Supplierforce: Supplier Information Management and Beyond (Part 2)
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Will the EU -- Germany and France in particular -- bail Greece out? If not, the contagion has the potential to spread around the Eurozone to Spain, Italy, Ireland. At least the UK can depreciate its currency to help get out of trouble; Greece is locked into the Euro and has not made the structural changes necessary to adapt since it joined.
If the EU does support Greece, will there be enough incentive for the Greek government and people to make the necessary painful adjustments, which will mean real cuts in living standards? Or will they keep on spending, like the rich kid on heroin who knows that when things get really tough, Daddy will bail them out? (“Daddy” in this case being Germany, with some help from France and the Benelux countries.)
Last week, however, we saw poor indicators from Germany in particular and the Eurozone in general, in terms of the economic recovery, so voters in the stronger countries are less likely to be comfortable with bailing out their profligate neighbors. As the BBC reports:
“Economic growth in the eurozone has slowed to a crawl -- and that's bad news for the UK as much as it is for member states. The 0.1% growth figure for the fourth quarter of 2009 was worse than expected and puts into perspective the UK's similarly anaemic performance over the same period.”
I have always feared that the UK was in for a “double dip” recession; I am probably a bit of an economic pessimist by nature. These figures suggest, however, that this may be an issue for Europe more widely. And once public-sector cuts start to hit home in countries including the UK, that must act as another kick to an already weak economy.
So ... no answers or predictions, other than this: If you are a service/solution provider/supplier to the Eurozone or the UK, don't bank on a robust recovery and booming sales any time too soon.
Spend Matters believes that, starting in 2010, we'll see leading procurement and supply chain organizations start to focus on building broader transparency into their supply base, not only to solve immediate requirements but also to stay flexible and nimble, the better to manage future requirements and to react to changes in the market. In this regard, companies will focus on transparency as a means to both current (and necessary) realized ends as well as future, potentially unknown ones, such as the need to rapidly implement and effect a successful supplier development effort in response to a crisis (e.g., quality failure, adulterated ingredients/parts, child-labor violation, etc.) In some cases, they'll rely on suppliers to partially or fully offset the costs of these programs by requiring a registration and/or annual fee. Our research suggests that there is significant polarization among organizations about whether to have suppliers offset transparency-program costs (or, in some cases, to make such programs a profit center).
Earlier today, IBM announced it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Initiate Systems, a provider of customer data integration (CDI) and enterprise master patient index (EMPI) technology. According to the company press release, IBM describes Initiate as "a market leader in data integrity software for information sharing among healthcare and government organizations. Initiate's software helps healthcare clients work more intelligently and efficiently with timely access to patient and clinical data. It also enables governments to share information across multiple agencies to better serve citizens." For further commentary on the transaction and Initiate, check out fellow Enterprise Irregular Lawrence Dignan's analysis over on ZDNet. In my view, there's actually much more to Initiate Systems that what IBM is letting on, however. In fact, Initiate's technology could easily be used to power supplier- and supply chain-centric hubs in the same manner in which it fuels customer, healthcare, and government (e.g., FBI/cyber) data-integration initiatives today. It’s also worth noting that this is also a consolidation play for IBM: it previously acquired DWL, an Initiate competitor.
President Obama's very first executive order when he took office in 2009 was the Open Government Directive. The idea was to provide transparency, participation, and collaboration, powered by new processes and technology, for a wide variety of government data sources. The first rounds of action for each agency were due on Friday, January 22nd.
In the meantime, the U.K. has in some ways crafted an even larger vision that recently launched. The U.K. open government initiative already has about three times as much data available than the U.S. initiative.
Delib, a U.K.-based company focused on Open Government projects, put together a 14-minute documentary on the U.S. Open Government initiative.
"Open Gov the Movie" - from Delib from Delib on Vimeo.