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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 modelsoptimize functional processes to improve cost and customer service. At the top of the model is a balanced scorecard.
Optimizing fulfillment requires a series of steps to get a shipment from its source to the end customer. These steps include sourcing and receiving inventory, storing inventory, order processing, picking and packing an order, shipping the order, and returns management.
From sourcing and bid evaluation to warehouse slotting and dynamic routing, AI tools support faster and more consistent outcomes by processing large volumes of operational data and identifying patterns that human decision-makers may overlook. These capabilities are now being integrated into mainstream TMS, WMS, and ERP platforms.
Enterprise procurement teams face growing pressure to deliver strategic value – managing supplier risk, ensuring compliance, and supporting sustainability – all without sacrificing speed or control. This blog explores the most common challenges in digital procurement and the capabilities that matter most.
Proactively adopting cleaner energy sources ensures alignment with these evolving regulations. The industry’s dependency on traditional energy sources necessitates an urgent shift toward cleaner alternatives. These initiatives also lead to cost savings by maximizing load capacity and reducing fuel consumption.
Three months into 2025, we have seen a barrage of on-again, off-again tariffs that have supply chain and logistics teams reeling, as they must rethink everything from next weeks shipping route to their foundational networkmodels. With the global e-commerce market predicted to reach $8.1 The Ukraine-Russia conflict is ongoing.
Enterprise procurement leaders are under more pressure than ever—juggling cost control, compliance, supplier risk, and internal complexity, all while trying to modernize outdated systems. AI, automation, and generative tools are redefining efficiency, allowing procurement teams to move from reactive to proactive decision-making.
GEP and the North Carolina State University (NCSU) Supply Chain Resource Cooperative surveyed supply chain, procurement and IT professionals across a range of industries to gain insight into their priorities and strategies regarding supply chain resilience and optimization. Business Spend Management Solutions are Networked .
If you’re evaluating procurement technology or exploring ways to drive more value from existing systems, chances are you’re looking beyond tactical fixes – you want a smarter, scalable strategy. Misaligned priorities across finance, legal, and procurement create friction that delays decision-making and reduces impact.
Traditionally, procurement has been a process weighed down by manual tasks, fragmented systems, and endless paperwork. Today, procurement is undergoing a transformation. While procurement teams have long worked to add strategic value, Artificial Intelligence (AI) amplifies their impact.
In a previous post , I made a case for how the Chief Supply Chain Officer (CSCO) and Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) are smarter together. Accordingly Supply Chain and Procurement will need continuous collaboration. Such sourcing events can be in the context of direct materials or logistics capacity.
However, recent disruptions have highlighted the vulnerabilities of these complex networks, resulting in significant financial losses for companies. It is crucial for organizations to understand the importance of Purchase Order collaboration to effectively manage their direct spend, optimize operations, and mitigate risks.
Supply chain efficiency is the cornerstone of success and involves the effective management of processes, resources, and technologies from procurement to production, transportation to warehousing. As companies across industries have discovered, a well-optimized supply chain can drive significant improvements throughout their operations.
But between rising costs, complex logistics, and the constant struggle to optimize space and labor, staying ahead can feel like an uphill battle. That’s where warehouse optimization comes in. Here’s what you can expect: A clear definition of warehouse optimization and its core components. Ready to get started?
Procurement and Supply Chain Management are essential functions that can help companies navigate these challenges, but they are often siloed and operate in separate departments. Their metrics are often misaligned as well – supply chain focuses on service and procurement focuses on the cost of acquiring materials and services.
The discipline, first defined in 1982, includes source, make, deliver, and planning functions. One of my favorite supply chain leaders has a stack of Palantir reports in black binders on his desk. Kinaxis Purchase of Rubikloud. Kinaxis Purchase of Rubikloud. The Rubikloud acquisition was a $60M cash purchase.
Supply chain execution is required to distinguish between the high runner purchases and the slower-moving products customers are willing to wait for. In a study of logistics providers conducted by Fraunhofer IML, only 36% of organizations reported having a clear overall plan for digital transformation.
The basic frame of supply chain planning–functional taxonomies for optimization on a relational database–must be redesigned before supply chain leaders can reap the benefit of deep learning, neural networks, and evolving forms of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Graph architectures also use different optimization technologies.
In May 2025, one in seven home-purchase agreements fell through resulting in the cancellation of 56,000 purchase contracts. Supply chain was defined in 1982 as interoperability between source, make and deliver. The concept was that managing trade-offs and optimizing the whole to drive business outcomes would improve value.
Since January, Canadians’ weekly grocery trips have become a real-time indicator for the potential impacts of tariffs as shoppers have responded to threats with a showcase of buying power, prioritizing nationally sourced and manufactured products even before a single tariff was enacted.
But companies often have diverging incentives and interests from their supply chain partners, so when they independently strive to optimize their individual objectives, the expected result can be compromised. ”. I think about this discussion with Keith often as I work on the Supply Chain Index and edit the chapters of Metrics That Matter.
By embedding analytics across logistics, sourcing, and fulfillment, businesses gain the visibility and foresight needed to stay competitive.Analytics-driven leadership is no longer a luxury; it’s the foundation of operational survival in todays volatile business environment. Today, agility and adaptability determine who thrives.
