Latest news with #MarkFowler
Business Wire
3 days ago
- Business
- Business Wire
Grimco Thrives Using Cleo Integration Cloud Platform to Drive Business Growth and Efficiency
CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Cleo, the global leader in supply chain orchestration solutions through its Cleo Integration Cloud (CIC) platform, today announced a successful partnership with Grimco, Inc., a leading provider of signage products and services. This collaboration, now 1.5 years in the making, has supported Grimco's growth as it celebrates its 150-year anniversary in 2025. Through Cleo's supply chain orchestration solutions, Grimco has streamlined operations, improved forecasting, and enhanced customer and vendor relationships. "Partnering with Cleo and utilizing Cleo Integration Cloud (CIC) has been a game-changer for Grimco," said Mark Fowler, IT Infrastructure Manager. "Cleo's solutions have allowed us to reduce manual entry, streamline EDI processes, and improve the ease of exchanging documents with our customers and vendors. This collaboration has had a tremendous impact on our efficiency and is a key enabler for our continued growth." Grimco, known for its extensive portfolio in the signage industry, provides a range of products including large format printers, materials, inks, and durable signage for municipal and government projects. Their customer base spans small businesses to large enterprises across the US, Canada, and the UK. Before adopting Cleo's solutions, Grimco faced challenges with their previous EDI solution, which was difficult to support and lacked the flexibility needed for business growth. "Our decision to move to Cleo was driven by the need for a secure, cloud-based solution that would allow us to better integrate our systems and streamline data movement," Fowler said. "With Cleo, we've achieved easier integration, faster partner onboarding, and a more secure data exchange environment." As a result of implementing CIC, Grimco has experienced significant improvements in operational efficiency. The company has reduced manual data entry, improved inventory management, and enhanced forecasting accuracy. These benefits have contributed to increased margins and more reliable shipments, ultimately supporting Grimco's expansion. Grimco's growth, including a doubling of their size since 2020, demonstrates the power of Cleo's solutions in supporting business scaling and operational optimization. By leveraging Cleo's managed services and professional services, Grimco can focus on its core business while ensuring their integration efforts continue to evolve. "We've learned a lot from Cleo," Fowler said. "Their expertise has been invaluable, especially when onboarding new trading partners. We don't plan to become experts in EDI ourselves – that's where Cleo's professional services team comes in to ensure smooth integration while we focus on what matters most: our customers." 'On behalf of Team Cleo I want to congratulate the entire Grimco organization on the amazing milestone of their 150 th anniversary,' Cleo President and CEO Mahesh Rajasekharan said. 'Very few companies attain such amazing success, and as your supply chain orchestration partner, we are truly honored to have contributed to Grimco's growth and success over the years. Today, and as Cleo Integration Cloud continues to evolve with AI and Automation, and so much more, we'll be right there with you creating value for you and your customers for many years to come.' About Grimco, Inc. Established in 1875, Grimco has grown to be a leading distributor and manufacturer of sign supplies and equipment for the sign and graphics community. With over 70 locations across the United States, Canada, and the UK, Grimco provides essential items and favorite everyday products from trusted brands. Grimco proudly serves the graphics, traffic, electrical, and screen printing industries. To learn more about our business please visit our website. About Cleo Integration Cloud Cleo Integration Cloud (CIC) is a cloud-based integration platform, purpose-built to design, build, operate, and optimize critical ecosystem integration processes. The CIC platform brings end-to-end integration visibility across API, MFT, EDI, and non-EDI integrations, giving technical and business users the confidence to rapidly onboard trading partners, enable integration between applications, and accelerate revenue-generating business processes. On the platform, businesses have the choice of self-service, managed services, or a blended approach – ensuring complete flexibility and control over their B2B integration strategy. About Cleo Cleo is a supply chain orchestration software company focused on business outcomes, ensuring each customer's potential is realized by delivering solutions that make it easy to discover and create value through the movement and integration of B2B enterprise data. Cleo gives customers strategic, 'outside-in' visibility into the critical end-to-end business flows happening across their ecosystems of partners and customers, marketplaces, and internal cloud and on-premise applications. Our solutions empower teams to drive business agility, accelerate onboarding, facilitate the modernization of key business processes, and capture new revenue streams by reimagining and remastering their digital ecosystem through robust application, B2B, and data integration technologies. For more information, visit or call +1.815.282.7695.
