Finding a qualified female CFO for an international role has historically been one of the most challenging executive search mandates. Traditional search firms take 8 to 12 weeks, operate on retainer fees, and often present homogeneous shortlists that underrepresent female candidates. This guide walks CHROs and CEOs through a faster, more effective approach.

Why Female CFO Searches Fail

Most executive search firms draw from the same networks. When diversity is an afterthought rather than a design principle, female candidates are systematically underrepresented in shortlists — not because they don’t exist, but because the search methodology isn’t built to find them.

A Dedicated Database Changes Everything

Female Executive Search (www.female-executive-search.com), powered by CEO Worldwide, maintains a dedicated pool of vetted female C-level executives across 183 countries. Every candidate has been verified through professional reference checks and competency interviews.

The result: a curated shortlist of qualified female CFO candidates delivered within 7–10 business days of your search mandate.

What to Include in Your Search Mandate

To receive the most relevant shortlist, your mandate should specify:

• Geography (country or region of assignment)
• Industry sector and company size
• Interim or permanent placement
• Language requirements – Key competencies (M&A experience, IPO readiness, cost transformation, etc.)

Submit Your Search Today

Submit your female executive search mandate at www.female-executive-search.com/hire-a-female-executive/submit-a-search-mandate/ and receive your first shortlist within 7–10 business days.

The Crucial Role of Diversity Managers in Fostering Inclusion and Equality

The article discusses the responsibilities of Diversity Managers, who are tasked with promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion within an organization. These professionals are responsible for creating policies and practices that promote equal access to opportunities and ensure fair and equitable treatment of all employees. They also develop programs to support underrepresented groups, educate employees about the importance of diversity, and ensure fair and inclusive recruitment and hiring practices.

Furthermore, Diversity Managers create an inclusive work environment and track and analyze diversity metrics to design new techniques to increase the inclusion of underrepresented groups. Having a dedicated Diversity Manager is essential to fostering an environment where everyone feels welcome and respected, which can lead to higher employee satisfaction, stronger customer success rates, and recognition with stakeholders as an ethical company.

Read the complete article on Female Executive Search

An interview with our CEO and Founder: Patrick Mataix

Read the complete interview here

Practical tips to cope & adapt

Why?

The current normal (COVID19 period) reveals Life’s uncertainty and triggers unusual behaviours and reactions. What each of us is experiencing is understandable. It is ok to feel uncomfortable.

• It does impact our daily lives in both personal and professional field and requires each of us to cope with the induced stress then adapt to the situation. The latter expects us to be innovative and creative in the way we think, work and live, as an individual, professional and community member.
• The global lockdown also has a physical impact that can increase the « stress » if not acknowledged and managed: a lot of thoughts and information related to a change out there are running in our brains, while our bodies are unable to move, kind of stuck in one place (and we lost the body language part in our communication). The dichotomy of reality & speed between the mind and the body creates a cognitive dissonance (=stress).

The goal of this document is to help you to relieve from daily stress and empower your capacity to innovate and create in a sense of « adapt ». Resilience starts with you.

Recommendations

The following list is non exhaustive, and based on neuroscience, neurobiology, research and experience. Tips are affordable and simple.

There is no « have to », « must » « should ». Be kind only.

Choose 1 or 2 tips you feel comfortable with and try today. Repeat the following days. Habits are made of repetition. Good habits are made of repetition of tiny healthy acts. They contribute to thoughtful leadership.

