Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 How are institutional investors, markets and businesses managing through the Covid 19 environment? Well, it's challenging to say the least, right? Um, America is managing through some very new-ish concepts, broad use of new collaboration tools. For example, working from home. Then there are the more important social issues that we're dealing with. Quarantine, caregiving, giving care to ourselves, as well as our loved ones. Healthcare pay time off. Clearly, there are a lot of things that we are unpacking as a society, but we're gonna drill down just a bit into one specific area on the minds of many institutional investors right now, and that is supply chain management. Today, we're gonna talk about all these things in the context of supply chain management. Um, and the first thing that business leaders really tend to do when we look at new phenomena is to look at precedent in terms of precedent.
Speaker 0 00:01:03 Many people are comparing the current covid ID to severe acute respiratory syndrome, also known as sars in terms of impact on the global markets and impact on supply chains. But if we look at SARS as a benchmark or a precedent, we see a couple of things. First of all, it was nearly a decade ago, things have changed. Then we look at manufacturing trends and outsourcing trends. Those things are very different in terms of where our vendors are located and how we're doing business with them at this point. So we see that the situation that we have now is in fact quite unique and potentially has very little precedent now as we talk about the supply chain and context of precedent, what's going on now, what we can expect in the future. We have here with us, Kevin Jackson, c e o of GC, global Link. Kevin, thank you so much for joining us, and so glad to see you and to see that you're healthy and well.
Speaker 1 00:02:02 No, thank you very much, Kisa. I really appreciate your invitation to talk about this.
Speaker 0 00:02:08 Great. First of all, Kevin, what to get your thoughts done. What are the top three supply chain issues that businesses are seeing right now with everything that's going on?
Speaker 1 00:02:20 Well, I tell you one of the biggest issues is just communications. Many organizations are used to physical communications using paper, and they, they use, you know, WebExes and, you know, digital forms. But it's sort of a adjunct to the physical communication as we have so abruptly been transitioned to the social dis distancing world. Everyone is now shifting a hundred percent to, uh, remote. And some of the systems weren't designed to support business processes a hundred percent. The the other thing is with the supply chain being stressed, there's a critical need to identify new suppliers and new sources of some of the most basic needs. Toilet paper and hand sanitizer sort of comes to mind for some reason. Um, and most of those processes, again, are manual. The, the companies really don't have automated or digital means of looking for new suppliers and vetting the information about those new suppliers, onboarding these suppliers to their procurement systems.
Speaker 1 00:03:48 The digital capabilities are there, but until now, companies haven't seen the need to invest because, hey, I could always have a meeting. Um, and, and finally, the actual transactions. I mean, all of us buy online, like, you know, as a normal course of business, uh, who hasn't gone to Amazon to look for something and have it delivered on there by drone, maybe the, the next day. This is a common thing in the, for the everyday consumer, but believe it or not, this is not common for business to business transactions. They're still done in the old fashioned way for business to consumer. The seller has all the power. They say, these are the products I'm giving, uh, this is the price and I take credit cards. But in business to business, that's not the case. It's the buyer that has all the power. So these B2C websites actually don't work well when a buyer is, is purchasing or negotiating from a supplier. You need to be able to do things like purchase orders, uh, negotiate contracts, do digital signatures, and many of these things where none of these things are available in a B to C marketplace or online commerce. So there's a lack across the industry on doing these e-commerce for B2B transactions.
Speaker 0 00:05:40 So when we talk about e-commerce and the, the purchase orders and the digital signatures and, and that sort of thing, these are all terms and concepts that many of us have been using pretty frequently, um, and we know quite well. How do you see that changing from the way that we're using those digital tools right now, say in March, 2020 versus the way we'll be using the digital tools and let's just say December, 2020. Do you think the tools will change? Do you think they'll become more complex, or do you think that we as operators of the tools as business owners, that we will need to begin to roll out different sorts of tools to really get business done in a more efficient way?
