Lessons from a year of supply chain change

Joanne Elson, Head of sup­ply oper­a­tions, JoJo Maman Bébé

Simon Finch, Sup­ply chain direc­tor, Har­rods

Alice Marmion, Sup­ply chain direc­tor, Rapha

Richard Fat­tal, Co-founder and chief com­mer­cial offi­cer, Zen­car­go

Jamie Lewis, Man­ag­ing direc­tor, Europe, RMS Inter­na­tion­al

Ian McConville, Group pro­cure­ment direc­tor, MKM Build­ing Sup­plies

Why is vis­i­bil­i­ty across the sup­ply chain now busi­ness crit­i­cal and how can it be improved?

RF: I hope busi­ness­es use the learn­ings gained in the last 12 months to catal­yse some sup­ply chain changes, in terms of where you hold stock, how you move goods world­wide, opti­mis­ing a mul­ti­chan­nel strat­e­gy and deal­ing with the reg­u­la­tion in chal­leng­ing parts of the world. Sup­ply volatil­i­ty means the broad­er busi­ness needs to have more vis­i­bil­i­ty into the inbound pipeline.

SF: Busi­ness­es have adapt­ed and come togeth­er. The amount of con­tact I have had through­out the last year with Har­rods mer­chan­dise direc­tor or fash­ion direc­tors or the IT direc­tor has been far high­er than before. Vir­tu­al con­fer­enc­ing tools like Zoom and Teams have been phe­nom­e­nal enablers to build those rela­tion­ships and work more close­ly togeth­er. I think there was over­con­fi­dence, pre-pan­dem­ic, in lean sup­ply chains. The bal­ance was wrong and sup­ply chains have since evolved to become bet­ter because we have the tech­nol­o­gy, data insights and vis­i­bil­i­ty to make real-time deci­sions.

AM: Rapha [road bicy­cle rac­ing cloth­ing and acces­sories brand] has lengthy, com­plex sup­ply chains because of the tech­ni­cal nature of the prod­ucts. A year or so ago, we had a sup­ply chal­lenge because we man­u­fac­ture a pro­por­tion of our stock in Asia, which was the first region to be impact­ed by COVID-19. Then the whole world embraced cycling and it became a demand chal­lenge. Hav­ing vis­i­bil­i­ty across the sup­ply chain and lever­ag­ing extreme­ly close rela­tion­ships with trust­ed part­ners has been essen­tial. Greater flex­i­bil­i­ty, agili­ty, dynamism and mak­ing the right deci­sions is what we are striv­ing to achieve.

JE: We’ve always been proac­tive and flex­i­ble with our sup­ply chain, but the last 18 months has been a real test for every­one. We have worked hard with our freight for­warders, with whom we have great rela­tion­ships.

IM: There was a peri­od of great uncer­tain­ty in the build­ing fra­ter­ni­ty when the pan­dem­ic hit because nobody knew what would hap­pen. That’s when vis­i­bil­i­ty and sup­ply rela­tion­ships were ben­e­fi­cial. We have had to face many prob­lems across the globe and it’s a demand-led mar­ket. The tight sup­pli­er rela­tion­ships have been incred­i­bly impor­tant, as has the access and exchange of infor­ma­tion.

JL: These are inter­est­ing times, but luck­i­ly we have long­stand­ing rela­tion­ships with our freight for­warders. Ulti­mate­ly, they helped and we moved the crit­i­cal stock we need­ed for a cer­tain peri­od in the year and came out some­what unscathed from the var­i­ous recent crises.

What must busi­ness­es do to strength­en sup­pli­er rela­tion­ships?

RF: Being a respon­sive, proac­tive part­ner that can pro­vide greater vis­i­bil­i­ty, and iden­ti­fy and warn oth­ers about poten­tial prob­lems in the sup­ply chain, is like­ly to build trust quick­ly. When volatil­i­ty inevitably hits, you want to know the real­is­tic knock-on effects. The rela­tion­ship has to be based on trust and respon­sive com­mu­ni­ca­tion, aug­ment­ed by data insights, is deci­sive.

