Article

New Supply Chain Study Links Trends to Shareholder Value

by Bridget McCrea
Contributing Writer,

A new report from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville's Global Supply Chain Institute pinpoints supply chain trends that it believes will have the most significant impact on businesses today.

After surveying 163 supply chain professionals and 132 global companies, UT pinpointed 10 different trends in its new white paper, Game-Changing Trends in Supply Chain.

The institution defines a game-changing trend as "one that greatly impacts a firm's shareholder value and can be extremely difficult to implement successfully."

"This research confirmed that world-class companies need to revisit these trends on a regular basis to stay abreast in today's dynamic and rapidly changing environment," said Paul Dittmann, executive director of UT's Global Supply Chain Institute, in a press release. "Companies also must be open to considering new challenges, such as the application of business analytics to big data and cloud-based applications."

A number of the trends identified by UT will be of particular interest to Microsoft Dynamics customers looking to leverage their ERP systems and related data in a few key areas, including:

  • Customer relationship management. According to UT, leading companies are successfully segmenting their products and customers and developing tailored supply chain solutions for each segment. This approach allowed one firm to eliminate nearly half (48 percent) of its inventory while still improving on-shelf availability from 96 percent to nearly 100 percent.
  • Collaborative relationships.  A win-win collaboration between supplier and customer may be rare, but it can produce amazing results. These collaborations should be built on a foundation of common metrics, shared benefits, and trust. According to the report, OfficeMax collaborated with its supplier Avery Dennison to dramatically increase revenue by more than 22 percent, achieve product availability ...

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About Bridget McCrea

Bridget McCrea covers business and technology topics for various publications. She can be reached at bridgetmc@earthlink.net.

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