Supply chain survey pushes integrated strategy

The cost of transport, a lack of available supply chain skills and labour unrest are the top three constraints to South African companies achieving their supply chain objectives. That’s according to the Supply Chain Foresight 2013 survey released last week by Barloworld Logistics and featuring the responses of 350 executives across a wide spectrum of companies. They identified costs, currency volatility and macro-economic uncertainty as the general barriers to doing business. “This South African climate of unpredictability, uncertainty, instability and skills shortages reinforces the need for an integrated business and supply chain strategy that is flexible and innovative, enabling businesses to adapt and continue to deliver relevant products and services to customers,” marketing executive at Barloworld Logistics, Kate Stubbs, said at the launch of the report. To that end, 88% of respondents listed increasing their flexibility, agility and responsiveness as their top strategic business objectives, followed by introducing new products and services (80%) and expanding into emerging markets (75%). 74% indicated that they would use the supply chain as a competitive advantage and 69% ranked international expansion as their fifth top business objective. Speaking on the need for serial innovation for companies to maintain their competitive advantage, Martin Neethling, an industry consultant who collaborated with Barloworld Logistics on the survey, said: “The supply chain is critical to delivering products and services to customers; there is a need for companies to constantly innovate new processes to effectively serve consumer demands and changing market conditions.” CAPTION Kate Stubbs ... strategy must be flexible and innovative.