Accenture’s Supply Chain Study Champions “Change-Ready” Culture

Recent research by Accenture found that Chief Supply Chain Officers (CSCOs) are ahead of their peers in the sales function, surpassing them in scaling digitally enabled solutions.

Furthermore, the most proactive supply chain executives are moving beyond their reputation for efficiencies to help drive customer centricity and the C-suite growth agenda. These are promising outlooks, but CSCOs will also continue to face some challenges in the new year.

Accenture research also showed half of supply chain leaders cited a lack of “change-ready” culture as their biggest impediment to success.

More on the findings:

• CSCOs who claimed a lack of a change-ready culture as their biggest hurdle achieved a much lower return, roughly 20%, compared to CSCOs who don't have a cultural issue (approximately 24%).
• CSCOs will have to reinvent their workforce and elevate their people.
• To build a culture that supports competitive agility within their teams, CSCOs will need to reimagine how humans and machines can work together to capitalize on the best of both.

Jason Gilroy, managing director, Accenture Operations, told SCMR in an interview that today's talent gap is intensified by a number of issues.

“Supply chain managers are retiring faster than they can be replaced,” he says. “The skills needed to do the job are changing rapidly with the emergence of digital supply chains. Yet, as companies fully embrace this new reality, many companies still need to augment career pathways to align with their future roadmap and not the past.”

He adds that robust talent development, competitive compensation packages and individual pathways for career progression will all be critical.

“They'll also need to equip existing people with new digital skills and look to hire new specialists where needed, such as value chain architects and orchestrators,” says Gilroy. “Only with a comprehensive talent strategy do companies begin to curb the talent gap and extract significant outcomes from their investments.”

Gilroy further maintains that talent strategies are inclusive of all generations – not just rooted in the past. Case in point: Gen Z is the most populous generation to emerge since baby boomers and will shift some of the expectations, views and behaviors in today's work environment.

“I think a key point CSCOs need to get right is the opportunities for career advancement,” he says. “With the emergence of digital supply chains, many roles now call for different responsibilities and skills than in recent years – but often the talent model and career path hasn't changed at pace with the company.

In order to attract the newest generation, concludes Gilroy, people must see the supply chain as the critical function it is and the range of advancement opportunities that exist as it evolves.

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