A volatile 2021 taught businesses a tough lesson about the fragility of supply chains. Just when many thought we were out of the woods, the promising trends toward recovery reversed. Supply chains quickly snapped amid the resurgence of COVID-19 outbreaks, China’s utility crisis, logistics woes, labor issues, and mass supply shortages.
Increasingly, supply chain sustainability is becoming a key corporate goal as organizations aim to minimize environmental damage and positively influence the people and communities in which they live and do business. Sustainability refers to managing the environmental, social and economic impact of a business in way that reduces harm and benefits the world.
With the COVID-19 Delta variant threatening pandemic recovery around the world, brands that source products globally are facing supply chain challenges in a business landscape mired by transit limitations, factory shutdowns, surging shipping costs, delays, labor shortages and rampant supply shortages.
The light at the end of the tunnel is shining brighter for businesses that were forced to halt 2020 strategies and goals, customer acquisition and procurement. As the economy slowed to a halt, business leaders struggled to develop a risk management strategy that determined the how, why and when their COVID-19 safety protocols had been enacted. The waters were muddy because initial reopening strategies varied state by state and frequently changed based on infection rates in communities.
Procurement organizations know that sustainability initiatives have far-reaching impacts on risk-management, cost and innovation. This is why most procurement teams historically invest in supplier compliance according to environment, social and governance (ESG) and sustainability risk-related issues.
From being a startup to a scale-up, businesses today have the advantage of cutting-edge technology and a diverse talent pool to realize their vision. But when growth is happening at a faster pace and wider scale than expected, there’s a danger for some companies to fall behind.
This period of growth can cause small businesses to fail if they have limited resources to keep up with the velocity of change. For those ready to take the next step, however, their growth plans often include business process outsourcing (BPO) as a strategy.
While the rapid shift to a remote workforce model in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic has driven many changes for businesses around the world, a few constants have grown in importance. To maintain operations as seamlessly as possible, organizations must secure their payment systems, technology access, and sensitive customer data no matter where it resides, and that is particularly true when it is being accessed or processed by employees from their homes.
Compliance is a critical purchasing success factor. Aside from the tremendous amount of financial impact, compliance has other positive outcomes. When employees comply with purchasing through designated supplier programs, it significantly streamlines the supply chain, allowing your organization to be agile and flexible.
As businesses across all industries undergo digital transformation and adopt new, omnichannel strategies for engaging with customers, the enterprise contact center of today is continuously evolving and looks dramatically different than in the past.
The outsourcing industry is adapting and changing rapidly. Outsourcing companies are now much closer to their clients, as technology enables clients and outsourcers to be more connected than ever before.
This technology evolution has also impacted the demand for IT workers, with more companies requiring skilled workers on a project basis. However, whereas an outsourcing company used to begin working with a client and completed any project tasks that were required, outsourcing teams have started to take on an advisory role too.
Sourcing executives today are all about innovation and adding business value: buying smarter to drive business benefits such as increased customer satisfaction, reduced error rates and insights into product design. In other words, procurement operational strategy aspires to demonstrate alignment with factors driving the success of the business, which is more than just cost takeout.
Who could argue with that?
