Sourcing Success under Tight Time Pressure

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the November 2010 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

November 2010

Grace under pressure. Anyone working as a supply chain professional over the last couple of years knows what that phrase is all about. With the economy only recently beginning to rouse itself from the doldrums, supply chain folks are still being asked to find “just a few more” areas where costs can be cut. For a while there, the cost-cutting pressures were unrelenting. But for the most part—as our Annual Global Survey of Supply Chain Progress in this issue confirms—the supply chain came through. One of the key findings from this year’s survey is that absent the supply chain’s ability to control costs and streamline operations, companies…

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Emergency room (ER) physicians constantly make critical decisions with limited information and under extreme time pressure. What separates best-in-class ER physicians from the pack is that they not only “do the right things,” but also “do things right.” In addition to possessing the knowledge to diagnose and select the appropriate treatment strategies, top performing ER physicians think creatively and adopt non-traditional tactics to “do things right.” First, they have the skill to adapt and modify text-book treatment approaches based on the severity of the patient’s condition and time constraints. Second, they judiciously take short-cut tactics to accelerate treatment processes if the patient is running out of time. And lastly, they effectively triage and mobilize the entire ER staff to work as a well coordinated team to stabilize the patient as quickly as possible.

Similar to an ER physician treating incoming patients, executives often are placed in various time pressure scenarios where they must achieve rapid positive results—for example, cost savings—under a tight timeline. Specific challenges might involve delivering against an aggressive post merger target; bracing for a worse-than-expected economic downturn to offset softening revenue; or enabling a rapid enterprise-wide transformation where early wins become the critical change catalyst. Companies often pursue an enterprise procurement transformation to meet these challenges. However, a systematic and enterprise-wide procurement initiative can often take well over a year to fully execute and deliver P&L impact.

Executives seeking to achieve rapid and high-impact benefits through their sourcing and procurement initiatives should embrace three key takeaways from best-in-class ER physicians who both “do the right thing” and “do things right” in a hectic, time-pressured environment. Expressed as business imperatives, these takeaways are:

1. Adapt your sourcing strategy to account for time pressure complexity.
2. Leverage benefit-acceleration tactics.
3. “Shock” and mobilize the internal organization to drive sustainable transformation.

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