DC Velocity - November 2015

26 DC VELOCITY NOVEMBER 2015 www.dcvelocity.com
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what the supply chains have to offer. In many businesses, the people who have the face-to-face interaction with companies, besides the individual salesperson, are the supply chain people. It is the supply chain that has to deliver in the end and look the customer in the eye and either say, “We’ve done what we promised to do” or “We failed in what we promised to do.” So that relationship, I think, in many ways is as important as the sales-to-customer relationship—and in some cases, it is more important because the last and final impression that a customer gets is whether or not the order was delivered on time, complete, and free of damage. If the supply chain is doing all of those things, you’re probably going to build a really good relationship with your clients. If it’s not doing those things, then you’re going to be in big trouble.

QRight, which goes back to the old silo argument we’ve been having for decades. If the merchants and sales and marketing people aren’t talking to supply chain, you may have some issues.

ARight, and, you know, I think a lot of companies have done a better job with that over the last few years,
especially since 2008. Back in 2004 or so, 30 percent of
companies had a position called supply chain or logistics
that was either in the C-suite or reporting directly to the
C-suite. By 2011, 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies
had that position, supply chain or logistics reporting to or
in the C-suite. There has been a recognition that supply
chain management is important to the enterprise. The trick
is keeping it top of mind because when things get good,
when the economy is booming, when you can’t help but
sell things, enterprises lose track of the fact that the supply
chain is important, and they only come back to that reali-
zation when things get tough.

QWall Street pays attention to supply chain these days, too. AIt does. But again, I think that has been more since 2008. I can recall being the first supply chain person at CVS to ask to present at an analysts’ meeting in New York because of all the things we just talked about—the fact that we had a story to tell and it was not just about how we were cutting and controlling costs, but how we were adding to the value proposition on the top line.

We have certainly come a long way. The trick now is to make sure that we keep our value proposition front of mind so people understand that we’re not just the backroom people who ship stuff and store stuff, but that we are also a part of the enterprise that helps add value to whatever product or service is being provided.

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