Before Using Supply Chain Consultants
Defining The Challenge
Often an organisation will contact supply chain consultants, because they have an issue that they want support with, and at first the details are often sketchy. Getting some clarity around these issues is vital in order to make the right "go/no go" decision, and much good work can be done before supply chain consultants need to even be contacted.
It can be extremely helpful to run a short workshop to clarify the nature of the challenge more exactly. As at the beginning of any significant project, its beneficial to involve as many of the key stakeholders to do this, who can facilitate the process. An advantage of using supply chain consultants at this early workshop stage is that their knowledge of the "art of the possible" based upon their experience in other organisations can be extremely valuable during this part of the early "go/no go" decision making process. They're also very good at facilitating these sorts of workshops. A potential disadvantage is that the support your organisation actually needs, but doesn't yet realise, may not be something that your supply chain consultants typically provide, and by involving them early, you risk setting a hare running prematurely. Nevertheless, it's often surprising what these workshops yield in terms of background information. Some of the questions that good supply chain consultants will want to consider during such workshops include:
- What's the challenge?
- How do we write it down?
- Do we know where we want to get to?
- Do we really know what "best practise" is in this regard? Because none of us know what we don't know, it can be very valuable to involve supply chain consultants for this part of the process alone.
- What are our objectives? Try and write them down, but assume they won't be exactly right first time.
- How appropriate is it for our organisation to be at the cutting edge of best practise in this particular area? Being amongst the first may give some competitive advantage, but it usually comes at a significant price.
- Just how sustainable will any competitive advantage be that this gives us?
- How big are the likely financial benefits of making the change? Feel free to add more detail to estimated financial benefits at a later stage, but just make a top line estimate for the moment.
- What are the key non-financial benefits of making the change?
- What's the risk to the organisation of doing nothing?
- How important does that make this opportunity for us?
- What are the key risks of making the changes?
- Given what the anticipated financial and non-financial benefits are, what implications does this have on what we can reasonably spend to deliver the project?
- What does the costs/benefits/risks equation look like?
- How confident are we that the project will be "in the black" within the same financial year?
- If we're not, how might this fit in with our planned portfolio of investments for the financial year; what's more important and what's less important?
- Is it appropriate to go for 80% of the benefits and try to make the changes for 20% of the cost? What are the risks of doing it this way?
- Is there a way of being a "fast follower" and simply copying those who've done something similar before?
- How successful are we typically, as an organisation, in delivering these sorts of changes?
- Do we already have the appropriate programme and project management practises and procedures (including for example PRINCE 2) to ensure that the project comes in on time and to budget and achieves all of the key deliverables?
- Do we have all of the other necessary expertise to reliably deliver the change? There's a lot more to delivering change than simply using a process like PRINCE 2 and this is a core competence of supply chain consultants.
- Who are the key stakeholders in the project ?
- How can we secure their buy-in ?
- If we decide to address this, what skills and expertise will we need and what would be "nice to haves"?
- What skills and expertise do we have within our own organisation to do this ?
- How available are our people?
- Can we afford NOT to use a full time core team? Is this really going to be a success, if we use only a part-time team?
- Could we make people more available, by back-filling?
- Should we try to do this on our own, or do we need some additional help?
- Do we want permanent or short-term help?
- Where might we get this additional help from: headhunting, interim management or supply chain consultants?
- If we do it on our own, can enough of our people "think outside the box" or to put it another way: are we at risk of only making incremental changes unless we bring someone in from outside who thinks bigger?
- How long might it take us to head-hunt an expert from a competitor?
- Even if we can head-hunt an expert, is that any guarantee that they can deliver the necessary change in our organisation ?
- What other skills and expertise do we need to complete the team? The answer to this question may not be apparent entirely from the inside of an organisation, but equally supply chain consultants may not understand your organisation's strengths and weaknesses in that level of detail either. Often a combination of both opinions will be most valuable.
- Do we know what the pros and cons of using supply chain consultants as opposed to an interim management approach are?
- Who should own the project?
- Who should manage the project ?
- Who should work full time on the project?
- Who should be part-time on the project ?
- What resources will they need?
- What do we need to do next?
If the results of the above workshop or meeting are clear enough, the immediate answer to this last question may simply be a case of drafting some "Terms of Reference" for the project. That said getting the "Terms of Reference" right is often more difficult than most organizations imagine. After all it's a vital step in the process of engaging supply chain consultants.
It may though, be the case that a short diagnostic project is necessary to size the projected costs/benefits/risks and draft out the "Terms of Reference". One of the things that supply chain consultants excel at, is helping clients understand what their particular challenges are, and helping them to prioritise them. Supply chain consultants have the benefit of being able to come into an organisation with a "fresh pair of eyes", having worked in lots of other industries, from which learnings are often transferable.
Executive Interims - Supply Chain Practice
In addition to providing interim management services, Executive Interims - Supply Chain Practice provides clients with consultants formerly from "Big Four" consultancy firms, including:
Want More Advice About Supply Chain Consultants?
Executive Interims - Supply Chain Practice is a specialist provider of supply chain consultancy and interim management services. If you'd like to know more about what our supply chain consultancy services can do for your business, contact us to explore the subject further.
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