Attracting Top Supply Chain Leadership: Skills And Strategies

Radu Palamariu is MD of Alcott Global, Global Head of Supply Chain & Logistics Practice, co-author of bestselling book “From Source to Sold”

It's not coincidental that several of today's leading corporate executives were in operational roles before stepping into the C-suite. A research study conducted by Cranfield University, titled "Supply Chain Strategy in the Board Room," addressed the importance of effective supply chain strategies and how they are embedded within the board agenda.

CEOs like Tim Cook (Microsoft) and Mary Barra (General Motors) are well known for their strong operations and supply chain management backgrounds. But Doug McMillon (CEO of Walmart), Revathi Advaithi (CEO of Flex), Jim Rowan (CEO of Volvo Cars) and countless others all come from core operations backgrounds as well.

During the pandemic, supply chain leaders have gotten a firm seat in the boardroom as business leaders contributing to the business visions of organizations. In this context, I believe that hiring for supply chain leadership roles has become increasingly important and strategic.

In a recent study conducted by my company, we surveyed over 300 executives to gain insights into their biggest challenges when hiring for supply chain leadership roles.

Given the evolution of supply chain leadership as a strategic function who are expected to contribute to the organization’s business strategy, it’s not surprising that the executives surveyed overwhelmingly agreed that "finding candidates with the right skill set" (64%) is a major challenge they face.

Digital transformation and the implementation of supply chain end-to-end processes accelerated during the past years, making data the "new oil." Similar to oil, data also requires refining through analytics, optimizations and automation in order to extract valuable insights and efficiencies that can provide added value to businesses. According to the responses collected by my company's study, such skills are still being developed, and the market has a talent gap in areas such as data analytics, optimization and automation.

Three other less emphasized but still significant challenges revealed by the study were: "Reducing time-to-hire for open supply chain positions," "retaining talent and reducing turnover" and "the lack of diversity in the talent pool."

While the "right skill set" is becoming a buzzword, I hope to unveil below the actual expectations executives have in terms of the hard and soft skills supply chain leaders need to possess in order to be considered top talent.

Supply chain teams themselves tend to be large organizations within companies, and to be successful as a supply chain leader, not only do you need to hone your skills but those of your teams as well.

To be seen as successful, most agree that those in operational roles need to keep a holistic view of the end-to-end supply chain operations. A more holistic view of the supply chain helps leaders identify areas for improvement, implement efficiency-enhancing strategies and ensure smooth coordination among various stakeholders.

The other important skills that need to be on every supply chain leader’s priority list are data analytics skills and an understanding of the latest supply chain technologies. Leaders should also have a firm grasp of risk management, inventory management and control of principles.

Lastly, other skills that the executives in my company's study highlighted as important included sourcing and procurement strategies, ESG and sustainability practices, transportation management and optimization and an understanding of trade regulations and compliance requirements.

Hard skills tend to be what gets you into a job, but soft skills are what help you progress in your career. In the supply chain industry, these essential skills are crucial for the whole value chain to function successfully.

Based on the survey, the top soft skills professionals need to have to be successful include problem-solving, collaboration, customer focus, adaptability and influencing skills. Conflict resolution, negotiation skills and presentation skills were also listed as important.

A leader needs to be resilient, adaptable, open to challenges and have a great influence on internal and external stakeholders. They should be able to lead their teams amidst disruption and challenges and develop strategies to meet the needs of their stakeholders.

The market continues to have some gems of top talent when it comes to supply chain leadership roles, and there are many strategies on how companies can attract them. I've found that one of the best ways is to have a clear vision and communicate it well to the world. Ask yourself questions like: How does your company make a contribution to make the world better? Specifically, how does your supply chain make the world a better place?

Be clear on your supply chain narrative. In fact, as I previously wrote in a book of mine, I believe that narrative is one of the five key attributes of a great executive.

Effective leadership in the supply chain is about understanding how the whole supply chain works as well as understanding how to be agile, adaptable and a driver for transformation and development. The strategic hiring of supply chain leaders with the right skill set can be a competitive edge to your business, making the connection between supply chain management, profitability and shareholder value a practical application of what theory has already demonstrated.

Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?

AI Streamlines University Contact Center Operations

It was the kind of problem that most colleges and universities would love to have.

A few years ago, the Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business at Purdue University, then known as the Krannert School of Management, was struggling to keep up with questions from prospective students interested in learning more about its programs.

“The first issue was the volume of emails we were getting and the time it took to answer them,” says Dan Gaines, associate director of marketing and analytics at the business school. Beyond that, the challenge had to do with the variety of programs offered. “The knowledge you had to possess to answer the possible questions was too much to manage,” he says.

With just a handful of people on the contact center team to field questions from people around the world, the team turned its attention to solutions that promised to augment its capabilities. It ultimately chose AtlasRTX chatbot technology powered by IBM Watson Assistant, which uses artificial intelligence (AI).

