Over the past few days, supply chain colleagues gathered in San Diego to share ideas and insights on the exciting changes happening in the industry. Here are just a few highlights from the conference:
On Building Great Companies
Industry leader, Howard Schultz, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Starbucks, shared insight on how to grow and succeed as professional individuals and as an organization by remembering that culture trumps strategy.
He says that every company needs a great strategy, but a company with a good strategy without a great culture, ultimately leads to poor execution. He encourages companies to cultivate a corporate culture that “brings people along” in order to build great, enduring companies with great people.
“Growth is not a strategy. Growth is an outcome.” –Howard Schultz, Starbucks Chairman and CEO
On Technology
Gartner shared that roughly 30 billion devices will be connected by 2020 via the Internet of Things. With this, experts agree that there is a lot of growth toward implementing new technology innovations. The supply chain is moving toward a place that is more and more foundationally-dependent on technology in order to thrive, which allows for a huge opportunity to leverage technology in your organization.
On Sustainable Business Models
Organizations will need to evaluate and re-imagine their business models in order to optimize their supply chains to find the right balance among cost, service, sustainability, and risk.
Industry experts shared that a sustainable business model leveraging the power of analytics would allow organizations to analyze the current state of their supply chains, validate supply chain changes and continuously adjust to new scenarios, optimize performance, respond to disruptions, and reduce risk.
On Networking
Lastly, and possibly most importantly, I learned the value in networking at conferences. The supply chain industry is extremely diverse, and I enjoyed meeting other professionals and learning about their specific roles in the industry, such as securing additional warehouse locations, managing and implementing transportation management systems, analyzing ways to improve operations, and etc. Whether it was on breaks, in hotel elevators, at roundtable lunches, or in the back rows at panel discussions—it was great connecting with everyone at CSCMP!