In early 2021, IHS Markit conducted a survey with procurement professionals under the title 2021 Supply Chain Insights Global Survey , revealing that "supply chain professionals often lack the tools, data, and platforms needed to diversify their supply chains and optimise their processes."
Around 63% of the 340 supply chain leaders that took part in the survey agree that they lack the necessary data, platform, and technology to make more strategic and cost-saving decisions. The surveyed professionals were from 33 different industries across 60 countries and the intention was to understand what their priorities and capabilities are, especially during the hardest moments of the pandemic and their plans for business after.
According to IHS Markit, "the results represent a clear misalignment between strategic intent and capability and send a signal that significant investment is needed in technology, platforms, and data to enable and deliver overall supply chain objectives."
Having data is key to making decisions and planning for the future
The Covid-19 pandemic and the Suez Canal problem showed companies' that when you have the right tools in place and use them to gather relevant and strategic data the risks for the supply chain in the future become smaller and the possibility to make faster and smarter decisions increases exponentially – and being able to make those right decisions fast is what brings savings and innovation.
Being agile is now as important, if not more important than cost saving. For 96% of procurement leaders, agility may be more important than costs. And to be agile, procurement professionals may need to have one thing on their hands: solid and robust data and a reliable way of quickly seeing what the data is showing.
Companies' are shifting to the DDMM or information-based decision-making way of existing. This means that all decisions made for the future are based on the historical information gathered of what worked best in the past – and what didn't work either!
Successfull and smart companies ensure they when it comes to making core strategic decisions, they have reliable data backing them up at every step. And this is also usually true for procurement leaders when it comes to making similar core decisions in direct, strategic spend. However, the survey also showed that when it comes to having the right tools and information there's still a gap to be filled for almost two-thirds of the professionals across the supply chain and most of this will undoutedbly be within indirect tail spend areas.
If procurement professionals want to make the same cost-saving decisions they have the ability to make in their strategic spend and reduce the risk of negative effects on the supply chain in the tail they need to have the data and the technology in place.
The executive director of supply chain solutions at IHS Markit commented on the outcomes of the survey: “Supply chains can no longer operate as siloed, disconnected functions. Recent events such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the Suez Canal saga have illustrated the need for supply chains to be resilient and agile."
And the way to be resilient and agile is to have solid data in place. The past year has shown how complex the world is and missing the opportunity to make fast decisions for the lack of data can be fatal for companies. Data, and the ability to quickly and easily access and use it is the way to proactively reduce risks for the future.
If you want to find out how Maistro's unique tail spend solution captures and displays data for better buying decisions, even in low-value high-transaction categories, get in touch for a demo.