Today, Gaines says, he and his colleagues are still plenty busy corresponding with people who are curious about the business school. The difference now is that the bot handles about 70 percent of the questions they receive about their on-campus and online programs.

Click the banner below to explore services that can help you manage your IT environment.

When a prospect goes to a program webpage, the BizBot pops up as one of several options to get more information. Built on natural language processing models, the tool can communicate seamlessly in hundreds of different languages.

“If it can’t answer a question, it will send a notification to the right person and tell them they need to jump in,” Gaines explains. If the Purdue employee can’t join the conversation right away, the bot asks the user for a cell phone number for a follow-up text.

READ MORE: AI has arrived in higher education. Now what?

Since the business school launched the digital assistant in 2020, it’s become its second-highest generator of new applications. The latest numbers show that more than 50 percent of those who engage with the bot are eventually accepted into the institution.

Gaines notes that the goal was never to completely eliminate the human element of the contact center’s work. Instead, he says, the bot is a tool that brings people together.

“Higher education is highly relational; it’s important to keep our team involved,” he says. “This approach works well for us. I think we’ve found a really good balance.”

Kate Silva Digital Communications Manager, Vanderbilt University

While much of the news about AI in recent months has focused on how it could eliminate certain jobs, higher ed leaders agree that the technology will only make their contact centers better.

At Stanford University, for example, IT leaders are “trying to figure out where AI belongs” in the school’s Cisco Contact Center platform, according to Sylvie Cosgrove, executive director of IT infrastructure. Stanford hasn’t deployed artificial intelligence yet because the automation it has now is highly effective, but Cosgrove says that day is coming soon as AI-equipped solutions rapidly evolve.

“It’s something that we’re looking at because it can certainly expedite call routing,” she says. “It can get people to the right agents faster, which is really the whole purpose of contact centers.”

DIG DEEPER: Why a community college adopted Microsoft Teams for its contact center.

Tamara Cibenko Askew, principal at Deloitte Consulting, puts it a slightly different way. One recent Deloitte survey found that more than 8 in 10 contact center leaders across industries are investing in AI for “agent-enabling technologies” that promote operational efficiency.

AI can help prospects connect with humans at university contact centers, but it can also ensure employees are prepared with everything they need to communicate, Cibenko Askew says.

“The great thing about AI is its ability to parse through infinite amounts of data,” she says. If a student is looking at a certain program and shares information on his or her background and interests, for example, a technology boosted by AI might use those details to provide suggestions to an agent. “Like, ‘here are some of the features about the university this person should find compelling.’ It’s a way to give them exactly what they’re looking for more efficiently.”

The percentage of organizations that have deployed or are testing customer-facing chatbots

Source: deloittedigital.com, 2023 Global Contact Center Survey, April 2023

At Regent University in Virginia, Kevin Ferguson understands the importance of optimizing operational efficiencies. As director of communication technologies, Ferguson oversees Regent’s contact center, a cloud-based platform from Five9.

When agents reach out to prospective students who have provided their contact information, the technology leverages AI to do the dialing automatically, Ferguson says.

“It allows us to call multiple prospects at once by calculating the probability that someone will pick up,” he explains. “You might dial out to three people, for example, knowing you’ll only get one on the line.”

The system integrates with Regent’s Microsoft customer relationship management system, so inbound calls from previously identified customers trigger a pop-up screen on the answering agent’s desktop providing details about the caller and any interaction history. The technology helped the school double its call volume the first year it was used, “and we did that while improving customer service and without having to hire more staff,” Ferguson says.

It’s a similar story at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management, where Kate Silva serves as digital communications manager. Like Purdue, Vanderbilt is using AtlasRTX to streamline the contact center at its business school.

With the digital assistant on the team, Silva says, “we’re available to anyone 24/7, 365 days a year.” In Vanderbilt’s case, the chatbot tool is gated; it only goes to work once a website visitor provides a name and other basic information.

When a candidate has questions that the digital assistant can’t answer, it’s up to Silva to make sure that person connects with the appropriate contact at the school. An inquiry from a prospective student interested in the school’s master’s degree in finance, for example, would be forwarded to the admissions team responsible for evaluating applications to the highly selective program.

“I’m immediately alerted through the system, and I’ll take the contact information and chat history and pass it along right away,” Silva says. That history usually includes enough useful details to set the stage for a productive conversation.

Silva says that the admissions team “will take a second to learn about the candidate and their interests so when they talk to them, they already have a sense of how to nurture the relationship.” This discussion could be in person or over the phone, but it typically takes place in the digital domain, either via email or chat.

“If you don’t meet them where they want to be met, there’s always another university that will,” Silva says.

Photography by Chris Bucher

Join us at Microsoft Secure to innovate and grow – Microsoft