patented RapidResponse solution has drawn praise for being easy to use and able to deploy across various types of businesses, and in past years was picked up by luminaries ranging from aerospace giant Lockheed Martin to camera-maker Olympus. "We've been active but one of Ottawa's best-kept secrets for a long time," said John Sicard, the chief operating officer, in an OBJ interview moments after receiving the award. "What we hope OCRI's award will do is bring us out."

March 2011

Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) - free registration required
S&OP Newcomer Asserts Notable Domain Expertise
Q&A with Trevor Miles: "I see S&OP and IBP as separate topics. One of the greatest fallacies in the industry is that each planning process is unique and isolated, and that each requires a separate tool with a separate data structure, analytics, and user interface (UI). In reality, planning is a continuum, and each stage should be feeding the next and being informed by the previous."

February 2011

Francis-Moran.com
Making the SaaS model work for you as a vendor
Offering customers this option versus the traditional model of selling boxes of CDs in shrink wrap is a “price of admission capability for software companies these days,” Rob Bell, director of service operation and corporate IT for Kinaxis, said at OCRI’s #smarTALKS event last night.

February 2011

Ottawa Citizen
OCRI names 36 awards finalists (Kinaxis named as finalist for Technology Company of the Year)
The awards, from the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation (OCRI) economic development agency, honour such categories as technology company of the year, health innovation, most promising startup and, for 2011, an added category: "solution" of the year. Kinaxis named as finalist for Technology Company of the Year.

February 2011

Chief Content Officer
Supply Chain Love - B2B is no longer boring
"The reputation of being a world leader comes from the quality of the products you deliver, and in the way your company behaves," Ms. Watson said. "In the end your brand and what it stands for is ultimately determined by the markets you serve, not by you in that big office tower."

January 2011

Fearless Competitor (by Find New Customers)
Laugh and Learn featuring the Fearless Competitor – Top B2B Ideas of 2010 – The Winner!
In this special edition, we announce the winner of the 2010 Best B2B marketing idea. The Linkedin community has spoken too and they agree. Congratulations to our winner! Kinaxis with their remarkable series – Suitemates (www.suitemates.com).

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