Are you looking for a Supply Chain Crystal Ball? Industry Analysts play a unique role in helping companies prioritize supply chain initiatives, set and benchmark performance goals, understand unique industry vertical opportunities and identify a short list of potential solution and service providers. To be well informed and effective, the Industry Analysts must engage with solution and service providers to understand their software solutions, unique value propositions including product differentiators, complimentary services, customer success track record, and partner ecosystems.

Billed as “The World’s Most Important Gathering of CSCOs and Supply Chain Executives,” the Gartner Supply Chain Symposium attracts a wide range of practitioners, technology providers, consultants, analysts and academia. No crystal ball and no silver bullets here, but listen to this TEKTOK crossover episode as Karin shares lots of insights and fresh inspiration!

Intro/Outro (00:01):

Welcome to TEKTOK Digital Supply Chain Podcast, where we will help you eliminate the noise and focus on the information and inspiration that you need to transform your business impact supply chain success and enable you to replace risky inventory with valuable insights. Join your TEKTOK host, Karin Bursa, the 2020 Supply Chain Pro to know of the year with more than 25 years of supply chain and technology expertise and the scars to prove it. Karin has the heart of a teacher and has helped nearly 1000 customers transform their businesses and tell their success stories. Join the conversation, share your insights, and learn how to harness technology innovations to drive tangible business results. Buckle up, it’s time for TEKTOK, powered by Supply Chain Now.

Karin Bursa (01:03):

Welcome back, supply chain movers and shakers, to the TEKTOK Digital Supply Tune Podcast. I am your host, Karin Bursa, and I’m here to help you replace risky inventory with valuable insights. If you are a fan of the show, please subscribe to TEKTOK, that’s T-E-K-T-O-K and leave us a review. And don’t forget to follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Karin Bursa (01:29):

Today, I want to talk about industry analysts. Industry analysts play a unique role in helping companies prioritize supply chain initiatives, right? And here on TEKTOK, we’re all about the digital supply chain podcast, right? So we use that word digital for a reason, because it involves technology. So industry analysts play a very important role in helping companies to prioritize these digital supply chain initiatives, or to set and benchmark performance goals or understand unique industry vertical opportunities and help you identify a short list of potential solutions and service providers.

Karin Bursa (02:21):

That’s right. Helping you to identify who you should talk to, who you should consider. Now, to be well informed and effective, industry analysts have to engage with solution and service providers. They’ve got to spend time, considerable time, with a wide variety of solution providers, because the goal is for them to understand the software, to get a feel for the unique value proposition, a particular solution provider offers. And those unique value propositions could come in the form of product differentiators, complimentary services that are offered, partner ecosystems that are available, and some joint innovation opportunities as well.

Karin Bursa (03:16):

So, when asked, the industry analyst will also help technology and services companies to prioritize their innovation investments, right, where they’re spending money and research and development to drive new product capabilities. These industry analyst firms will also occasionally give recommendations about partner opportunities or acquisition candidates or growth into different geographic marketplaces or vertical industries. So you can see, it’s a wide variety of topics.

Karin Bursa (04:00):

Now, for more than 25 years, I’ve worked closely with a wide range of industry analysts. And many of the analysts who I admire greatly have become dear friends over the years. The firms I’ve worked with, just off the top of my head, Gartner, IDS, Supply Chain Insights, RSR Research, Chain Link Research, TEC, Nucleus, and many, many others, just to name a few.

Karin Bursa (04:35):

Now, they’re all a bit different, but they are all considered industry analysts. Now, the ability to engage with industry analysts, to do that usually requires a subscription. So, you are paying them for their services or access to their research and reports that they publish on a regular basis. Now, these do come with a hefty price tag, but you are paying for some pretty substantial research from many of these firms.

Karin Bursa (05:05):

The fact is that is true whether you are a practitioner, whether you’re an end user business, or you are a solution or services provider, the fees are substantial. So most companies will pick one to maybe three analyst firms that they work with, depending upon their size or the scope of solutions or services that they provide, or the size of the practitioner business, the end user business that is being managed. So, as you think about industry analyst, let’s talk a little bit about their portfolio of services.

Karin Bursa (05:50):

So, most industry analyst firms provide a pretty wide portfolio of service offerings. The objective is to give you some expert guidance and some tools that are going to enable faster ranking or faster understanding of your priorities and higher quality decisions, usually around some pretty mission critical business priorities. Now, if you are willing to listen and you come armed with some great questions, these industry analyst relationships can have a real positive influence and help accelerate your strategic initiatives, your priorities for your business, and just give you some real valuable perspective as a sounding board with a very knowledgeable consultant in the industry or advisor in the industry.

