EXECUTIVE INSIGHT
At Procurement and Supply Chain LIVE London 2024 , the final main stage session saw Jeff Collier , Chief Revenue Officer at SAP Intelligent Spend & Business Network , join Neil Perry , Stage Host and Group Broadcast Director at BizClik Media .
Concluding our flagship event back in September , the fireside chat with Jeff explored the pressing challenges facing modern supply chains and procurement functions . Jeff shared insights into the strategies organisations are deploying to mitigate disruptions , with a focus on the growing role of AI in procurement and supply chain operations .
Q . WHAT ARE THE CURRENT CHALLENGES THAT YOU SEE ORGANISATIONS FACING , PARTICULARLY WHEN IT COMES TO THEIR SUPPLY CHAINS ?
» A topic that we ’ ve all been a part of for the last five years – we don ’ t need to go back to Covid . Since that time we ’ ve seen a lot of more isolated cases of massive supply chain disruptions , where if you ’ re in the automotive industry , you dealt with the cable harnesses that only came from Ukraine . A surprising tier three or tier four level problem . From Israel , now we see a lack of items for electronic components and fertiliser , and so these very specialised areas that cause big impacts . You look at that and you say , well , how can technology help with that ? Many of the people in this room are part of their organisations trying to say , let ’ s prevent that . Let ’ s predict what the next
“ In the supply chain , we ’ ve seen the power maths can have , and now we ’ re talking about taking the next leap forward ”
disruptions will be so that we can maybe prevent them in the first place . Which involves not just knowing who your suppliers are , but who your suppliers ’ suppliers are . It ’ s a question as I travel around the world being with our customers , probably 80 % of them come back to this very question of that challenge of how do you know who your third tier suppliers are and what the risks are . At SAP we ’ ve been doing a lot in this space to try and help share information up the stack , but sometimes not everyone ’ s willing and it can be a tough maths problem . One of our Canadian manufacturers took their 11 significant suppliers and did some analysis on how many of their suppliers mattered and it was 300 . Then when they went to the next question , ‘ let ’ s see if we can do the maths on how many of their suppliers ’. So now we ’ re down three tiers matter and it was 12,000 , which is a significant challenge for humans to keep track of .
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