Supply Chain Technology Roadmaps

The reality is that most innovative supply chain strategies leverage technology in some form to achieve their objectives. In most organizations, making technology decisions involves multiple parties and a lengthy annual budgeting process that does not always effectively evaluate the overall portfolio of potential operations and supply chain projects. Typically, this process falls short in one of several ways:

• Limited understanding of the supply chain technology marketplace and potential solutions: Organizations are typically internally focused and do not have a broad awareness of the potential technology capabilities and solutions available on the market. Thus, they constrain their options and the result is an incomplete set of potential initiatives.
• Ineffective prioritization of potential initiatives: Often, a “squeaky wheel gets the grease” phenomenon occurs and prioritization is disconnected with business value.
• Undisciplined and inefficient process: The decision-making process itself may lack organization and discipline and participating may be an inefficient use of time for key personnel.

Spinnaker’s Supply Chain Technology Roadmap Services help solve these issues by providing a focused approach and methodology, subject matter expertise in supply chain technology solutions, and an outside perspective on the potential benefits of different solutions for an organization.

The scope of a Supply Chain Technology Roadmap can be customized based on a client’s needs, but often considers:

1. Supply Chain Planning
2. Sourcing & Procurement
3. Manufacturing Execution
4. Logistics & Warehousing
5. Supply Chain Reporting & Metrics

To execute the process, Spinnaker and a core team of client associates engage in a formal planning process to develop the Supply Chain Technology Roadmap. The approach leverages standard Spinnaker methodologies that are customized to suit the specific functional and organizational requirements of the client by working a process that identifies and assesses current supply chain capabilities based on industry-focused best practices, prioritizes pain points, identifies key technology initiatives, creates a sequenced roadmap to deploy the technology, and facilitates buy-in from key stakeholders and executives.