Supply chains need cross-functional expertise

The global body for online supply chain management for senior supply chain practitioners has found that a lack of cross-functional expertise across company departments is the biggest issue preventing supply chain executives from developing and transforming their network.

The Supply Chain Predictions for 2011, conducted by SCM World, surveyed more than 400 supply chain directors.

Significantly, 36 per cent of respondents felt their companies are suffering from a ‘business-as-usual’ approach where they prefer to maintain the status quo than pursue innovation and development.

The global recession has squeezed budgets and customers have become increasingly price-sensitive and as such, demand has become far more difficult to predict.

The report said that despite an appreciation of the need for the supply chain to be customer-focused, collaborative and cross-functional in order to be competitive, this has yet to be achieved.

“A significant number of organisations still did not appear to genuinely appreciate the role supply chain can play in competitive differentiation,” the report said.

More than half consider their key pressure points to be supplier capacity shortage and constraints (50.6 per cent), increasing supply chain complexity (51.0 per cent), rising transportation costs (50.6 per cent), increasing commodity pricing (54.5 per cent), and demand volatility (62.7 per cent).

The report is only available to members of SCM World.

Read more here.