Practical tips – The 5 Re/…

• Re/duce
  • Stress level by practicing cardiac coherence (whenever you feel you need it): inhale for 5 sec, exhale for 5 sec , during 5 min, 3 times a day (from belly not from thorax)
  • Infos intake: prefer TV/media flow intake around midday instead of wake-up or bedtime
  • Switch off notifications from emails/messages app on all your tech devices: you choose when to collect your message (dedicated time slots) and manage your time
  • Focus on uni-tasking and the 3 major tasks of the day
  • Have break of 10’ every 52’ of work (walk, do nothing, power nap, play, read…)
• Re/charge
  • If you can go out, just walk 30’ everyday with no other goal than the walk itself (if you can’t, do few steps while you’re on call)
  • HUG someone for 20 seconds (kid, partner, yourself !)
  • Cupping palms over your eyes for several seconds
  • Take some day off and enjoy « lazy days »
• Re/place
  • Smile
  • Prepare your confcall/zoom meetings by taking 5’ before and asking yourself 2 questions:
    • What do I want to say?
    • How do I want to say it?
  • Replace professional Visio by phone call when possible
  • Replace coffee, Coca-Cola, alcohol (3rd Step Prayer AA) … by water as much as possible, through your day
  • Replace lunch at desk by a dedicated moment to enjoy your food (and nothing else)
• Re/play
  • Make room in your schedule and living place for playing activity (cooking, lego, video gaming, painting, music, writing…), alone or with family member(s)
  • Have fun. Whatever makes you laugh ☺ (Without hurting anyone)
• Re/think – Re/imagine – Re/create
  • Stop – Look – Think
  • Look for the upside of the situation (in your personal life, for your company, in your career…). You can choose deliberately to look at it. Keep in mind that a Crisis is always a mix of danger(s) and opportunity(ies) (cf Chinese ideograms)
  • Practice cardiac coherence to unlock the innovative part of your brain to express, and let it flow. It is riskless.
  • Practice reverse thinking : Ask why not?

Additional resources

There are numerous of cardiac coherence, meditation, sleeping apps available. Pick the one(s) you like and use it.

There are also a lots of free content to start any new activity (yoga, Pilates…). Choice is yours. Just keep practicing.

Here is an interesting info graphic about our own bias; it can help to distance yourself from the ongoing thoughts.

MAKE THE MOST OF NOW

I am available for each of you to tackle 3 topics:

• Manage the stress of the current normal
• Deepen your self-awareness
• Re/think – re/imagine and re/create (your life, your career or business activity)

In March of 2019, I visited the American Occupational Therapy Association’s (AOTA) website to refresh my memory of the organization’s Vision 2025; meant to provide aspirational guidance to its members. Its five pillars read as follows:

• “Effective: Occupational therapy is evidence based, client centered and cost-effective
• Leaders: ​Occupational therapy is influential in changing policies, environments, and complex systems.
• Collaborative: ​Occupational therapy excels in working with clients and within systems to produce effective outcomes.
• Accessible: Occupational therapy provides culturally responsive and customized services.
• Diversity: ​Coming soon​” (AOTA, 2019)

Upon visiting the same page on March 29th of the same year, the diversity bullet now read “​Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity:​ We are intentionally inclusive and equitable and embrace diversity in all its forms” (AOTA, 2019). It is unclear how long it took for the diversity bullet to be filled in, it is sheer coincidence that I happened to notice it before it was amended. It was as recently as October of 2018 that the AOTA’s board of directors voted to make the words ​diversity​ and inclusive​ more explicit. I write this article because as a therapist who began practicing occupational therapy (OT) in late 2018 at the age of thirty-seven, it is in this profession that I have encountered my first instances of overt racial and gender discrimination in a professional setting. According to the Academic Programs Annual Data Report of academic year 2017-2018, occupational therapy students (doctoral, masters and assistant ships combined) were 6.3 percent African-American, 6.3 percent Asian, less than 1 percent Native and Pacific Islander, less than 1 percent American Indian or Alaskan Native, 7 percent other and 80 percent White (p. 10) . After the events that spurred the writing of this article, I wondered how a field with such demographics is perceived by prospective students and new clinicians of color?

As an OT graduate student, I discovered and fell in love with the specialty of hand therapy. So enthralled was I with its confluence of neurology, biomechanics and technical expertise that as a fieldwork student, I began designing and 3-D printing devices that I hoped would increase the efficacy of the rehabilitative process and reduce strain on therapists who spend hours a year crafting orthotics at the risk of the same repetitive strain injuries for which they treat their patients.On my fourth day working in a sought-after mentorship, I was taken aside and subjected to an approximately forty minute quasi-intervention by my superior that was framed as a concern for my professional growth and patient safety. The main thrust of this feedback was that I was “overly confident” and needed to learn to “humble myself” in this environment (quoted as heard). One can rightfully assume that perhaps I did in fact have a problem with ego-centric behavior. Maybe I had been given feedback or been reprimanded in the past, and had ignored advice? Keep in mind however that this was four days into my first hand therapist job; my supervisor also mentioned that his South African friend had a similar problem of coming across confident and knowledgeable. To conclude the conversation, I was told that it would be easier to manage me if I were more “passive”.

