Tag Archives: Management

Cloud-Based Supply Chain Faces Scrutiny

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Cloud-Based Supply Chain Faces Scrutiny

As the supply chain looks for new tools to manage increasing complexity, as well as a need to manage risk and other variables quickly and proactively, cloud-based solutions, which are relatively underutilized today, will become more common.

What are some of the common misconceptions around cloud computing and supply chain applications?

Supply chain has generally been a very slow adaptor to new technologies, and cloud computing is no exception. Besides data security and ownership, other factors come into play around how the infrastructure would behave in terms of excess volumes and concerns the in-house IT team may have with feeling helpless when it comes to issues around performance, managing downtime, and handling end customer pressures.

Often, lack of management support is cited as a reason for not adopting cloud technology. Why do you think the corner office is reluctant to support these sorts of initiatives?

Not all senior managers have yet to fully understand the implications of moving into cloud. They still look it as a pure cost saving initiative vis a vis the risks and the litigations they may end up facing in case they encounter issues around their data. Managers would like to hear success stories that [demonstrate that the concerns about] data security are all addressed by big product vendors, which are now moving over to cloud.

What are the best ways that supply chain managers can “speak the language” of business leaders to quantify the potential benefit of cloud-based apps for the supply chain?

The ROI of moving to a cloud-based service is very fast. Customers need not invest in capex for their expensive infrastructure, licenses, and upgrades. This can be very easily worked out. Another factor is that often, companies invest in large IT teams and have to constantly manage them – thereby deviating and investing in a division that is not their core business. By moving to the cloud, they can overcome this by maintaining a lean IT team.

Do you have any personal views about utilizing cloud-based system? What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages?

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6 Steps To Supply Chain Risk Management Success

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6 Steps To Supply Chain Risk Management Success

Lean production may traditionally be considered the linchpin that holds successful supply chain management together, but reducing your exposure to risks is becoming a key priority for maritime companies.

Our dependence on, and partnerships with suppliers, whether it be via outsourcing or mitigating stock opens up a whole world of exposure for marine businesses and their procurement teams. That’s why risk management is so crucial to the supply chain.

Navigating risks really is the key to management success. With the global expansion of supply chains comes ever more complicated business structures and so countless issues can arise causing disruption, delays and ultimately money going down the drain.

Both buyers and suppliers can be hit by a number of unavoidable problems. From natural disasters to terrorism or cyber attacks. Each problem can have big effects on both upstream and downstream partners.

So what can you do to mitigate risk?

The best way to reduce exposure is to make sure you and your company keep up to date with developments in the maritime sector. And to follow a few key steps…

1. Choose your suppliers carefully

Conduct audits of your suppliers on a regular basis and if necessary, inspections to make sure they are committed to risk management like you are.

2. Authenticate suppliers’ insurance cover

It’s worth remembering that a certificate of insurance is only evidence of the insurance cover as it was when it was written.

3. Clearly define contract scopes and draft contracts

Be careful when defining contract scopes and draft contracts.

4. Understand the extent of your exposure

How much risk are you and your business exposed to?

5. Put a plan in place

Identifying risks is the easy part, now you have to get an action plan in place.

6. Lower the threat of risk by purchasing the right cover

Making sure your policy covers your company’s specific exposure mix and risk tolerance is important.

Do you have any ideas to add regarding risk management in supply chain? Share your opinions in the comment box or send us a message for discussion.

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What is the most crucial goal for supply chains?

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What is the most crucial goal for supply chains?

One of the driving forces behind the expansion of business relationships is a mindful effort to reduce risk. This is particularly true in supply chains.

To be sure, the pursuit for lower-cost materials and more efficient logistics are very important to industries of all kinds today. But reliability of supply and precautionary redundancy have prompted firms in industries ranging from basic materials like steel and chemicals to high technology, to establish supply networks across the globe.

Ironically, it’s likely that in going global, companies have not actually decreased their risk profile but actually increased it. Broadening exposures can actually drive total risk higher, either by actual exposure to new perils or simply by making existing risks more difficult to quantify or manage.

That is especially true of global supply chains, through which goods or services often come from countries with low per-capita income, weak regulatory control or where the quality of risk management practices—as well as building codes and standards—are weak or nonexistent. In several memorable cases, retail chains and clothing brands have had to respond to fires and collapses of the factories making their garments on the other side of the planet.

Even the industrialized world is not immune to global risks, as was proven by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan in 2011. Automobiles, car parts, electronics, and many other sectors saw their supply chains disrupted for weeks or even months, prompting them afterward to geographically diversify their sourcing, production and inventory.

What is the most crucial goal for supply chains in your opinion? Share with us in the comment below or send us message for discussion. Subscribe now to get updates in your inbox.

 

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Performance Management or Employee Development? Is there a Way to Merge Both?

