Jim's Articles

The growth of a supply chain business networks expert : Mary Ann Holder

Mary Ann Holder or the upsurge of a blockchain-enabled network platform leader? MaryAnn Holder is Chief Marketing Officer at One Network Enterprises, a provider of the blockchain-enabled network platform, The Real Time Value Network. NEO is your all-knowing supply chain assistant, continuously monitoring, analyzing and resolving problems so you can focus on the important decisions. NEO gathers information from across your entire business network to analyze and optimize business processes and resolve issues. He autonomously performs dozens of different functions, including forecasting, replenishment, sourcing, transportation optimization and much more. He works in the background to constantly find and fix issues. NEO tirelessly monitors execution processes and outcomes, to determine what works. NEO knows, learns, and acts to keep your supply chain and your business network running optimally for highest service levels and product quality at lowest cost.

How should marketers address those challenges? I think it’s really getting the heart of how people consume the information that they want. We are living in the information era. The digital era of information. With the advent of the internet first in the early 1990s through now. With all the newest latest modes of communications such as YouTube and different parts and pieces of different parameters within communication and content, people are really geared sometimes in one direction, being visual, being auditory, being a reading learner. If you think back on the educational status of someone, sometimes age sometimes the demographics will tell you where they might reside in that spectrum of learning. But, really when you’re consuming data for your organization, it’s you’re on a learning process because you’re looking for the newest and the latest information to help you shine in your position and help make you a better employee, a better partner you know with your suppliers with your organization.

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.”

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 talking 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.

By allowing the agent to analyze current performance relative to historical data, customers leverage the software to determine the optimal replenishment order. Trading partners can see the forecast that the system publishes, enabling them to better prepare to fulfill the upcoming order. Agents continue to scan inventory levels and incoming demand signals to optimize the next replenishment cycle. “Using intelligent agents, One Network’s advanced network platform includes modular, adaptable solutions for multi-party business processes that help companies realize value and run more efficiently and effectively,” said MaryAnn Holder-Browne, Chief Marketing Officer of One Network. MaryAnn Holder-Browne, Chief Marketing Officer of One Network: “We are thrilled to once again be recognized by Nucleus Research”.