Harnessing Big Data: Building and Maintaining Capabilities that Deliver Results

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the September-October 2015 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

September-October 2015

It’s September, which means the kids are going back to school, and soon, you’ll spend the evenings helping them with their lessons. September is also the month that we publish Gartner’s annual look at the Top 25 supply chains. While the Top 25 is a celebration of great supply chains, the leaders also offer lessons for the rest of us who aspire to the top. It’s news you can use right now in your planning. And, we’ll have you home for dinner on Tuesday. We hope you’ll join us for this inaugural event.

Browse this issue archive.

Already a subscriber? Access full edition now.

Need Help?

Contact customer service

847-559-7581   More options

Not a subscriber? Start your magazine subscription.

“Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink,” wrote Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his 1798 poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In today’s corporate environment, we might well exclaim: “Data, data, everywhere, but how in the world shall I put it to profitable use?”

With every online survey from shoppers, every GPS signal from a truck or train, every Tweet from the head of marketing, and every RFID-tagged package speeding off to the shrink-wrap station, companies have more data than they know what to do with. Supply chain operations in particular are hotbeds of data—inputs sought, captured, and reported to improve efficiencies, accelerate throughput, enhance customer service, contain costs, and make it easier to utilize assets and manage risks.

For many business leaders, the fashionable response has been to get excited about so-called “Big Data”—the term du jour that describes the expanding universe of available data outside of that traditionally circulating in a company’s CRM, ERP, or MRP systems and stored in its own data centers. A brief scan of newspapers, business magazines, conference brochures, or a Google search demonstrates that there is no shortage of articles, books, speeches, and course content on the topic.

This complete article is available to subscribers only. Click on Log In Now at the top of this article for full access. Or, Start your PLUS+ subscription for instant access.

SC
MR