Karin Bursa (06:49):

Advisor is a better word than consultant there. For solution providers, strong industry analyst relationships can really make or break your business, and it’s a two-way relationship. You as a solution provider need to be in a relationship where you are informing them and educating them on your capabilities and client success. But at the same time, you can use that relationship to ask for feedback on differentiators, on priorities in the marketplace, on investments that are being made in your business.

Karin Bursa (07:30):

So, it can be very valuable, but it does require quite a lot of time and effort to engage and establish a mutually respected relationship between your business and the industry analyst firms that you’re working with. Now, with more than 4.7 billion, yes, billion with a B, more than 4.7 billion in revenue, Gartner is by far the gorilla among industry analyst firms. Gartner works with businesses in more than a hundred countries and has achieved organic growth, as well as growth through some pretty significant acquisitions, significant in the market around supply chain.

Karin Bursa (08:19):

And two that come to mind are AMR Research, which was a real strategic acquisition for Gartner, as well as SCM world which was another complimentary supply chain focused acquisition that Gartner has done and rolled into their portfolio of services. At Gartner, analysts come from a variety of backgrounds, including end user practitioner roles. So many of them have been in your shoes. And there’s real value in that because they understand how difficult it can be to really wade through some of the messaging that’s out there to really get to the tangible points that are going to be meaningful for your business. So some of the analysts come from these practitioner backgrounds as well as some will come from solution providers or services companies at Gartner. So usually there’s some real depth of expertise that the analyst you’re working with has earned over a significant portion of their careers before they became industry analysts, or they became industry advisors.

Karin Bursa (09:36):

Now, this mix of experience is really valuable because it brings a wide perspective to the Gartner Research team, and you get a good cross section of deep practical experience across a variety of specific markets. Now, the goal is to help you to help clients with strategy development, with priorities, with positioning, understanding some actionable advice that you can really put into practice to improve your business performance. The research materials are delivered in a variety of formats. So, they can be traditional reports that look a little like white papers, or they can be in e-book formats which tend to be more graphical. They can be in presentations. Of course, they can be in the form of one-on-one engagements that can happen either on a conference call or on a virtual call with them. And for Gartner, they’re also delivered in a conference format or in a trade show format, which is the Gartner Supply Chain Symposium. More about that in just a minute.

Karin Bursa (10:58):

Now, you may be really familiar with Gartner’s trademark report format, which is referred to as the Magic Quadrant. So this is a two by two grid that plots industry leading solutions in a variety of areas. And the X and Y axis are – the two-by-two grid are first, the company’s completeness of vision. So how visionary or how is the company’s vision aligned with what Gartner believes the direction that the industry is going? So, you may have a really interesting vision, but if it doesn’t line up well with Gartner’s vision of where the market is going, you are not going to get credit for a really strong completeness of vision. So, just be sure that you understand kind of that perspective in how they are ranking vision against what they see, what Gartner sees as the vision or the direction that the industry is moving in.

Karin Bursa (12:06):

Now, also, the altitude of the two by two is something referred to as ability to execute. And this is important to practitioners. This should be very important to practitioners because this underscores success, customer success in using the technology or services that are being ranked in these magic quadrants. So, that’s really what the kind of the two-by-two format is. Now, of course, everybody wants to be in the leader’s quadrant, which is the upper right-hand quadrant. But I got to tell you, just getting on a Gartner Magic Quadrant is a significant achievement, especially for smaller or emerging technology providers.

Karin Bursa (12:53):

Now, if you’re not familiar with the Gartner Magic Quadrants or if you’re just nodding and you’re so familiar with them that you’re treating me out, come back to me, you might be more familiar or even more interested in Gartner’s annual list of top 25 supply chains. This is a newer report format. It’s usually published initially, kind of in a hierarchy or in a period in a pyramid graphic. But they will rank every year who they considered to be the top 25 supply chains. And they’ve even developed a few derivatives of this. So, there’ll be a European top 25 or there’ll be some specific industries that they will rank with a top list, a top 15 list. But it is very interesting, and it does include some peer ranking as well. So, the bottom line is love them or hate them, we all want to know the Gartner point of view. We want to take a look at it and internalize it and really understand how it might influence the priorities we have for our businesses.

