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To build an outside-in model, and use new forms of analytics, we must start the discussion with the question of, “what drives value?” ” Traditional planning models optimize functional processes to improve cost and customer service. You are right. Or the use of AI to improve supply chain planning.
When I started this research project, I was busy. One of my lessons learned in completing survey-based research over the past twelve years, is that projects are full of surprises. To manage continuous improvement, companies need a clear definition of excellence and organizational alignment to that goal. What Drives Value?
However, this approach ignores real purchasing behavior, such as customers buying complete sets of four tires. Probabilistic demand forecasting, in contrast, provides a full probability distribution, revealing actual purchasing patterns and enabling inventory planners to align stock levels with demand realities.
Most of the business networks were hollowed out by venture capitalists or purchased by opportunists. ” My problem is that we move through these hype cycles with little accountability for spending and with a major opportunity cost to not redefine work. Or that a focus on cost reduction can actually undermine value creation?)
Supply chain excellence is easier to say than to explain. In this area of research, I find that companies are like dogs chasing cars. At each company, there is a relationship between the metrics of growth, margin, inventory, customer service, and asset strategy. Understanding this relationship requires modeling. (A
” Followed by “How are you organized, and what defines functional excellence? And, how do you tie functional excellence to corporate value?” Companies became less clear on the definition of supply chain excellence and how to implement decision support technologies. Functional Metrics.
Decoding the Procurement Department: A Comprehensive Guide to Roles and Responsibilities This supply chain article provides a comprehensive overview of the procurement department within an organization. Read In Detail About Procurement Department Here 2.
In May 2025, one in seven home-purchase agreements fell through resulting in the cancellation of 56,000 purchase contracts. Ask a procurement or transportation professional if they have a good demand signal and expect a laugh. I don’t believe supply chain research is ever effective behind a paywall.
The results of the research are a good news, bad news story. On one hand, consumers expect to increase their online purchases post-pandemic. Consumers are planning to buy more, but only a fraction cite improved home delivery performance. Figure 1: Top Reasons for Increased Online Purchase and Home Delivery.
I share research, observations, and insights. How aligned do you believe your organization is to drive these metrics? Observations on What It Takes In the Mea Culpa post, I wrote that I used to believe that excellence in S&OP was a ratio of 60/30/10. (60% See the World Kitchen case study in the Agility Report.
This landed me in front of the Vendor Review Board at Gartner to defend my research. <This In the height of the e-commerce craze, the marketplace offerings started with a focus on e-procurement. The widely-held view was that the e-procurement market would fuel the next generation of marketplace applications.
Interview for Metrics That Matter. My kitchen table is piled high with interviews for the upcoming book, Metrics That Matter. The research is the fun part of the process. He is responsible for manufacturing, procurement, supply chain planning, logistics, quality, social responsibility and final product engineering.
While consultants know the answers (or believe they do), I believe my goal as a research analyst is to unearth new questions that should be asked (and answered together openly in the supply chain community) to improve value. I see a preponderance of reports and white papers that have lots of pages but say little. Back to John.
With the global market expansion and deepening supply chain complexity, the roles of procurement leaders have evolved from tactical to strategic. Nowadays, procurement departments not only focus on the day-to-day buying operations but also search for the most efficient ways to go about them. From whom are we buying?
Here I share some insights from my research. I am currently doing research on inventory management. In the research, I ask inventory planners to define resilience. For example, change the business models so that Ariba must interoperate with GT Nexus, E2Open with Elemica, MPO (Kinaxis) with Nulogy, etc.
So, I smile, catch my dinner partner’s eye and ask, “In our prior conversations, you mentioned the lack of clarity on the definition of supply chain excellence in your current deployments and how this is a barrier to implementing supply chain planning properly. As shown in Figure 1, the reporting relationships vary.
Each executive has a different perspective on the definition of supply chain excellence, but they are never discussed and aligned. His organization purchased an advanced planning technology from well-known best of breed provider, and the implementation should have been successful, but it was not. What Is The Ring of Fire?
The consulting team pitches a theme–vision of supply chain best practices, big data analytics, or demand-driven value networks– to the executive team, and a new project is initiated. It was also the preference of the consulting partners because the projects were longer, more costly and better aligned with the consulting model.
I think about this discussion with Keith often as I work on the Supply Chain Index and edit the chapters of Metrics That Matter. Our current processes and dependencies on Excel spreadsheets cannot get us to our goal. E2open last week announced the purchase of Serus. I believe that value is what you create. 3) Risky Business?
Consumers constantly change the mix preferences in purchases. Somedays, the focus is on steaks or ribs and the next on the purchase of ground or cubed meat. The Supply chain leader wants Technology from Company C, and the demand planner intends to purchase a solution from Technology Solution D. Avoid Badly Written RFP Bake-offs.
There will be little relief in 2022 unless the factors driving the increased import volumes—a strong economy and the fundamental shift in consumer behavior to purchase more goods and less services—change. Online buying will fuel home delivery growth, challenges and new strategies.
Millions of shoppers, like my Dad, are not going back to their old habits because there are now faster and more convenient ways for buying daily household needs. It excels on a union of E-Commerce mobile apps and last-mile delivery innovations. It also provides an excellent part-time employment opportunity with flexible shifts.
