Security Concerns Aside, Don't Stop Collaborating

Will a sharper focus on security cause companies to collaborate less with partners, suppliers, and customers? It shouldn't, say collaborative companies-in fact, quite the opposite. "Everyone has a heightened sense of security, but collaboration stays on the agenda because it's such an essential element of business," says Rick Radecki, E-business director at Delphi Automotive Systems Corp., a $29.1 billion auto-parts maker in Troy, Mich.

Companies need to collaborate over the Web more than ever to assure timely delivery of goods, especially items needed to keep the nation's assembly lines rolling, says Gene Tyndall, executive VP of global supply-chain solutions at logistics provider Ryder System Inc. "Information sharing is what has to happen," he says.

In the post-Sept. 11 era, Tyndall sees Web collaborators increasing use of decision-support tools to gain a better view of the information in the supply chain, such as location of alternative parts that could be shipped to a manufacturer if the primary supplier fails to deliver on time. Companies realize they need better information to manage during a crisis, and the term "event management" has surfaced as a favorite expression among logisticians. "Sept. 11 was a major event that had to be managed," Tyndall says. "The Holy Grail is in the execution."

Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control used a collaboration tool to deliver a proposal for a rocket project to the Army on Sept. 13, a day when package-delivery companies were grounded because of the terrorist attacks. Chuck Barnard, supply-chain coordinator for Lockheed, says the immediate need for the rocket project didn't allow the Army to push back the deadline for the proposal, even though courier service was disrupted. Driving the plans from Lockheed, in Dallas, to the Army base in Huntsville, Ala., wasn't a good solution because a problem on the road would mean a missed deadline.

Barnard says he called the Army and suggested that his company deliver the plans via the Internet using Ventro Corp.'s Collaborative Commerce Solution. The Army agreed. Within an hour, he had walked Army personnel through the process of logging on to a secure virtual workspace set up on Lockheed's servers, then Lockheed engineers walked Army personnel through the rocket plans. "All they had was a computer and E-mail, and we supplied the collaborative portal," Barnard says.

Lockheed doesn't know yet whether its rocket plans will be used, but Barnard says the Ventro software kept it in the running. "The real story for me," he says, "is that there's capability to collaborate even in crisis."