Karin Bursa (14:05):

Now, I mentioned just a moment ago, the Gartner Supply Chain Symposium. Now, this event, it’s actually two events. One in North America and one that occurs in Europe. But this conference, so the content of the conference is essentially the same and delivered twice so that it’s more geographically appealing from a travel perspective. The conferences will have a variety of practitioner presentations or sponsor presentations as well. So, those will be a little bit different in North America than they might be in Europe. But this particular event, so it’s called the Gartner Supply Chain Symposium. And it is built as the world’s most important gathering of chief supply chain officers and supply chain executives. The Gartner Supply Chain Symposium does in fact attract a wide range of practitioners, of technology providers, of consultants, analysts, and academia as well.

Karin Bursa (15:09):

In 2022, the Supply Chain Symposiums were held in Orlando, Florida and in London in the United Kingdom. So, both events were sold out. That’s right, sold out. In-person, live event, sold out. The European event, which was held at the O2, which is just outside of London, actually just wrapped up today, or excuse me, the day I’m recording this particular podcast. And so, it’s hot off the press. So since the majority of the Gartner delivered content, so it’s based on the Gartner research initiatives that have been underway. So, the bulk of that research that gets presented around supply chain is the same. It may be delivered by different analysts, but the research itself is consistent for North America as well as the European marketplace.

Karin Bursa (16:06):

So, I thought this would be a great opportunity to reshare a TEKTOK episode that recaps what you missed at the Gartner Supply Chain Symposium 2022. Unfortunately, there were no silver bullets, but the exchange of ideas, the fresh inspiration and a lot of good old fashioned human connection around a common desire to drive performance and innovation in the supply chain was electrifying. It, in itself, was just really motivating and creating kind of a renewed excitement around all things supply chain.

Karin Bursa (16:52):

So, I got to tell you, it is a great time to be in supply chain. Take a listen. Thank you for tuning in today. You know, it has been a busy, busy week. It’s been filled with the 2022 Gartner Supply Chain Symposium, and I wanted to share just a few highlights from the event with each of you. As you know, the expectations around the value supply chain deliver are accelerating. And this is despite all of our ongoing volatility, disruption, gridlock, and of course uncertainty. We are all grappling with the impacts of the pandemic. Even today, global conflict, climate change, new ESG initiatives, shifting channel and product mixes, as well as significant constraints on available talent. As supply chain leaders, we’ve got to be prepared to navigate this uncertainty and mitigate risk. It’s increasingly a dynamic global market. And many of these challenges were discussed, as you can imagine, at the 2022 Gartner Supply Chain Symposium, which was held in Orlando, Florida. It is billed – this particular event is billed as the world’s most important gathering of chief supply chain officers and supply chain executives.

Karin Bursa (18:26):

Now, unfortunately, there were no silver bullets, but there was a lot of insight and inspiration. So let’s start with the fact that the conference was actually over-subscribed. Now, I don’t have the exact numbers, but I believe that Gartner expected between 1800 and 1900 attendees. However, estimates are that registration was closer to 2,600. Yeah, let me say that again, 2,600 supply chain professionals gathered together in Orlando this week. That meant that there were three overflow hotels in addition to the dolphin and swan accommodations that Gartner had planned in the Orlando area. It was really exciting to see so many supply chain movers and shakers together in real life. It felt a little like a reunion, a little like a party, and then some really, really good discussions. So, as we caught up with old friends, we connected face to face with colleagues that we have only seen in virtual formats for the past two years, and we had the opportunity to meet new supply team leaders that are making an impact.

Karin Bursa (19:50):

And over a three-day agenda, there were more than 140 sessions, many of which were featuring the latest research and insight from Gartner. Try as I did, there was no possible way to cover all of these sessions. So, I wanted to share just a few of the highlights with you. If you were at the conference, please chime in with your highlights, your takeaways. And if you weren’t able to be at the Gartner Symposium, let me know what you found valuable in this recap.

Karin Bursa (20:25):

So, let’s start at the beginning. The opening keynote was delivered by Gartner Analyst, Ken Chadwick. And it focused on this theme of supply chain’s offset strategy, recalibrating our approach to the great acceleration. I got to tell you that I didn’t love the term offset or offset strategy, but I totally get it. And I’ll explain why. While we have survived some of the most volatile and uncertain times in recent history, I think we all recognize our journey is not done.

Karin Bursa (21:00):

Our goal is not to simply survive, it is to thrive and to build thriving supply chains. So, I’m an optimist. I do like Gartner’s positioning because they said that we were on the cusp of the great acceleration. Now, that can mean a lot of things. And I’m going to tell you, Gartner shared some offset strategies for what they believed to be the five challenges supply chain leaders should be addressing. So, five challenges supply chain leaders should be addressing. The first was really interesting, It is cognitive overload. And this really focused on the burden and the way that we supply chain professionals feel. It was a recurring theme throughout the conference, this cognitive overload. And Gartner shared a statistic that said that there was a staggering 83 percent of the workforce. The supply chain workforce feels overwhelmed. That’s right, 83 percent.