Speaker 1 00:06:22 To be honest, I think the tools are there. They can be used and it can be used quite effectively and efficiently, but it's the information in data with which we make our decisions. That's where the real change is needs to occur. I mean, you sign a contract digitally because you have spent time with a, with a buyer or a supplier. You have done your research, you verify the information with which you are making decisions, but the need now is, as we move forward, is to be able to do that verification in a digital manner. That's what's missing. You need to be able to verify that maybe a company is owned by, uh, diverse owner has diverse ownership. You need to look and check, do they use slave labor as part of their supply chain? How do you verify that when you have to do everything over a digital channel? So you'll need to get third party verifiers, and this is really important when it comes to environmental, um, and social governance.
Speaker 0 00:07:50 Great. So Kevin, let's talk about what you and your colleagues are talking about now. What you're hearing now, whether you're on, I know you're active on, on LinkedIn mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, and other tools. What are you all talking about now in the wake of covid 19? What seems to be top of mind for you and your colleagues, those who focus on the supply chain? What are the, the top, you know, two or three issues that you all are talking about? What sort of solutions are you seeing or what are the questions that haven't even yielded solutions yet that you're talking about in that social sphere? I'm assuming you're practicing social distancing, so <laugh> that's what I'm saying. What are you talking about, um, in, you know, on LinkedIn chats, groups, things of that nature, what are you hearing specifically about supply chains and covid ID and what we need to focus on? What's going on in your sphere there?
Speaker 1 00:08:36 First of all, how to identify new suppliers. If your, if your supply chain is, is strained, how do you identify a new supplier and establish a new supply chain with that supplier? Um, how do you monitor the, um, uh, the quality of a, of a product starting from scratch? Um, how, how do you verify information that you may see online about the supplier and about the product? How do you verify the financials of a new supplier? How do you onboard a new supplier to your procurement processes, V M S A P or any other, um, procurement in, in, uh, procurement system?
Speaker 0 00:09:33 Do you feel that onboarding now with, in the wake of covid 19 and the wake of what's going on is how is onboarding different than it was two weeks ago? If I was scheduled to onboard a new vendor next week mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and, you know, now we're remote, so what, what's gonna be different in terms of how we onboard next week versus how we onboarded a month ago? What are the differences there?
Speaker 1 00:09:54 Well, right now it's mostly manual and it takes a long time. It's very slow and very inefficient. It can take between 30 to 90 days just to do the paperwork to onboard a new supplier. And these suppliers actually su provide the same data to every new buyer, but every buyer has their own particular process or their own form that needs to be for filled out. Um, also bank accounting information and, and certification information. It's, it's ripe for fraud when you're doing this in a, in a manual way. And the regulatory requirements are changing very rapidly. Just today, there in the United States, there was, um, a real, there's been the waving of governmental rules and regulations around HIPAA in order to provide telehealth. So how would you now extend supply chains from hospitals to people that are sitting at home? Um, how do you verify those products? And there's a huge technology gap. So there's limits in receiving real-time updates across the supply chain, because these systems that are in place, these manual systems, some of them may be digital, but they're all siloed, and there's no way to get information or verified information from one system to another. All those things need to change actually quickly in the next few months.
Speaker 0 00:11:49 So I love that example with telehealth, because I, I hadn't heard of that. And also, I'm just curious if we could just use that as a use case with telehealth, and that's something that's new. Number one. How does that play out in, you know, this new environment where things have to be done in a very digital hands-off format? How would a telehealth who's bringing healthcare services to people remotely at, that's what it sounds like. Yeah. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, how, how are they operating, um, when they're bringing number one services to people remotely, but also they have to engage their supply chains remotely? How would that play, um, play out today versus two months ago in that specific example?
Speaker 1 00:12:29 So let's say, um, a doctor, um, two months ago had a new patient. They would have to have that patient physically come in. They would have to, uh, use manual, their existing tools to do a checkup. If there was medicine that needed to be given to the patient, the doctor would just go to their medicine cabinet in his office or at the hospital and hand it to the patient. Today, if you're gonna be using telehealth, the patient is now going to be on some type of remote video. Um, you may need to, um, have a different type of, uh, medical device. So you're looking at a medical internet of things that you may need to have delivered to the doc, to the patient. What if it was a diabetic? And they already had one of the modern, um, diabetic tools that allowed them to monitor. They now need to be able to transmit the data from home to the doctor's office, which is relatively easy. But how do you verify that that data is actually correct? And finally, if there's new medicine that has to be delivered to the patient at home, how, how do you deliver it? What, um, type of transportation or delivery system is, uh, qualified to deliver medicines? Um, all these are certifications driven by regulatory, uh, federal and state regulations. How do you verify those regulatory requirements?
