A persistent pandemic around the world and global geopolitical conflicts continues to dominate headlines. Navigating uncertainties and managing supply chain challenges accordingly has, out of necessity, become a top business priority.
The Business Costs of Supply-Chain Disruption report by the Economist Intelligence Unit estimates that the disruptions of the past two years are costing companies, on average, 6 to 10% of annual revenues. This doesn’t include reputational costs as companies struggle to maintain supplies of their goods.
The report goes on to say that, as a consequence, businesses are exchanging efficiency for greater resilience. Some are prioritising costlier suppliers in less risky markets.
The EIU cautions that such strategies come at a cost. “But firms are working to mitigate these costs through investments in technology, simplified and regionalised supply chains, and, in some cases, simplifying the design of goods to make components easier to source, as this report discovers.”
In this episode of PodChats for FutureCIO, we are joined by Kuntha Chelvanathan, Partner, Supply Chain, and Procurement Transformation, IBM Consulting, APAC, to provide with some perspective around supply chain resilience and growth amid the continuing uncertainties.
1. For chief supply chain leaders, what are the top three learnings since 2020?
2. How are these learnings translating into change in terms of how supply chain systems and processes are designed and operated?
3. Specific to visibility, define for us what is visibility in the context of the supply chain?
4. Uncertainty will likely continue to be the norm in the years ahead. Given this, how should the CSCO help better prepare the organisation to improve the supply chain’s resilience?
5. What is important to supply chain operations going forward? What are the key imperatives they will focus on?