Again, I would not fault the reader for presuming that these words came at the tail end of a track record of failures on my part to provide the best care. As a new clinician, there were valuable conversations to be had about treatment protocols and rehabilitative guidelines. In light of such feedback, I spent several days agonizing over every action, every conversation with a colleague or patient; striving to understand where I had gone wrong. Interestingly, when I relayed this conversation to my Caucasian husband, his first response was “I would never have received that critique as a man”. Fearing that he was speaking from the biased perspective of being my spouse, I reached out to other friends, all competent professionals working in a variety of disciplines. The responses were unanimous in their horror, confusion and disgust. Ultimately the impact that the“confidence conversation” had on my work performance the next week was deleterious; I became painfully self-conscious, afraid that I was committing another yet-to-be-unearthed professional transgression. I was then censured for displaying a lack of confidence in my treatment planning and corresponding abilities to provide competent care to my patients.

Paradoxically, I would not be writing this article if this was where the critique ended. After all, skewed gender expectations are simply part of life as a female in a patriarchal society no matter the social justice strides of the last century. As I resigned myself to becoming more humble and passive as counseled, I learned that my supervisor was asking his peers if he should mention that my “hair might be too big of a statement for someone new to be making”. This query fascinates me because it suddenly placed the critiques of my behavior from the previous week in a new light. One irony of my circumstance is that the occupational therapy profession prides itself on utilizing a more holistic approach than other medical disciplines. We are taught to consider all aspects of the patient’s/client’s world, from values, spirituality, rituals and socioeconomic status in order to craft the most efficacious client-centered approach possible. How ironic that my OT supervisor was not viewing me with the same lens.

How does my story relate to efforts to diversify the OT workforce? Sadly they are symptoms of a larger problem that encapsulates the issue of a lack of diversity in many workplaces in the United States of America. As a city planner working for a high-profile organization, the subject of my hair and/or personality arose exactly zero times in three years. Compare this to the six days total I spent working as a hand therapist before deciding that, despite my passion and eagerness to succeed, I had encountered an atmosphere that was too toxic to foster significant professional growth without sacrificing my mental health. Scientific studies show that the toll of navigating such race-related societal pitfalls has real implications for the lifespan and health of African-Americans. According to a 2017 study and poll by the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health, blacks have poorer health and die sooner than whites in America, in part due to the cumulative experiences of discrimination such as being unfairly stopped by the police, unfair firings, having people act as if they fear you or repeatedly feeling that you are treated with less courtesy than others (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2017) . Given this state of affairs, I am left questioning if these sorts of experiences are the sort of obstacles I should expect to wrestle with in my professional future or if it is a once in a lifetime occurrence.

It is not sufficient to pat ourselves on the back for interviewing or hiring an applicant of color. African-American women have been labeled many things over the years; they are “too much”of something; too fertile, too loud, too angry, too promiscuous, too fat, too sexual (Ashley, 2014). Take a moment to consider the “professional” critiques that I was given through this hyperbolic lens. Hopefully, it becomes apparent why the focus on my personality with my disruptive hair becomes not just about the preferences of a single workplace, but rather a potential indictment of my very existence as a woman of color. As an individual of largely West African descent my hair is often styled in an Afro, in the tightly-coiled texture in which it grows out of my scalp. In order to label an Afro a statement, one must be so acclimated to, and oblivious to a certain “baseline” that the sight of my hair would be disconcerting. What is the baseline? Straight, wavy, bouncy, sleek; the hair we see in hair commercials and slick magazine advertisements? Contrary to my supervisor’s presumptions, my Afro is the result of no hidden agenda to seek attention, no special hairspray or pomade; simply a comb. Just as dreadlocks do in fact get washed on a regular basis (a contrary assumption made by yet another supervisor), Afros are not the result of some extra effort to standout.

