Talent test - managing the supply chain revolution

Rapid advances in technology are fast transforming supply chains into instruments for business advantage and greater profits. But those who must manage and manipulate them are not adapting nearly as quickly.

Data, networks and high-powered computing are helping make supply chains more agile, streamlined and robust. As a result, supply chains are transforming from logistics operations focused on cost management and efficiency into dynamic business networks that facilitate swift responses to market changes and enable business growth. Please see the briefing paper “Future of business: supply chains” in this research programme.)

Creating and operating these fast-evolving supply chains requires significant organisational change. “New [technology] tools will transform the way supply chains are designed and managed, presenting a new and significant challenge to logistics and supply-chain management,” says Stan Fawcett, professor of global supply chain management at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. “Many traditional approaches will need to be reimagined.”

Acquiring the talent to implement change is becoming a major corporate challenge. Demand is rising for tech-savvy supply-chain managers, experts say, yet neither the industry nor the education system are equipping people adequately with the skills and knowledge required to capitalise on the opportunities that lie ahead.

Digital disruption 

An array of forces are driving increased demand for qualified supply-chain talent, but the most powerful is the emergence of “pervasive commerce”—anytime, anywhere buying and selling made possible by the rise of social, mobile, cloud and big data technologies. Supply chains have had to adapt to support this transformation of business, while supply-chain managers have had to acquire many new skills.

Modern supply-chain managers oversee a complex web of interactions that enable a vast array of business activities. “You have to manage all the relationships—from customer relationships to supplier relationships,” Mr Fawcett explains. “The supplier network is a combinatorial nightmare.” 

“Supply chains now are global, and they have become more integrated,” adds Paul Ballew, global chief data and analytics officer at Dun & Bradstreet—and companies are keen to get clearer views inside them. “They need to understand how the interconnectedness of tier-two and tier-three suppliers affect the primary suppliers, and they need to understand if there are forward-looking risks that could disrupt their supply chain or their quality or whatever their business objective is.”

Fortunately, data collection and analysis are offering companies unprecedented transparency and enabling new levels of insight into vast and far-flung sets of relationships. “We have two things that we never had before: We have global data that tracks transactional interactions between businesses, and, secondly, we have analytics that allow us to deal with large data sets to connect the dots in terms of buyers and sellers,” Mr Ballew says. “This involves an incredibly complex network-discovery process.” 

Meanwhile, a new breed of cloud-based business networks is emerging to connect companies with a vast pool of potential suppliers, ultimately replacing catalogues, web searches, phone calls, emails and sales meetings. These platforms help companies vet potential partners and meet specific needs—whether to boost diversity or local-country sourcing or to meet corporate social responsibility goals—more effectively.

These new technologies enable companies to engage in more active, less reactive supply-chain management and to collaborate in new ways with suppliers, which can create new value and lay the groundwork for what might be dubbed “pervasive value creation” along a company’s entire supply chain.

A shift in skill sets, a shortage of talent. 

The implications of all these changes for executives are profound. Indeed, the redesign of supply chains is being accompanied by major changes in the roles and responsibilities of supply-chain managers. (Please see related research “Future of business: human resources”.

"Today's global supply chains require a new focus on technology and innovation as well as a willingness to invest in these areas for the long term,” said Scott Sopher, a principal at Deloitte Consulting and the leader of its supply-chain and manufacturing operations practice, in a press release. “A true commitment to innovation will help organisations better prepare for the future, manage supply-chain risks and stay ahead of the curve.”

The shift in focus to innovation and away from cost reduction and operational efficiency is changing the portfolio of skills and knowledge that supply-chain managers must possess. For instance, the expansion of big data analysis is driving a need for training in statistics, forecasting, probabilities, mathematical modelling, finance, economics, marketing and accounting, according to Mr Fawcett.

As a result, companies are looking in new places for new hires. “While employees for the first generation of supply-chain talent were recruited from engineering programmes—primarily chemical, mechanical and industrial engineers—today’s entry-level employees are coming from business school supply-chain programmes,” writes Lora Cerere in the 2014 Supply Chain Talent Report.

But good candidates are in alarmingly short supply, making talent the number one supply-chain risk for companies today, according to Ken Chadwick, an analyst at Gartner, a US industry research firm. Competition for talent is so fierce that 85-100% of graduates of university supply-chain programmes have jobs before they graduate. 

“Companies need supply-chain talent with the right skills, experience and mindset to harness the value of supply-chain innovations. Unfortunately, the right kind of supply-chain talent is extremely difficult to come by these days,” a March 2014 study by the Material Handling Institute and Deloitte maintains. This demand will only grow; the report predicts the addition of 1.4m new supply-chain jobs by 2018 in a field that currently employs about 6m people. 

While the supply-chain management field struggles to scale up, it will also have to gear up for even greater changes ahead. There is no time to waste.