IM: Trans­paren­cy and clar­i­ty in terms of what’s hap­pen­ing when, and the exchange of data, is fan­tas­tic. The chal­lenge for those who don’t have any cen­tral dis­tri­b­u­tion is dis­sem­i­nat­ing the detailed infor­ma­tion to mul­ti­ple loca­tions, espe­cial­ly in a tra­di­tion­al­ly peo­ple-to-peo­ple indus­try.

SF: Hav­ing the data alone doesn’t help. You need to know how to use the data, so under­stand­ing, along­side sup­pli­er part­ners, is vital to gen­er­ate greater vis­i­bil­i­ty and mean­ing­ful, val­ue-adding insights. This strat­e­gy is only achieved through trust­ed, trans­par­ent rela­tion­ships.

JE: Our ethos at JoJo Maman Bébé is “peo­ple and plan­et before prof­it” and because of our eth­i­cal dri­ve, our sup­pli­ers are very impor­tant. We have worked with some sup­pli­ers for over 20 years and sup­port­ed them with tech­nol­o­gy and more. They have become like an extend­ed fam­i­ly. For exam­ple, we fund­ed an emer­gency kitchen in Mum­bai dur­ing lock­down last year because we knew it would impact our sup­pli­ers.

AM: Because of the last year’s events, Rapha has strength­ened our rela­tion­ships with strate­gic part­ners. That trust has pro­vid­ed greater vis­i­bil­i­ty and helped stream­line inter­nal process­es, too. The part­ner­ship approach is now embed­ded in our deci­sion-mak­ing process.

JL: Giv­en the nature of my role, I have to have rela­tion­ships with sup­pli­ers and also cus­tomers, and I find it most effec­tive in the long run to be hon­est and real­is­tic and man­age expec­ta­tions. The lev­el of under­stand­ing and co-oper­a­tion on both sides has def­i­nite­ly increased since the start of the coro­n­avirus cri­sis.

What might the per­fect sup­ply chain look like in five years’ time?

IM: It’s been pleas­ing to see greater col­lab­o­ra­tion recent­ly. For instance, the Con­struc­tion Lead­er­ship Coun­cil, which I am part of, and the Builders Mer­chants Fed­er­a­tion have pulled togeth­er in an all-indus­try forum and met fre­quent­ly. It spans the entire sup­ply chain – trade, mer­chant and man­u­fac­tur­er – and not only is there more com­pre­hen­sive vis­i­bil­i­ty, but we also have bet­ter chan­nels to gov­ern­ment. That end-to-end under­stand­ing and col­lab­o­ra­tion will improve sup­ply chains.

AM: While I miss trav­el­ling to sup­pli­ers, vir­tu­al real­i­ty and video­con­fer­enc­ing capa­bil­i­ties will reduce it, and that’s good for the plan­et. Col­lab­o­ra­tion can help here, too, and there are not many sup­pli­ers in the sports­wear world. So we are now shar­ing sup­pli­er infor­ma­tion with oth­er brands in this space and I hope that will con­tin­ue because we learn a lot from one anoth­er. This knowl­edge and col­lab­o­ra­tion will make the indus­try stronger and more sus­tain­able.

JE: We seem to be hav­ing an Armaged­don of a year in the sup­ply chain, but busi­ness­es will learn from this and become more resilient and improve infra­struc­ture. I hope air freight doesn’t become more wide­ly used, as we all need to keep down our car­bon foot­prints.

JL: There’s def­i­nite­ly a big role for tech­nol­o­gy to play mov­ing for­ward, to allow more vis­i­bil­i­ty across the sup­ply chain and enabling busi­ness­es like RMS Inter­na­tion­al to make bet­ter deci­sions and also keep­ing our cus­tomers informed.

SF: The last 14 months have empha­sised the impor­tance of flex­i­bil­i­ty and hav­ing mul­ti­ple routes. What’s excit­ing is that hav­ing bet­ter data and more diverse and localised dis­tri­b­u­tion nodes will dri­ve sup­ply chain sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

RF: I believe we will see a move towards more sus­tain­able sup­ply chains, which is made pos­si­ble by hav­ing the vis­i­bil­i­ty and data at your fin­ger­tips to make bet­ter deci­sions. Deci­sion enhance­ment through bet­ter data and more struc­tured inputs will mean sup­ply chain pro­fes­sion­als can do their jobs more effec­tive­ly and be proac­tive rather than fire fight­ing.

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