Supply chain management (SCM) and financial executives representing over $17.8 billion in transportation spend met last week at the Aberdeen Group's SCM Summit to outline critical components of global supply chain management, including live research with the executives on hand. Attendees from North America, the European Union, and Asia-Pacific shared how new organizational and technology strategies are enabling their organizations to improve financial performance and increase market share.

"Successful companies are embracing Generation 3 principles of supply chain management," stated Beth Enslow, Senior Vice President of Enterprise Research at Aberdeen. "While first-generation SCM focused on department-level efficiencies and second-generation SCM brought order and cost-cutting within an enterprise, Generation 3 SCM is orchestrating multi-party processes that span the end-to-end supply chain to drive strategic market benefit for companies. This is requiring centralized supply chain organizations that work hand-in-hand with their CFOs and Treasurers to drive profitable growth and market agility for their companies."

The focus on multi-party supply chain transformations is consistent with new Aberdeen research that finds that 85% of companies are currently focused on creating new supply chain innovations or looking to adopt best practices, supported by an increase in supply chain technology spending.

Results from the onsite instant polling of the supply chain executives revealed some quick statistics about the Summit audience:

1. 52% of participants are most focused on improving their supply chain's transparency/visibility in 2007.
2. Multi-tier inventory management is earmarked as the area with the most opportunity for improvement and business impact.
3. 53% of participants are actively using or investigating Supply Chain Finance techniques to lower end-to-end costs.
4. 41% of participants are currently using or evaluating Software as a Service (on-demand applications) for supply chain management.

Participants walked away with actionable supply chain recommendations from executive best-in-class presenters from: IBM Integrated Supply Chain, Target Corporation, Boeing, Nike, Under Armour, Agilent Technologies, Wrigley, Anritsu, Williams-Sonoma, Boston Scientific, Raytheon, Supply Chain Executive Advisors, MIT, and Nypro Inc.

During the proceedings, Aberdeen presented five companies with Supply Chain Management Achievement Awards. The award winners were as follows:

1. Renault received the Executive Stewardship Award for achieving performance heights due to the direct involvement and leadership of executive management.
2. Panasonic received the Process Excellence Award for demonstrating process ingenuity, agility, flexibility, and scalability in addressing changing business requirements.
3. Boeing received the Business Evolution Award for managing information flow across internal functional practices to achieve measurable business growth.
4. Proctor & Gamble received the Innovation in Technology Award for maximizing technology solutions to solve pressing supply chain issues in order to positively impact company performance.
5. Agilent Technologies accepted the Performance Excellence Award for harnessing the performance impact of supply chain activities and mastering methodologies for financial, operational, and customer-centric performance excellence.

The Summit's overall focus was on how companies are transforming their physical and financial supply chains in the face of globalization, with discussion on topics such as: transitioning to a centralized supply chain organization; improving supply chain visibility; new inventory management approaches; breakthroughs in supply chain finance; and supply chain compliance and risk management strategies. "We were pleased to be the catalyst bringing together the leading supply chain, financial, and other key executives to share experiences of successful supply chain transformation," said Beth Enslow, Senior Vice President of Enterprise Research at Aberdeen.

Summit sponsors included: HSBC, TradeBeam, Infor, PowerTrack, Archstone Consulting, GT Nexus, Red Prairie, Loftware, Voxware, and Harte-Hanks.
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