"The Holy Grail… Supply Chain Excellence" - Harold Geller

When I think about efficiency profitability and growth within our industry I immediately question our current practices I am afraid we may be squandering opportunities for supply chain excellenceWhen we digitize wherever we can including using industry standards like AdID and supporting other master data management efforts in place of proprietary and laborintensive solutions we put greased lightning on the entire supply chain We can track and measure where our digital assets are going and we improve efficiency across the board A lack of alignment between assets creates more disharmony as each party in the chain maintains incongruent definitions and conflicting hierarchies But opportunities exist to create common information management practices and until they are implemented the ad39s lifecycle will continue to be laborintensive duplicative and vulnerable to errorsWhat is master data management MDM MDM is an approach to business records including systems processes and applications which standardizes business categorization and to help ensure a clear and accurate view of business and performance A lack of MDM processes increases business challenges and decreases profitability and performance Master data as related to our needs is the basic information on advertisers brands vendors and other campaign details that need to be shared across all systems internal and external coordinating applications and processes in order for business data to be consistently and accurately reportedAs advertisers and agencies we always have a fear of letting go of information that some may consider confidential But what we39re talking about here is NOT proprietary it39s basic descriptive information amp8212 advertiser name product name commercial title and a few more descriptive values The data we39re talking about is being shared today in analog methods that were invented over 30 years ago when there were fewer media outlets and a far less complex supply chain these can now be shared digitallyThere is always a concern that by identifying faults in your customer39s processes you will diminish your share of the overall budget Realistically this negligible amount that may be lost will be gained in other areas When we take on such ventures it is necessary to review all the components affecting the costbenefit analysis A small fundamental capital loss can cascade into a huge capital gain through supply chain excellenceExcellence in the supply chain is when partners have fulfilled their roles adhered to industry best practices and made way for the other members of the supply chain to focus on their own roles We need to shift responsibility to the right place in the supply chain away from downstream parties who have no ownership or primary knowledge of the accuracy of the information In fact these downstream parties have been held responsible for errors What we are talking about is the foundation of repeatable documentable best practicesRealistically marketers agencies and the media are overwhelmed by an explosion of new data to process and analyze This trend has been dubbed quotBig Dataquot we were once dealing in megabytes and now are dealing with terabytes The expanded information now has more uses and affiliations thereby rendering the current methods used to label it obsolete This new data is organized by what could be hundreds of segmentations Ultimately our supply chain is limited by legacy technology systems Our current industry structure leads to disparate data conflicting hierarchies and intendedtobetemporary workaroundsamp160In our industry we have always lived with workarounds shortterm fixes and stopgap solutions A workaround is defined as a bypass of a recognized problem in a system It is a temporary fix that implies that a proper solution is to the problem is needed Workarounds are considered frail in that they will not respond well to further pressure from a system beyond the original design In applying a workaround it is important to keep note of the change so at a later date a genuine solution can be implemented amp8212 something that we generally don39t do When practices evolve or advance the workaround created to address a problem may break the overall functionality of the updated system in anticipation of the previous erroneous causeandeffect patternOur workarounds have graduated to permanent practices which have evolved into institutionalized bad habits which have become a barrier to innovation and creativityIf we develop standard industry operating procedures ranging from how to get information into order entry asset management workflow to measurement systems then innovative business models will emerge and cost savings will be generated amp8212 possibly even additional revenueSupply chain excellence relies on a company39s ability to make decisions quickly and effectively Furthermore these decisions must be based on what is best for the entire supply chain rather than one specific organizational componentThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentaries

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"The Holy Grail… Supply Chain Excellence" - Harold Geller

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