Interview with Randy Littleson, Kinaxis' VP of Marketing

Randy, congratulation on the launch of RapidResponse 9, it looks like you have successfully identified market needs and met those demands in this release of the product.


EMSNow: Randy, what is driving the success of RapidResponse in the electronic manufacturing industry and what trends have driven the developments of this new release?

Randy Littleson: There are three primary market trends that we see driving the need for our RapidResponse Response Management solution; increasing demand volatility driven by global competition and rising customer expectations, product lifecycles that continue to shrink as companies seek to "out-innovate" their competition and keep pace with changing customer requirements, and the increasing globalization of the supply chain itself. Within this distributed and rapidly changing environment, responding to change has become a more frequent and urgent need and really has become the key to competitive success. These trends are impacting all markets, but tend to be most acute in electronic manufacturing.


EMSNow: How do you solicit the opinion of your market?

Randy: We have quite a few vehicles that we use, including; a customer advisory board, very frequent interaction with customers over the phone and via visits both in terms of understanding business challenges and working with them on specific requirements and designs for how we will implement solutions, an annual user conference and through indirect but broad inputs that we gather through discussions with industry analysts and experts like those at AMR Research. We're also very fortunate to count many market leaders and innovators as our customers, so we're able to tap into their vision and ideas on a regular basis.


EMSNow: Clearly there is a relationship between the brand position and the quality of the product, even when manufacturing is outsourced, how can RapidResponse allow the OEM to maintain some supply chain visibility, or even control without having to micro manage the whole process?

Randy: Brand owners realize that while they have outsourced much of their manufacturing, they remain accountable for quality, customer satisfaction, their brand, etc. Today, brand owners are managing a virtual enterprise with a supply network consisting of many partners.

RapidResponse empowers brand owners with supply network visibility by integrating data from various systems at the supply network partners and through tools to effectively coordinate response across this virtual enterprise. This frequently involves direct collaboration with their supply network partners who not only share data with the brand owner but also collaborate and coordinate response to change to ensure the brand owner's objectives are met.

Brand owners tell us they want to proactively coordinate response to ensure the right outcome is realized – they are not interested in micro-managing their partners. So, that's what we help them do.


EMSNow: Globalisation has created more and more complex and sometimes unwieldy supply chains - can RapidResponse make these supply chains easier to maintain and actually agile enough to deal with the fickle nature of consumer demand?

Randy: This is one of the biggest areas of growth for us. It was hard enough to manage a supply chain that was local, but globalization really has created a host of new challenges. Unfortunately, because many companies lack solutions to manage a rapid and effective response to change, they are forced to maintain excessive inventory buffers at all stages of the supply network to enhance responsiveness – albeit it at a huge cost and risk given the rapid obsolescence of inventory.

By delivering users global visibility and tools to respond to change, you can have a profound impact on reducing inventory buffers while simultaneously increasingly supply chain agility and flexibility.

The reality of today's supply chain is that there are a host of problems that you can't plan your way out of. Our customers excel at planning, but they also excel now at Response Management to ensure that they are experts at dealing with the situations that couldn't have been planned for. As one customer said "we do a good job of planning, and then the phone rings!" That phone ringing could be a customer wanting to buy 100 more of your product – if you can deliver them by next Friday. Can you do it profitably? That's where we come in.


EMSNow: How has the consumer market and the way we choose and buy products effected the demands made on the supply chain?

Randy: This has really had a profound impact. Let's face it, we've all become accustomed to getting what we want when we want it. Buying things today is very different than it was 5-10 years ago. Today, I can go on the internet and compare alternatives side-by-side and get opinions on everything I'm considering. It's never been easier to lose a customer since your competitors are a click away.

For consumer electronics, we've seen a blending of technology and fashion to a large degree. I know my daughter didn't just want an MP3 player, she wanted the pink ipod Nano. These same behaviours are seen on the commercial products side where you may see a customer wanting to change configuration options on a multi-million dollar piece of equipment right up to the last minute. The end result has been less brand loyalty and increasing demand volatility.


EMSNow: It seems a key part of the new release involves managing individuals' roles in the supply chain, their responsibilities and their goals. How key is your understanding the impact that people have on the supply chain to its smooth running?

Randy: I think they are more important than ever. The reason is change. When businesses were more vertically integrated, geographically centralized and not seeing the volume of change as today, the emphasis was all on process automation – really about removing people from the equation.

Today, just the opposite is required to compete. There are a growing number of decisions that have to be made every day to deal with the high volume of unexpected changes. And these decisions are of high complexity and high risk to the business, creating the need for high visibility judgment calls to be made based on human judgment. This process requires collaboration amongst the front-line decision makers throughout the supply network that can understand the impact and evaluate the appropriate options for solving a given problem.

Empowering people is the key to responding to change. Doing so requires that you arm them with the visibility and tools to collaborate and rapidly simulate options for respond to a given change.


EMSNow: Inventory risk has had major impact in the EMS industry over the years and many are acutely aware of the importance of managing that risk and ensuring real visibility. How does the new version of RapidResponse deal with this issue?

Randy: Responding to change is in large part about balancing opportunity and risk. As you indicated, one such risk is inventory liability exposure. The root cause of this exposure is change – change outside the contractual agreement between the two parties. RapidResponse Inventory Liability Manager integrates the monitoring and management of inventory liability exposure directly into the Response Management process. It provides both brand owners and contract manufacturers with the tools to load their contract terms and then have the software provide visibility into inventory exposure.

By integrating inventory liability management into the Response Management process, companies can more proactively be aware of and manage this material financial impact in the context to responding to change to avoid the risk of an unpleasant surprise.


EMSNow: Obviously this release will have had some visibility among key accounts, how have they responded to it?

Randy: Very well. We've had the opportunity to review the main enhancements with a number of customers to get their feedback very early in the design process. This has helped to validate not only the value of the enhancements to the market but also helps to ensure that it operates the way the users will expect it to on a day-to-day basis.

This release is all about innovation to help our customers respond to change faster, with greater accurately and insights into the impact of their actions.


EMSNow: Randy, thank you for your time.


Randy Littleson assumed the role of Vice President, Marketing for Kinaxis in July 2003. Randy's strengths in building winning marketing strategies that translate end user requirements and market demand into the final product, have enabled him to create successful marketing teams throughout his more than 15 years in the industry.

Prior to joining Kinaxis, Randy served as Vice President, Marketing and Business Development at Interface Software, where he led the company's product marketing strategies, as well as all marketing communications and business development initiatives. Previously,

Randy was Executive Vice President and General Manager for Spyglass, Inc., a provider of strategic Internet consulting, software, and services for the information appliance market. He played a critical role in repositioning Spyglass from the PC technology space to the embedded software market. During his tenure at Spyglass, Randy helped build growth revenues from $0M to $50M/yr. run rate in embedded software and services in less than four years. At Spyglass Randy led product development, professional services, business development and strategic marketing, as well as the integration efforts with OpenTV Corp., who subsequently acquired the company. He has also held various management positions at Palindrome Corporation, a Seagate Software company, Novell, Inc., and Unisys Corporation.

Randy earned an M.B.A. from the Keller Graduate School of Management and a Bachelor of Computer Sciences and Communications from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.