This is the second part in a series by Cori Rogers, Marketing Associate at Zepol Corp. Click here for Part 1.

Trade data is import and export trade information that is taken from dozens of sources, including the U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Customs, and assists businesses in a multitude of ways. With much deliberation, we have come up with the top ten ways professionals use this trade data to their advantage.

5. Identify Unique Import Opportunities
Importers use trade data to compare product trends in order to find wise, niche investments. For example, say you're an electronics importer who brings in record players with speakers to the United States. You trend the product over the past five years and make the discovery that record players without speakers have had a 64% higher value, and are more popular, than the players you currently import. You've discovered a product you have never thought of before, it's similar to what you already import, and now you're making more money.

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Do you guys agree?
What keeps supply chain execs awake at night -- From controlling costs to fretting about security, supply chain chiefs say they have plenty of worries. At a recent session of the advisory board to the University of Tennessee's Global Supply Chain Institute, senior executives -- vice presidents of supply chains and CEOs -- from 39 companies discussed major issues facing their profession. Supply chain has become a quagmire of challenges, the executives said. Although the world has become more interconnected, the complexity of the global supply chain has grown.

Patagonia takes transparency to the consumer.
Patagonia Maps Out Its Supply Chain For Even More Transparency -- Patagonia has long been a sustainability leader, and pokes its competitors in the eye with programs, from asking consumers to buy less to working with fisheries to the preservation of salmon populations while rolling out new snacks. Now the outdoor clothing and gear company is pushing supply chain transparency to a new level. Now Patagonia has released its Footprint Chronicles, one tool to help customers and stakeholders learn more about the company's global operations and suppliers. The interactive map allows visitors to click on locations of the company's textile mills and factories all over the world.

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One thing we took away from Sapphire is that networked-based business models are going to factor prominently into the value SAP sees itself generating for customers beyond providing just business applications. These networks may take the form of information-rich environments that cross companies and tiers of supply chains to drive predictive risk analytics (e.g., Supplier InfoNet). Or they may enable new levels of operational efficiency by allowing suppliers to connect a single time to a network to maintain basic vendor information without having to register with (and continuously update) multiple supplier portals and supplier management platforms. Regardless, SAP's network vision is real, even if they haven't yet finalized all of the details of their strategy. And it's clear that Hubwoo, at least for the foreseeable future, is going to have some part in it.

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My colleague Tom Finn recently penned a highly thoughtful piece exploring the relevance of airline supply chain chains to healthcare supply chains and strategic procurement decisions within them, which historically, have largely been based on local preference rather than any type of standardization. The post itself really got me thinking about the implications of SKU and parts standardization in general across all of procurement and how despite all the strategic sourcing programs we inevitably deploy across indirect (and MRO) related areas – not to mention direct spend, where such focus is needed in the design engineering stage -- and how such efforts quite often erode as frontline users go back to their old behaviors and suppliers find ways of circumventing the system.

Here's Tom's analogy in the airline industry marketplace:

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Have you ever wanted to buy a set of color toner cartridges and a drum unit and compared the number of clicks necessary to research, find, analyze and buy the (typically) five items you're looking for on Amazon compared with a trusty SAP SRM install (we're talking SAP SRM without the help of a Simplifying IT, Hubwoo or IBX/Capgemini front-end)? Well, if you haven't, you're probably not aware of one of the reasons maverick purchasing remains common in earlier eProcurement implementations -- SAP and otherwise. Compared to Amazon, many P2P implementations are cumbersome, clunky and make it difficult for the casual user to find what they're looking for. Granted, while we don't even consider Amazon the best shopping experience anymore, it's light years away from where most SAP SRM, Ariba Buyer, Oracle eBusiness suite and PeopleSoft procurement implementations are, usability-wise. Simply put, it's faster and easier.

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Spend Matters welcomes a guest post from Cori Rogers, Marketing Associate at Zepol Corp.

Trade data is import and export trade information that is taken from dozens of sources, including the U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Customs, and assists businesses in a multitude of ways. Zepol Corporation takes complicated U.S. Government trade data and puts it into an easy-to-use online interface. The interface includes three subscription-based tools: TradeIQ™, TradeView™, and ComplianceIQ™. Zepol helps those dealing with the opportunities and perils of global trade. With much deliberation, we have come up with the top ten ways professionals can use this trade data to their advantage.

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Banksy goes CSR.
Banksy Diamond Jubilee graffiti springs up overnight on London street

Image source: The Telegraph

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One of the new products that Spend Matters has been most impressed with in the broader procurement and supply chain sector in the past year is SAP Supplier InfoNet (you can read our initial impressions of it in this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4). Yesterday at Sapphire, we took a quick look at the most recent version of InfoNet, which marks the first GA version. This version, which officially launched today, leverages SAP's HANA (in memory database) technology. It features an expanded set of now 160,000 different news sources (wires, papers, financial, government information, etc.) integrated with both internal (i.e., company) and network supplier performance-related information.

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There's much ado about supplier management at Sapphire this year. Yesterday, we sat down with the solution managers for two products: SAP Supplier Lifecycle Management (something new!) and SAP Supplier InfoNet. We'll give a detailed introduction and analysis to SAP Supplier Lifecycle Management soon, and also take a closer look at the latest in our favorite multi-tier supplier management product, SAP Supplier InfoNet. But today we'll give our cursory thoughts at both solutions, beginning with our initial impressions of Supplier Lifecycle Management in this post (check back later for a quick update on InfoNet.

SAP Supplier Lifecycle Management is designed to serve as a core supplier information toolset. It supports both closed registrations (i.e., those in which you invite pre-selected suppliers) as well as open registrations (e.g., a supplier diversity registration portal). 70% are currently doing closed registrations primarily and 30% are predominately doing open registration approaches, according to SAP. Supplier Lifecycle Management differs from SAP's On Demand Sourcing Supplier Management toolset in the following ways:

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