In early 2019, the New York City Commission on Human Rights (NYCHR) instituted a law banning hairstyle-based discrimination by employers, schools among other public spaces. The press release for the new law states:

“Bans or restrictions on natural hair or hairstyles associated with Black people are often rooted in White standards of appearance and perpetuate racist stereotypes that black hairstyles are unprofessional. Such policies exacerbate anti-Black bias in employment, in school, while playing sports, and in other areas of daily living” (p.1)

The release goes on further to specify locks, twists, afros, and other hairstyles that have been labelled “disruptive, unhygienic, messy or unkempt” by the supervisors and colleagues of black employees (NYCHRL, 2019).

The fact that the problem’s magnitude requires such a law leaves me wary, and yet hopeful that new levels of awareness can be reached. There is a societal lack of understanding of the extent to which the texture of Black hair has been tamed to adapt to Caucasian standards over the centuries by sizzling hot combs, toxic chemicals that bare the scalp, destroy hair follicles an​d the millions of dollars spent on wigs and weaves. In 2017 Black consumers s​pent $54.4 million dollars on ethnic hair care and beauty aids or 85.65% while making up 14% of the general population (Nielsen, 2018). Although it is now considered trendy to include a model of color with Afro hair in an advertisement, the choice to embrace one’s “natural” hair is still viewed as an act of rebellion by some sectors of the African-American community.

The 2015 Occupational Therapy Code of Ethics states that AOTA members are “committed to promoting inclusion, participation, safety, and well-being for all recipients in various stages of life, health and illness and to empowering all beneficiaries of service to meet their occupational needs” (AOTA, 2015). In the fifteen years of my professional life before coming to the field of OT, I felt empowered to do what gave me joy and took for granted the mental and emotional energy I could focus on honing my craft or technical skills. As a city planner and then as a yoga instructor who specialized in teaching those with paralysis, degenerative nerve conditions and amputations,my coworkers and supervisors judged the quality, quantity and speed of my work or the safety and efficacy of my yoga classes. My value as an employee and colleague was not dependent on whether my personality broached some personal, racially-tinged preference for a passive demeanor or if my hair challenged narrow, ill-informed ideas of how my hair should be styled.

My experiences as an OT thus far have left me disillusioned and despairing. The AOTA’s Board of Directors formally added explicit language about inclusivity to the Vision 2025 statement on November 1st 2018, suggesting that this is still a very novel issue with which the profession as a whole grapples. A full one hundred years of the profession had transpired prior, culminating in much celebratory fanfare on a national scale in the summer of 2018. . The text on inclusivity states that OT “maximizes health, well-being and quality of life for all people, populations and communities through effective solutions that facilitate participation in everyday living” (AOTA,2018). In order to effectively execute this component of the vision, it is critical that we first recognize the current professional climate that inevitably results from the dominance of a particular demographic, no matter how uncomfortable. As students of this profession we learn to consider the individual as a dynamic product of their context/environment, occupations, performance patterns, performance skills and client factors (S4, OTPF, 2013). It is this perspective that leads to occupational therapists being prized on interdisciplinary healthcare teams for their ability to consider elements outside the standard medical model that might affect the efficacy and outcomes of care.

As we strive to recruit more students of color, are we considering the tenor of the professional world they are being sent into? This is a question relevant not just to OT, but other disciplines that complain of persistent homogeneity amongst their ranks. The process of recognizing and admitting our conscious and subconscious biases can be difficult, scary and painful. This is probably why many of us avoid it at all costs. A key component of making a profession more attractive to prospective candidates is to educate, hire and retain individuals that reflect the multi-cultural utopia one is seeking to create. Universities and organizations should not simply pat themselves on the back for hiring one more candidate of color or for having a slightly more diverse classroom. If we are to presume that this is where the work ends, it is to embrace a level of naïveté that is untenable in the world we live. The aforementioned experiences in the field thus far have left me incensed and more importantly, disappointed and saddened.

The profession’s seven core values remind us repeatedly to consider all aspects of a patient’s existence in order to treat them with​ altruism​ and provide ​equal​ treatment, respect their right to​ freedom​, ​justice​, ​dignity​ and ​truth ​while exercising ​prudence ​(AOTA, 2015). How unfortunate that it appears we struggle to turn the same therapeutic lens onto our colleagues in order to treat them with the dignity and respect that they deserve, no matter their cultural background, skin color, gender or hairstyle.

