Supply Chain Talent

My children always laugh when I start making a case to them with “Back in the day…..”. A period of reflection every now and again, always serves as a good reminder that change is a part of advancement.

My first view of supply chain professionals

Take the working environment I started in. The typing pools of the sixties may well have passed me by, but I do remember the time supply chain design teams were full of bright boffins, working through algorithms to come up with supply chain solutions for implementation in the next month or year. You could tell them apart, because they carried a special dongle to add to their computer, and only they knew what it was for. They sat in their own area of Head Office. They didn’t really talk to anyone else, probably either because they were concentrating, or too tired after getting up at 3am to plug in to Lotus Notes to send large attachments to the supply chain director, before he or she would arrive in the office at 8am.

"We demand not only that they continue to develop their technical skills but we now need their softer skills to be brilliant as well."

Technological and digital advancements have moved us forward again. We now have sophisticated software, with easy-to-use interfaces that give us real-time visibility of key metrics 365/24/7, allowing decisions to be made instantly and continuously across different regions of the globe. Our working world is not siloed and independent. It is interconnected. And companies adopting interconnectivity are thriving.

Today’s supply chain talent

Certainly, we want our supply chain teams to be trained and skilled in their areas of expertise, just as we did in the 90s, but we also need our supply chain leaders and change agents to have additional attributes. We demand not only that they continue to develop their technical skills but we now need their softer skills to be brilliant as well.

We need them to be great communicators and influencers, able to communicate with customers and suppliers and also able to influence the departments they link to within the organisation.

We need them to be equally happy working remotely as well as in face-to-face environments. We need them to be socially conscious and embracing of diversity and inclusion, just as our customers are increasingly demanding of our organisations.

Combined with the breadth of expertise in their subject matter, these new ‘soft’ talents will allow our organisations to adapt with success. Such agility and desire to adapt has never been so acutely tested as during the last two years.

Does your team have the required skills of the modern era? We offer a free resource and training consultation which may help. Contact us today to take advantage of this offer!

Advocates of Improvement and Evolution

Only those with both technical and soft skills make it to be a Slater Austin consultant. But we are not complacent. We recognise the need to be mindful of our own evolution in order to stay ahead of customer demand.

To that end we have added ten new training courses to our portfolio in 2022 to help businesses develop the technical and soft skills required in this new supply chain era, and we added a new placement division to Slater Austin in November 2021, to help our customers obtain the permanent and interim supply chain professionals they need, readily equipped with both the soft skills and technical skills required to be successful within their organisation.

Is it time to develop your supply chain team and skills?

Click here to download our training brochure, or here to enquire about our supply chain placement offers.