Karin Bursa (22:17):

So, if any of you, TEKTOK listeners, you movers and shakers out there, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, you’re not alone. In fact, if you’re not feeling overwhelmed, you’re in the minority at this point, based on this particular statistic that was shared by Gartner. Now, one of the key strategies around cognitive overload that was shared by Ken Chadwick was that we need to shift the burden of decision making, and we need to shift that to computers or to technology. Now, let me be clear, Gartner was not advocating replacing humans, but instead augmenting humans with better insights, faster analysis so that we can inspire confidence and quicker decision making.

Karin Bursa (23:10):

So, in fact, Ken Chadwick shared one example, which was from Lenovo. And Lenovo has been able to achieve a 55 percent reduction in decision cycle time, right? So, they’re making decisions in less than half the time that they used to. And this has helped to contribute to about a $26 million increase from a profitability perspective or profit growth perspective. That’s right. Lenovo making decisions faster. The cycle times are contracting, and they can measure that impact with additional profit growth. Now, rest assured I got the audience’s attention. So, that was the first challenge that Ken Chadwick put before us, this audience of 2,600 supply chain professionals.

Karin Bursa (24:09):

The second is the evolving customer expectations. I know each and every one of you are dealing with this, whether you’re doing product rationalization, you are doing customization, these are trends that will continue. Technology change, technology evolution. It’s no secret that technology has been evolving faster than most companies have been able to harness, deploy, and use to their advantage. Don’t allow yourself to get stuck because you will get left behind. Number four was supply chain cyber risk. Yeah, supply chain cyber risk. A very, very real challenge for many of us in the industry today. And it is high on the list of CEO concerns as well.

Karin Bursa (25:05):

And then, finally number five is energy instability. Now, here in North America, we are dealing with energy instability or rising fuel costs. So, it does become important because it is requiring the ability to replan a number of supply chain initiatives or to reevaluate margin contributions for customers or product lines or distribution channels as well. So what Ken Chadwick asked everyone to do was look at delivering at least one win in each of these five categories. If you can do one thing in each of these five categories, you will keep pace and thrive.

Karin Bursa (26:12):

So again, let me give those to you, cognitive overload, let’s remove some of that burden or accelerate that decision process. Evolving customer expectations, let’s get closer to our top customers, let’s understand and get greater visibility on how we can serve them. Let’s look at segmentation strategies, technology changed. I know it can be difficult, but you must keep pace. You must be looking to adopt harness, deploy AI driven capabilities so that you can make decisions faster or evaluate criteria faster. Be sure that we are considering supply chain cyber risk, and then looking at strategies around energy instability.

Karin Bursa (26:12):

So, at this point, I have either like overwhelmed you and you’re tuning me out thinking, Karin, what am I going to do? Those are our big, big rocks to be moved. But stay with me, I want to share some inspiration as we go through this recap. So, there was another session that Ken Chadwick shared. And I do want to just share a few of the big highlights from there. It was CEO concerns in 2022 and 2023. So, this is what your CEO is thinking about or what the aggregate survey shows that CEOs are concerned about and the implications and actions for supply chain executives or chief supply chain officers.

Karin Bursa (27:30):

And I just picked a few of these. The first is growth. So, growth, as long as I have been tracking this, growth is always number one on a CEO’s agenda. And it is still, in fact, number one priority for the CEO, despite expectations that inflation is going to continue for potentially as long as three years. So be sure that when you’re engaging with your CEO or you’re engaging with your executive team, you are presenting ways that you and the supply chain team can fuel growth, anticipate growth, serve customers from a growth perspective, or even tap into new markets. The next was number two was technology related. So CEOs do see digital strategies as key solutions to boost productivity and manage costs. That should not be a surprise to you, but it was number two, on this CEO survey, technology related, how do we harness it?

Karin Bursa (28:41):

How do we use it? How do we boost our corporate digital strategy to increase productivity and manage overall cost? Now, I’m going to skip a couple at – number three was workforce. Now this moved up from number five in the prior survey. So, this was in at number three, so workforce talent. Priorities need to be realigned to attract and retain talent. That’s right. No surprise, you’re probably going tell me something I didn’t know, Karin. While they rolled in, the need to expand diversity and inclusion an efforts as well. So, bringing in the DEI initiatives as a part of attracting, retaining, challenging, giving opportunities to your workforce is, is number three on the CEO’s list. In past, it’s been around number five.

