How Far Would You Go To Secure Continuity of Supply?
It is a legitimate question on supply chain security – How important is continuity of supply to you? How far would you go? Would you commission an act of aggression, if that was the only way of assuring supply chain security to keep the supply lines open? Would you go further than an act of […]
Amazon spent $28B in freight costs last year. How well are they using their advantage?
Someone asked me this question on a popular social platform. The subtext was this: What kind of discount do you think they’ve negotiated with the major carriers (UPS, FedEx, USPS, etc.)? I have over 12 years of operational experience and 23 years of commercial negotiation experience with freight companies on large scale global freight operations. […]
Opportunities for Start-ups in Supply Chain Security
People often wonder where the best opportunities for start-ups are. Supply Chain Security space is getting a lot of attention in this regard.
How Supply Chain Strategy Can Help You Resolve The Innovators’ Conundrum
This is a million dollar question for most companies – start-ups or conglomerates. A lot of time and money is wasted, either because the companies do not bother to ask this question in time, or try to answer it in the wrong way. Here is a story:
Never Hire Management Consultants In These Situations
I need to tell a true story which is about 16 years old. Jon had just left the secure world of a senior role in a multi-billion dollar global corporation to accept the role of the CEO in a mid-size family-owned company. He had always been a go-getter, who had progressed fast in his previous […]
How To Get BIG Breakthrough Results in 2019?
Achieving breakthroughs is always difficult. Here is an easy way to think about how to achieve breakthrough results.
How To Get The Biggest Bang For Your Technology Buck
There were only 24 hours left. Tomorrow the board would pull the plug on the project which had continued for well over 3 years. The total costs as per internal calculations had run into hundreds of millions of dollars. External consultants reckoned that when you included the costs of internal resources seconded to the project from […]
How You Define Success Determines Your Results
“What is success? How do you define it in your current role?” It was a simple question. I asked this question of the room in general. I expected multiple replies from the all the executives in the room. Then, I realised that none would be forthcoming. A number of cultural factors were at play. The […]
Value of Trust in Supply Chain Management
Why Trust in Supply Chain Is Important?Recently, the value of trust in supply chain was brought home to me in a graphic manner. An owner of a medium sized business (who was trying to be one of our well-wishers) showed me (and one of our new recruits in sales management department) the way they were […]
Why Almost Everybody is Missing the Most Important Point in Their Solution to Amazon’s Threat to Australian Retailers
HOW BIG AMAZON’S THREAT TO AUSTRALIAN RETAILERS? Yesterday (on 2nd November 2017) I happened to briefly glance at the Australian Financial Review – the key finance newspaper in this country while I was waiting in the lobby for a meeting. Almost the entire paper was devoted to just one single topic – AMAZON’S THREAT TO […]