BLOG
NEWS (under const.)
TOOLS (under const.)
A new site is currently in development that will replace this one - Go here
Managing the Financial Supply Chain - Part 2
In Managing the Financial Supply Chain - Part 1, I reviewed the first part of Supply Chain Management Review recent article titled - Managing the Financial Supply Chain by Roland Hartley-Urquhart in a recent edition of their online magazine.
In this post, I want to go deeper into Roland's article about Managing the Financial Supply Chain because of its critical importance in how the efficacy and direction of progress of supply chains are decided under the headings of New Processes & New Competencies, Forex Risks and Capital Cost Inefficiencies
So a firm has decided to go the route of outsourcing or offshoring some of their non-core competencies, what is the immediate effect of such a strategic decision on the financial processes within the firm.
Read the rest of review here.
Tags: Financial Supply Chain, Rising Inventories, Globalization, Offshoring, Outsourcing, Working Capital, Vertical Integration
Managing the Financial Supply Chain - Part 1
Supply Chain Management Review has an article titled - Managing the Financial Supply Chain by Roland Hartley-Urquhart in a recent edition of their online magazine.
Understanding and managing all aspects of the financial supply chain is an essential ingredient for business success. While that statement has always been true, it takes on a new level of importance in today's world of global sourcing and production outsourcing. The recommendations offered in this article can help supply chain professionals more effectively integrate the physical flow of goods with the financial flow.
As the previous series on Creating the Optimal Supply Chain amply demonstrated, there are three essential flows in a supply chain - Material, Information and Financial flow. While the first two are often frequently dissected and analyzed, the third is comparitively less so and thus I thought that I would do a piece on that.
Voila!!
Never have truer words been spoken:
Global sourcing and outsourcing have the added benefit of generating cash for many companies, as investments in plants, equipment, and working capital shift from the brand owners and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to their trading partners, who in many cases are overseas. While these benefits can't be denied, business leaders need to assess the unintended consequences of their global sourcing and outsourcing strategies beyond direct cost and capital savings. In particular, they need to recognize that the labor cost advantage of moving these activities offshore masks hidden costs and risks within the financial supply chain.
Read the rest of the review
here.
Tags: Financial Supply Chain, Rising Inventories, Globalization, Offshoring, Outsourcing, Working Capital, Vertical Integration
Creating the Optimal Supply Chain - Review (Supply Chain Enterprise Systems: The Silver Bullet?)
In this concluding review of the report titled - Creating the Optimal Supply Chain published by experts from Wharton and BCG, I take a look at the section titled - Supply Chain Enterprise Systems: The Silver Bullet?. In earlier posts, I had reviewed the first three sections namely, You Can't Manage What You Can't Measure': Maximizing Supply Chain Value, Avoiding the Cost of Inefficiency: Coordination and Collaboration in Supply Chain Management and Flexibility in the Face of Disaster: Managing the Risk of Supply Chain Disruption. The report - Creating the Optimal Supply Chain is available online as well.
There can be little doubt in the minds of supply chain professionals and practitioners that managing the supply chain is no easy task no matter how simplified the meta level process diagram looks like that neatly shows product flows in one direction and information flows in the other. It is precisely because supply chain management is such a complicated issue that Supply Chain Enterprise systems have appeared on the scene from a variety of vendors - SAP, Oracle, i2, Manhattan etc. However, since supply chain management is a rather complex task in itself, systems deployed to facilitate supply chain management are also complex such that a practitioner now has to deal with supply chain complexity through a complex system. And thus go I to say - "Have you really solved a problem when your solution creates two new problems?" This task is not made any easier when you have to wade through not only a complicated solution set but oodles of marketing gimmicks, ploys (and well meaning marketing professionals as well), endless half promises with inflated verbiage and out and out term misuse.
Read the rest of the post here.
Tags: Optimal Supply Chain, BCG, Wharton, Supply Chain Strategy, Triple-A Supply Chains, Sustainable Competitive Advantage, Dr. Paul Kleindorfer, Supply Chain Systems
