George Lawrie
VP, Principal Analyst

Author Insights
Blog
Collaborative Supply Networks Can Resolve The Logistics Logjam
Road Transportation Is Fragmented And Wasteful Road freight accounts for 30% of the global logistics spend at about US$1.9 trillion per year. But road transportation is a highly fragmented industry. Most North American carriers operate fewer than 20 trucks, and companies with fewer than 50 employees generate more than 60% of European road freight market […]
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Let’s Put $1 Trillion To Work!
Have you been following the debate about business support and recovery investment programs? Perhaps you also wondered about business case realization. Meanwhile, right across industries, we’re wasting billions in trade promotion management and channel incentives. Massive Waste In Global Trade Investments I just finished reading consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry guru Rob Hand’s book on […]
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What The US Infrastructure Bill Means To You
After months of negotiations in Congress, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is about to become law. This new law will address specifics such as climate change, sustainability, and cybersecurity that all have specific requirements which, in turn, will drive your policy and regulation in the future. If you do business with the US federal […]
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Supply Chains Evolve To Become Collaborative Supply Networks
Align Finance, Sales, And Marketing For Supply Chain Success Thanks to all of you who helped with the research for The Forrester Tech Tide™: Smart Supply Chain, Q4 2021, our latest report about the maturity and business value of supply chain applications. Our survey told us that integrated business planning (IBP) is eclipsing sales and […]
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Taming The Supply Chain Tiger — Practical Measures To Mitigate Logistics Congestion
In a recent blog, my colleague Alla Valente described the increased risk of late shipments in complex, interconnected supply chains. As she pointed out, any element may fail as a result of random events such as strikes or earthquakes. Project managers following critical chain methodology build project “buffers” to absorb random shock. But in logistics, […]
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When Systemic Risks Collide: Why Supply Chain Issues Are The New Normal
Before March of 2020, “supply chain issues” was a term we’d hear after a natural disaster or labor strike — that all ended the moment we ran out of toilet paper. Unquestionably, the supply chain crisis has been a secondary theme of the pandemic, one that continues to escalate. For the 15 months since the […]
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New Technologies Transform Transportation Management
Transportation management systems used to focus on streamlining operations and reducing costs. But today, cloud-based systems use advanced technologies to focus more on customer and employee experience. Learn how.
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Rationalize Your Product Portfolio For Real Customer Focus
Smart Manufacturing Offers More Choice If you follow our research on smart manufacturing and product lifecycle management, you know that manufacturers today have more ability than ever before to develop and bring to market exciting new product variants. You have also seen our work on collaborative work management, project portfolio management, and accelerating product delivery with […]
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Learn How Modern PLM Lays The Foundation For Smart Manufacturing And Supply Chain Resilience
Manufacturers used to compete on economies of scale. Design engineers were the only users of product lifecycle management (PLM) systems. Their task was to design the lowest unit-cost piece parts for mass production. But now manufacturers must compete on customization and on time-to-market. It’s why industrial giants have bet their future on software. Drivers and […]
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We’d Love Your Feedback On New Applications Designed To Master Supply Chain Resilience
Lead time and availability determine customer experience. We all learned about that during the crisis. But now there is a global shortage of everything, from 20-foot containers to lumber and basic chemicals. You must master supply chain resilience to meet your customers’ lead time and availability expectations. Moreover, you must guarantee supply chain sustainability to […]
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Digital Business Models Mandate More Sophisticated B2B Pricing Processes And Applications
Industrial manufacturers need tighter integration with applications such as CRM and enterprise resource planning to price product and service bundles effectively.
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NRF 2020: Robotics Realize Real-Time Retail
I’ve just returned from NRF 2020. There were more than 40,000 attendees and 800 exhibitors from 99 countries. They showed how to deliver real-time retail, applying technology to win, serve, and retain the most demanding retail customers. This year, the emphasis was more than ever on boosting supply chain responsiveness to anticipate customers’ latent demand. […]
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Modern Retail Planning Anticipates Customer Intentions
Don’t Just Satisfy Customers; Anticipate Their Every Desire! One of our retail clients told me: “No one rewards you for merely satisfying customer demand. These days, you need to be three steps ahead . . . You must embed superior retail planing to anticipate their whims and desires!” “Finger in the air” techniques used to […]
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Use Trade Promotion Management To Boost Return on Promotions
Trade Promotions Are Hard To Execute We all know that sometimes brands run promotions that don’t seem to make sense. I expect that you have seen “buy one, get one free” offers in stores with bare shelves. Colleagues say that movie-themed merchandise often hits the stores just when the movie season is over. We have […]
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Holiday 2019: AD&D Leaders Should Deploy Sophisticated Analytics In Their Trading Support Applications To Optimize Holiday Planning
The holiday season is the year's biggest test for retail. Good use of data can help application development & delivery professionals improve results.
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Holiday 2019: AD&D Leaders Should Test Customer-Facing Applications Early To Guarantee Performance During Peak Trading
Application development & delivery professionals in retail must prepared for the year's busiest season. These three steps can help.
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The Future Of Retail: From Store To Stage
Did you know that 90 former Toys R Us big-box stores are now Urban Air Adventure Parks? Here at Forrester, we’ve been anticipating that retail, entertainment, and hospitality would ultimately merge. We discussed the trend here and have more research in the pipeline for you. Application development and delivery professionals must look sharp and emulate […]
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Embed AI In Your Digital Supply Chain To Win, Serve, And Retain Customers
Read an overview of the three main ways AI can augment supply chain management operations.
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Does Atrify Signal The Atrophy Of GDSN? Decoding The 1WorldSync Acquisition
“Product data is the lifeblood of many large enterprises. For manufacturers and CPG companies, the efficiency of the product supply and distribution chain may be their one and only true differentiator,” Forrester wrote in 2009. Ten years later, it’s still true, and data synchronization is the means to connect that data outside your org to […]
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Benchmark Your Retail Technology Investment Plans
When benchmarking retail technology investment plans, we found that retailers around the world plan to: Maintain interest in SaaS for agility — and exploit PaaS for differentiation. Retailers will invest in SaaS to manage application load variability, such as holiday shopping. But retailers will also invest in PaaS and cloud microservices management frameworks. They do […]
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