It’s not everday you see a respected business journal write about supply chain management (although the Wall Street Journal recently wrote a piece here). Given the strategic importance of supply chains to a business, it continues to perplex me why there aren’t more articles, but I digress. So, it was with some pleasure that I found this article at the Financial Times site (see additional comments on this article at the Solectron blog here).

I’m sure it will catch a lot of people’s attention that the article states up front that “according to Accenture, the consultancy firm, “supply chain leadership” can increase a company’s market capitalisation by between 7 and 26 per cent above the industry average.”

The article goes on to say that “supply chain managers in many sectors are looking for greater visibility of whatis happening in their supply chains and faster accessto more accurate data. This means that if there is an unexpected event, be it storms affecting shipping or a production shortfall, companies can divert stocks or bring in alternative suppliers.”

I’ve long argued here that not only can supply chains play a much more strategic role in organizations than they usually get credit for, but that today’s environment demands a responsive supply chain. To achieve this, companies need to empower people with the visibility and tools to respond to change across their virtual enterprises made up of multiple partners geographically dispered around the globe.

Great to see the increasing coverage of these critical business issues.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 at 2:52 pm and is filed under Best practices, Collaboration, General News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.