Bursa (29:54):

Now, another one that I found interesting made a big move is environmental sustainability. This moved up to number seven, prior year was at number 17. So, that’s ten positions. This does reflect a change in the buyers in the marketplace. This is a buyer that is coming into power and authority and businesses or consumers that have more income to spend, and they want products that reinforce a strong environmental message to the marketplace, sustainability message in the marketplace, good governance of how the products developed, the materials used, and how they make their way to market. Even the packaging that surrounds the product as it makes its way in either a B2B or a direct to consumer. So, CEOs, now agree, this is a worthy investment, and it will actually fuel future revenue and sales.

Karin Bursa (30:58):

Now, supply chain improvements, just as a broad theme for these CEOs was number 11. Now, I got to tell you, this surprised me. Now prior years, it has been around number 14 but I was surprised it wasn’t higher. I was surprised it didn’t break the top 10 themes, but supply chain improvements landed at number 11. Let me know what you think about that. Now, with this digital accelerated decision making, there was one session that caught my attention based on title alone. The title of the session was – let me look at this and get it right for you. The title was The Digital Era and the End of S&OP. I’m sorry, The Digital Era and the End of S&OP. Now, I had a question mark at the end. So, the end of S&OP? Maybe I need to say that differently, The Digital Era and the End of S&OP, with a big question mark.

Karin Bursa (31:57):

Now, this was delivered by Gartner Analyst Pia Lund. And as you can imagine, I was on the edge of my seat because, you know, the topic of sales and operations planning is one that I have a great deal of expertise and passion around. While Pia got down to brass tactics and told a standing room only audience, the technology has evolved faster than our S&OP process and it’s time to make a change. So, she advocates that S&OP should be sure to align to business objectives instead of rigid time horizons, business objectives, overall goals and objectives, not just that we have a monthly planning cycle or a quarterly planning cycle, or we’re looking at investments on a three-year horizon.

Karin Bursa (32:53):

Secondly, you advocated that we leverage systems that evaluate hundreds of scenarios versus just a few. That’s right, hundreds. So, this is a great example of taking advantage of technology to cycle through the available data, the business context, and then present up the best or the most likely scenarios to be discussed in your executive S&OP leadership team. I love this. I’m seeing this take place today. And for those of you that are looking at just simply a best case, worst case, and most likely kind of three-pronged evaluation, you need better data. You need the ability to kind of boost the confidence and look at a tighter range of outcomes and have the understanding that there were literally hundreds of business scenarios that were evaluated to present those to you.

Karin Bursa (33:59):

Then the fi final theme that she spoke to was that we need to focus on the future versus the past. I really believe this. We’ve got to get out of that firefighting mode. We do need to measure the performance of our plans. But at the same time, we need to be getting smarter and smarter and learning what went well and what didn’t go well, right? Machine learning coming into play to figure out what we did and what the impact of that was.

Karin Bursa (34:31):

So, here are a few examples that Pia Lund offered as examples of shifting in the way you are looking at your planning around sales and operations planning. So, if we need to go from siloed decision making to broad alignment with our business strategy, everybody, every one of you should be nodding yes as you’re listening to this. So come back to me, stay with me on this list. We want to move from looking only at a few constraint considerations to many, many constraint considerations. In fact, you may want to include personnel, your talent pool as part of your constraints that are being modeled today. Move from that one, two, three scenarios to the ability, I said the ability to look at hundreds of scenarios. She actually said thousands of scenarios. That’s right, thousands of scenarios. So, we need to get well beyond the one, two, threes, and strive for, you know, hundreds and potentially looking at thousands of scenarios for our business.

Karin Bursa (35:45):

She also mentioned that we need to stop thinking of our ERP systems, our enterprise systems as the single source of data. We need to start tapping into external data sources and extending those so that we’re getting better signals, sensing demand from multiple signals, but also sensing supply and looking at those signals to really augment and improve our overall planning. We’ve got to move from batch planning, right? Monthly, quarterly, weekly to looking at real time data, get out of manual planning, everything where planners are touching every item, every channel to looking at automated or autonomous planning so that we can elevate how our planners, our business analysts are engaging, right? So, lots of great examples there for you to consider as you evolve not just your supply chain planning process, but your sales and operations planning process.

