If you want to change how you monitor supply chain performance, you need first to be able to see it

For every organization, in every industry, from manufacturing to services, there’s likely to be a supply chain that is critical to the business’s success. Even with the most proactive management, in today’s changeable world risks can have a very negative impact on your business. So, ultimately, to make your business more secure, it’s in your interest to monitor how your supply chain is performing. And not just with an eye on a single area that might be underperforming, but on the whole of the supply in your chain.

The economic and geopolitical landscape today is making those risks more of a threat than (almost) ever before. The invasion of Ukraine, the Covid-19 crisis, commodity scarcity, transport congestion, the Suez Canal blockage, and more, have all shown how unforeseen events can accentuate our supply chains’ vulnerabilities. It’s as important now as it’s ever been, in fact probably even moreso, to monitor current performance, so that you can improve future performance. The problem is that most firms struggle reliably to see even six months ahead.

To get those insights, you need visibility, and to get that visibility you need data.

To give us some first-hand insight into these issues, we talked to Sam Clive, Head of Presales at Rosslyn, long-standing spend and procurement analytics experts. Sam is in the fortunate position of being directly exposed to customers’ daily challenges across a broad range of industries, so he gets to appreciate and understand what companies are up against. He speaks daily with the key people on the front line about their projects, what they are trying to achieve in procurement and the problems and risks they are facing, which usually, in his experience, come down to lack of visibility. Here are some of his learnings.