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Web-Enabled Global Literacy — Core Competencies & Critical Success Factors for Supply Chain Professionals

Author(s):

Andrea Charman
Andrea Charman, Executive Director, CTS Inc, New York, NY 10017, 212 661 5682, Andreacharman@ctsus.com

86th Annual International Conference Proceedings - 2001 

Abstract. The revolution has taken place. The 'virtuous circle' of technological innovation and creative application is the catalyst of new business models. E-procurement, therefore, is beyond cost savings. VSCs, virtual supply chains, are changing relationships between procurers and suppliers, partners and competitors, as well as internal enterprise relationships and the way goods are produced. As a result, firmly anchored in the challenges of the knowledge economy, savvy supply chain professionals must continually assess and develop core competencies through a web-enabled lens that produces these new business models and revolutionary processes to replace those of the obsolete industrial economy model. Against this background and through tangible examples, this session explores the challenge, the competencies and the critical success factors to keep ahead.

The Approach. This session will move from the broad business model challenge that the web environment has initiated and its consequences, through specific e-procurement challenges and supply-chain-relevant examples, towards an assessment of core competencies and critical issues for practitioners.

  • Anchor the session via a review of the race to convert business operations to web-based infrastructures
  • Review how innovative networked infrastructures are changing the nature of business competition
  • Review the implications of continuous transformation
  • Assess the global market perspective and consequences
  • On electronic marketplaces, digital exchanges, global trading hubs
  • Review the full implications of collaborative VSCs
  • Assess the need to leverage strategic and operational teaming skills, the hidden value, in a multiplex environment of collaborative partners and competitors
  • Consider how to optimize existing business relationships that took time to develop, nurture and leverage
  • Understand the integration demands of e-procurement; the need for instant decision-making supported by the ability to integrate procurement functionality, market-making capabilities, client and business environment realities and more
  • Understand the strategic sourcing opportunity that e-procurement releases
  • Integrate the net effect on essential core competencies of practitioners

Objectives. The session objectives are progressive. First, to create an overall awareness of the issues that continuous business transformation and the emergence of new business models poses for business in general and supply chain professionals in particular. Second, to propose key emerging principles that point to the direction of a web-centered supply chain and its consequences and critical issues for practitioners. Tangible examples will support this. Third, to propose that the global connectivity of the digital world does not 'neutralize' the arena but rather heightens the need for global literacy expressed in a set of core competencies, the 'net effect' of the dynamism of the knowledge economy. Echoing Covisint — connectivity, communication, visibility, vision, integration, international — is just the beginning.

References.
  • Ariba.com
  • Clarus.com
  • Covisint.com
  • Forrester Research.com
  • Intelisys.com
  • PurhasingCenter.com
  • Works.com

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