The study, supplychainforesight 2008, which is conceptualised and owned by supply chain management major Barloworld Logistics, has been suggesting for several years that globalisation is the key challenge facing large SA businesses as they seek to remain competitive.
Over 400 SA executives took part, many of them CEOs and supply chain directors, and a significant proportion of them from SA-based multinational companies with over R5bn in annual revenues. The study set out to answer the question: what is the relationship between your company's supply chain performance and your business success?
It found that those businesses that have been able to take their supply chain planning, management and execution capabilities into foreign markets, and cope better with the demands of a globally stretched supply-and-demand chain, as well as much more diverse customer needs as a consequence, are seeing significant returns in their industry sectors. Some 75% of the companies that claimed they had both global complexity in their supply chains, along with the capabilities to deal with this, also claimed to be more successful than their competitors.
By contrast, those companies that have gone global but without the benefit of the increased and more specialised supply chain capabilities this requires, are putting their businesses at risk, the study finds. Only 11% of these companies claimed that they were more successful than their competitors.
A third grouping, those companies with good supply chain capability but that have not embarked seriously on globalisation, also shows appreciable improvement in profitability, with 48% of this group claiming to be more successful than their competitors. These companies are well placed to embark on the globalisation path, which may well be an inevitable one for many of SA's larger companies.
Supplychainforesight 2008 also measured responses to key industry issues such as the private sector's attitude to government reform and policy in the logistics and infrastructure spheres, and gained an in-depth insight into the skills crisis faced in the country's industrial supply chains.
The study is being launched to the public in Johannesburg on today, 11 March, and in Cape Town on 13 March.
