The best procurement teams focus on more than price alone when making purchasing decisions—because some things are more important than discounts. In this episode of The Agile Supply Chain Podcast, Nico Bac, a P&G veteran and the founder of consulting firm Digital Procurement Now, and Pierre Mitchell, Chief Research Officer and Managing Director of Azul Partners, discuss the latest thinking on strategic sourcing and procurement and supply chain information management.

Key Takeaways

• The best suppliers want to work with pharma companies who embrace digital tools and techniques that can make them even better.
• When you are doing strategic sourcing and bringing on new suppliers, you are effectively doing extended network design. Therefore, it’s important to think carefully about what kind of network you are creating. 

Greater collaboration between pharma companies and their end-to-end supply chain partners can lead to improved patient outcomes, greater resiliency, as well as significant business opportunities. In this episode of The Agile Supply Chain Podcast, Greg Cathcart, founder and CEO of Excellis Health Solutions, explains that if we collaborate better, “we can do better.”

Key Takeaways

• Insurance companies are increasingly requesting supply chain and dispenser-level business improvements designed to ensure the safety and authenticity of medicines given to their insured patients.
• The “walls” that have traditionally prevented closer collaboration between end-to-end supply chain partners are slowly beginning to come down.

What could your supply chain team accomplish through tighter collaboration with your company’s finance team? In this episode of The Agile Supply Chain Podcast, Bob Belshaw, Director of Business Development at Falcon Group, explains how this type of tight-knit collaboration can lead to benefits like greater supply chain responsiveness to changes in demand; more cost-effective and strategic inventory decisions; and greater agility when disruptions arise.

Key Takeaways

• If your view of the finance department’s function and capabilities is too rigid, you may be limiting options that can increase your agility in the face of supply chain disruptions.
• Best-in-class companies set up cross-functional teams that include the CFO, finance team members, and supply chain and procurement team members. The goal is to work together to weigh the ramifications of business decisions and boost supply chain efficiency and resilience.
• Finance leaders may need to set new types of goals that support the need for supply chain responsiveness.