Supply chain finance teams are evolving.  The role of corporate finance in the supply chain is transitioning from one of control (the overseer or landlord) to one of active collaboration. The reason is simple. More and more supply chain decisions are being driven by financial opportunities, and there is a need for active management of the supply chain by corporate finance teams.

"¢ The more mature the corporate finance team is in the processes of sales and operations planning, the more mature that this important horizontal process will be. Gaining a clear understanding with the financial team on the role of the budget in S&OP is one of the top three change management hurdles to S&OP maturity.

"¢ Despite the fact that more than 80 percent of manufacturers, distributors and retailers have an enterprise resource planning  system, only 23 percent of supply chain leaders can easily model total supply chain costs to understand the trade-offs of supply chain costs.  Cost profitability modeling technologies have been slow to evolve.

"¢ As social responsibility reporting and good citizenship analysis becomes important for stock ratings, corporate financial leaders are getting more interested in supply chain finance. Eighty percent of corporate social responsibility impact lies outside the four walls of the supply chain.  To achieve corporate social responsibility goals will require finance to partner with the corporate social responsibility and supply chain operations teams to better understand the financial impacts of the decisions. The move to natural resource accounting will cement this importance.

"¢ Twenty-five percent of supply chain leaders are actively modeling supply chain networks to minimize the tax implications of new regulation. The changes in labor, regulations and tax incentives will be faster and more volatile requiring greater modeling and analysis.

                                    The Outlook

The tightening of commodity markets, the volatility of commodities and the increasing pressures on corporate social responsibility will force supply chain leaders to become more acquainted with supply chain theory and model the trade-offs of supply chain effectiveness using new technologies for optimization and simulation.


Keywords: supply chain management, supply chain planning, tax-effective supply chains, supply chain finance strategies