A report released today lists five ways that “best in class” companies enlist more diverse suppliers, boosting their procurement business with minority-owned firms, according to the data analytics provider Supplier.io.
Westchester, Illinois-based Supplier.io conducted its research by teaming with Sourcing Industry Group (SIG), a membership organization that provides thought leadership and networking opportunities to executives in sourcing, procurement, and outsourcing from Fortune 500 and Global 1000 companies.
The rewards for that effort can be great, Supplier.io said. Companies that achieve that goal of consistently including small and diverse-owned businesses in their procurement activities can improve their bottom-line results, as measured by decreased supply costs via supplier competition, and better product innovation through the entrance of new products, services, and ideas.
To get there, best-in-class companies ranked higher in five specific areas:
• data-driven accountability: Track metrics at the business unit or product level, and use that data to hold specific teams accountable.
• proactive planning: Start category planning well ahead of time and bring in diverse suppliers earlier and for specific purposes.
• connecting business goals to diversity goals: Tie supplier diversity goals with current business objectives, and build a direct relationship with the supplier diversity team and business leaders outside of procurement and finance.
• collaboration across the company: Focus more on how diverse suppliers can support specific business unit needs while also making it easier for all teams to find and engage diverse suppliers.
• balancing data and relationships: Use data to prioritize specific relationships with business unit teams and diverse suppliers, rather than focus on one or the other.
“Companies are always looking for ways to improve their supplier diversity programs and have been asking for us to provide insights on ‘how’ the most successful organizations are, across industries, achieving greater results. We wanted to go beyond the normal best practices and use data to identify specific actions leaders are taking to achieve better integration of diverse suppliers, increased diverse spend and success” Aylin Basom, Supplier.io CEO, said in a release. “Our new best practices report provides clear ways that teams can optimize the steps they’re already taking to vastly improve their results—without needing additional budget or resources—and more deeply embed diverse suppliers within their growth strategy.”
The New Hampshire-based cargo terminal orchestration technology vendor Lynxis LLC today said it has acquired Tedivo LLC, a provider of software to visualize and streamline vessel operations at marine terminals.
According to Lynxis, the deal strengthens its digitalization offerings for the global maritime industry, empowering shipping lines and terminal operators to drastically reduce vessel departure delays, mis-stowed containers and unsafe stowage conditions aboard cargo ships.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
More specifically, the move will enable key stakeholders to simplify stowage planning, improve data visualization, and optimize vessel operations to reduce costly delays, Lynxis CEO Larry Cuddy Jr. said in a release.
German third party logistics provider (3PL) Arvato has agreed to acquire ATC Computer Transport & Logistics, an Irish company that provides specialized transport, logistics, and technical services for hyperscale data center operators, high-tech freight forwarders, and original equipment manufacturers, the company said today.
The acquisition aims to unlock new opportunities in the rapidly expanding data center services market by combining the complementary strengths of both companies.
According to Arvato, the merger will create a comprehensive portfolio of solutions for the entire data center lifecycle. ATC Computer Transport & Logistics brings a robust European network covering the major data center hubs, while Arvato expands this through its extensive global footprint.
The new funding brings Amazon's total investment in Anthropic to $8 billion, while maintaining the e-commerce giant’s position as a minority investor, according to Anthropic. The partnership was launched in 2023, when Amazon invested its first $4 billion round in the firm.
Anthropic’s “Claude” family of AI assistant models is available on AWS’s Amazon Bedrock, which is a cloud-based managed service that lets companies build specialized generative AI applications by choosing from an array of foundation models (FMs) developed by AI providers like AI21 Labs, Anthropic, Cohere, Meta, Mistral AI, Stability AI, and Amazon itself.
According to Amazon, tens of thousands of customers, from startups to enterprises and government institutions, are currently running their generative AI workloads using Anthropic’s models in the AWS cloud. Those GenAI tools are powering tasks such as customer service chatbots, coding assistants, translation applications, drug discovery, engineering design, and complex business processes.
"The response from AWS customers who are developing generative AI applications powered by Anthropic in Amazon Bedrock has been remarkable," Matt Garman, AWS CEO, said in a release. "By continuing to deploy Anthropic models in Amazon Bedrock and collaborating with Anthropic on the development of our custom Trainium chips, we’ll keep pushing the boundaries of what customers can achieve with generative AI technologies. We’ve been impressed by Anthropic’s pace of innovation and commitment to responsible development of generative AI, and look forward to deepening our collaboration."
The Dutch ship building company Concordia Damen has worked with four partner firms to build two specialized vessels that will serve the offshore wind industry by transporting large, and ever growing, wind turbine components, the company said today.
The first ship, Rotra Horizon, launched yesterday at Jiangsu Zhenjiang Shipyard, and its sister ship, Rotra Futura, is expected to be delivered to client Amasus in 2025. The project involved a five-way collaboration between Concordia Damen and Amasus, deugro Danmark, Siemens Gamesa, and DEKC Maritime.
The design of the 550-foot Rotra Futura and Rotra Horizon builds on the previous vessels Rotra Mare and Rotra Vente, which were also developed by Concordia Damen, and have been operating since 2016. However, the new vessels are equipped for the latest generation of wind turbine components, which are becoming larger and heavier. They can handle that increased load with a Roll-On/Roll-Off (RO/RO) design, specialized ramps, and three Liebherr cranes, allowing turbine blades to be stowed in three tiers, providing greater flexibility in loading methods and cargo configurations.
“For the Rotra Futura and Rotra Horizon, we, along with our partners, have focused extensively on energy savings and an environmentally friendly design,” Concordia Damen Managing Director Chris Kornet said in a release. “The aerodynamic and hydro-optimized hull design, combined with a special low-resistance coating, contributes to lower fuel consumption. Furthermore, the vessels are equipped with an advanced Wärtsilä main engine, which consumes 15 percent less fuel and has a smaller CO₂ emission footprint than current standards.”
A growing number of organizations are identifying ways to use GenAI to streamline their operations and accelerate innovation, using that new automation and efficiency to cut costs, carry out tasks faster and more accurately, and foster the creation of new products and services for additional revenue streams. That was the conclusion from ISG’s “2024 ISG Provider Lens global Generative AI Services” report.
The most rapid development of enterprise GenAI projects today is happening on text-based applications, primarily due to relatively simple interfaces, rapid ROI, and broad usefulness. Companies have been especially aggressive in implementing chatbots powered by large language models (LLMs), which can provide personalized assistance, customer support, and automated communication on a massive scale, ISG said.
However, most organizations have yet to tap GenAI’s potential for applications based on images, audio, video and data, the report says. Multimodal GenAI is still evolving toward mainstream adoption, but use cases are rapidly emerging, and with ongoing advances in neural networks and deep learning, they are expected to become highly integrated and sophisticated soon.
Future GenAI projects will also be more customized, as the sector sees a major shift from fine-tuning of LLMs to smaller models that serve specific industries, such as healthcare, finance, and manufacturing, ISG says. Enterprises and service providers increasingly recognize that customized, domain-specific AI models offer significant advantages in terms of cost, scalability, and performance. Customized GenAI can also deliver on demands like the need for privacy and security, specialization of tasks, and integration of AI into existing operations.