What are the key priorities & right approach for Supply Chain Skills development?

In my pursuit to get a wider view on Supply Chain skills development , I launched a survey through Linkedin . It is my pleasure to share the results of he survey. As promised, I am not going to disclose the names or the individual responses. However, I would welcome feedback & comments & continue to refine my study.

First question was, “What are the key priorities for Supply Chain skills development?” The participants were expected to rate each of the given priority as High, Medium or Low. Based on collective response the priorities have been rated in descending order.
A : Need for preparing the SC Organization to meet future business challenges.
B : Ability to assess the gaps in skills for meeting existing business requirements.
C : Need of reviewing or redefining roles & responsibility within SC organization.
D : Fill gap in Soft Skills in SC organization.
E : Fill gap in Technical or Functional skills in SC Organization.
F: Need for developing structured approach to arrive at the skill gaps.
G: Focus on continuous skills development for strategic organization development.

Clearly, building Supply Chain organization to meet future challenges is the topmost priority followed by skills needed for existing business needs. Development of soft skills scores a slight edge over the functional skills (will detail these skills as specified by the respondents).

The second question went on to ask each respondent to specify soft skills. The list was quite long, so I am including the most commonly expressed ones.

Soft Skills for Supply Chain Organization :
1. Effective Communication : Looking at the number of responses for this skill, it sounds like a “mantra” for Supply Chain. There were various forms of this skill mentioned e.g.:
· Communication with peers
· Communication with internal & external customers
· Intra-departmental communication
· Written communication
The importance of communication in Supply Chain effectiveness is well known to everyone, yet it continues to be biggest gap in all SC organization.
2. Collaboration & Coordination, not only within the organization, but across the extended enterprise ( suppliers & customers)
3. Inter-personal skills, Transparency, cooperation with stakeholders , Trust
4. Business acumen & Market understanding : I would take a liberty to expand this a bit more. Most of the SC professionals tend to be specialists and not the business managers.
5. Proactive approach & Sense of Urgency
6. Ability to analyze problems & think out of box

Functional Skills for Supply Chain Organization:

1. Sales & Operations planning, Forecasting, Inventory Management
2. Understanding of entire value chain (including constraints in each part of chain) starting from customers to suppliers
3. Supply Chain network optimization
4. Negotiation
5. Knowledge of integrated IT / ERP tools and ability to quickly adapt to enabling technologies.
6. Risk Management & Disaster Recovery
7. Project management
8. Customer Service

The final question on the skills gap was to check at what level these gaps exist & to what extent. The respondents were asked to pick up one of the level (Senior, Middle & Staff) for the soft & functional skills. The results are:

Soft Skills: 62% felt the need at Middle Management level, 30% at Senior Management Level & 8% at staff level. It is well understood that the largest need for soft skills development is at middle management level because this group plays an important role in managing ground level operations and it is also needed for them to move to senior management roles. Interestingly, many felt the need at senior management levels as well. It means many Senior Managers also lack some of the soft skills.

Functional Skills: 40% felt the need at the Senior management level, 33% at Staff level & 27% at Middle Management level.
It shows that need for development & understanding of Functional Skills is there at all the levels .

TRAINING & DEVLOPMENT
The second section analyzed the priorities for training in Supply Chain organization.

A : Need for continuous training programs for retaining talent in the Supply Chain.
B : Need for training & development support available outside organization (consultants, institutes etc.).
C : Need for training & development support available from within organization..
D : Satisfaction with the quality & relevance of the existing training programs to the job
E : Extent to which the existing training programs use Games, Simulations tools to reflect near reality scenarios.

Type of Training : 80% of the respondents felt that combination Class Room Training and eLearning is the best possible way to make training effective.

Need for external consultants : 55% of respondents are open to engaging external agency or consultants for Supply Chain training.

RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION
The last section analyzed the priorities in the recruiting & retaining talent in the Supply Chain organization.


A : Level of pre-assessment of candidates & filtering of resumes by placement
B : Ability to attract good talent in Supply chain.
C : Satisfaction with the recruitment services provided by placement consultants.
D : Attrition rate in the Supply Chain compared to other functions in your organization
Major reasons of dissatisfaction from recruitment consultants:
-Lack of Supply Chain domain knowledge
-Focus on quantity than quality
-No pre-work / whetting done on matching the job & person’s profile
-Lack of communication
-No accountability

I thank all who took time to participate in the survey & gave valuable inputs. I feel that this study will help Supply Chain Leadership to make right decisions about supply chain skills development.