The ability to predict and act – the way forward for Supply Chain Management

A top line up of 70 of Australia’s leading Supply Chain executives from the following sectors: Health, Retail and Consumer, Telecoms, Energy and Industrial, are spending three days in November in a closed door environment on the Gold Coast to discuss best practice supply chain management. The overall aim is to rethink supply chain structures by discussing the key areas of concern for companies such as selecting the right 3pl ,driving improved supply chain performance, reverse logistics, and how to address demand and supply forecasting in such volatile market conditions, including the effects of the currency war.

Analyst partner, IDC have shown that there is a strong notion of rethinking supply chain structures, with an effort to move to more of a variable-cost-driven approach rather than a fixed-cost-driven network. Through the implementation of effective BI strategies, companies can now understand the consequences of any business decision, which allows them to operate at a new level of intelligence – far beyond sense and respond – and move towards the ability to predict and act.

At NG Supply Chain Australia, leading industry executives; Simon Ellis – Practice Director, Supply Chain Strategies, IDC, Craig Stokoe – Global Procurement Manager, Aristocrat, Peter Fouskarinis – GM Supply Chain, Country Road, and Vince Aisthorpe – Manager Supply Management, Tarong Energy will examine the many facets to Supply Chains of the future. The increased role of business intelligence and analytics tools in the supply chain and procurement processes, the competitive challenges driving businesses to rethink their analytics strategy, and the key elements of a successful business intelligence and analytics initiative, with a specific focus on its key role in procurement and spend analysis.

Supply Chains of the Future will become more complex and involve more participants as discussed by Colin Kempter - Principal Consultant, ECN Group. As such the requirement for technology that provides supply chain agility is going to increase. Software needs to be much more agile and cost effective in order to adapt to the ever changing business requirements. A new breed of (Software as a  Service (SaaS) technologies that can be implemented quickly and that have the ability to enforce your business policies throughout your supply chain community without high costs and lengthy development cycles are becoming key areas of focus and spend. In a short amount of time SaaS has become a leading supply chain technology enabler.

SaaS, amongst many other industry leading solution technologies, will be areas of key discussion and focus for the industry executives at the NG Supply Chain Australia Summit as businesses rethink their supply chain structures. Until recently, the most important parameters for supply chain designs has been related to cost efficiency and on-shelf availability. The Global Recession has brought new factors into the equation and now supply chain executives have to figure out the best way forwards.

 

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