In a world of complex and integrated supply chains, success hinges on supplier relationships...
The way trading partners interact is changing. Today, suppliers are viewed as strategic partners, which can help gain competitive advantages.
Cloud-based collaboration solutions allow different stakeholders in a construction project to easily exchange information and conduct business with each other. The most critical success factors within a construction project are cost and time management. Cloud-based tools are designed to increase productivity levels and create unprecedented results across project performance, schedule, workforce management, and safety. With a collaborative network, all project stakeholders have access to the same data and can leverage network-based intelligence and analytics to optimize processes and gain efficiencies.
When Ryan Bartholomew, CEO of Lauren Concrete, first heard about the Command Alkon Platform at the ELEVATE Conference in New Orleans, he was very skeptical. The concept seemed fragmented, and there’s so many players. He thought “there’s no way this is going to work.”
Then, at a Leadership Round Table event in Philadelphia, the platform had gained a lot of momentum, and there was tremendous participation from all types of constituents in the construction supply chain. Ryan’s skepticism was dissolving.
People outside of the construction space wouldn’t believe the plethora of technology that’s available in the industry today – automated batch systems, complex scheduling systems, optimization engines, mobile apps. Tremendous technology, yet most in the industry still work in silos, and historically, Lauren Concrete was no different.
“We work within these four walls, our suppliers are over here and our customers over there, and yet we did not collaborate except with paper tickets that we manually passed along. I think our company generates probably close to a million or more paper tickets a year, either incoming or outgoing, and we are still doing this,” said Bartholomew.
It was time to address this issue and take the first step to eliminate these silos. Command Alkon encouraged Lauren Concrete to take a leap of faith and choose a partner to take the journey with them – enter Alamo Cement, a trusted partner of Lauren Concrete, supplying them with cement for many, many years.
When it comes to collaboration, even the most powerful tools are useless if they are not easy for businesses to use. One portal for trading partners to exchange data through is enough. There shouldn’t be a need to update and manage data in several locations. It’s also important that data be easy to consume by using a portal with a business-friendly user interface, with clearly presented dashboards and visible alerts for urgent matters.
One of the shared goals that Lauren Concrete and Alamo Cement would like to see is digitized cement tickets. With the platform, the systems that they already have in place will keep the ticket digital until the truck pulls into the plant and the operations manager or plant manager accepts the ticket. Inventories are immediately updated without any paper, and all parties will receive that data in real time.
Digitally transacting will increase the speed of business, strengthen the relationship between the two companies, and increase productivity gains for both – a win-win for all.
“It’s very interesting that there is a group of people that are striving to move our industry forward, and the fact that Lauren Concrete thinks highly of Alamo Cement Company,” said Ed Broach, Vice President of Sales at Alamo Cement. “To be able to push this forward within our company, to do away with those paper tickets, to explore those parts of our business relationship, enables us to make Lauren Concrete a better company and a better customer, and also to make Alamo Cement a better supplier.”
The collection of rich data from each transaction among trading partners provides fresh, big picture data with full context, enabling analytics that can uncover trends; monitor carrier performance; measure improvements; and enable better, more-informed business decisions.
“I encourage you, if you haven't already gotten connected to the platform, or if you're company historically is not an early adopter; choose that trusted partner and give it a shot.”
- Ryan Bartholomew, Lauren Concrete
