Innovation and Opportunity: What’s Ahead in Supply Management

The ISM just released the seventh edition of the Supply Management Handbook (J. L. Cavinato, A. E. Flynn, and R. G. Kauffman) and my copy arrived late last week.

Chapter three (of the forty-two chapter book) is entitled Innovation and Opportunity: What’s Ahead in Supply Management. The chapter discusses four promising trends in supply chain technology and three other trends that are taking or expected to take the supply management world by storm.

Supply Chain Technology Trends

  • Maturing and Scaling of Procurement Technology
  • More Sophisticated Business Intelligence
  • Integration of Technology Functions with Other Parts of the Business
  • Stronger Influence of Web Services on Supply Management

The maturing and scaling of procurement technology is happening every day, business intelligence technology is also improving at a brisk pace, we’re starting to see new technologies aimed at integrating procurement with the rest of the business, and some of the best solutions out there are on-demand solutions built on or as web-services.

Other Trends

  • Global Sourcing and Supply Management
  • Procurement Outsourcing
  • Supply Management in Government and Financial Services

Global Sourcing is hot and Procurement Outsourcing is on the rise. Even financial services are hearing the call of the supply chain. (After all, Macquarie Bank scooped up one of our best bloggers earlier this year.) And, finally, some governments are starting to latch onto good supply chain management principles. Hopefully their good example will convince those that aren’t to hear the call of the spend management party.