Get to know MaryAnn Holder and some of her blockchain in logistics opinions: How many degrees deep do you think your buyer persona is? The same buyer group has multiple. A lot of times they’re at VP level, director level, C-level people. They have the same kind of educational background but do yours vary? For instance, if you’re trying to provide a solution to someone, are you dealing with multiple educational boundaries or any type of boundary like that? Well in a certain sense, yes. The office of the CFO is going to have a different, well, maybe not different educational status, but they’ll certainly have a different bent to their studies. They will have a different focus. We market to the whole organization when we’re looking at the supply chain. What we’re looking at the office of the CFO, the office of the CIO, the office of the CEO and then the office of supply chains. All of those buying units have their own individual needs that they have to balance within the greater organizational structure. When we build out our buyer personas, we look very closely at what are the things that are going to make that person a superstar even down to what are the types of people. I mean we look at the psychographics as well as the basic demographics that you get for a position such as a supply chain director. We might look at an engineering background and the way they make decisions so a lot of that factors into how we message to that. See even more information at MaryAnn Holder.

MaryAnn Holder is Chief Marketing Officer at One Network Enterprises, a provider of the blockchain-enabled network platform, The Real Time Value Network. Back in 2002, Greg Brady, a supply chain visionary and Ranjit Notani a pioneer in multi-enterprise collaboration technology came to the conclusion that the traditional paradigm of business-to-business collaboration built around enterprise-centric software was fundamentally flawed. Businesses must take an outside-in network view and together serve the end consumer. In May 2003, they acquired Elogex, a cloud-based logistics software company, and founded One Network Enterprises with a vision to create consumer-driven business networks. They developed a network platform that enabled entire business communities to collaborate and work together to serve the consumer. Brady and Notani brought the network way of conducting business just as LinkedIn did so to managing professional contacts. They re-imagined how business software is built, delivered, and used for today’s dynamic and highly inter-connected world.

But before applying the technology to logistic processes, let’s first start by understanding the function of blockchain. Blockchain is a shared, tamper-resistant digital ledger that provides a near real-time record of things such as transactions, records of ownership, locations, values, state of goods, etc. The ledger is shared among parties which brings transparency to the supply chain, because everyone is equally informed about things like the location, carrier, condition, and documentation relating to a shipment. Smart contracts can further automate many transactions based on other transactions, such as triggering a change in ownership titles when a payment is made.

MaryAnn Holder on One Network’s Intelligent Control Tower: One Network’s Intelligent Control Tower is not your typical control tower, that provides visibility to immediate trading partners only. The Intelligent Control Tower monitors, manages, and controls decisions and execution across functions and across companies to optimize the entire network. The Intelligent Control Tower uses AI and serves as a system of engagement across trading partners, and orchestrates companies, people and things to work together in real-time to serve the end consumer. Until recently, supply chain control towers have been all about providing visibility to your immediate trading partners. But with the development of multi-party, consumer-driven networks, advanced control towers now provide real-time visibility, collaboration and powerful AI capabilities to move beyond decision-support to decision-making and autonomous control. Find more info on Mary Ann Holder.

The network has over 75,000 participating organizations, allowing customers to find partners and collaborate around their plans. It supports industries in CPG, retail, restaurant and foodservice, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, high tech, aerospace, defense, and government, automotive, and logistics service providers. According to the report, One Network has taken several steps with its planning applications to increase automation and usability for its customers by providing intelligent agents that perform a host of functions such as forecasting, replenishment, sourcing, and transportation optimization. MaryAnn Holder-Browne, Chief Marketing Officer of One Network: “We are thrilled to once again be recognized by Nucleus Research”.

This year is the first time Gartner has published a report on multienterprise supply chain solutions. The report stated,”Networks are not new, but with companies focusing more on having end-to-end (E2E) processes include their external trading partners, these networks are increasing in importance and value. Collecting data and sensing signals in real time, and then coordinating, executing, and resolving issues quickly, will allow companies to operate their supply chains more effectively.”