Intek Corporate Blog

Your thin is too fat...

mac@intek.com — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 00:42:00 GMT

It has become perhaps de riguer in the last few years to have some Requests for Proposal or some IT departments talk to us about the deployment of 'thin clients'.

What do you carry?

mac@intek.com — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 06:38:00 GMT

In his famous short story "The Things They Carried", writer Tim O'Brien chronicles the travail of American soldiers in Vietnam. In a litany that's often like an inventory list, he tells us that the lieutenant carries letters, two photographs and a smooth stone from his girlfriend...

A NEW new normal

mac@intek.com — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 05:21:00 GMT

There's a new phrase in economic circles: the new normal. This noetic turn was recently coined by Mohammad El-Erian, the Chief Executive at Pimco. Because of who he is and because of who Pimco is, and as a result of the earthshaking events of last year, everyone seems to be talking about it.

Hey, SCOPE it out...

mac@intek.com — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 21:11:00 GMT

We're at the SCOPE west supply chain event this week in Las Vegas. The format of the trade show aspect is a new experience for us. Our days are filled with short appointments with potential clients that have some interest in taking a look at us. We have 42 scheduled appointments in two days!

Competitiveness and Complexity: What will you embrace?

mac@intek.com — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 02:30:00 GMT

SCdigest continues the saga of the growing resistance to SKU proliferation in its recent Will Large Retailers Help Manufacturers Drive Out Supply Chain Complexity? Once again we get exemplars of proliferation and the economic impact such proliferation has on corporate performance and profitability.

Revenue is down, but labor is up. What's wrong with this picture?

mac@intek.com — Wed, 20 May 2009 00:39:00 GMT

We've completed a fairly informal survey among several hundred prospects over the last few months. We're getting a consistent message from them: Revenue is flat or down, but labor costs are up.

Of course, we ask them "Why?"

The answers coincide with the market dynamics in supply chain execution that we've been tracking for years. Companies are tightening inventory levels. So they are ordering less, more frequently. In terms of supply chain execution, they may be picking less orders but they are performing more receipts and executing more put aways. In some cases, especially in wholesale distribution, their customers are ordering less - but more frequently. This drives order count up - but with less lines per order. These things just prove that whatever the economic conditions are, the trends are inexorable. To get our Market Dynamics White Paper, please click here.

Before the economic woes hit, we reported on the NYSE 2009 CEO survey last August. The net of the report was that "Operational Efficiency" was the most important internal factor determining profitability for 2009. It is apparent that this is still the case.

But it's also apparent that few companies are presently willing to actually do something about operational efficiency, despite their experience with costs remaining high while revenue diminishes and with clear ROI opportunities.

Perhaps the NYSE report missed the fact that "Fear" is actually more important to many companies than "Operational Efficiency".

Supply Chain Execution in the Cloud...

mac@intek.com — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 01:49:00 GMT

We've been fortunate to get some good press coverage for our Warehouse Librarian SaaS^TM product in the press since our ProMat announcement last month.

Supply and Demand Chain Executive provided a good overview of our technology positioning.

Everything Old is New Again...

mac@intek.com — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 20:09:00 GMT

One of our oldest (and we mean in calendar time using our product suite, not the spry spring chicken interviewed) customers, Bill DeWitt of Boyds Coffee, was interviewed in Purchasing Online this month. It's a great story, one that is now sixteen years in the telling and still going strong. We have always been proud to be of support to Boyds Coffee Company, even before we got famous overnight...

One for the ages...

mac@intek.com — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:35:00 GMT

Those ProMat Thursdays, you know. This one exacerbated by outside temperatures at -15 degrees - that's without the wind chill.

Still we've had some great visits with prospects today. And we're excited to head home and begin assisting some of these courageous companies to make their operations more efficient and sieze market share.

Any list of "thank you's" would miss too many people, so let us just say that we appreciate everyone: employees, partners, customers, vendors, and friends who helped make this trade show such a success!

The Intek ProMat 2009 Booth Team

But it's our customers, you know...

mac@intek.com — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 01:36:00 GMT

Perhaps you can tell. We're having the best ProMat show in our 20 years of exhibiting here. Part of it is because our company has been growing. Part of it is our booth location, our booth design, our booth materials, our preparation, and many other factors that contribute to a successful trade show.

But, mostly, it's our customers.

We're indebted to many of our customers who took time from their busy schedules to assist us in promoting Intek. We're so appreciative of companies like Animal Supply Company and Bargreen Ellingson for their tireless efforts in helping us create case study videos about their operations. We're thankful for companies like Boyds Coffee, Willamette Valley Supply Company, Petco, and Animal Supply for their great testimonials about their experience with our product suites. We're also indebted to companies like Beauty Brands and Animal Supply Company for photographs of their operations.

These companies' stories are our story.

And with growing top lines, growing bottom lines, increased efficiencies and extreme measures of inventory accuracy and customer satisfaction, the stories, and our story, is good.

It's very good.

Thank you to these, and so many other Intek customers, for helping us tell our story.