| Vendor relationship management: viable or theory?
While at LeWeb3, I caught Doc Searls session entitled "Turning the tables: What happens when the users are in charge." Doc is co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto and widely regarded as a leading thinker on customer relationships. Susan Kish at LunchoverIP does an excellent job bullet pointing Doc's presentation. I was especially interested in following up on his ideas around vendor relationship management (VRM) as this has specific meaning to me. In enterprise land, VRM usually means managing suppliers within a business to business context. So far, that has proven something of an illusion. Too many people remember the hub systems of the late 90's where what seemed like a great idea around creating electronic markets rapidly turned into a price race to the bottom. I would go futher and argue that those systems gave the Wal-Marts, Tescos and other retailers a powerful weapon with which to beat up suppliers and which has since done little for end user customers other than act as a price brake.
Entessa Announces Sunoco Logistics Partners L.P. to Implement ...
HOUSTON, Oct. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Entessa today announced that Sunoco Logistics Partners L.P. (NYSE: SXL) has selected Synthesis(TM), a world-class supply chain management software for companies that transport or store oil and gas. Sunoco Logistics required an integrated and effective solution to manage its planning/scheduling to invoice cycle for its pipeline and terminal business. "We conducted an evaluation of available solutions and chose Entessa's Synthesis(TM) solution. We have begun the first phase of the implementation and look forward to our relationship with Entessa," said Walter DeSouza, Chief Information Officer of Sunoco Logistics Partners. "This demonstrates that Synthesis(TM), the only complete supply chain management application specifically targeted at the Oil & Gas industry, is increasingly gaining market share with operators, owners and customers of pipelines and terminals.
Loan landscape changing
Bank of America Corp.'s $4 billion deal to buy Countrywide Financial Corp. helps to clarify the future for customers seeking mortgage loans: less competition for their business, less of a role for independent mortgage brokers, and one more reason for a trip to the bank. The deal, made public yesterday, will combine the two largest mortgage lenders in Massachusetts. It also speeds the dismantling of a business model that made loans cheaper and easier to get than ever before - fueling an unsustainable home-buying boom, a record number of foreclosures, and perhaps a recession. And it may result in more help for people who can't afford their Countrywide loans. Bank of America immediately signaled it would expand efforts to help troubled borrowers through counseling and loan modifications.
The most influential US conservatives: 1-20
A Mormon, he has been reluctant to discuss details of his faith on the campaign trail and it remains to be seen whether evangelical Christians will back him. Perhaps more problematic is his recent shift from being a liberal Republican in the New England mould to being a purported rock-red conservative. He became an opponent of abortion rights at age 57 and only recently joined the National Rifle Association. Has sunk truckloads of his own cash into his well-organised and astute campaign that has him leading the polls in the crucial early-voting states. Despite lagging badly in the national polls, he is well placed to win the Republican nomination.
11. MIKE HUCKABEE
Presidential candidate .
XL Associates, Inc. (XL) Wins 5 Year Competitive Award for Acquisition ...
WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- XL will provide an array of acquisition support and oversight addressing the full life-cycle acquisition management process and other DOC acquisition-related tasks to improve and/or maintain service quality and maximize the use of available funding. This BPA will serve as an umbrella to provide acquisition support services to DOC to include Bureaus, offices, directorates and agencies for recurring requirements. DOC carries out its acquisition function through delegated procurement authority for five Bureaus: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), Census Bureau, and the Office of the Secretary (OS). Lloyd M. Mustin II, President and Founder of XL, stated: "We're privileged to have been awarded this important work with DOC.
From Mahler to Dylan, ‘The Rest’ is Music
His book manages not just to reach across the vast chasm between classical and popular music, but also to make the distance seem shorter, the depth of the chasm shallower, and the passage across easier. He told a reporter for The New York Observer last month that “the whole point [is] to not be too in-your-face or condescending"—to present your argument simply, without over-simplifying. Ross manages the spectacular feat of making this crazy music seem logical by taking a modular approach. Rather than trying to pack every opera, symphony, and concert into one narrative, he subdivides relentlessly and then assembles and reassembles the pieces to suit his arguments. (For music theorists, the technique is similar to twelve-tone composition.) Thus, he tracks simultaneous developments like Arnold Schoenberg's atonal school in Austria and the early jazz compositions of little known American composers like Charles Ives and Will Marion Cook.
SR Telecom and Microelectronic Technology Sign Technology License ...
SR Telecom (TSX: SRX) and Microelectronics Technology Inc. (MTI) today announced that they have extended their business partnership by entering into a technology license agreement for the sale of advanced WiMAX radio systems. Through the agreement, MTI and its approved subsidiaries will design, develop, manufacture, distribute and sell the range of products in SR Telecom's symmetryMX (TM) portfolio.
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