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What are the 3 biggest challenges faced by supply chain/purchasing professionals today? (Survey Result 19)

Written by: Jon Hansen

Article Overview: There are many factors both internally as well as externally that are affecting supply chain/ procurement practices today. From the growing talent vacuum to the continuing lack of collaboration between Finance, IT and Purchasing relative to corporate initiatives. What in your own experiences and opionions are the top 3 issues that procurement professionals face?

What are the 3 biggest challenges faced by supply chain/purchasing professionals today? (Survey Result 19)

Keith, Senior Commodity Specialist, Chicago, U.S.

Here are the quick three challenges that are driving my decision-making as a supply chain professional this week:

1) Devaluation of the US dollar in relation to a world basket of currencies. Specifically the appreciation of the Chinese RMB to USD because we are sourcing so much from China. Having a balanced sourcing portfolio with suppliers in different parts of the world is no different than diversifying your own investment portfolio to combat such situations.

2) Managing and containing costs in an environment of rapidly rising raw material prices and inflationary economies. More specifically, getting buy-in from upper management that there is only so much that can be negotiated and mitigated before some % is legitimately passed on.

3) Alignment with other parts of the organization. Finance and Purchasing seem to have similar fiscal interests, so I see the larger challenge with marketing and engineering.

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Article Tags: alignment, challenges, china, chinese rmb, commodity specialist, currencies, devaluation, finance, investment portfolio, marketing, raw material prices, supply chain, upper management, week 1, world basket



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Re: What is your biggest challenge? Today? - My today biggest challenge was to avoid distractions... and i managed.
Finding Good People - From my own experiences and from interviewing some of Canada's fastest growing companies, one of the biggest challenges always seems to be finding good people to hire. What have you guys done to find good people and keep them in your organization?
Survey the Landlord - Terry, my suggestion is simple but powerful - Survey. Survey Landlords and find out what is important to them. By doing this it does two things: 1. You will find out trends/under-operated services that Landlords are currently unsatisfied with = your client will be able to fulfill 2. You are infact Marketing your clients services by doign this because when you are approaching your landlords it not a sales pitch and they have someone to clear their frustrations with. Then when you approach them after a month (when you've put your numbers together and identified services that are most important) you can remind them of the survey and share with them the results. At this point you can end with an offer to use your clients services to manage their property. I use this method with my clients who are looking for new services to develop in thier markets. It's simple but powerful.


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