Staying in the Game: David Lambert, Wipro Technologies

The recession changed the supply chain game tremendously, challenging consumer goods companies to seek more visibility and transparency, stronger retail partnerships and new ways of reaching the end consumer to ensure brand loyalty. This month, Albert Guffanti, publisher of CGT, sat down with David Lambert, practice lead, CPG Supply Chain, Wipro Technologies, to shed some light on how consumer goods firms can succeed in adopting a few of the biggest supply chains trends today.

Can a consumer goods company achieve inventory visibility and overall supply chain transparency through the same supply chain strategy?

Lambert: The reality is an organization cannot achieve successful supply chain transparency without inventory visibility. Conversely, if an organization strives for true inventory visibility across the network, supply chain transparency is required. Companies should ensure that both components are included in their supply chain strategy to optimize their business.

Given the current trends in globalization and economic challenges, where we see companies heading today with their supply chain strategy is to increase the integration with suppliers and customers through collaborative initiatives. These efforts are designed to enable inventory visibility and supply chain transparency. The emphasis is on alignment and transparency of initiatives, bi-directional visibility to key data, collaborative establishment of goals and KPIs, extension of business processes to trading partners, and deployment of enabling technologies to support those processes.

 

Given the reemergence of direct to consumer interactions, how can consumer goods supply chains be optimized to meet the needs of this new commerce channel while preserving traditional logistics?

Lambert: The direct to consumer channel is important to companies as they strive to extend their reach to consumers while protecting their brands, better understand consumer needs and nurture innovation through direct interaction. The supply chain is a critical component to fully enable the channel and meet both consumer requirements and company profit goals. 

Our experience in working with companies is that there are supply chain synergies to be found between direct to consumer and traditional channels -- first these should be identified. It is not a matter of preserving traditional logistics, rather optimizing the complete supply chain network to reduce channel conflict and enable a consistent consumer experience. Where consumer goods companies should start is by developing a holistic multi-channel supply chain strategy and approach focused on a common set of replenishment and fulfillment capabilities from demand sensing, inventory, warehousing, order fulfillment, transportation and delivery. 

As part of the process, companies should look to outsource certain functions to specific partners where it makes sense. By doing this organizations can extend their technical capabilities and accommodate the unique aspect of a given channel.

Lastly, companies should ensure that they obtain the demand-side data to assist in aligning inventory and the distribution channel with consumer demand.  

S&OP has traditionally been the starting point for supply chain overhauls. How have your customers leveraged this important process?

Lambert: As our customers have matured their S&OP processes they are effectively synchronizing their supply chain networks. Leading companies are leveraging the process, supported by technology, to become more demand-driven, and achieve visibility and transformation across the entire organization and value chain. This added visibility has generally led to lower costs, higher margins, better product availability and plan execution.

In many cases our clients are sharing the information outputs from that process with supplier and retailer partners. In addition, they are educating partners who are adopting some of the concepts to add value to the overall supply chain.

We are starting to see companies further optimize their S&OP processes by establishing scenario-based planning and integrating fully with their budgeting and financial planning processes to link profitability to execution. Consumer goods companies are starting to test the use of real-time demand data to adjust replenishment plans as well as adopting a more sophisticated approach to forecasting that includes much more than just sales trend information.