Supply chain leaders are no longer exclusively technical, operational people with sole focus on driving cost reduction. In today's climate, you play a fundamental role in enabling the company growth agenda through cross-functional engagement and external partnership with  suppliers and customers. And nowhere is this more evident than in times of crisis where resilience, flexibility, speed and responsiveness across the end-to-end value chain make all the difference.

Chief Supply Chain Officer Report 2011, available by download from SCM World, addresses the key issues faces supply chain leaders today. Co-authors Hau Lee, SCM World chairman and Thoma Professor of Operations, Information and Technology at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, alongside Kevin O'Marah, faculty member at SCM World, have designed the report to draw out the critical insights that executive supply chain professionals are prioritizing across four key areas: value-driving supply chain management, globalization, sustainability and talent management. The findings identify a series of key developments, which suggest a change in supply chain strategy from three or four years ago.

Highlights of this study include:

* Emerging markets are now fully-fledged growth markets with an overwhelming 80 percent of respondents selling and delivering to emerging economies

• Sustainability increasingly forms part of the DNA for high-performing supply chains, with 65 percent of respondents characterizing pressure from senior management and the board as the source of sustainability efforts

• Talent acquisition and leadership development represent key challenges across supply chain management, with 90 percent off respondents agreeing that it is at least "an important issue"

In sum, this year's research findings serve to underline supply chain's growing role as a driver for value creation and source of competitive advantage in the global context and, in turn, the changing requirements for supply chain leaders to deliver excellence. Consequently, there is no doubt that talent management will become an increasing priority as industry looks to develop future leaders that can drive overall business performance.

The report is available at http://www.scmworld.com/?page=CSCOReport2011.

Source: SCM World