Ready for a Supply Chain Disruption? Build Resilience Into Your Network, and You Will Be

There’s no doubt that ensuring continuity of supply is a business-critical necessity.

But as companies operate increasingly complex and far-reaching global supply chains, this can seem like an impossible task.

In fact, the only thing that businesses may feel they can count on is a supply chain disruption, whether it takes the form of a supplier suddenly going out of business, a labor dispute, a factory fire, or a major weather event courtesy of Mother Nature.

Our eBook, Addressing the Continuity of Supply Challenge: Three Must-Haves for Today’s Supply Networks, examines the challenges companies face in trying to make ensuring a continuity of supply a reality. More important, we look at the sound risk management principles that can help all businesses implement the proper safeguards and build the necessary resilience in their supply chains to work around any disruption, big or small.

The three must-have capabilities that we outline in our eBook can also help companies take advantage of an unplanned event that is actually positive: an unexpected increase in demand.

So, what are these supply chain must-haves? Of course, our eBook dives much deeper into the value of these capabilities, but in a nutshell, they are:

• Visibility – If you can see a problem sooner, you have more time to correct it.

• Intelligent response – If you have the ability to not only see the information regarding a disruption but also to contextualize it, you can take action in the moments that matter.

• Network-wide collaboration – If you have an integrated trading partner network, you can leverage its collective brainpower to implement your strategy and achieve your goals.

We suggest that by integrating these three closely intertwined capabilities into your supply chain, you will be better positioned to ensure that disruptions – which are inevitable – don’t become problems that can undermine your profitability, or even put you out of business. We also explain the concept of the “the three pillars for visibility” in our eBook, and discuss how a business network can serve as the platform for bringing everything together.

We hope you find these insights on preparing for the unexpected to be valuable. And, if we’ve piqued your interest for all things pertaining to continuity of supply, be sure to check out our other related content, including:

• Our latest Professor Andrew video, “Continuity of Supply: More Than Meets the Eye of Sauron”

• The recording from our recent webinar on this topic