The climb of a supply chain business networks consultant : Mary Ann Holder

Mary Ann Holder and the upsurge of a hybrid blockchain-enabled 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.

This year is the first time Gartner has published a report on multienterprise supply chain solutions. The report stated,”Networks are not new, but with companies focusing more on having end-to-end (E2E) processes include their external trading partners, these networks are increasing in importance and value. Collecting data and sensing signals in real time, and then coordinating, executing, and resolving issues quickly, will allow companies to operate their supply chains more effectively.”

Today, these hybrid blockchain-enabled networks are providing a real-time, shared, single version of the truth at the core of the business community. They eliminate data discrepancies, delays, and costs, while leveraging blockchain’s strong, decentralized, and trusted network. Best of all, it supports powerful new functionality such as chain of custody apps that run on the hybrid network. These shared apps empower shippers, carriers, freight forwarders, 3PLs/4PLs and other partners to track and manage orders and shipments, and collaboratively plan and execute across all stages of the supply chain, in a trusted, transparent, yet confidential environment. Considering the strategic role logistics play in business, how an organization approaches logistics can often dictate its overall success or failure. Blockchain enabled networks are creating an unprecedented advantage by greatly speeding how goods are moved throughout the supply chain by taking the guesswork out of process and ensuring all partners are operating on the same page.

Mary Ann Holder on One Network’s Intelligent Control Tower: “One Network’s global network lies at the core of its value proposition and underpins its unified planning and execution capabilities. With over 90,000 global businesses on their network, users have the opportunity of collaboration with every other party on the network, and can form new partnerships easily, since required data streams have already been linked to the global network and can be shared through a permissibility framework. One Networks’ approach also enables business partners to improve performance in supply chain planning and execution. Forecasts and plans can automatically adjust to match supply with demand, while balancing capacity constraints, costs, and service levels. In the event of a disruption, AI enhancements provide users with prescriptive actions and can make adjustments to execution processes automatically.”

“While many vendors just talk about bringing automation to their supply chain planning and inventory optimization software, One Network has customers that are live and using the capabilities to extract value from the technology,” said Seth Lippincott, lead analyst of the report. “By providing an integrated platform on which customers can run their supply chains end-to-end, the vendor is shortening the distance between planning and execution, providing a holistic view of inventory and the ability to optimize stocking levels. Nucleus expects the value One Network delivers to continue to improve as more customers adopt its automation and intelligent capabilities.” MaryAnn Holder-Browne, Chief Marketing Officer of One Network: “We are thrilled to once again be recognized by Nucleus Research”.

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