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Performance Management or Employee Development? Is there a Way to Merge Both?

If you ask an employee on what a performance management is, he or she will mention that it is nothing but the annual appraisal of his or her performance followed by salary revisions. Employees also tend to view performance management process with a lot of skepticism, as generally they are not happy with the subjective appraisals and get dis-satisfied with their salary revisions.

An effective performance management system should not stop with just once a year performance appraisals and salary revisions. It should be much more comprehensive, and one of the key goals of such an effective performance management system should be to develop employees.

What is employee development?

Employee development consists of activities that are initiated by an organization that would help in the overall development of an employee. An effective performance management system is one which gives high priority for employee development.

Benefits of employee development

When a performance management system focusses on employee development as well, the return of investment from such a system would be good due to the following reasons:

1) Well trained employees become more competent and execute their responsibilities productively.

2) Employees become happy as their development is taken as the prime focus.

3) When leaders are groomed within the organization, it helps in succession planning and reduces the associate costs and risks in hiring a new employee.

4) When facilities are created for employees to do their job effectively and obstacles are removed, it ensures that organization goals are met.

How do you convert your Performance Management System to Employee Development System?

Most companies do performance appraisals once a year and use performance management software for streamlining the process (self-evaluation, 360 degree feedback, manager’s feedback & rating, recommendation, etc.). Due to the volume of the work and stress associated with this process, the process stops with the salary revisions. Ideally, the HRs and managers should extend this process to identify the training needs, strengths & weaknesses of the people/organization, people development needs and put a clear roadmap for addressing them.

You are welcome to share your opinions and suggestions with us by leaving your comments in the available space below. Please share this article if you find it useful or interesting. Also remember to subscribe this blog to receive new updates in your inbox.

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10 BPM tools every manager needs to know

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10 BPM tools every manager needs to know

Managing business performance is everyone’s everyday job. You could argue that making sure the business is performing well is THE job of any manager. The challenge is that there are many different tools available to mange business performance, here I want to look at 10 popular BPM tools that every manager should know.

1. Planning and budgeting

This is probably the most widely used BPM approach in businesses by which plan ahead and set budgets for the following year. This is traditionally done annually where organisation set goals for the next 12 months and negotiate a budget to achieve the goals.

2. Key performance indicators (KPIs)

KPIs are the navigation instruments that companies use to understand whether they are on track or veering off the prosperous path.

3. Balanced scorecard (BSC)

The BSC is another popular management tool that has been designed to articulate the strategic objectives of a business and then align performance measures and action plans to these strategic objectives to ensure the strategy gets executed.

4. Benchmarking

Companies use benchmarking to compare their own performance with those of others. Benchmarking is traditionally seen as comparing your own performance with external best-practice performance (where best practice performance can come from outside the sector or industry a company operates in).

5. Business excellence model

The business excellence models come from the quality movement and have been developed by national bodies to assess quality standards in companies. There are various national standards that are often used as the basis for quality awards.

6. Enterprise risk management (ERM)

ERM represents a set of tools and approaches to identify, assess and manage corporate risks. While risk management started its life very much as an internal control back-room function, today it has moved up onto the boardroom agendas of most businesses.

7. Six sigma

The six sigma is a tool that was pioneered by Motorola in the late 1980s and later adopted very successfully by global giants such as General Electric and Honeywell as well as many other companies of various sizes.

8. Performance dashboards

Most organisations today are bursting with data, metrics, reports and analyses. Dashboards provide single-page at-a-glance overviews of areas of performance (eg corporate overview, sales, finance, HR, business units, etc).

9. Customer relationship management (CRM)

Most companies want to make sure they not only have satisfied customers but that they turn their customers into profitable and loyal customers.

10. Performance appraisals

Another popular performance management tools is the performance appraisal. It is basically a tool to assess job performance of individuals in a company.

Do you have any opinions regarding this topic? Leave your comments below or send us a message. If you enjoyed reading this website, consider about subscribing.

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Five factors of supply chain sustainability

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The five factors of supply chain sustainability

Leadership, empowerment and sharing success stories are among the attributes required to implement sustainable procurement.

That’s according to a panel of experts who shared their top tips at the Institute for Supply Management annual conference in Las Vegas, US last week. The advice included:

  1. Sustainability champions : “Find out who’s passionate about this in your organisation and ask them to be champions.”
  2. Leadership : “You are all leaders to your supply chain, they’re looking to you and your actions and expectations.”
  3. Empowerment : “If you give people a ladder to execute in their own fashion they will take ownership of it.”
  4. Success : “Nothing sells better than success, so we recognise and reward success.”
  5. Metrics : “If you can communicate what you [have done], it is really a powerful story.”

Do you have any opinions? Leave your comments below or send us a message.

