For any business leader today the top challenge is cost. According to the latest Hackett report, managing supply risk has increased in priority (56% in 2013 vis-à-vis 42% in 2012) as a means of profit protection. Thus, as business leaders across industry sectors work towards realizing cost efficiencies, with millions of dollars at stake, the significance of supply chain is on rise and so is the impact of supply chain disruption.

Supply chain disruptions can affect stakeholder confidence and the reputation of a company besides resulting in immediate costs, loss of productivity and loss of revenue.

In the recent years there have been many instances like crippling economy of developed countries, natural disasters like Nemo, hurricane Sandy, political unrest on account of events like Arab spring, etc which mandate the need for an agile supply chain for procurement to function efficiently in times of uncertainty.

In this 5 part blog series we will focus on the 5 key imperatives that organizations must focus on while building an agile supply chain and the role technology plays in achieving these imperatives.

The 5 imperatives are as below;

• Understanding The Value Proposition Of Your Stakeholders
• Understanding The Ecosystem
• Conduct Scenario Planning For Impact Assessment
• Build Relational Contracts
• Enable Rapid Responses & Deployment

In the next blog we will discuss what understanding the value proposition of the stakeholders’ means for your supply chain.