Speaker 0 00:14:30 That's great. So it sounds like many of today's firms are going to need these new services and Yes. At a very last minute basis because, you know, maybe a couple of weeks ago they didn't foresee this. And so onboarding these new vendors, and your example, the telehealth company, onboarding a transportation company who will deliver those medicines to, um, the recipients. That's gonna be something that needs to be done, um, in a very quick manner, but also in a very, uh, last minute manner. <laugh>. What are some of the, yeah, what are some of the issues if they don't do it well, even, you know, even though a lot of folks are saying, well, you know, we are in different times. So what, what we're doing now, we're laying a new precedent. What do they need to be mindful of in this particular example with the telehealth company that's onboarding a transportation company who will deliver medicines to people who work in, um, other locations who can't come in, what will they need to be aware of? What, what does their future look like?
Speaker 1 00:15:25 Well, one of the, um, most promising technologies around this is blockchain. Uh, blockchain, uh, February, pe many people have heard of blockchain and its association with Bitcoin, but it's really a digital ledger that is shared by all members of an ecosystem, and it's in supply chain. It's very important with respect to, uh, validating information and the providence of an information and proving that any information has not been changed. For instance, if you have a medicine and you need to report that it's, uh, it's being transferred from the hospital to someone at home, well, you may be able to put a digital tracker on the medicine or use barcode scans, uh, with G P s to understand where that medicine is. Well, once you get the data, you can use blockchain to, uh, assure that that information has not been changed, that it's actually true, and that you could provide real time updates of where that bottle of medicine is, who has access to it. And all this information, because it's secured by blockchain, is, um, uh, acceptable in a quarter law. So it protects the business. Blockchain can also be used for contractual agreements, um, and for leveraging information across our wireless networks, wifi, and the upcoming 5G networks. All these things actually improve the velocity of information and your ability to verify the validity of information and to ensure that it can't be changed. What that does is provide the ability to do audits and enforce penalties, and it actually increases compliance.
Speaker 0 00:17:52 So that's amazing. So learning so much about blockchain and the ability of blockchain to help us protect our businesses and our assets, and really also what's coming down the pipeline in terms of new ways to do businesses that will, um, help us to really think creatively and to bring, to bear new ways of onboarding faster, more expedient ways of onboarding. Yes. That's great. Kevin would love to hear, what's your big idea? What do you think we can expect to see, um, in the future around supply chain management and around vendor onboarding, especially during times of crisis that we haven't seen in the past? What do you think will surprise the marketplace around supply chain in the future? What's the big idea there?
Speaker 1 00:18:36 Well, actually, um, I'm actually, uh, through my, we have an online marketplace that is, uh, blockchain enabled and we've partnered with a ecosystem called Trust Your Supplier, and it's built on top of an IBM blockchain. It's actually in use today for monitoring food through, through, um, with Walmart. And it does supplier qualification, validations onboarding and lifecycle information management. And through our online marketplace, we call Source Connect, we actually give suppliers an ability to present their products electronically, um, not just a list of contacts. And it also gives buyers an efficient way to get vetted information of their suppliers, the ability to electronically onboard these suppliers to their backend systems. This actually accelerates the pace of commerce, uh, and it uses blockchain or, uh, token based authentication and to support the communications that are verifiable. And once again, immutable can't be changed. I think these types of systems are really going to expand globally, um, and support, um, rapid adoption of advanced technologies.
Speaker 0 00:20:15 Great. Well, Kevin, thank you so much for that tremendous information around supply chains, the future, what we can expect, CR post-crisis. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 1 00:20:25 Thank you very much.
Speaker 0 00:20:27 And I wanna just send a message out to our audience, um, to audience, please send positivity out today. Whether it's remote positivity or in-person positivity. Really the best way to take care of our businesses right now is to really take care of ourselves. Also, send us your comments and thoughts on how we can serve you better on what type of content do you wanna hear more about. As always, feel free to subscribe and rate the podcast. Thank you. And be well.
