This is an exciting time to be in the supply chain sector. Companies are extending their supply chains to more partners and more parts of the globe in order to achieve the highest value and service to their customers. Add to that the growing cost of basic commodities like oil, metals, labor and you can see why investing in supply chain efficiencies is at the top of all Fortune 500 companies. At SCM Solutions, we have been helping our clients extract the highest value from their supply chains and SAP IT investments for over four years and today starts a new chapter in that book. The SCM management team and I are thrilled to share the news that Axon Global (www.axonglobal.com) has acquired our firm (see related press release). We believe this is a fantastic opportunity to continue growing our supply chain consulting practice leveraging the resources of the largest dedicated SAP consulting firm in the world. With over 2,400 employee world-wide Axon provides the network and infrastructure to grow faster and with more depth than if we had continued to do so on our own. From Axon’s side, they get the best SAP supply chain consulting team so together we can achieve breakthrough business transformations in this expanding sector.
We have had many questions from the team on how this will change our operating model and structure. For at least the near term, very little will change. SCM’s management team will continue to run the company as Axon’s supply chain consulting arm. Our founding partners will be playing key roles in the new structure. Pete King will own Sales and Marketing while Chris Botha will continue to his focus on delivery and customer engagements. The rest of the management team and I will play similar roles as today - building out the company and ensuring our clients and our employees remain our top priority.
As always, drop me or any of the management team an email with further questions and we will expand on the good news personally.
Taking a quick step back from the details, I wanted to spend just a moment introducing this forum. The intent is to share with folks our insights on the supply chain consulting industry that may be as specific as a new SAP capability but also as broad as an industry trend in Fortune 500 supply chain investments. Although we are a niche player in the field, we are actually considered mid-sized in this market. We only hire senior consultants that have “cut their teeth” with other firms for years and have established themselves as leaders so we often get handed the tough problems either directly from our clients or from the large firms that do not have the expertise. With 30+ clients across multiple industries, this gives us a pretty broad view of the overall supply chain market
My partners and I will use this forum to discuss the trends we are seeing and hypothesize how it may impact other companies. I live in San Francisco and passed a gas station this weekend where the $4/gallon ceiling had been breached – ugh. We all know that rising energy costs will increase corporate expense ratios but I will go into more detail on what companies are doing to mitigate those costs in form of supply chain process and technology investments. Other topics may include how Operations and IT teams never quite seem to work together as well as they should and how some basic facilitation may help. Of course, we will also have some deep dive discussions on a new feature or set of current features that SAP has released in their Advanced Planning and Optimization tool or other budding areas of their overall SCM module.
The driver for this forum was that I was unable to find anyone else addressing this subject matter for the supply chain sector. Our goal is to allow this blog to help facilitate some of that discussion in a consolidated place and of course… show prospective clients that we are the best firm in which to partner to solve these complex problems
The SCM Solutions management team has been discussing how the slowing US economy will impact our pipeline of business. You could look at it two ways: (1) corporate budgets will be reduced during ‘08 therefore fewer dollars will be allocated to consulting based projects for ‘09 or (2) companies need to improve their supply chain cost centers to remain competitive and will make strategic investments to get there. It is too early to tell which one of these theories will win out but we believe SCM Solutions is well positioned for either one. As a niche firm employing only senior consultants, we can staff projects with fewer heads and generate faster results than our competition. Our strategy of helping clients realize business benefits incrementally through the projects as opposed to long and drawn out implementations will also be key.
We are seeing an increase in the number of good SAP SCM/APO consultants looking for positions so that may be an early sign of the market softening. Luckily, our direct business is growing and we will continue to hire these folks so we are even better positioned with talent when the economy comes roaring back.
