What’s Different About Innovation in Supply Chains This Year from Last?

According to ALM Intelligence, companies’ focus in supply chain has moved from tactical to strategic as organizations have come to recognize the linkage between a well-functioning supply chain and everything else the organization is doing. To that point, most organizations entered 2023 with significantly better running, more efficient supply chain management regimes than they began with in 2022. The bad news is that with slowing global economic growth and a customer base spooked by geopolitical turmoil, demand in general is slowing.

Part and parcel of the move in focus from tactical to broader, more strategic projects in supply chain has been the realization that supply chains are an essential part of any value creation story. That may sound obvious, but it is a key hurdle many clients have had to overcome in realizing that supply chain management has implications for not just procurement and product delivery, but overall client operational strategy, finance, tax, talent, technology, and market partnership strategies as well. In other words, supply chain is key to the optimal customer experience, and “supply chain issues” has come to be a mantra for unavailable products.

To be sure, there are still kinks to work out in other areas: close cooperation between finance and operations tends to lag, while most organizations still struggle with effective data management. But the new approaches to supply chain management still foster greater collaboration, connectivity, and visibility – what is being called “radical transparency” – across client organizations, even if they’re not realizing the full benefits yet.

Another trend that has developed further since last year is the notion of sustainability and resiliency. These two concepts are usually paired together, reflecting a growing linkage between both the need for operational flexibility in supply chains – being able to quickly pivot to respond to global economic and political volatility – as well as a growing need to align an organization’s overall value proposition more closely with the impact it has on the communities it operates in.

For multiservice and management consulting providers, supply chain-related services (often bifurcated between procurement and supply chain) have moved to the forefront of their offerings, and in 2022, they played a big role in generating revenue. These services were often linked to M&A or restructuring services, but over 2022, they increasingly became the entry gateway for clients as they sought to address longer-term resiliency challenges. Not surprisingly, technology is playing a big role in supply chain deals with one multiservice provider claiming that more than half of the revenues generated by supply chain-related projects derived from their digital and advanced technologies teams.

Technology providers have benefitted from the growing importance of technology in supply chain solutions, with the center of gravity moving from platform-based solutions to outright supply chain-as-a-service solutions. Meanwhile, while the legal profession on the whole remains reactive in supply chain focused on contracts, risk, and compliance, innovators have been developing targeted technology solutions to help legal departments better manage both supply chain technology assets and supplier relationships.

The Supply Chain 2022-2023 report explores how the most innovative professional services providers in 2023 are able to help clients build effective, efficient, and resilient supply chain strategies that “wow!” customers and satisfy key stakeholder concerns.

What all this points to is a whole new set of concerns regarding recruiting, hiring, and retention for Supply Chain across the entire spectrum of US industries. Given the complexity of the change, companies will need to recruit in a whole new way. A relationship with a recruiting firm that understands and stands for the demands of this new world is likely to produce the best results. An effective recruiting partner will partner with the company to identify the right combination of skill and experience to find the top candidates and to convey to them what the hiring company stands for.

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