Sourcing for Resilience

What’s inside?

A recognition is dawning that procurement practices need to change. For too long businesses have pursued Just in Time inventory management practices in conjunction with low-cost country sourcing—often combined with sole sourcing in order to drive economies of scale—and the result is that supply chains are now increasingly vulnerable to disruption.

In this in-depth report, we make a call for procurement functions to pursue a different strategy: source for resilience, rather than lowest cost. To achieve this, businesses need to think differently about sourcing and supply chains, which calls for a different mindset, and different skills. The prize is certainly worth the effort with procurement teams able to reduce their complexity, challenge and stress. The result for the business: more resilient supply chains, less disruption.

Our extensive research features many thought leaders in the procurement world, including Stephen Day, CPO Kantar Group who agrees that "The more a procurement function improves resilience, the more it helps to reduce the impact of such challenges on the procurement function itself". You can also read the views of the world's first professor of supply chain risk management, Richard Wilding and of course Skill Dynamics' Executive Strategic Advisor, Professor Omera Khan by downloading the free paper now.