Business Transformations

Recent years have been observing the drastic changes in trends toward business environment. Novel parameters affecting businesses make them remain with two choices: adapt or perish. The fact that a once-thriving company like Nokia could not last in the market would provide a factual example of how the new business environment may be challenging. Business transformation is a term with ranges of definitions: an ultimate change in organizational process, which was caused by or resulted in a basic major alteration in structure, processes, and behaviors. It relates to new ideas, strategies, and management processes. Strategies not only affect the inner side of the company but also have peripheral consequences on the total supply chain. The chapter is an exertion to introduce some of the foremost factors on which businesses are being influenced, such as the Internet, e-business, globalization, etc. In addition, the relationships between supply chain management and business transformation and the reciprocal impacts are studied.

Supply Chain Strategy

With global expansion and emerging business model complexities such as omni-channel for retail industry, corporations are under pressure to reinvent their supply chains. They fall into the old trap of following supply chain strategies of lean, agile, or postponement. These however are not strategies, but simply the goals of an effective supply chain: to reduce cost and variability, and optimize production. In contrast, a strategy should guide a corporation on how to reach these goals. The author argues that true supply chain strategy must be derived through an evaluation of capabilities to be built to realize the business goals of a corporation. To effectively create such a supply chain, corporations must further align their technology strategy to enable their supply chain capabilities. Only when the three, business, supply chain, and technology strategies, align can truly lean, responsive, and agile supply chains be enabled that create sustained competitive advantages.

The Board-Executive Imperative

This chapter provides a fresh outlook for supply chain optimization by advocating the involvement of boards and top-teams that are uniquely positioned to address a confluence of three strategic responsibilities of a firm: scope and significance; people and culture; and measures and metrics. It provides a holistic corporate context and grapples with tougher issues often deferred or stalled as other initiatives or crises grab corporate attention. This chapter introduces his frameworks and guidelines and selective examples of success and failure in implementation. This chapter assigns primary responsibility for supply chain strategy senior executives. It observes these areas as gradually becoming too operationalized, even commoditized, with local efficiencies emphasized at the cost of gradual overall ineffectiveness. It also dispels six myths that have taken root over time, highlighting their impact and substituting these with today's realities. To make this work more practical, this chapter shares first-hand examples of supply chain practices.

Sales and Operations Management in Contemporary Organizations

Based on in-depth dialogue with executives, analyzing technology research reports, and leading supply chain transformation programs, a growing evident trend was noticed that more and more companies are seeking to enhance their Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) processes to higher levels of maturity. The question amongst supply chain executives has metamorphosed from “Why do we need to improve at this time” to “How do we do it?” This chapter attempts to alleviate those concerns by providing a practical and proven approach for change transformation across various levels of S&OP maturity, thereby enabling organizations to become more demand-driven, improve margins, increase market share, and become contemporary – Lean, Agile, and Social Sales and Operations Management (LASSOM).

Optimization of Construction Supply Chains for Greenhouse Gas Reduction

There is an increasing number of regulatory and public policy initiatives aimed at improving building energy efficiency, recognizing the importance of the built environment to achieve lower energy-related emissions. However, these efforts have generally focused on the building scale. A comprehensive reduction of carbon emissions from construction requires a wider focus, considering the building as well as the lifecycle of materials and their supply chains. There is a need for robust analysis of the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) implications of construction supply chains and to optimize supply chains configurations so as to minimize GHG emissions across multiple organizations. This chapter provides a rigorous means of assessing the dynamic and complex supply chains of construction to obtain optimal and sustainable levels of GHG reductions in a whole-of-chain approach. Outcomes represent critical new knowledge, enabling deeper understanding as well as enhanced capacity to maximize energy savings from the built environment.

