1. Sales Visibility, Sliced and Diced

For years you were told that spend visibility was the key to success. For many years I echoed that claim, because it was the truth — success required understanding your spend — who was spending with whom, where, for what, and why. The ability to slice and dice not just by category and product and supplier but location, customer base, etc. was key to understanding where your opportunities were, what volumes you should be ordering, what suppliers you should be considering, where you should have contracts, and where you shouldn’t.

But that was in the age of globalization when global trade was steady, conflicts were low, maritime channels were open, and tariffs were low and stable. Today, many countries are returning to isolationism and/or off-limits due to sanctions, conflicts are many, maritime channels are constantly restricted or closed (Panama Canal has restricted throughput during droughts and the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz are regularly restricted or closed due to Middle East conflicts), and one country in particular keeps changing tariffs on a leader’s whims.

Not only is supply assurance the name of the game, but supply assurance in the product lines that will sell. With costs constantly on the rise (since inflation has returned as well), you need to be focussed on your top selling product lines, and how to ensure those don’t get interrupted. This will require diving into your sales data to see what is really selling, what is trending upwards, where the product is needed, and how best to allocate your orders and shipments to serve the customers. (Then, once you have figured out what you need and how to ensure supply, you can focus on spend.)

2. Supply Chain Aware Supplier Splits

You’ve been told for decades that you need to dual-source to mitigate risk in case of disaster or unexpected supply chain disruption, and while chances are you still aren’t doing it in some key categories, dual sourcing is not enough. Two suppliers in the same region, or that depend on the same supply base is not effective dual sourcing since a single event could take them both out of the picture. You need your decisions to be geologically and supply-chain aware.

And that works great if you’re only sourcing for one regional market, both are in friendly / pseudo-safe countries that aren’t too far away, and shipping lanes are relatively secure — but if you are sourcing for multiple geologically distinct and separate regions (which can be half a world away), the home countries are not friendly, and shipping lanes are a geopolitical spat away from being shut down, that’s a supply chain shutdown waiting to happen.

If you are a global multi-national selling in multiple, geologically distinct regions (North America, Latin America, UK, Europe, Middle East, Asia, Australia, etc.), you need to be building a multi-supplier global supply base where you have a primary supplier close to each location in a friendly, or at least, safe country and a backup supplier not too far away, which can be the primary supplier for another region. You might need half a dozen to a dozen suppliers for some products / categories to ensure supply assurance.

3. Carriageway Carrier Consolidation

Just like you will need multiple suppliers, you will need multiple carriers — at least one per region, and two if your shipments are large or the reliability of any single carrier (due to financial situation, fleet size, etc.) is questionable. You’ll have to group your lanes by regional transit and select the appropriate carrier for each just like you’ll have to select the right supplier for each region.