Even though the analysts (Aberdeen and AMR) and vendors (Andy Monin of VendorMate and Gret Holt of CombineNet) are still recovering from ISM and other conferences, Tim Minahan of Supply Excellence and Vinnie Mirchandani of Deal Architect are still globe-trotting, and Jason Busch of Spend Matters is still catching up on ISM posts, I’m going to do an initial wrap-up. When more posts hit, I’ll update this post and add a comment.
So far, we’ve had the following great posts:
| Author | Post |
| Michael Lamoureux | Culture, Complexity, and Visibility |
| Lisa Reisman | Global Sourcing Savings Maximization, Volatile Commodities Management, and Savings Implementation |
| John Miller | “Slow is the New Fast, The 90-mile Rule, DIYS” on Gemba Panta Rei [WayBackMachine] |
| Kevin Brooks | Listen to Your Audience, Repeat Repeat Repeat, Keep it Simple |
| Doug Smock | World Class Metrics, Cross-Functional Collaboration, and Value Engineering |
| Dave Stephens | “Cost, Complexity, and Compartmentalization” on Procurement Central [WayBackMachine] |
| David Bush | “Adoption, Adoption, Adoption” on eSourcing Forum [WayBackMachine] |
| Jean-Philippe Massin | “Live Spend Analysis, Best-in-Class Suppliers, and Change and Culture Management” on Strategic Sourcing Europe [WayBackMachine] |
| Chris Jacob Abraham | Forward: SCM 2.0
Closed Loop Supply Chain Management and Supply Chain Collaboration |
| Eric Hiller | Design for … What? |
| Doug Hudgeon | Dale Earnhardt |
| Charles Dominick | “Measurement, Benchmarking, and Skills” on the Purchasing Certification Blog (now the Certitrek NLPA blog) |
| Randy Littleson | “Strategy, Strategy, and People” on the Kinaxis Blog |
| Haydn Jones | “Sustainability, Sustainability, Sustainability” on European Leaders |
Even though it looks like the posts are all over the map, one starts to see a common theme emerge – a three C’s theme in fact, even though not the three C’s proposed by Dave Stephens. The three C’s I see emerging are: Culture, Complexity, and Collaboration. Supply chains are global – they embrace all cultures, exist at various levels of complexity, and require a great deal of collaboration to pull off – especially if one wants to do it efficiently and cost-effectively. Not to say that all of the other points made aren’t valid – they are – but it seems that these three C’s will be center of tomorrow’s supply chain and any supply chain management 2.0 solution must address, and improve the handling of, these three C’s.