Supply Chain Inc.

CHICAGO — Whenever someone mentions that Supply Chain should be concerned about revenue, eyes tend to roll and lungs heave sighs of resignation. After all, Supply Chain doesn’t generate revenue. That’s a top-line concern. Supply Chain manages expenses. That’s a bottom-line concern, best left to those boys and girls in the basement.

Not so fast, posit a number of speakers at Eye for Transport’s 3PL Summit and CSCO Forum in Chicago. Time to hop into the elevator to control and manage a considerable piece of the organizational pie: Data.

Powerhouse IT companies, such as IBM, Oracle and SAP are spending billions of dollars on data analytics firms, according to Steve Banker, Supply Chain Services Director, ARC Advisory Group. Banker argued that “supply chain people” need to recognize and understand that analytics is being used across departments and processes. Data should be the link that balances supply and demand to help an organization meet its growth objectives. In fact, that’s why companies are spending money on systems to improve revenue and not necessarily to reduce costs, he added.

Even CHRISTUS Health, the 2016 Supply Chain Department of the Year, has invested in data analytics and informatics that is paying dividends for operations and patient-care delivery. And the recent Pensiamo joint venture announced at press time between IBM Watson Health and UPMC (the 2014 Supply Chain Department of the Year) signals this developing trend in healthcare that already has planted roots in industries outside of healthcare.

On the dais with Banker, Competitive Insights CEO Richard Sharpe cited that by 2020, 35 zettabytes of data will be produced annually with data volume doubling every 18 months. That’s not just Big Data; that’s Big Data on PEDs. “Data is growing exponentially so we need to find value in it,” Sharpe asserted.

No kidding.

Banker and Sharpe both posited that data analytics fused with data management — fueling the blossoming profession of data science — will prove to be a boom and boon for Supply Chain to wield this asset (data) around the administrative, clinical, financial and operational realms of the C-suite.

“Supply Chain is having a hard time putting their hands around revenue generation,” Banker said, but controlling the data card may be the answer to driving changes throughout the organization. It’s one thing to know what happened when and why; it’s another thing to know how to respond with intelligence.

Supply Chain pros should not dismiss this informatics notion as an IT project. IT builds the clock; data science via Supply Chain reads the time and figures out how to manipulate and use it to support business functions throughout the organization — not just the warehouse, stockroom or operating room and nursing floor supply closets.

This extends well beyond the trite “show docs the data” refrain. Through data science, Supply Chain effectively can demonstrate to the C-suite how a service line, care offering or business decision can be profitable for the organization — clinically, financially and operationally.

Fortified with an enterprise-wide view, end-to-end access and a cognitive ability to analyze anything, predict behavior and demand and prescribe workable comprehensive solutions that “make money” along a “net-X” mindset versus a more limited “save money” mentality is just what the Supply Chain profession needs to deliver — and what the C-suite needs Supply Chain to deliver.

Breaking through that artificial barrier should propel Supply Chain from relevance to reverence. It’s about time.