CapGemini blikt terug op 2007 en voorspelt de trends voor 2008. Het optimaliseren van prijzen en omzet, RFID en duurzaamheid staan hoog op de agenda voor 2008.
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2007 was a year of growth in our supply chain and procurement practices. Capgemini’s supply chain and procurement consulting teams have delivered a record number of projects across the globe in 2007. In 2007 more than 1400 different consulting projects in the area of supply chain and procurement have been executed. This huge base of consulting projects obviously gives a good overview of the topics and projects that were HOT in 2007.
In 2007 the following topic areas were hot:
· One-Number-Planning; the new trend in planning and S&OP projects is called One-Number-Planning. Making sure that both the finance department (budgeting and forecasting) and the supply chain department (forecasting, S&OP, production planning) is working with the same numbers.
· Control Tower projects; almost all High Tech companies have started up so-called Control Tower projects as a result of the increased percentage of manufacturing outsourcing. Where some of the high-tech companies have already outsourced all of their manufacturing operations, these companies increasingly have problems getting visibility into their extended supply chain. Projects are started up to implement global Control Tower to achieve total end-to-end visibility into the extended supply chain.
· Service Parts Logistics; margins in the after-market business are higher than in the normal product business hence companies are increasingly investing in their service parts units to increase its revenue.
· Retail supply chain transformations; demand driven / pull driven supply chains are still hot in the retail industry and many retail companies are starting up massive end-to-end retail supply chain transformation projects where their complete retail supply chain is driven by point-of-sale data.
· Logistics cost reduction; increasing fuel prices has led to increased transportation costs hence many companies are considering transport cost benchmarking, outsourcing tenders etcetera to find areas to keep the transportation costs under control. Freight management and auditing is also an increasingly hot topic to keep the transportation costs under control.
· Sourcing of direct materials; the optimization of procurement processes and departments is still ongoing. Where the initial optimization projects have focused primarily on the indirect spend (e-procurement projects), nowadays the focus is on the direct spend (supplier relationship management, utilizing your supply base for product innovation and growth).
· Renewed interest in supply chain strategy projects aimed at revenue growth instead of cost reduction; many companies have had a supply chain strategy which was focused on cost reduction. Company executives however are calling for revenue growth and innovation. Supply chain departments are adapting their strategies to focus on these new topics instead of pure cost cutting focus.
· Global Trade Management; many industries are becoming more and more global and hence monitoring the global trade processes (and the resulting import and export duties) becomes increasingly important. Customs authorities are changing and globalizing as well. There is increased focus on security aspects of global supply chains. Risk management of global trade is important because of the increased risk of global sourcing and the implications of disruptions in the supply chain. Many companies are starting up projects to professionalize their global trade management processes and to develop simulation environments to be able to optimize their margins in the new global supply chains.
· Innovation projects; Innovation is the hot topic today to be able to achieve autonomous revenue growth. R&D departments are refocusing themselves to enable a better environment for innovation. Increasing collaboration with smaller R&D firms (start-ups) puts increased focus on tools and methodologies for working together with external partners in R&D.
· Parallel supply chains; many European and American companies have already outsourced manufacturing operations to Asia Pacific. Increasingly companies are setting up also manufacturing operations in Eastern Europe and for the US market in countries like Mexico. These parallel operations enable those market leaders to deliver the low-cost products from Asia Pacific and to deliver the higher-margin products from Eastern Europe. Fashion retail firms are pulling product from Asia Pacific to get the stores full before the season, but they are using the Eastern European manufacturing operations to replenish the stores during the season (to avoid lost sales because of the long leadtimes with Asia Pacific sourcing).
For 2008 we expect similar trends like we have seen in 2007. There are some additional changes expected though in new HOT areas for 2008:
· Price & Revenue Optimization; these methodologies are designed originally in the Airline & Travel industries to perform revenue optimization (how do you earn the most revenue from the inventory of products / services?), however they are increasingly being applied in other industries. A large retailer is doing pricing optimization for all of its articles across its stores and the same article is priced differently in each store based on the demographics of the inhabitants living around that store. In spare parts environments companies are increasingly starting up pricing projects to cope with the increasing competition from “independents” and to enable efficient pricing for the huge number of SKU’s they typically carry.
· RFID. RFID has been hyped in the last number of years but now it has reached the bottom and we are seeing a huge uptake in RFID projects around the world. The technology has become mature and companies are seeing positive business cases to implement it.
· Sustainability. Green supply chains have been hot for the past two years and especially since former president Bill Clinton got behind the green trend the market for “green” supply chain projects has grown very fast, primarily in the US and UK markets. Initially started as carbon-neutral initiaves (where the environmental effects of supply chains were simply offset by buying forests elsewhere), the market is now welcoming a new impulse with the “cradle-to-cradle” concepts where the idea is to develop supply chains which do not produce waste anymore.
Tags: 2008, cap-gemini, Checklisten, Kennisnetwerken, logistics, price-optimization, rfid, supply-chain-management, sustainabiliy, trends
