Accenture - How To Achieve High Performance Through Effective Global Operations

In today's well-connected world, global sourcing and manufacturing have become basic strategies for managing costs and a competitive necessity for achieving high performance.

As Asia, Eastern Europe, and Central and South America evolve beyond economical sources of parts and materials, they are now poised to become growth markets and pools of innovation, presenting a new, more balanced world of consumers and vendors that provide even broader opportunities for savvy sourcers and suppliers.

RESEARCH RESULTS

In June 2005, the Accenture supply chain management service line launched a research effort aimed at understanding the attitudes and experiences of senior executives with global responsibilities. Representing the major markets, 305 on-line interviews were conducted, with the majority of respondents representing organizations with revenues of $1 billion or more.

Our resultant report, "World views: achieving high performance through effective global operations", demonstrates broad support for highly strategic, highly effective global operations that concurrently seek to minimize landed costs while maximizing market penetration and growth.

Few companies have established an integrated, global operations footprint that balances highly efficient supply networks (vendors, plants, distribution centres and optimal product flows) with market-making capabilities (such as new product development, sales and operations planning, and product life cycle management).

COMBINING GROWTH AND OPERATIONS

Companies that understand varying market and customer requirements, and can factor them into specific landed-cost and time-to-market targets early in the new product design and product introduction processes, most often achieve effective global operations.

In this way, they are able to bring together market growth and operational strategies in one end-to-end exercise and achieve a key element of supply chain mastery.

ACHIEVING SUPPLY CHAIN MASTERY

Organizations that achieve supply chain mastery must also excel at horizontal integration, including internal and external collaboration, supplier development, and so forth.

Cultural reengineering - establishing and inculcating new values and metrics that support collaboration - is at least as, or perhaps more, important than process and IT reengineering.

By increasing collaboration, adopting new supply chain strategies and developing a global operations footprint or model based on their specific needs, organizations can develop their ability to capitalize on the significant opportunities presented in a worldwide environment of sourcing and market-making.

As the gap between leaders and the rest of the pack continues to narrow, achieving high performance through effective global operations is a source of competitive advantage that savvy executives cannot afford to overlook.

ABOUT ACCENTURE

The Accenture supply chain management service line works with clients across a broad range of industries to develop and execute operational strategies that enable profitable growth in new and existing markets.

Committed to helping clients achieve high performance through supply chain mastery, we combine global industry expertise with skills in supply chain strategy, sourcing and procurement, supply chain planning, manufacturing and design, fulfilment, and service management to help organizations transform their supply chain capabilities.

We collaborate with clients to implement innovative consulting and, outsourcing solutions that align operating models to support business strategies, we optimize global operations, enable profitable product launches, and enhance the skills and capabilities of the supply chain workforce.