So, the first question that we got on this Blog was related to the supply chain.  In my answer, I said that we preferred to deal with the customer facing space for the Enterprise.  But, the customer is the end of the supply chain for a retailer. So we kind of have convergence.

One of the examples that we have for review and discussion is a "vintage" application that we created ten years ago for data poor environments.  I discuss it because it is an example of the fragmentation of the supply chain and it is an example of how to create estimates that can be used to "run the business" in the absence of a completely automated system - when automation is not cost effective or possible.  This may or may not be a problem today for a truly modern environment - in some companies I am sure it is. It is an example though of the reality that businesses deal with all of the time - they have to create estimating tools to manage the business wit.

In the fresh foods departments of supermarkets the business practice was to take an item and use it to produce other items inside of the store.  So, an item was shipped to the store - like frozen loaves of French bread.  Those frozen loaves could be used in a variety of ways - they could be used make French bread, Italian bread, buns and so on.  In fact over twenty items could be produced.  Each had a different yield, each had a different retail and as a result - each had a different gross margin.

The usual practice for the department in the supermarket was to estimate gross profit achievable in the store from the shipment to the store out of the warehouse or direct delivery vendor.  This did not work when such a variety of different items could be produced - especially when an item like Italian bread was on sale - which was often.

So the category manager needed an "under the desk" (because it sat on a PC - under his or her desk) system that came up with the derivatives of the loaf of French bread (and other items). This was combined with the shipments from the warehouse system, and the sales from the point of sale system to create an estimated gross margin for the business area. Thus, we had a system that could determine the estimated product from the items that were derived from other items.

These types of systems are considered "run the business" systems - created by a non-IT professional and are not part of the census of the IT executive.  We believe that the use of Enterprise Web 2.0 tools can help the CIO get control of these systems in a web fast fashion that is in compliance with needs of a post SOX IT organization.