Karin Bursa (36:51):

Now, some of the best presentations that I attended were case studies. This were delivered by practitioners. So come back to me if you’re multitasking, I really want you to hear about these couple of end user presentations. There are a few that stood out to me. And the first one, the first one focused on growth. Yeah, growth. So, during the pandemic, it was focused on growth. And this one was delivered by Diageo. So, Livia Kandiyoti Konak, who is the head of planning and logistics at Diageo, delivered a really inspirational session and it was focused on leveraging supply chain capabilities to fuel growth.

Karin Bursa (37:45):

Now, I loved that Livia started with the goal of delighting customers. That’s right, delighting customers, a worthy goal that honestly has resulted in an impressive 20 percent single-year growth rate. Let me say that again. The goal is delighting customers. Well, they must be delighted because the result has been an impressive 20 percent single-year growth. That’s huge. So, if you’re not familiar with Diageo, I bet you’re familiar with many of their brands. Diageo is a global drinks business. It ranked number 16 on the Gartner Top 25 Companies, Top 25 Supply Chains for 2022. And it’s got iconic brands like Guinnes, Johnny Walker, Gordons, and Smirnoff.

Karin Bursa (38:44):

Now, another measure of the success to date for Diageo is that it has now ranked first place for supply chain excellence and customer service in the U.K. That’s right, first place. That’s a big jump. Now, Livia is leading a team that is achieving this rapid transformation, and they are in fact delivering what every supply chain professional wants. They are delivering better visibility, optimization, and autonomous planning. And they’re doing much of this with the rollout of OMP’s unison planning. So that’s their partner, their technology partner in this transformation initiative. So today, Diageo has the agility to anticipate and respond to demand and channel shifts, supply chain constraints, to model those, to look at packaging transitions, to look at product and market segmentation, all while delivering significant growth.

Karin Bursa (39:56):

And the Diageo customer is in fact delighted with the improved service levels. And Diageo is also committed to both grain and glass sustainability. So, if we go back to that list of what’s on the CEO’s agenda, we’re looking at examples here of growth. We’re looking at examples of sustainability. We’re looking at making better decisions, leveraging technology. And we are looking at automation, the ability to elevate and relieve some of that cognitive overload. So, I thought this particular case study really brought many of those messages to the forefront in a very tangible way. For me, in a very, very tangible way.

Karin Bursa (40:49):

All right. So, another great case study – so come back to me because I want you to hear this. This is a very different company than Diageo. This was Border States Electric. So, Border States Electric, and it was about navigating the disruptions. They were impressive, very, very practical recommendations. And so, the presenters were Tony Serati, who is the Vice President of Procurement with Border States Electric. So, Border States Electric is a leading electrical distributor, about three billion in revenue, and they have been working with GAINSystems. And so, Bill Benton who is the co-founder of GAINSystems, presented with him.

Karin Bursa (41:36):

But in reality, Tony told the story and told us about what Border States Electric has been up to. And so, they’ve been navigating all of these supply chain disruptions and they are leveraging AI, artificial intelligence to drive automation. So back to those CEO themes and automation and better decision making and leveraging technology, another great example. A little bit about Border States because it may not be a name, you’re familiar with. They are one of the largest electrical distributors in North America. They’ve got a network of about 5,000 suppliers, 100 locations, and approximately 300,000 skews.

Karin Bursa (42:23):

So, if you’re with me, you supply chain movers or shakers are automatically thinking about the planning process in tapping 5,000 suppliers, a hundred locations, and 300,000 skews. I did not get their number of customers, but I am sure that’s a big number as well. So, we’ve got to think about product, location, timing, optimization. And Tony did share that some of their lead times, you’re experiencing the same thing I know, have exponentially extended, right? So, instead of being able to look at days or weeks, they’re looking at weeks or months. And he even gave one example where lead time has extended from roughly four months for some items to nearly four years. That’s right. Imagine that. Now, that was an example or an outlier that he shared. But in the best-case scenario, extended lead time for many, many of the items that they like to provide and need to provide for their customers.

Karin Bursa (43:35):

So, Border States Electric has been augmenting their SAP ERP system with GAINS. And they’re doing this really to automate numerous planning processes. And the goal is to free up that planner time while also simultaneously delivering greater precision, quicker response to disruptions of all types, pandemic and others, frequent price changes, supplier constraints, and a changing mix in customer demand. So, all of those themes go back to that CEO’s agenda, growth, leveraging technology, looking at elevating decision making or accelerating decision making and that customer service and how do I elevate what my talent is doing so that they can perform and make a bigger impact.

Karin Bursa (44:32):

So, there were a few specific automation examples and I want to share those with you. When Border States started, they said that only 50 percent of their portfolio of 300,000 skews were forecasted. Today, that is 95 plus percent of all skews are forecasted and forecasted with much greater accuracy than they were able to do before. They also talk in terms of multi echelon planning and made this powerful statement.

