Gartner’s Top 25 Supply Chains for 2015

Gartner has just released their list of the top 25 supply chains in the world. It was unveiled last month in Phoenix at the Gartner 2015 Exec Conference. What defines the best supply chains in the world and what traits do best-in-class share? What lessons can be learned from these high-performing supply chains?

The ranking score is based on a combination of the peer and Gartner opinion. Gartner examines three metrics: return on assets, inventory turns, and revenue growth. After taking a weighted average, these three are combined into 50% of the final score with most of the weight going to return on assets. Another 25% of the ranking comes from ‰peer opinion‰. They get a list of the eligible companies and ask which are doing the best job of being a demand-driven value network orchestrator, and then rank them. The last 25% is done by Gartner’s analysts. Besides the specific (and arguably exclusive) selection criteria you can read more about in Dan Gilmore’s article, it is important to examine the characteristics that make these organizations stand out from the crowd. What do Unilever, Samsung, Starbucks and Coca-Cola have in common? They all understand the value of managing their supply chains as a strategic asset to boost performance and profitability. Modern supply chains stretch across the globe with multinational buyers on one side and a diverse group of suppliers in numerous countries on the other. Corporations are finding that the efficiency gains they achieved through strategies such as outsourcing and low cost country sourcing are being eroded by the tremendous amounts of working capital trapped in their extended supply chains. Increasingly, companies recognize the importance of working capital management to support their business in difficult times and many have begun to look across the financial supply chain for opportunities to unlock trapped cash. Supply chain finance, perhaps the hottest new area emerging in global supply chain management has become an important tool in the battle to unlock working capital, improving competitiveness and generating billions of dollars in free cash flow for best in class companies and their suppliers. Want to know how you can improve your supply chain and perhaps crack the list? Contact us to find out how our solutions can help you achieve the next level of supply chain efficiency.