9 minute read
INTEGRATED CHAIN
Sourcing has a unique, enterprise-wide view, Vora says. It also has a responsibility to understand the landscape and consolidate suppliers to ensure larger, more meaningful supplier partnerships. At Telus, she had an opportunity to support two different teams while finding suppliers to provide services that met needs on both sides. She was also able to influence the businesses to participate in a competitive process, while showing them the value of the consolidation of services.
“Being a key client to a third party allows us to grow the partnership more strategically and gives us the opportunity to take more risk and be more creative in how the services are delivered while improving the service,” she says.
Vora’s next career move was into banking. She took a job at Scotiabank, where she was responsible for fixed-term labour, global delivery and contingent labour. But she soon made the move to TD where she became the lead in implementing an SAP Ariba solution. TD had an opportunity to increase system maturity. The implementation for the digital transformation took about three years, and the organization is now in the process of getting everyone on board.
“It’s a complete S-to-P system, I’m also including risk in that portion,” Vora says. “As a bank, risk is very important. So, we have executed, where you have a business come in and make a request. We do a risk assessment, we do the sourcing, we do the contracting. And then you connect the contract to the whole P-to-P cycle. It’s all connected from a data perspective. Then the transactions happen, and all the transaction details roll up back under the contract. You have the visibility as well as the control from the list perspective that, when you’re transacting against the supplier, the risk has been executed.”
When implementing any system, it’s difficult to anticipate potential outcomes, Vora says. One objective is getting as much as possible into the system. With organizations unaccustomed to issuing POs or having invoices in the system, there must be discussion about change management. It’s necessary to solve problems continuously, looking at the process from end to end.
Whatever else, sourcing resembles a continual sales job, Vora says. You must influence the business to use sourcing as a service, so the business will consult sourcing before the contract negotiation cycle starts. In some regions, such as much of Europe, sourcing is a more mature function, Vora notes. In North America, influencing the business and selling sourcing’s value is still an ongoing process.
“You can absolutely overcome it,” Vora says. “It’s just building that relationship and making sure the business understands that you’re listening to them and ensuring that you’re actually providing outcomes based on their needs.”
Sourcing and the business don’t always see eye to eye, Vora stresses. Saving money remains an important sourcing KPI, yet a business may value other indicators. Vora emphasizes the importance of focusing on what the business wants and what its problems are. From that, the savings will still come.
The projects that Vora counts as the most successful of her career were also the ones that were most transformational to the organization. Vora has sometimes been handed a category and told that it runs well. Yet she would quickly realize the category was far more immature than she was led to believe. Turning around such programs remains a highlight – renegotiating contracts, reconfiguring the system, redoing the KPIs and building a team from scratch all stand out. The process results in significant savings, improved delivery times and better supplier relationships.
Her efforts have paid off. Fieldglass, a cloudbased vendor management system, named one of her programs among the top one per cent of programs in the world, she says. The company designated her as a “Pro To Know.” She also won the TD Legendary Award twice, the TELUS Top Rung Award and the CEO Award, TELUS Passion for Growth Award, among other accolades.
“For me, the devil is in the details,” she says. “You really need to understand the business to deliver a big outcome. Sometimes, even though it’s harder, trying not only to execute sourcing activities, but transform what you’re doing, is really important. Which I think is also what has made me very successful in some of the bigger projects that I’ve done. It’s transformational work, not just sourcing and negotiating.”
Vora is surprised by how many organizations haven’t yet done digital transformations. But the process is beneficial for several reasons: reduced cycle times, driving analytics to reveal more transparent data, and helping sourcing professionals to focus on strategy. Ultimately, automating tactical functions allows sourcing professionals to focus on strategic initiatives, she says.
Regarding future plans, Vora intends to continue the transformation at TD. She also plans to eventually turn her focus to thought leadership, specifically how to drive better sourcing and business outcomes.
Outside of the sourcing world, Vora enjoys biking with her husband, Whitney, and covers over 500 kilometres a month. She also spends time reading, and the couple are avid movie fans. Their older daughter, Kiran is in university, while their younger daughter, Maryn, is a high school student.
FOCUS ON THE BUSINESS
When offering advice to sourcing and procurement professionals, Vora recommends focusing on business needs and solving business problems. As well, consider negotiation as an art rather than a science. Both negotiating and saving money are important, but the process must include benefits for the supplier, or the relationship will fail.
With any good sourcing initiative, details count, Vora says. Take the time to understand what a process will look like and incorporate that into building a contract to help ensure good outcomes. Vora cites the example of an agency of record initiative that she once did, in which she restructured and rewrote the master service agreement to ensure both parties involved were accountable. It took time, but the revamped contract documented the plan for the year, so that there were no surprises. “I have had the opportunity to lead some very large multi-million dollar, high-visibility projects,” she says. “When I’m involved in these large projects, I use the opportunity not only to build relationships but also build knowledge of the industry I am sourcing from, as well as getting a deeper understanding of my stakeholders, their teams, operations, and the problems they’re trying to solve. As a trusted advisor, I worked with them to shape requirements and rebuild an agreement that supported solving their challenges and while helping build a strong third-party partnership.”