Karin Bursa (45:08):

So, Tony Serati made this powerful statement. I actually wrote it down in my notes. He said, “You know what took us days to do now takes us minutes”. That’s right, what took us days now takes us minutes. So, talk about freeing up your team members to great underscore, including he gave an example of making a network change to better respond to a customer need, right? That they have the agility that they can move their stocking locations, they can move volume in order to specifically serve customers and do it as quickly and reliably as possible. So, Border States is also taking advantage of automated replenishment for a significant portion of its portfolio as well.

Karin Bursa (45:57):

So, I think you can see why I was so excited about this. I liked the examples of automation, of acceleration to be able to do more, right, covering that full product portfolio, and elevating how they’re planning team engages and is now able to spend more time serving customers or working with suppliers versus just crunching numbers. So, a great case study that I think underscores many of the big themes that Gartner was challenging us with on where we should spend our time.

Karin Bursa (46:31):

Okay. Now, stay with me. I know I’m going on, but you can – I hope you hear the enthusiasm in my voice because it was really a great conference. There were great conversations in between sessions, opportunities to sit down with people you did not know at lunch and ask questions and see what was working in their environments as well. Now, many of these analysts delivered multiple sessions. In one of the three different sessions delivered by Gartner, distinguished Vice President Noha Tohamy, focused on the consumer products supply chain. This was about innovating and adapting amidst this theme of accelerating change.

Karin Bursa (47:15):

So, I thought that this was a really good session. It was packed with good data and relevant examples around top investments for consumer products companies to increase agility and resilience. So, a couple of those themes were supply chain, supply chain segmentation. I mentioned this was also cited in the Diageo presentation. That was one of the things that Diageo is implementing is a segmentation strategy so that they can better support, their never out or their always available products for their customers. The second is network design and a diversifying supply base, right? We’re not as focused today on the low cost provider. We are looking for reliability. And many times, that means I’m going to have to go to multiple suppliers so that I can mitigate risks in my network and in the marketplace.

Karin Bursa (48:23):

Number three is the redesign of products to reduce complexity. And then finally gaining supply chain visibility. And you know, I say this all the time, visibility is on the top of every supply chain investment initiative. So, dig in and understand what visibility means to your company, to your culture, to your products, to the channels you serve. Because I believe firmly there are opportunities to boost visibility across your supply chain operations.

Karin Bursa (48:55):

This session underscored that there is a dramatic shift in direct consumer channels. I think we all agree with that. The pandemic just accelerated that, but what it means is that consumer products manufacturers now have to behave like retailers. They’re going direct to consumer. So, this requires a very different operating model, very different packaging, very different marketing. It’s a big shift. This transition is driving significant investments and things like real-time analytics so that you can capture and analyze the data and execute in shorter, tighter cycles, respond to market opportunities faster. So, just a few thoughts there, if any of you are in the consumer product sector.

Karin Bursa (49:51):

So, speaking of consumer products and visibility, my friend Rob Haddock, who is Group Director of Planning and Logistics at Coca-Cola. So, Coca-Cola, number 12 on the Gartner Top 25 list for 2022. So, congratulations to the Coca-Cola team. Now. Rob is such an expert in this area of logistics and visibility that he was talked to speak on a couple of different panels in a few different sessions. But he was underscoring the critical nature of navigating these disruptions, these logistics disruptions and responding to market changes with process improvements and technology in areas like network visibility, shipper collaboration, lane availability or lane sharing, yard visibility, even contactless pick up and deliver, right? How can we reduce dwell times and improve the overall driver experience? So, drivers are a significant constraint. How do we improve their experience and get them able to execute faster or have greater visibility themselves?

Karin Bursa (51:18):

So, Rob has a great passion for connecting and educating and developing supply chain professionals. And every time I saw him in the hallway, he’s just surrounded by a group of people who were tapping into him either telling jokes or asking for examples of how they’ve been able to achieve what they have. Now, a name that many of you would that listen to TEKTOK regularly, may be familiar with is Steve Barber. Steve Barber is with Transplace or now Transplace and Uber Freight, which have come together. Steve was a guest on TEKTOK just a few months ago.

Karin Bursa (51:55):

Now, Transplace and Uber have more – excuse me, Transplace and Uber Freight have more than 17 billion, that’s billion with a B, of freight that’s under management. And Steve talked about how they are transforming the traditional freight procurement process and introducing some new solutions for shippers so that they can really enable seamless procurement of lanes. They can look at things in the spot market or look at low volume planning, not just high volume planning. So interesting things there. I think that we’ll hear more from Transplace and Uber Freight as they continue to bring these two businesses together.

