Strategically Phase in Technology to Bolster Supply Chain Management
Starting from predicting demand, supply chain is your company’s lifeline. You can easily lose customers and miss your growth targets if only one link in the chain fails.
- Supply chain shortcomings fuel growing realization that existing IT systems are inadequate to support SCM data and process complexity. This increases pressure on IT, but attempts to find adequate solutions are fragmented, lack direction, and ultimately do not yield the desired outcomes.
- There is no overarching definition for supply chain in the organization as it means different things to different people.
- As the organization scaled up, the complexity of supply chain has increased exponentially and the skills don’t currently exist in house to deal with such complexity.
- Inadequate planning has adverse effect on the rest of the supply chain activities, and technology is blamed for the lack of enablement.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- Technology is NOT a “silver bullet.” Change the focus from technology alone to balance it across processes, people and suppliers in alignment with organizational priorities and technical maturity.
- Planning is the key. Demand forecasting and planning shape the operational success for the rest of the chain. Sharpen up planning process before investing in expensive technology.
- Adopt best practices and eliminate noise. Adopt best industry practices for most processes. Carefully pick and focus on true differentiating areas only.
Impact and Result
- Adopt a holistic perspective on supply chain management (SCM) that breaks the siloes. Understand what SCM is to your organization.
- Improve alignment of the technology initiatives with business goals and provide a foundation for SCM solution business case.
- Evaluate the current state of your Supply Chain capabilities and identify ideal state prior to choosing a solution.
- Establish competitive and future-looking differentiation in SCM practices where it can be enabled by technology.
- Leverage best industry practices and evaluate your key differentiating abilities against technological maturity and the value it is capable of bringing.
- Develop a practical roadmap the whole organization can buy into and engage and equip SCM with decision-making tools to meet business objectives and drive business strategy.