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Focusing on Efficiency in Logistics is No Longer Enough: Flexibility is Key
In today’s high-risk and uncertain supply chain environment, organizations must plan for disruptions and minimize their impact by balancing tradeoffs between efficiency and flexibility in logistics. While the focus on logistics efficiency alone has been a norm, recent years have underscored…
Tips to Drive Supply Chain Success Amid Uncertainty
This is an important time for the supply chain profession. Supply chains are in the news, on governments’ agendas, and in the spotlight. Supply chain professionals are facing disruptions on multiple fronts, including rising geopolitical tensions among countries and regions, shifting maritime trade…
Develop Contingency Plans for Supply Chain Disruptions
While organizations cannot avoid the unexpected, supply chain professionals can develop a “just in case” playbook with contingency plans to activate when alternatives are needed.A contingency plan spells out the actions to take, such as reallocating money, people, equipment, and other resources,…
Top 5 Procurement Strategic Objectives
APQC research shows that procurement is changing for the better with its strategic objectives. While in the past the focus was on cost savings, now there’s also an emphasis on avoiding supply disruption. Reflecting other changes in business environments, additional notable objectives include…
ESG Changing Supply Chain Decision-Making
In the current market, the increasing importance of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) is primarily influenced by new regulations and customers' ever evolving expectations. Business customers and consumers are increasingly aware of their purchases' social and environmental impacts,…
Supply Chain AI Moves From Theory To Reality
New and emerging technologies are changing the way supply chains operate. The impact of technology is compounded by all the recent disruptions affecting supply chains, like the pandemic, supply shortages, and security threats. Among the technologies impacting supply chain is artificial intelligence…
Artificial Intelligence Leading to New Skills for Supply Chain
Many organizations believe that AI drives value through its impact on the number of employees needed for the supply chain. Of the organizations surveyed by APQC, 46 percent consider a reduction in headcount to be a top driver for deploying AI. A slightly smaller percentage, 44 percent, consider…
Lasting Sustainability Needs These 4 Components
In 2021, the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report identified climate action failure as second greatest threat to global prosperity in both likelihood and potential impact—following infectious disease. Many of the factors in the high impact and high likelihood quadrant were other…
Small Suppliers Face Pain from Changing Requirements
“This will kill small companies.” “This” refers to the increasing complexity in sales and contracting processes. Dramatic sentiment? Yes, and this statement reflects the frustration I’m hearing from small service providers dealing with large, global buyers that have adopted a “one size…
What is the Order-to-Cash Process?
Order-to-Cash (O2C) is a critical end-to-end process that, when optimized, creates a seamless value chain from customers to the business. But for many organizations, O2C has been a particularly gnarly set of processes to optimize. Its domain stretches across functions and organizational boundaries…