Supply Chain Management

Those would be easier done in ERP-kind of programs where you have the luxury of defining your boundary walls and getting your arms around the scope definition and change management. When you broach the topic of SCM transformation, you are in turn trying to tame a beast of a plethora of functions (what's really common after all between replenishment planning, contract management, warehouse management and multi-channel commerce apart from an umbrella term called SCM?), a range of stakeholders (suppliers, customers, partners, employees - at a basic level) and then a series of many-to-many interactions in the worldwide SCM web between these functions (or departments) and the stakeholder categories.

If we need to talk of SCM Transformation, we need to anchor this somewhere and that could mean starting with a specific function (eg: strategic sourcing or transportation management) and then expanding it globally while at the same time keeping an eye on the integration elements of that function upstream and downstream in the supply chain. At Infosys, we have a lot of clarity on this at a sub-function level. Take procurement: we start with spend analytics, go to strategic sourcing, then contract managment and finally PO side optimization covering, if needed, catalog managment and category management as well. Ditto with Supply Chain Execution triads of WMS/TMS/OMS. But my sense is that end2end SCM transformations these days are best not attempted since each of the parties in the chain is a supplier/customer with their own views on how "their SCM" would look like. Even with mega players like a Walmart or a TESCO, I am not sure if the locus of control is completely at their end, for all SCM functions. It works far better if done in a collaborative fashion.