What's Next - Craigslist?

SmartFreightWare's COO, Jim Bramlett, brilliantly summarized, in a recent Letter To The Editor, what I've been fumbling around trying to say for some time now.

The big disconnect when almost everyone pays lip service to the idea of business relationships lies in the chasm of convenient definitions.  The "marriage" analogy may be trite, overused, and overplayed, but real business relationships - with suppliers, customers, service providers, consultants, and other suply chain partners - take hard work, focus, commitment, communication, accountability, focus, shared values and objectives, and continuous maintenance (preventive and otherwise).

Far too many supply chain relationships are treated more like arrangements with escort services: a relationship without commitment; payment for time, services, and company - and no more; and the freedom to go in a different direction with no warning and for no particular reason.

An inelegant example, perhaps, but an apt comparison.  A poorly constructed and unmaintained relationship with one-way terms might be momentarily gratifying, but can leave the short-term players, in the words of the great Eagles hit, "all alone at the end of the evening, when the bright lights are turning to blue . . ."