Forbes
02-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
FCC Under Trump Creates More Questions Than Answers For Media
UKRAINE - 2021/11/25: In this photo illustration, U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seal ... More is seen on a smartphone screen with the US flag in the background. (Photo Illustration by Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) I doubt too many of my media brethren paid a lot of attention to the Federal Communications Commission in the last four years. And with the flood of tumultuous changes throughout the federal government, you might still not be focused on the FCC – but you need to. Whether you are a legacy broadcasting or cable company, a broadband provider, or Big Tech, you're likely to have a lot more questions than answers about what the new FCC will mean for your business in the next four years. You might well have expected – or still expect - the Trump FCC 2.0 to deliver a massive deregulatory blitz. For those with long memories (or good Googling skills), you might have anticipated a stripping away of legacy regulations akin to what took place under the Reagan Administration-era FCC. Reagan-era FCC Chairman Mark Fowler famously quipped that 'TV is just a toaster with pictures,' and the Commission dramatically curtailed significant long-standing regulations of the broadcasting business. It eliminated the Fairness Doctrine leading to the explosion of partisan talk radio, financial syndication ('fin-syn') rules that protected the market for independent TV producers, relaxed the limits on the concentration of TV station ownership, and facilitated Rupert Murdoch's purchase of the TV stations that became the foundation of the Fox network. Pretty major stuff. On the surface, you might think the Trump-era FCC, led by Chairman Brendan Carr, is of the same type of regulatory slashing mindset. The Commission issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking entitled In Re: Delete, Delete, Delete – no you can't make this stuff up – inviting unlimited comments on "every rule, regulation or guidance document that the FCC should eliminate.' This is the ultimate spray and pray (de)regulatory approach, but at least according to DC insiders I spoke with, it isn't clear what specific deregulatory agenda is at work in that proceeding. The FCC also recently relaxed longstanding rules requiring maintenance and operation of copper wire telecom infrastructure, but here too we can't say this is yet reflective of some broader effort to deregulate the mobile and wireline phone businesses. For years, conservatives railed against the 'public interest' standard of the Communications Act of 1934 being used to justify broad and activist FCC actions in areas such as the Fairness Doctrine, children's TV programming, cable and satellite programming regulations and net neutrality. Yet now we have an FCC Chairman employing as broad a definition of 'public interest' as we've ever seen. Rather than reflecting a consistent deregulatory agenda, the initial indicators under the Trump-driven FCC actually suggest a selective but energized hands-on rather than hands-off approach to media and communications regulation. It just happens to be a vastly different set of hands operating than we've seen before. The Commission has directly initiated investigations of DEI practices at Comcast and Disney, suggesting that their practices may violate equal employment opportunity commission rules. Putting aside the irony of aggressive EEOC enforcement by a Trump Administration agency, the one thing you can't call these actions is deregulatory. The Carr FCC isn't making a move to limit its authority to regulate media companies – quite the contrary. This is activist government in action, adding a new arrow to its quiver of arrows to sling at media opponents. Remember when after the election so many thought, and some like Warner Bros. Discovery's David Zaslav hoped out loud, that it was going to be a media dealapalooza? But according to a recent statement from Chairman Carr, when it comes to approving media and communications mergers, 'if there's businesses out there that are still promoting invidious forms of DEI discrimination, I really don't see a path forward where the FCC could reach the conclusion that approving the transaction is going to be in the public interest." This should put a chill down the spine of companies with deals in the pipeline such as Skydance and Paramount Global, as well as T-Mobile and U.S. Cellular, not to mention the lengthy list of companies who had been expecting to pass 'Go' quite easily with a Trump FCC. Upon appointing Chairman Carr, Trump called him a 'warrior for free speech.' Yet we now have the FCC actively investigating CBS over its editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, claiming that its editing represents a 'news distortion.' This is of course all the more dangerous when you realize that Paramount Global is depending upon the FCC to eventually approve of its merger with Skydance. If you get into selective enforcement of news organizations with parent companies that have a host of business before the federal government, it's hard to see where this ends. The CBS action has even raised the ire of a coalition of politically conservative advocacy organizations, including The Center for Individual Freedom, Americans for Tax Reform, and the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, which recently implored the Commission to drop its CBS investigation. This isn't about right vs. left here. Trump was certainly right to call Carr a 'warrior' but what happened to the 'free speech' part? If you have a Trump FCC that loosens rather than tightens the meaning of 'public interest,' the potential for regulatory uncertainty grows exponentially. Despite strong constituencies for deregulation from the industries involved, regulations such as ownership concentration, and enforcement of regulations on programming negotiations, retransmission consent and must carry and even compliance with the limited content-related rules on the books are all fair game for an activist 'let's make a deal' regulatory approach. Earlier in my career as a General Counsel, my boss would always ask in a dispute which side had the better legal argument. Today the answer to such a question would be merely one data point among many where mischievous and politicized enforcement appears to rule the day. As someone who teaches a graduate-level course in media dealmaking and negotiation, I'm afraid that skillset, well beyond a careful legal interpretation, has never been more desperately needed by a host of media and communications industry players at the mercy of government regulatory whims.
