The Panama Canal’s Future Is Bigger Than the Canal
Engineers Can Fix Some Things – But Not Geopolitics Modern civilization runs on a surprisingly small number of waterways. While geopolitical problems engulfing The Strait of Hormuz dominate current headlines, the Red Sea and the South China Sea are all under pressure....
Poor Digital Enablement Hurts the Customer Experience
Disconnected Systems Damage Sales Long Before Executives Know the Problem Key Takeaways Bad customer experiences usually trace back to disconnected systems, not frontline employees. When marketing, sales, fulfillment and service operate from separate data sources,...
7 Warehouse Design Myths That Cost You Money
Odysseus Had His Monsters. Intralogistics Has These Sometimes, warehouse design reminds me of Greek mythology. Odysseus spent 10 years returning home from the Trojan war. He knew how to get back to Ithaca and had the skill to get there. But sirens, monsters and gods...
Paper Rates Don’t Move Freight
What Happens When the Carrier Doesn’t Show Up A lot of companies think they have freight rates and transportation figured out. They ran the RFP, pushed hard on the carriers, got the low rates. The executive team felt pretty good. Then the truck doesn’t...
Offshore Call Centers Shouldn’t Cross 12 Time Zones
Nearshore Bilingual Services Can Deliver Better Customer Experiences For years, companies treated the offshore call center as a way to cut labor costs. Move operations as far away as possible. Cut hourly costs. Often, they accepted slower collaboration and frustrated...
On-Demand Labor Can Fill Your Workforce Shortage
The Real Reason Warehouses Can’t Solve the Shift Problem Everybody in distribution and manufacturing knows the workforce shortage numbers. Seventy-four percent of employers in transport, logistics and automotive report talent shortages, according to Manpower....
Manufacturers Turn to Fractional Executive Leadership
The Gig Economy Has Climbed the Org Chart – and Manufacturers Are Paying Attention Three years ago, I wrote about the growing trend of fractional executive leadership. I called them third-party fractional executives – 3FEs for short. At the time, a lot of people still...
Reindustrialization of U.S. Manufacturing? Wrong Word
The Right Word Is Renaissance – Something the World Has Never Seen Would you call the iPhone a better rotary phone? Then why are people talking about the reindustrialization of U.S. manufacturing? Reindustrialization is the wrong word. And the words we choose shape...
EBITDA Leakage Often Hides in Procurement
How Companies and Private Equity Firms Can Uncover Hidden Value Fast EBITDA rarely erodes all at once. Instead, margin erosion often begins quietly inside procurement: fragmented suppliers, inconsistent pricing, unmanaged contracts, weak purchasing discipline and...
Data Integration Challenges Weaken Business Intelligence
Without Unified Data, AI and Analytics Produce Noise, Not Decisions Key Takeaways Data integration challenges slow decisions and distort insight. Fragmented systems prevent a true single source of truth. AI models fed bad or incomplete data amplify the problem....