Karin Bursa (52:42):

All right, stay with me. I know we’re going here. So, another – so, I’m trying to bring you kind of the best of the best of some of the sessions at the Gartner 2022 Supply Chain Symposium, which took place this week. And some just really good, really good market analysis, buyer behaviors, et cetera. So, another really hardworking Gartner analyst at this particular event was Amber Sally. Amber delivered three presentations. She had dozens of one-on-one sessions with practitioners and solution providers. And she is the lead analyst on the Gartner Supply Chain Planning Magic Quadrant, which published just a few weeks ago.

Karin Bursa (53:28):

So, she did a session on the magic quadrant for supply chain planning solutions. And I got to tell you, there were hundreds of people just captivated, standing around, again wall to wall, standing room only. As Amber Sally went through some of the background information on how Gartner selected and evaluated 22 solution providers that qualified for the 2022 Gartner Supply Chain Planning Magic Quadrant. Now, I have been engaged with this particular magic quadrant for more than 25 years, and I still learn something every time. There’s still, you know, there is deep criteria in what gets evaluated from a critical capabilities perspective. But there’s also some insights that come from the Gartner engagement in the industry, as well as a customer survey process that takes place. So, I learn something every time.

Karin Bursa (54:34):

And one of the interesting data points that Gartner shared is that they believe that the supply chain planning solutions market is currently valued at about $5.7 billion. That’s right, $5.7 billion. That’s for planning. That’s demand inventory, supply, production, sales and operations planning, the analytics around those valued at $5.7 billion. And that, that marketplace is expected to grow at 13.6 percent through 2026. That is some healthy growth. And I believe that that growth in part is inspired because back to the CEO’s agenda, how do we leverage technology, how do we accelerate decision making, how do we evaluate hundreds of scenarios for our business and deliver for our customers? So continued investment in this area. So buckle up, supply chain movers and shakers, because change is coming.

Karin Bursa (55:44):

Now, as you might imagine, the networking at this event was fantastic. It started on Sunday, and it continued to the moment I got on the plane and returned to Atlanta late on Wednesday. And honestly, I have a number of follow up meetings that are planned as a result of the conference as well. So, I am energized, I’m excited, I’m inspired. And I’ve got to tell you that no supply chain industry event would be complete without Supply Chain Now Founder and Host, Scott Luton, making an appearance. So, Scott was there as well. And you should know, I want you to know, because I think it surprised some people who had not met Scott before in person. But Scott is more fantastic in real life than he is in the virtual world. He is so good at connecting people and engaging people. And that came through yet again in a live roundtable that he helped to moderate with Mark Holmes, who is with InterSystems.

Karin Bursa (56:55):

Now, this roundtable was focused on how to connect data for visibility and actionable insight. So, there we are again, visibility, harnessing data, leveraging technology, making better decisions faster. So, in this very lively roundtable, which again, standing room only, went – well, let me see. It really underscored that future performance goes beyond responding simply to supply chain disruptions. We’ve got to have the ability to consider things like inflation, rising costs, the exodus of tribal knowledge. So, this great resignation, right, where so much expertise is leaving our companies. We need to formalize or encapsulate some of that intelligence before it leaves our businesses. And we need to harness data, and not just our enterprise data, but new data sources and we’ve got to transform data into actionable insights so that we can do more intelligent decision making.

Karin Bursa (58:04):

So, I think you can see how that theme goes back to the CEO’s agenda as well, right? How do I fuel growth? How do I harness technology? How do I attract and retain my talent pool, my workforce? How do I make the investments that are really going to elevate the value proposition and look at these digital strategies? Woo, I got to tell you, I could probably go on for another hour. But suffice it to say that face-to-face events are back and they are energizing the exchange of ideas, the fresh inspiration, and some good old fashioned human connection are sure to fuel future innovation.

Karin Bursa (58:51):

So, if you were at the Gartner Symposium, please chime in with your highlights. Let me know what you connected with and if you weren’t able to be there this year, let me know what you found valuable from this particular recap. Bottom line is supply chain movers and shakers it is a great time to be in supply chain. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, but it is certainly, certainly worthwhile.

Karin Bursa (59:20):

So, thank you for joining us on TEKTOK, where our goal is to help you eliminate the noise and focus in on the information and inspiration you need to transform your business and replace risky inventory with valuable insights. We’ll see you next time on TEKTOK powered by Supply Chain Now.