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Sharpening strategic risk management

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Sharpening strategic risk management

While conventional enterprise risk management (ERM) techniques have done a reasonable job in identifying and mitigating financial and operational risks, research shows that it is the management of strategic risk factors that will have the greatest impact on your ability to realise your strategic objectives. Bringing ERM into the forefront of strategic decision making and execution could thus give your business a decisive edge.

Strategic risks can be defined as the uncertainties and untapped opportunities embedded in your strategic intent and how well they are executed. As such, they are key matters for the board and impinge on the whole business, rather than just an isolated unit.

Strategic risk management is your organisation’s response to these uncertainties and opportunities. It involves a clear understanding of corporate strategy, the risks in adopting it and the risks in executing it. These risks may be triggered from inside or outside your organisation. Once they are understood, you can develop effective, integrated, strategic risk mitigation.

Far from holding back the business, strategic risk management is about augmenting strategic management and getting the full value from your strategy. In a typical instance, a conventional approach to setting and executing strategy might look at sales growth and service delivery. Rarely does it monitor the risks of a shortfall in demand.

Key questions for the board

  1. How well is my strategy actually defined?
  2. How broad are the risks that we are considering?
  3. What risk scenarios have we considered to test our plans?
  4. Have we mapped our risks to key performance and value measures?

Thank you for reading. If you have any opinions, please leave a comment below or send us a message.

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The Startup Entrepreneur’s Guide To Risk Management

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The Startup Entrepreneur’s Guide To Risk Management

Only 44% of small businesses stick around four years or more. One big reason so many go away: Poor risk management.

Fortunately, help is on the way from the guys at VC Experts (subscribe to their email here).

They’ve published a helpful how-to on the art of risk management from Akira Hirai, the founder and managing director of Cayenne Consulting. With permission, we’ve excerpted the best bits below.

The Risk Management Framework

“Risk Management” is the art and science of thinking about what could go wrong, and what should be done to mitigate those risks in a cost-effective manner.

In order to identify risks and figure out how best to mitigate them, we first need a framework for classifying risks.

Once we know the severity and likelihood of a given risk, we can answer the question: Does the benefit of mitigating a risk outweigh the cost of doing so?

  1. Quadrant A: Ignorable Risks
  2. Quadrant B: Nuisance Risks
  3. Quadrant C: Insurable Risks
  4. Quadrant D: The Company Killers

Identifying & Mitigating the Company Killers

Companies flatline when the cash runs out and total current liabilities (i.e., bills due now) exceed total liquid assets. Risk management is all about identifying and mitigating the uncertainties — especially the company killers — that surround cash flows.

Uncertainty plagues businesses in countless ways, but we can group most company killers into the following categories:

  1. Market Risks
  2. Competitive Risks
  3. Technology & Operational Risks
  4. Financial Risks
  5. People Risks
  6. Legal & Regulatory Risks
  7. Systemic Risks

The knowledge of risk management is also essential establishing a startup business. If you have any opinion, leave it in the comment box below or send us a message.

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8 Risk Management Tactics Your Startup Should Have in Place

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8 Risk Management Tactics Your Startup Should Have in Place

What is one risk management tactic you implemented during the early stages of your business to protect you and the company?

The following answers are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched StartupCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

  1. Voice the Red Flags
  2. Hire a Tax Advisor
  3. Mind the Cash Flow
  4. Have Good Contracts
  5. Create an LLC
  6. Get Lean
  7. Insist on Down Payments

These strategies could be simple yet important. Do you have any thoughts? Post it in the comment box below or send us a message.

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80 per cent of supply chain managers don’t believe their supply chain enables business strategy

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80 per cent of supply chain managers don’t believe their supply chain enables business strategy

Some eight out of 10 supply chain managers do not see their supply chain as an “enabler of business strategies” within their organisation, according to a survey.

The poll, conducted by Hitachi Consulting, also found 55 per cent do not regard their business’s supply chain as a “fundamental source of business value and competitive advantage” and 29 per cent see it as “purely an operational function”.

Cathy Johnson, vice president at Hitachi Consulting, said: “These figures are far from reassuring. For the most part, it seems that senior executives understand the strategic importance of the supply chain, yet the managers who deal with the supply chain on a day-to-day basis do not.

“A supply chain that doesn’t support the overarching business strategy, and which doesn’t deliver competitive edge – and which isn’t going to deliver a material change in performance over the next five years – is clearly not a desirable asset.”

The survey, involving 100 supply chain managers and directors from nine European countries, revealed almost half did not believe their organisation’s supply chain would deliver increased profitability over the next five years, just a third believed it would deliver an improved customer experience over the same period, and half did not think it would deliver a “reduced working capital requirement”.

What is your opinion? Write it below in the comment or contact us for discussion.

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