References:

• American Occupational Therapy Association. AOTA unveils vision 2025. Retrieved from: https://aota.org/AboutAOTA/vision-2025.aspx
• American Journal of Occupational therapy. (2015). Occupational therapy code of ethics. Vol. 69, 691341003p1-6913410030p8. doi:10.5014/ajot.2015.696S03.
• American Occupational Therapy Association. (2014). Occupational therapy practice framework: Domain and process.American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 68(Suppl. 1), S1–S48.https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.2014.682006
• Ashley, W. (2014) The angry black woman: The impact of pejorative stereotypes on psychotherapy with black women. [Abstract]. ​Social Work in Public Health​, 29:1,27-34, DOI: ​10.1080/19371918.2011.619449
• Harvison, Neil. (2018). Academic programs annual data report: Academic year 2017–2018. Division of Professional Affairs, American Occupational Therapy Association. Bethesda, MD. Retrieved from: https://www.aota.org/~/media/Corporate/Files/EducationCareers/Educators/2017-2018-Annual-Data-Report.pdf
• Nielsen Newswire. Black impact: Consumer categories where African Americans move markets. February 2018. Demographics; Retrieved from https://nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2018/black-impact-consumer-categories-where-african-americans-move-markets.html
• NYC Commission on Human Rights Legal Enforcement Guidance on Race Discrimination on the Basis of Hair. NYC Commission on Human Rights. February 2019. Retrieved from: NYC.gov/humanrights
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Discrimination Pervades Daily Life, Affects Health Across Groups in the U.S., NPR/Harvard/RWJF Poll Shows. October 24th 2017. Retrieved from https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/articles-and-news/2017/10/discrimination-pervades-daily-life–affects-health-across-groups.html

Developing Emotional Intelligence is a self-paced journey designed to understand what EQ is,why and how, as a Leader in the digital area, developing EQ is the path to a more conscious, mindful and sustainable (efficient) way of being and working. It is a training program with coaching focused on identified pain points.

Domains & competencies

Emotional Intelligence is the understanding of the interactions between Mental, Body and Soul, as a way to continue to grow and thrive.

Leadership is a naturally stressful mandate, being responsible for the fate of hundreds or even thousands of other people can take its toll.

Leaders who are emotionally intelligent foster safe environments, where employees feel comfortable to take calculated risks, suggest ideas and to voice their opinions (collaborative working culture).

They can use emotions to drive the organisation forward. Leaders often have the responsibility of effecting any necessary changes in the organisation, and if they are aware of others’ possible emotional reactions to these changes they are able to plan and prepare the most optimal ways to make them.

Furthermore, emotionally intelligent leaders do not take things personally, are able to forge ahead with plans without worrying about the impact on their egos and address situation without being fraught with emotions. Personal vendettas between leaders and employees are one of the commonest hindrances to productivity in many workplaces.

Self-awareness

Self-awareness is like a deep dive to understand the root causes of our thoughts, decision-making and behaviours, which are only consequences of a personal intricate system.

The ability to take an honest look at your life without attachment to it being right or wrong. – Debbie Ford

• Communication style
• Leadership style
• Problem solving style
• Identifying underlying beliefs & values
• Cognitive dissonance & wellness wheel

Self-management

Self-management is the taking of responsibility for one’s own behaviour and well-being.

Be not afraid of growing slowly; be afraid only of standing still. – Chinese proverb

• Emotional self-regulation: Understanding the role and usefulness of emotions is the key of self-regulation.
• Adaptability
• Achievement orientation: Nurturing our personal needs to perform at our best.
• Positive psychology / Building resilience

Social awareness

Social awareness is the ability to comprehend and appropriately react to both broad problems of society and interpersonal struggles: accurately interpret the emotions of people with whom you interact.

The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance. – Nathaniel Branden

• Empathy
• Organizational awareness

Relationship management

It is all about our ability and willingness to impact in the way we want people: family, friends, colleague, and other stakeholders, in order to get the best out of others.