Managing Purchasing with Different E-Procurement Solutions

Increased demand from the market to carry out rapid business transactions has led many companies to seek to improve their regular business transactions. The progressive development of the internet in establishing a variety of electronic marketplaces has facilitated companies to move towards applying e-procurement technologies. This indirectly increases the competitiveness of companies due to well managed purchasing activities using e-procurement technologies. The strategic decision by the top management in implementing e-procurement technologies is mainly concentrated on managing the supply of external resources and preferred to focus on the implementation of green supply chain activities to increase the environmental performance with e-procurement technologies. With the spread of internet technologies, which led to changes in business strategy and its uses, companies will be provided with a digital platform for online business transactions. Therefore, business through electronic media (e-media) have the potential and power to transform business transactions and business relationships. E-procurement became the most important strategy for the business to purchase or procure goods or materials from global suppliers. Despite the claims on usability of e-procurement technologies, some companies however show little interest in applying e-procurement technologies because of the difficulty the companies to perform purchasing activities and other key aspects that influence the companies to exploit the technologies. As a major contributor to the growth of the agriculture sector, the Malaysia Palm Oil Industry (MPOI) should explore the potential of e-procurement and other relevant technologies to be exploited in the industry and enhance its competitiveness. The information on the applicability of e-procurement technologies for different types of materials at different stages of the industry supply chain will assist the industry players to achieve efficient purchasing activities. Hence, in this chapter the case study discussed will provide relevant e-procurement solutions with respect to the MPOI and will provide comprehensive purchasing activities of different types of products along the supply chain through e-procurement technologies.

Supply Chain Performance Measurement and Organizational Alignment

The authors describe how organizations can leverage a maturity model approach in conjunction with foundational concepts of perspective-based performance evaluation models like Balanced Scorecard (BSC) to define comprehensive performance measurement framework. Maturity models are essentially a reflection of theories about how the capabilities of an organization evolve. Therefore, by design, they provide a roadmap to the next level of performance. The authors propose using maturity models as a structured way of identifying current capability or maturity level of any supply chain. They then provide guidance on selecting the right “causal linkages” between supply chain objectives and performance measures and define a mechanism for specifying more granular definitions of measures linked to strategic objectives for progressive levels of maturity. The authors survey widely used business process maturity models, current practices for measuring operational metrics, and then present a tiered framework for operational metric alignment and KPI governance, based on perspective-based design principles.

Mastering Change Management for Successful Supply Chain Transformation

Supply chain transformation is necessary for the survival and growth of an organization; the more effective the transformation, the more likely the company is to thrive. In response to the dramatic changes in the business landscape over the last few years, many companies are launching business transformation programs to drive sweeping changes in their supply chain processes. These transformations are required to match the ever-growing customer demand and drive competition in the market. The supply chain transformation can be evident in exploring new sourcing networks, establishing collaborative forecasting processes, optimizing networks and inventories, reducing supply chain complexities, improving margins, etc. In today's world, it is no longer an option whether or not to opt for supply chain business transformations. Instead, it is a strategic mandate in order to stay relevant in the industry. This chapter provides the analysis of the most common transformation failures and suggests a practical framework leveraging some of the best practices in change management.

Supply Chain Segmentation

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the factors that influence supply chain segmentation and provide a best practice transformation approach to ensure a successful journey. The initial research is based on a review of supply chain segmentation literature and the application of relevant transformation steps to specific case studies, comprising of companies from different industries. Supply chain segmentation strategy presents huge opportunities that are already being tapped by a few companies who achieved significant benefits and gained competitive advantage. The chapter provides a practical and proven supply chain segmentation framework for companies who are about to take the segmentation transformation journey.

Business Transformation

Imagine when enterprises could capture the true picture of market dynamics from the very point of the demand-origin based on the customer behavior in an omni-channel environment, and have the ability to react to those demand swings with a near-zero latency? The top-line and bottom-line impact would be so huge that it would be a no-brainer for supply chain leaders to make the needed investment. Over these years, globalized network strategies such as source-anywhere, make-anywhere, and sell-anywhere have become an implementable reality. At the same time, the efficiency (economic profitability) of that very design continues to see risks due to several geo-political and macro-economic factors. For want of a nail, manufacturing and distribution companies face the risk of losing the shoe. In this chapter, the author outlines a prescriptive approach to manage such risks through synchronous collaborative planning and proactive supply chain visibility that would help enterprises not only continue to be agile but also remain profitable.