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Valerie BonebrakeGuest Post: Valerie Bonebrake, Senior VP, Global Supply Chain Services, Tompkins Associates

Last month, at eyefortransport’s 3PL Summit and CSCO Forum, I had the great pleasure of leading a workshop on Achieving Success in Logistics Outsourcing and found plenty of opportunities to renew old acquaintances and kindle new ones.  

My workshop focused on the importance of relationships with outsourcing providers and touched upon today’s logistics outsourcing environment, managing performance expectations, and determining the best practices and strategies for success.  

The conference was well attended, and the format allowed for plenty of interaction – social and business as well as formal and informal.  With so many conferences to choose from, it’s not always easy to know which to attend. So for me, being able to connect with key leaders in the Logistics Service Providers (LSP) arena was well worth the trip.  

This year’s themes centered on building relationships to accelerate growth.  After the first year of negative growth since such statistics were reported on LSPs, it’s clearly a time when service providers are working hard to deliver value and find new ways to measure success that are meaningful to their customers, and their customers’ customers.

For me, the exhibit hall was a great way to review new technologies and more importantly, to talk about all the new and innovative ways providers and shippers are working together to improve supply chain performance.  It's especially good to see cloud computing front and center with new applications that allow even small companies to compete effectively in the global marketplace.  

With that said, there are still big issues that remain.  I frequently heard, most often during my informal conversations, that despite new applications, data warehouses, global ERP systems - you name it -access to data and quality of data still plagues many projects.

Let’s keep pushing for those disruptive technologies that can drive change in the long term, but meanwhile, don’t forget about the importance of collaborating, working together and reaching across supply chains and supply chain partners to build relationships that form the foundation for short-term improvement and long-term business transformation. 

Lastly, I want to say "thank you" to those road warriors who man their booths at exhibit halls week in and week out.  I always come home from an event such as this with new friends and new ideas. 

Did you happen to attend the event? What are you seeing lately in the LSP area? 

Thanks,

Valerie 


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