Supply Chain Management Jobs Training Focused on Risk and Profits
Are you CEO who is not sure if you could survive a disruption in your supply chain? According to a recent survey, less than 15% of CEOs believed their current supply chain could survive a major disruption like a hurricane, labor strike, or war. That means 85% of companies would feel the impact of a major disaster. Worse yet, the vendors that provide products and services couldn’t survive. Could you afford to lose a vendor supplying a major component? Your Company is Losing Money Because Of Your Supply Chain!!!
Are you a corporate executive concerned your supply chain is not optimized to increase profits and deliver on time? According to a recent survey, only 17% of CEOs say their supply chain is optimized to get the best value from their vendors. That means 83% of the companies surveyed are spending too much money in the supply chain. When you reduce costs in the supply chain, that is immediate profit to the bottom-line. The problem is many executives feel supply chain is a software problem or an accounting or finance issue. Reality, even with the best software, supply chains will continue to suffer until the people who manage the supply chain are properly trained and certified in the best supply chain practices.
(This is not an accountant's job). Would you trust your sales to a computer? No, of course not, there are people skills required to identify needs and provide solutions. Companies spend over $20 Billion a year on sales training. They dedicate 32 days of initial training and 10 days of annual training to make sure their sales people are top notch and generating revenue to cover expenses and make a profit.
No matter how much sales generates revenue, each sale has expenses. Those expenses minus the revenue equals the profits that keep businesses alive and shareholders happy. So, if you spend so much on the revenue generation, why don’t you invest in controlling expenses? This is what I mean, supply professionals, also known as purchasing or procurement, get less than the average in annual training dollars invested in the company.
These folks are responsible for spending between $4 million and $22 Million of your company’s money; yet they get between $177 and $1027 each year to improve their skills. These are the skills of reducing costs, but more importantly, the skill of making absolutely sure that when you need something to serve your clients, you have it. Not only do you have it, but you have the right stuff, in the right place, at the right time. As we said in Marine Corps, you never know when you have a good supply office, but you always know when you had a bad one because you just didn't have the things you needed to operate.
Unacceptable!!! Bottom-line, you need people who know your company in a way that cannot be digitized. You need people to work with your vendors in the supply chain so that you always get best value and top priority. Software can tell you where you are spending your money, but it cannot negotiate the deal!!! Nor can software understand your strategic vision and make moves today that ensure you are in the best position possible to generate profits, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, and, yes, even the next decade. The critical thinking required to be strategic, to think strategically, to support your strategic vision only comes from people properly trained. Even with years of experience in purchasing, the needs of today's supply chain have rapidly move beyond that experience.
This ain't the accountant, folks!!! Accountants can tell you where the money is going and can tell you how much you are spending and that you are spending too much. What you need is a Supply Leader who understands...- 24-hour global transactions
- Wars in the Middle East and Eastern Europe
- Natural disasters in Greenland and Japan
You need people who can put it all together and take action to secure the profits of your shareholders.
- A shift in currency can skyrocket your costs overnight.
- A volcano in Greenland can cut off your supply from Europe.
- And union strikes in Los Angles will stop Christmas if you are not prepared and ready to shift.
If it were only that simple!!! I mean if your supply chain was solely reliant on your ability to be innovative and drive your procurement team to squeeze out every nickel of excess. But it's not. See, your company is part of a supply chain, you have vendors feeding you to make stuff for your customers. You are in the middle. So, if your vendors are not also shifting to strategic sourcing, eventually, their supply problems become your supply problems. When your vendors get short on resources, they have to choose which customers give them the best value for the long term. If you have been choking out every single dollar, then they will choose to serve your competitor, the person who understood their market and gave them a fair deal. This means that the vendors within your supply chain are just as important as your own purchasing team. They must optimize their supply chains at the same time you are optimizing yours or else their supply chain issues become your issues. When they run out of stuff, you run out. As I said, their problems become your problems.
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