How the digital twin concept drives benefit By using advanced analytics and machine learning algorithms, digital twins can provide real-time insights and recommendations to optimize operations, reduce costs, and increase productivity. Do they purchase a 3D warehouse simulation and modeling tool? come with any of them.
The research that I have conducted has enabled me to look at this holistically. When I left AMR Research I invested over 400K in building a database of supply chain financial ratios to correlate supply chain results. After three years of research, I have just refined the methodology to start to pull the trends. I am an old gal.
After Manugistics, I worked for two analyst firms; Gartner and AMR Research, and I continued to question if the extended ERP platform that included SCP delivered greater value. The implementations were longer, the purchasecosts were higher, and the functionality was less robust and lacking flexibility. I did not see it.
I am a big believer in procurement getting involved as early as possible in new product development based on all the market knowledge available. The worst-case scenario is product engineering developing a new product, selecting a supplier and then telling procurement to get on with negotiation. How often do your purchase orders change?
The procure to pay focus may continue, but other types of COE activities are layered on top, building on progressively more sophisticated activities such as KPI development, category intelligence support, risk management, contract management, and predictiveanalytics.
Lately, as I reflected on my conversations with John (fictitious name) when I was at AMR Research, I yearn to go back in time. AMR Research was an industry analyst firm in Boston. Gartner purchased the firm in 2010.) Driving Improvements in Supply Chain Excellence. John and I held differing beliefs.
I wrote my first report on Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) while sitting on the floor in the Atlanta airport in 2005 when I was an AMR Research analyst. I wrote many reports on airport floors in those days–electrical plugs were just too scarce.) Sales and Operations Maturity Model from 2005-2008.
A new report, “Data-Enabled Supply Chain Transparency” has revealed that 77% of respondents indicated their organization considers supply chain transparency to be critically or highly important. About the research. Redwood City, CA, 13 October, 2022.
This means we need more agile, flexible, and scalable planning platforms to process and consolidate new data sources, drive insights using advanced analytics such as AI/ML to drive autonomous decisions, and expand collaboration within and outside our organizations. We need planning platforms to keep up with all the changes.
It is one of the reasons that I went from working at AMR Research to being a partner at the Altimeter Group. They excel in the four Ps of marketing. In contrast, a market-driven organization connects bidirectionally market-to-market to orchestrate the signals to shape demand and mitigate risk (buy-side to sell-side and back).
If you are going to be excellent at ecommerce fulfillment, you need to have great perpetual inventory capabilities. The proliferation of the business models is exciting. Some of the packages on the trucks moving right now are the first shipments of Metrics that Matter. Don’t fool yourself. Redefine it. Make it work.
<Bear with me… > Here I share a nine-step process in an attempt to help companies unravel the process for buying supply chain planning software. They center on how to make a good decision in the purchase of supply chain planning solutions. Most have purchased software, but are dependent on Excel spreadsheets.
Within this setup, an ERP procurement module helps companies make purchases and manage suppliers. Numbers speak louder: According to Procurement Tactics’ top procurement trends in 2025 , 83% of CPOs prioritize digitization. Keep reading to learn: What Is ERP in Procurement?
Let’s take a look at what happened with the major themes, as well as the research and analysis we conducted in 2022 to help determine what those themes will look like in 2023. The only bright note is that shipping costs will be a fraction of what they were over the last several years. Figure 1: U.S. Source: Descartes Datamyne.
They also brought me and my colleagues at AMR Research stuffed Llamas. With the purchase of i2 by JDA, and Logictools by IBM, manufacturing companies serious about network design started looking for a company, with a well-established community, that was more serious about network design. “What a crazy name! The gap is tough.
Pricing Structure Affordable pricing, with annual access to purchased courses and practical resources through Pro Plan. This learning platform covers every angle of supply chain management, from demand planning and inventory management to supplier relationship management, procurement, and logistics.
The IT taxonomy for visibility is supply chain analytics. As you implement supply chain analytics and use control theory with well-defined reference data with clear bands for control, process improvement ensues. The team was seeking analytics to monitor process compliance. Visibility Maturity Model.
The chief procurement officer (CPO) is a senior executive responsible for developing and implementing their organization’s procurement policies, procedures, and strategies. Making sure these purchases are of high quality and compliant with relevant laws and regulations also falls under the CPO’s responsibilities.
That is the role of marketing or sales or procurement. Yes, I believe that supply chain overlays on top of the sales and marketing organizations and the procurement function. Overall, total costs of the value network have increased because companies have not owned their networks. “ I scratch my head.
If you’re eyeing a role as a Procurement Manager (or are looking to hire one), you’re in the right place! As a procurement Manager, you’ll play a crucial role in overseeing the purchasing and procurement process for a company or organization, making sure they get the best bang for their buck.
This data will be combined with the financial ratio data and published in an Open Content Researchreport in April on the Supply Chain Insights Community. Here is a link to the healthcare research study in the field. Current State: Costs are rising. Power is shifting to the hospital. I think both factors are at play.
As an analyst in the supply chain market for 15 years, I have written many articles on best-of-breed technology companies purchased by a larger company. The Terra Technology investment is one of what we believe will be a series of purchases to build inter-enterprise cloud-based software platforms to redefine supply chain planning.
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