It is just about time to ring in the New Year.  This is a time to reflect upon the past and turn the focus toward the future.  I do hope that you are enjoying reading both our reflections on supply chain events 2009 as well as the 2010 Predictions series running both this and next week.  As always, feel free to share your own commentary and predictions.

I did not want to close 2009 without noting some perspectives regarding this blog and our New Year’s Resolutions for 2010.   Supply Chain Matters was initiated by myself in February 2008, both as a new voice as well as an extension to our consulting firm.  My goal was to provide broader commentary regarding all of the various facets of global supply chains, of interest to a worldwide audience.  Jason Busch, executive editor of the Spend Matters blog sometimes jokes that I selected the name of this blog to copy the “matters” theme.  But alas the theme was continued with the introduction of the Service Matters blog by my good friend Tim Andreae at MCA Solutions.

The real truth is that I purposely chose the name of this site to reflect what the overall core themes of commentary would be, that supply chain business and technology practices, processes and enabling technology do indeed matter.  Hopefully you have been noting that our postings reflect on both the successes, as well as the disappointments among various corporate supply chains.

2009 has been a great year for this forum, and I want to sincerely thank our loyal readers, as well as our sponsors, for their continuing support.  We have logged 210 different commentaries this year. Since the beginning of the year, total site visits has more than doubled, and daily visits have more than tripled,  making this site one of the top five destinations in supply chain blog commentary.  New visitors, referred to as “unique visitors” in web tracking, have increased over fourfold, and in the past six months, this site has been responsible for over 14 thousand links among various search engine sites.  Our quarterly Supply Chain Matters Newsletter, where we summarize the past quarter’s commentary, has been garnering very positive reader feedback and our distribution list is growing.

We do not sell email lists. Unlike some supply chain web and media outlets, we do not barrage our readers with daily email blasts  in marketing or blatant selling vendor products. Our sponsors are limited, and have been selected on the basis of the quality of their products and service offerings, as opposed to the ad of the month. With ever more limited choices in finding experienced supply chain industry analysis, we anticipate that more of you will utilize our separate consulting and advisory services. All of this has reinforced our belief that we are on the right track for fulfilling your needs.

I cannot close 2009 without thanking my very able proof reader and editor, who happens to be my loving spouse.  Many years as a classroom teacher and school-wide administrator have provided her keen skills in correcting my grammar and prose. I hope to also recruit her as a guest blogger in the coming months.

As we move on to 2010, here are our New Year resolutions for Supply Chain Matters:

• Deeper perspectives on healthcare, alternative energy and green supply chain issues
• More supply chain perspectives for small and medium businesses, who also have their own unique supply chain challenges
• Increased guest postings to provide broader and differing perspectives
• A revised look and feel to this site providing additional reader options
• Increased cross-blogging interchanges to provide different views of certain supply chain challenges
• Introduction of podcasts / webcasts reflecting on key supply chain challenges
• Introduction of a supply chain conference and educational event calendar

Finally, one of my own personal New Year’s Resolution is to try and shorten the length of some of my posts.   Then again, that input comes from my able editor, which means I had better make the effort.

Best wishes to all for a very happy, productive and rewarding New Year.

 Bob Ferrari

In Part One, and Part Two of this series of linked postings, we shared the first three of five predictions for 2010.  In this posting, we outline our fourth prediction.

Prediction Four:  Supply chain technology deployment will remain tactically focused, with continued leveraging power favoring buyers.  The year will also feature more adoption of “cloud” computing.

A highly constrained recessionary driven budget environment impacted the pattern of supply chain technology investment throughout 2009.  My prediction is that this market shift that actually began occurring in 2008 will extend through the bulk of the coming year. 

Severely constrained budgets have limited supply chain technology investments.  Technology investments have been highly tactical or operational focused, fixing problems that absolutely have to get fixed, or investing in technology that is essential to significantly save costs or improve productivity. When the dust finally settles, software industry analysts will cite investments in procurement spend and supplier analysis, contract management, multi-echelon inventory optimization or supply chain performance among others, as areas of most interest in 2009.  I anticipate this tactically-focused investment trend will continue well into 2010.  In the coming year, forward-thinking companies, noting that the bottom has been reached in their industry sector, will make some exceptions by beginning to position themselves for global supply chain competitiveness and growth through selective technology investments, but the landscape of choice remains permanently altered in favor of more buyer choice.

Senior IT and financial executives first preference is that supply chain teams work with existing in-house applications, whether ERP or supply chain in-nature, to address needs.  If that is proven to not be feasible, teams are compelled to do a thorough analysis of investment options. Technology buyers continue to discover that more buying options exist, including software-as-a-service (SaaS) or hosted platform applications.  I believe the popularity of selecting these self-contained applications vs. behind-the-firewall licensed version will increase even more, and hosted technology vendors will benefit more in 2010 by these trends.  Since more and more organizations are increasing their confidence levels in leveraging “cloud computing” options, the move toward business process optimization (BPO) or complete outsourcing of select supply chain processes will become a more attractive option.

It is definitely a buyers market, and technology vendors need to assume that long sales and approval cycles will continue in 2010. Technology vendor references will continue to be scrupulously checked to ascertain what measurable values were received from the technology.  With the latest trends in consolidation among the industry analyst community who specialize in supply chain business process and technology, I believe evaluation teams will turn even more to the Web or to specific social networking groups to directly contact other users, seek external opinion or advice regarding deployment of technology.

In 2010, business process enablement will remain confined to important tactical or operational capability areas:

• A more robust sales and operations planning framework
• Optimizing inventory investment across all tiers of the supply chain
• Enhancing planning to accommodate more forward-looking business intelligence, event or scenario-driven capabilities
• Analysis of supply chain networks for cost and carbon saving opportunities
• Enhancing global transportation, trade and logistics capability

I anticipate that select technology investments in identifying, controlling or mitigating supply chain risk will also pickup sometime in 2010.

Stay connected for the Fifth and final prediction.

 Bob Ferrari