My father started his company in the forestry industry exactly forty-five years ago. Back then typewriters, mail, calculators and telex (which was later replaced by fax) were the main tools required to conduct business.

Due to language barriers and geographic distance, trading-houses were engaged to act as an outsourced export department, whom main task was to manage orders, oversee the supply-chain, open markets, provide finance security, ensure compliance and organise logistics.

If you are a supply chain professional you probably already know this: Building analytics solutions that produce actual value is usually a very complex endeavor which requires a lot of thought, time and effort.

The main reason is that the data you need to consolidate to get value is typically very fragmented and lives in multiple data sources, both internally, externally (at suppliers/customers) and in between (e.g. forwarders, agents, etc.). Some data might not even be possible to access.