Jonathan Gatrell, Vice President of Industry Development and Standards latest blog jonathan.gatrell@inovis.com As Vice President of Industry Development and Standards, Jonathan Gatrell is responsible for product strategy, competitive intelligence and market analysis.

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Q: How is Inovis participating with Standards?

A: Inovis has customers in every industry. Because of that, we really have to be engaged with what's happening in Standards bodies. Our customers don't just trade in North America, they trade globally. As you think about deploying your supply chain globally, you need to understand what's happening in certain geographies, what the standard of choice is for a given geography, and how we can be interoperable with that. Not just our technology, but also for understanding our customer's businesses. That's why we invest not only with my time, but also throughout the support organization, the development organization, and the Sales organization to be engaged in regional, local, as well as International Standards bodies such as X12 or VICS.

Q: What changes are taking place with Standards?

A. What changes aren't occurring in the Market? Right now, every industry is so dynamic. Whether it's automotive that has Just-in-Time manufacturing or Just-in-Time fulfillment which is a new set of activities happening in a lot of verticals, or whether it's direct to consumer. Standards are really spending a lot of time not doing data, but understanding business. The biggest change I see in Standards groups today around interoperability is that I need to understand your business process, the processes we share as organizations, so we can be more efficient in our supply chain activities and really better serve the end customer.

Q: What is the importance of Standards?

A. Standards provide a way to synchronize and interact between businesses. Without them, you wouldn't be able to have application to application integration. There'd be no single way of defining a document, a process, or the needs of a business. Standards represent that single language for integrating people, processes, and technology.