• Global Learnings from Overseas

  • Attending a professional conference is always something that you know it will require an extra-effort before and after it to cope with day-to-day responsibilities ... And that´s exactly why so many professionals and executives have no time to attend this type of events. It´s a matter of priorities.... and I really have discovered that for me personally it´s worth to devote an extra-effort BEFORE, DURING and AFTER, making sure you don´t miss them. 

  • 1,5 weeks after I returned from my last experience, let me share with you my key insights of my recent experience attending CSCMP´s Annual Conference 2015 at San Diego, whith +2900 Supply Chain professionals, from all over the globe and listening to Top leaders, like Starbucks CEO, Amazon COO and executives from companies like J&J, Toy´s R Us, Lancer, McDonalds ie. and academics from Top Global Ranked Universities.

  • I always tell my students that we always should be on a "continuous learning" mode, to capture most recent best practices & case studies and learn from what other innovative companies are doing to lead their markets. That´s exactly what I thought while registering to this conference, and was exactly what I did during my four busy days at San Diego Conference Center.

    Starbucks Schultz said that "internet is the death of distance" and now we´re all in a very competitive environment in terms of how customers are expecting to receive the goods they´re buying. When he stated that "You cannot scale a company of any kind without having the expertise and skill base of aworld class supply chain organization", the audience realized how important is to have this CEO engagement for the SC function to finally became critical at C-level.

     Amazon COO shared several innovations from their company that will change the dynamics of e-commerce and also affect "brick & mortar" channels strategy, in all of the Supply Chain plays a determinant role.

    My three final conclusions for the two keynote speakers plus other tracks that I choose to attend amongst all, are:

    1.- Attending is not an option, you must be in this kind of events, at least several times a year. The clue to make this decisions successfully is to choose them wisely, because you simply cannot attend all of the events being organized. 

    2.- Network, network & network: Relationship in other word. Communicate & interact with other professionals & executives i s the key for your future development & knowledge increase on a continuous learning mode. Critical !

    3.- Enjoy what you do & have fun: Supply Chain is a very complex function in which you´ll always be challenged by external circumstances & you´ll need to perform at your best from the 3-axis perspective: Personal, Technology-tools & Processes 

  • By Miquel Serracanta Domènech. Miquel is President of the CSCMP Spain Roundtable. This blog is also published on Linkedin, for more of Miquel's blogs follow this link.