I know that your primary focus is procurement. Or planned orders to purchase orders?) I observed companies use the beer game as an educational tool or a social networking activity. I encourage all to backcast to test and improve their models. Don’t limit your thinking to only the optimizers. Go to the source.
Source: Supply Chain Insights ASCM defines resilience in the SCM Supply Chain Dictionary as the ability of a supply chain to anticipate, create plans to avoid or mitigate, and to recover from disruptions to supply chain functionality. I would then consider taking five actions: Build on the Power of Existing Networks.
Networks Have Fistinct Advantages. In one McKinsey survey of more than 100 large organizations in multiple sectors, companies that regularly collaborated with suppliers demonstrated higher growth, lower operating costs, and greater profitability than their industry peers. Those include trust issues, the operating model, and technology.
That’s why staying on top of the latest supply chain planning trends is so important – they can make all the difference when it comes to staying competitive, reducing costs, and meeting your customers’ needs. They are more likely to shop for discounts and sales and may delay purchases of some items.
Digital commerce efficiently requires the digitalization of many customer-facing operations and sourcing and procurement. It includes all of its elements: customers, sales channels, products, warehouses, logistics network, and the interactions between them. This includes internal and external data sources.
I have learned that supply chain systems are more complex than I originally thought, and that the relationships between supply chain metrics are nonlinear. In my work on the Supply Chain Index , I see that companies I recognize as doing network design well are rising faster on the list of the Supply Chain Index work.
According to a July 2014 supply chain research study from Accenture focused on Big Data and supply chain risk management, most organizations have high hopes for using big data analytics in their supply chain but many have had challenges in deploying it. This is where the platform approach to supply chain management comes into play.
by Diane Reynolds – Project Director Healthcare Transformation at One Network Enterprises. Multiparty Networks are Proven Technology. One Network has years of experience in healthcare supply networks that provide medicines and vaccines to hundreds of millions of people in Africa and around the globe.
This architecture deliberately pushes beyond visibility to enable action and automation, ultimately working toward what project44 describes as “self-optimized logistics” through “adaptive, automated actions at scale.” This extensive connectivity has resulted in impressive metrics: 1.2
The introduction of smoke-free products made the use of spreadsheet tools far less efficient in the capacity and sourcing planning as the new product categories had rapid growth. “We We needed to simulate multiple scenarios of significantly increased capacity and sourcing complexity, at speed and over a long planning horizon.
Automotive distributors play a vital role in the automotive supply chain by procuring parts, warehousing them, and then supplying them to OEMs (original equipment manufacturer), retailers or end consumers. Eight key processes of automotive distributors Automotive distributors have specific processes that need to be optimized and streamlined.
Source Merriam-Webster Dictionary. And, should it be taken one step further to orchestrate bidirectionally market-to-market in market-driven value networks? The original principles of a value network that can sense, shape and translate demand with near-zero latency are being lost in the fog. The acronyms keep coming….
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. How often do purchases happen?
Some still have significant opportunities for additional efficiency gains, which can come from utilizing a B2B network to facilitate the buying and selling of products and services. B2B networks have evolved over the years from simple one-to-one connections to one-to-many connections.
It’s time to focus on how we innovate and optimize our businesses and operations in this permanently altered world. Across many of our industries, conventional wisdom about best practices for supply chain operations and logistical networks is being challenged. Challenges drive dramatic shifts in supply chain and logistics.
This is because most classical planning solutions lack the modeling capability and computing power to accommodate different data sources, large SKU count, and detailed constraints and contingencies to build an immediately executable plan. each with discrete plans generated typically in sequential batch runs.
Experts from North Carolina State University and GEP conducted a survey on supply chain, procurement and IT leaders to determine their challenges and priorities, focusing on examining gaps in the supply chain. The study found that these leaders considered the largest gap to be between supply chain and procurement, citing it as a major issue.
In the absence of communication, even the best suppliers can only deliver marginal value at best. For optimal effectiveness, supplier selection, contract management , and supplier development must be supported by consistent, streamlined, and transparent collaboration. Collaboration brings visibility and agility for gaining market share.
For AFFLINK's partners and affiliates navigating complex procurement environments, ESG integration reshapes how supply chains are built, evaluated, and optimized. With consumers and investors alike expecting higher accountability, ESG compliance has become a key differentiator in global procurement.
Retail returns occur when a customer returns the purchased items to a seller in exchange for a refund, store credit, or a similar product. Returns come with plenty of challenges around logistics, inventory, and predicting volatile sales trends. 83% of consumers with a household income of over $100,000 report that returns are important.
Organisations that have successfully implemented RPA initiatives reportcost savings of up to 80% and time savings of up to a staggering 40%. Procurement. Procurement can also have RPA do dynamic searches of websites to source or conduct market research for future buys and tenders. Purchase Order Management.
Leveraging the inventory planning and optimization solution from Logility , this well-established brand generates trend insights and supports a formal product review process, resulting in a 44% reduction in its SKU portfolio and more meaningful value for its customers. which helps us make smarter decisions with greater confidence.”
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