| Getting your supply chain management right | | | | leading to a knock on effect in customer care |
| can give your business competitive advantage | | | | and contact center KPI's. With any KPI |
| by lowering costs, greater efficiency and | | | | scorecard system, choosing the right metrics |
| improving customer satisfaction by getting | | | | is essential and less is also more. Remember |
| goods to customers faster. The impact of | | | | Pareto's Principle, 80% of the benefit will |
| technology with the use of RFID tags to track | | | | be derived from 20% of the activity - the |
| pallets and shipments electronically and | | | | same applies with your metrics. Scorecards |
| merging this into the stock and order | | | | carrying twenty or thirty metrics are going |
| management system is making the SCM aspect of | | | | to overload decision makers using the |
| a business an area of substantial opportunity | | | | dashboard so keep it simple and reduce the |
| for creating competitive advantage. Now that | | | | metrics being used to those that are |
| all sounds fantastic with the ability to | | | | essential. Allowing the metrics to be |
| track individual shipments through the supply | | | | reduced means that managers can gain a far |
| chain and maintaining data on product, serial | | | | more intimate knowledge of what a metric is |
| codes, description, quantity and so on. | | | | actually trying to tell them and this makes |
| Combining RFID data with barcode information | | | | the difference between using the dashboard |
| creates even more information that can be | | | | for a simple performance against target check |
| manipulated and collected. In truth though, | | | | and really unleashing the diagnostic and |
| what we have is a KPI nightmare with such a | | | | management power of a the KPI metrics. With |
| huge choice of metrics to choose from we are | | | | the massive influx of data that is being |
| at serious risk of KPI overload with metrics | | | | collected and collated by an SCM system, it |
| duplicating information and business trends | | | | is very tempting to rush headlong into trying |
| leading to information overload for | | | | to use all of this information. The fact is |
| management. Remember that using KPI's | | | | that in those KPI systems where metric |
| effectively means that you first must select | | | | selection is rigorously kept to a minimum, |
| the right metrics to measure and ensure that | | | | managers tend to make more successful |
| managers fully understand what those metrics | | | | decisions that their counterparts operating a |
| are actually telling them. The best metrics | | | | complicated, metric overloaded dashboard. The |
| to use are those that combine in a ratio form | | | | adage here is that less is more and following |
| and this means that we lose some of the | | | | Pareto's Principle, 20% of your metrics are |
| underlying raw data trend that is available. | | | | going to give you 80% of the SCM information |
| Combining delivery time with order value will | | | | you really need to make effective management |
| give us an index of how well we are at | | | | decisions. |
| getting our order pipeline to our customer | | | | |
| base but the smoothing effect of the ratio | | | | If you are interested in learning more about |
| will hide long delivery times for low value | | | | supply chain kpi, check Sam Miller new |
| products which may increase rather than | | | | web-site. |
| decrease overall customer satisfaction | | | | |