What are the Essentials for Supply Chain Management?

Most businesses often define their activities in terms of regional sales and exports. This view is considered to be shortsighted and restricting. Shortsighted firms also tend to define their logistics and supply chain management in terms of freight, warehouse, and other overhead costs. What they fail to understand is how much their customers and businesses are impacted by supply chain management. Essentials for supply chain management lead to growth and prosperity. However, often the results of all the myopic thinking lead these firms into a trap of defining themselves as a commodity product provider where the price is the key differentiator. To understand the value of supply chain management, let's study its essentials.

Essentials for Supply Chain Management

1. Understand your Customer

Most of the times' supply chain professionals forget about what the customer's needs are and leave it up to the sales and marketing department to take over. A key part of supply chain management is to understand the needs and requirements of the end customer. How does the customer want to receive the goods or services? Is there a need for special packaging or the products should be displayed right on the shelves? The customer is and should be the primary focus to ensure an effective supply chain.

       2.  Understand your Product, Service, or Technology

You might have heard, supply chain management is really about shipping widgets and one widget is no different than the other. This urban myth is miles away from the truth. Some items need to be refrigerated, while others require special care and handling, and some services may be digital. Understanding your product, service, and type of technology is key in order to create a successful supply chain.

3. It is Not Just About Cost Savings

Although cost is an important factor, it is not just about effective cost-saving. There are other factors that need to be considered, as the quality of the product, the value of the business that the supplier, buyer, and the end customer derive from your product, service, or technology, and ensuring the right amount of inventory is available at the right place at the right time.

4. It is about People 

There has been a lot of buzz about the automation of the supply chain. In the end, it all comes down to relationships and people. Supply chain tools and systems can get better over time but even with complete automation, people still need to make things happen, improve the systems, and fix things when they break. So, automation of the supply chain is good, but don't forget about the people, the human resources, they play the greatest role in effective supply chain management.

How Does an Executive Course in Supply Chain Management Help?

Certified supply chain management programs help you understand the basic concepts of supply chain management. It also equips you with an extensive range of tools and techniques for managing supply chain operations including demand forecasting, inbound logistics, purchasing, in-company logistics, inventory management, warehousing, distributions, etc. An executive course in supply chain management also develops requisite skills of supply chain management and enables you to control levers and variables influencing supply chain performance. So, if you want to excel in this domain, consider enrolling yourself in a certified supply chain management program and give your career a kick-start.