Podcast Episode 24: Bob Belshaw on the Power of Close Collaboration Between Supply Chain and Finance Teams

The best procurement teams focus on more than price alone when making purchasing decisions—because some things are more important than discounts. In this episode of The Agile Supply Chain Podcast, Nico Bac, a P&G veteran and the founder of consulting firm Digital Procurement Now, and Pierre Mitchell, Chief Research Officer and Managing Director of Azul Partners, discuss the latest thinking on strategic sourcing and procurement and supply chain information management. Key Takeaways The best suppliers want to work with pharma companies who embrace digital tools and techniques that can make them even better. When you are doing strategic sourcing and bringing on new suppliers, you are effectively doing extended network design. Therefore, it’s important to think carefully about what kind of network you are creating.

Greater collaboration between pharma companies and their end-to-end supply chain partners can lead to improved patient outcomes, greater resiliency, as well as significant business opportunities. In this episode of The Agile Supply Chain Podcast, Greg Cathcart, founder and CEO of Excellis Health Solutions, explains that if we collaborate better, “we can do better.” Key Takeaways Insurance companies are increasingly requesting supply chain and dispenser-level business improvements designed to ensure the safety and authenticity of medicines given to their insured patients. The “walls” that have traditionally prevented closer collaboration between end-to-end supply chain partners are slowly beginning to come down.

Pharma companies are increasingly taking an end-to-end view of the supply chain so they can ultimately deliver the right patient outcomes. Data is a critical component that enables you to achieve this goal by enabling you to manage the product on its journey to the patient, according to Timur Kabadayı, Managing Director of Conval Group, an information technology consulting firm that specializes in the life sciences industry. In this episode of The Agile Supply Chain Podcast, Kabadayı explains how the right approach to data management can help pharma companies and supply chain teams improve product safety and quality. Key Takeaways The most important aspect of The Agile Supply Chain Credo is its focus on patient safety and meeting patient demand right time, first time, every time. Companies across the end-to-end pharma supply chain produce and deliver medicines—but they also create data that can be shared to improve demand forecasts and boost supply chain agility. The global pharma industry could potentially save billions of dollars through digital supply chain enhancements—money which could then be reinvested in research and development.

It takes more than enterprise resource planning systems and buzzword-friendly technologies like “artificial intelligence” and “machine learning” to create an agile supply chain, according to Klaus Imping, CEO of mSE Solutions, a global management consulting firm. While these enabling layers are important, you also need to focus on how to change processes and integrate roles and responsibilities into a faster-reacting model. In this episode of The Agile Supply Chain Podcast, Imping shares practical advice on how to achieve greater agility and outside-in patient-centricity in your supply chain organization. Key Takeaways It’s important to avoid the trap believing that having an agile supply chain means having freedom to do anything and everything. Agility requires a great deal of structure in the form of stable and standardized processes. Patient-centricity starts with thinking in a demand-driven manner. Many companies believe that if they simply standardize their ERP, they have checked the box for agility. But the process of creating a truly agile and patient-centric supply chain is far more complex and requires sophisticated decision support.

The best decision makers often seek to limit their own options for dealing with problematic situations that arise—and this same technique can go a long way toward helping you ensure greater supply chain agility and responsiveness, according to Harshad Kanvinde, Global Supply Chain Practice Leader at Slalom. In this episode of The Agile Supply Chain Podcast, Kanvinde shares several best practices designed to help you boost supply chain agility across your organization. He also shares his thoughts on the implications of The Agile Supply Chain Credo. Key Takeaways Supply chain agility is about building an integrative capability across people, processes, technology, and leadership that enables you to quickly sense and analyze potential disruption and variations from plans. It’s important to approach supply chain agility dynamically across every part of your organization because different products, segments, and business units have response expectations that vary. The most effective supply chain leaders codify best practices, create limited-flexibility options for different situations, and understand their processes extremely well. This enables them to make quick decisions and rapidly identify the root causes of problems that arise.