Oracle Executives Provide More Tips Related to “Modern Supply Chain Experience”

As Oracle prepares for its Modern Supply Chain Experience (MSCE) taking place in San Jose, CA from January 29-31, we asked company executives to share a few insights and forecasts surfacing at the event .

According to Albert Chiang, Oracle's director of product marketing, managers must develop plans for both short-term and long-term objectives.

“The key for the short term, is to understand the critical performance points in the supply chain and business operating model,” he says. “Also, understanding what are the causes holding the business back from making progress in transforming the supply chain to an end-to-end demand-driven service. “

He suggests that instead of starting silo projects to fix these gaps separately, managers should investigate the interdependencies and ensure that the problem is not just transferred to another point in the supply chain by the perceived “solution.” This is typical in very project orientated companies where the focus is not yet on end to end capabilities.

“As soon as possible, introduce a governance leadership structure and process that specifically focuses on reducing the complexity that constrains end-to-end transformation and effectiveness,” says Chiang. “The goal must be to ensure improvements are holistically investigated, analyzed, addressed and deployed with minimum complexity. “

He adds that the governance process must start focusing business decisions on strategic end-to-end SCM solutions, rather than continue buying point solutions from vendors that are limited in their capability to support end-to-end SCM capabilities.

“Even if this governance initiative starts simply with a set of defined goals, accountabilities and a basic plan, it's still a good start,” he says. “If companies do not stop proliferating the purchase of point solutions, the problem becomes greater over time.”

Chiang says that In the long term, the cross-functional leadership team must come to the agreement and align on the business mental model of supply chain and how it needs to be transformed, why, and when. For example, a simple way to change mindsets is to teach the business and leaders to think about and design the supply chain from the customer back to supply (outside-in) and not the other way around.

Here is his checklist:

Define an outside-in orientated SC plan and execute against the longer-term plan.
This allows:
• The business to structure and plan work against a roadmap
• A reduction in complexity
• Joint value relationships with a key vendor
• The business to galvanize and manage the change plan
• Clear strategic and tactical accountabilities being defined
• The rules and structure of business cases to be defined

“It is always important to introduce a structured and formal benchmarking plan to evaluate and measure progress,” concludes Chiang. “ This is not only IT benchmarking, but also SC operations and performance benchmarking. Progress shown from benchmarking is likely to be a significant motivator.”

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