Sourcing and supply chain are great careers for those with a broad skillset, who love to lead, influence, and collaborate, Vora adds. “Success in sourcing is being able to have a customer mindset while delivering enterprise objectives, including total cost of ownership, continually increasing value to the end customer, and ultimately, giving the company a competitive advantage. Sourcing is a strategic role that touches every part of the organization. And while we don’t directly generate revenue, we certainly influence it.” SP
SUPPLY CHAIN AS A SERVICE E-COMMERCE IS DRIVING THE RISE OF SCAAS
The prevalence of supply chain as a service (SCaaS) has been increasing along with the boom in e-commerce, global disruptions to the supply chain, and technology advancements in the retail industry. Today’s marketplace must deal with SKU diversity, SKU rationalization, eaches picking, robotic automation, software and inventory automation, return logistics, online merchandising, and retailer requirements. This makes the marketplace somewhat complicated, which in turn makes an efficient SCaaS offering strategic and beneficial to the flow of goods.
THE INCREASING POPULARITY OF SCAAS
Supply chain and inventory management are more than just strategic to customer service. They have become a strategic maneuver aimed at defending profits. SCaaS is increasing in popularity, however there are disruptions to the current model. Traditionally, the industry operated on third-party logistics (3PL). The largest global providers of 3PL services are famous firms like DHL and UPS. Many industry-specific 3PLs exist, such as in the pharmaceutical, electronics, and perishable foods industries.
Supply chain disruptions such as the pandemic and the war in Ukraine are creating opportunity for SCaaS to morph and become more necessary than ever. The retail industry is booming more today than in previous decades, which puts more demand on efficient logistics in supply chain. The initial disruption came from e-commerce as a service with major services like Fulfilled By Amazon (FBA), which created wholistic solutions for companies to sell their products online and have all the inventory and fulfillment services completely outsourced.
COVID-19 further disrupted the SCaaS model when e-commerce experienced a volume explosion and the largest provider, Amazon, changed inventory requirements for companies to keep their inventory at Amazon locations. Containers, trucking, and seaports experienced significant delays and bottlenecks leading to decreased on-time performance and higher costs.
The net result is that companies are questioning their Just-In-Time (JIT) philosophy of staying lean on inventory and relying on global supply chains. Having the right inventory in the right place has become more important than ever.
GLOBAL DISRUPTIONS
Global disruptions have abolished the concept of international JIT. SCaaS can help companies by offering small inventory solutions in optimal markets. A company is better off having local inventory with same day, one-day prime, or two-day prime delivery options, rather than bulk inventory in a centralized location. Diversity in the supply chain is essential to an omni-channel distribution approach. Every company should have a mixed approach of self-operated facilities and SCaaS facilities. SCaaS can be 3PL, freight solutions, or e-commerce solutions. Essentially, a company does not want all its eggs in one basket. A company can be more resilient in the face of global disruptions by diversifying its supply chain.
There are many advantages to SCaaS. One of these is better customer service due to localized inventory. Localized inventory allows for much quicker delivery options for the customer at a more reasonable price. There is a higher chance of providing good customer service by having a diversity of supply chain channels to market, like distribution, freight/trucking, ecommerce, and 3PL. SCaaS offers a diversification of channels that lowers risk and keeps more efficiency in the flow of goods in the marketplace. SCaaS also lowers overall cost of goods sold in the marketplace. Goods can be more competitively priced and more affordable to customers because SCaaS lowers the cost of distribution of those products.
LEVERAGING SCAAS
Before any company considers leveraging supply chain as a service, it needs a strategy. The organization should therefore develop a robust strategy with a forward view on e-commerce proliferation and on-hand inventory sensitivities.
The next consideration before leveraging SCaaS is software
Matthew Chang is principal at Chang Industrial.
automation. A SCaaS partner must add to the digital supply chain and inventory transparency. Another consideration is robotic automation. The partner must have a labourreducing robotic solution to increase performance and decrease reliance on labour, especially seasonal labour.
One of the final considerations would be geographic coverage. The partner must have a geographic spread to get “the right inventory to the right place” while having the capability to manage bulk inventory. Inter-facility shipping and inventory balancing should be managed by the partner.
The last consideration before leveraging SCaaS is shipping diversity. The partner should have a network that can work with all major freight and parcel carriers, the postal service, and personal shopping (Instacart, DoorDash and so on). Leveraging SCaaS ultimately means that a company can better focus on product design and manufacturing. SCaaS can also enable a fast-growing company to scale faster, since less internal competencies, infrastructure, assets, and talent are required for growth. SP
