RollStream Provides Supplier Community Management and Collaboration
by Bill Ives
Here is a good idea. Why not go beyond the many general, and useful, enterprise 2.0 collaboration suites and create one devoted to a specific business function. This is what McLean, VA-based RollStream has done by applying the collective supply chain experience of a number of its senior execs with their deep IT knowledge and expertise to the creation of its supply chain community management and collaboration tool. I recently spoke with two of the RollStream execs, Nick Parnaby, Chief Operating Officer, and Kerry Lenahan, Director Product Management & Marketing to get an understanding of what they are doing.
RollStream was founded in 2005 to facilitate the management of enterprise communities, specifically suppliers and trading partners. Nick said in some ways it is like the mirror image of CRM. I would agree as RollStream allows you to establish company and contact profiles for all your business contacts and then let your partners maintain their own contact information via the Web or email. However, it goes much further than CRM, as RollStream is an enterprise 2.0 application that supports collaboration between members of the supply chain in a number of ways. In this sense it more like a mirror of the newer social CRM tools that are emerging. Here is a sample RollStream contacts screen.
They are different from most enterprise collaboration tools as they are very domain specific. For example, one of the tools is focused on Credential Storage. This allows you to store trading partner credentials in company profiles. You can track or import other trading partner capabilities, such as EDI certifications, expiration dates for liability certificates and payment terms. Nick mentioned an example in the US consumer drug industry where retail drug stores need to be able to offer testing certificates on demand to inspectors for many of the drugs and other products they sell. This CPSIA Certificate Exchange Network simplifies that requirement.
You can also create B2B projects with proper security. These projects allow you to define activities with due dates and dependencies and assign them to members of your community. This facilitates accountability for task completion to your trading partners. There is a dashboard to view detailed information about who in your community is receiving, viewing and acting upon critical project information. You can track individual, company, and community progress via the centralized dashboard and view response times and completion status for key activities. An action center connected to the dashboard provides the ability to generate new communications, reminders or simply send alerts. Here is a sample activities screen.
Here is a sample conversation around a set of actions.
RollStream provides a platform and then sells additional applications like the iPhone app store. Some of these applications include: Registration, Change Management and B2B Workspaces.
RollStream is being used by a number of enterprises with large and complex supplies chains such as grocery stores and drug stores. I am familiar with the needs of at least one of their clients, Sainbury’s, as I did work on their initial enterprise portal a number of years ago. I can appreciate how the capabilities with RollStream can help. Other clients include Walgreen’s, Ahold, and Tesco. I think this is a very smart approach that should also reduce some of the adoption challenges associated with more general enterprise 2.0 tools. It comes already aligned with a key business process.