Time is not the main thing. It’s the only thing. – Miles Davis

• Influence
• Coach & Mentor Posture
• Conflict management
• Teamwork
• Inspirational leadership

A crisis on an individual level that invites each one to sort out to get rid of waste and to create an “After” respectful of one’s Being and Humanity

Individually, the crisis we are experiencing and the long time of confinement it imposes on us gives us the opportunity to connect with ourselves. In the emotional wringer of these few weeks, we can really listen to what is essential for us, we can choose what we want to invest energy on, we can free ourselves from what hinders us. It requires us to critically examine what drives us, what even agitates us, what fundamentally motivates us.

Several questions emerge

Humanly speaking, what does it mean to be in relationship with a person? To have more and more contacts in the same place? But with what depth vs. what superficiality? What place is there for each person in a whole? Is it necessary to shake hands, to kiss, to touch to greet each other? What is the meaning of making a gesture if it is by loo king elsewhere, by not being present? To look straight in the eyes is to welcome the other, to recognize him/her as a person.

What does it mean to be connected? It is quite possible to be connected to others without being physically with them. If the exchanges are attentive, focused on the essential, written and voice messages, calls and video conferences constitute a link. Listening, caring and empathy are essential to the link. A sincere interest in the other in his or her uniqueness as well.

What does it mean to be alive? How does everyone experience it? Even so, what is the price of life?

These are probably haunting questions from the beginning of the confinement. First, the astonishment due to the very brutal change of habits, the loss of personal, family and professional landmarks and rituals.

And the anxiety about a future with an unknown deadline, the fear for one’s health and that of one’s loved ones. Fear of one’s professional and financial future, and even of one’s present. Remaining frozen, looking for information, non-existent, partial. Finding a thread to be able to act: to set up telework (when the job makes it possible), to organize teaching, to carry out the possible administrative steps…

An d to ask oneself, with ever greater force: what does it mean to be alive? What makes everyone feel alive? What does it mean to be free, to feel free? How important, how essential, how vital is it?

To act freely is to take care of oneself, as much as possible. And moreover, it is about helping to take care of others. To consent to the lack of freedom of movement is of great value. It saves lives.

To be free is to free your mind from panic, from negative thoughts that prevent you from thinking. It is to welcome within oneself, preciously present, one’s thoughts, one’s values. It is to give them a large place. Being aware of what is essential for oneself, of one’s inner resources is one of the means to reinforce one’s freedom.

These days and weeks out of the world “before” are a precious time to imagine the world “afterwards” and to prepare oneself for it

To discern what is essential, important and superfluous in the world before, requires listening carefully to oneself. In actions and interactions, which ones are carried out for oneself? To really please oneself? Which are those that respond to a social norm, an injunction?

Leaving the world before is to free oneself from the weight of norms and injunctions, it is to put “I” at the center of the game. Not for selfishness, at all. By commitment. To take care of oneself because no one else can do it. Because to be well is to send a positive signal to others that can help them change their view of themselves.

This crisis requires a great deal of self-awareness and presence, here and now, to oneself

Effectively implementing barrier gestures, for example, requires anticipating each gesture in order to chain them together as well as possible. It even requires being completely focused on the realization of the gesture itself, at least until it becomes a new reflex. This crisis is an invitation to a great awareness of all the automatisms that govern our daily lives. Physical automatisms of course. By going further and holding up a mirror to oneself, behavioral and psychological automatisms.

It is in this area that there is a lot to sift through to free oneself from what does not belong because it does not correspond to the individual in his uniqueness. The danger would be to remain identical in exit and entry, without having chosen. The opportunity is to find oneself, to give birth to oneself, a little or a lot. The resources exist in everyone. Making the most of the time in the working room allows one to (re)appropriate them to make them accessible.

To take advantage of these few weeks, it may be time to call upon a revealer to give birth to oneself.

“Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.” – Walter Elliot

This prominent Scottish politician saw the important distinction between tactics and strategy.

Logistics involves successfully piecing together any number of moving parts into one working supply chain. Although it may look like one long process, supply chain managers need the patience to think in terms of both the end-to-end system and its constituent parts.

Emerging trends in supply chain management has been largely driven by the incessant growth in businesses, by the reliance of one business on another and by the demands that are far flung across geographies, deep into the hinterlands and traversing many barriers, in the backdrop of a globalised business complexities and more holistic move to “e-commerce”.

This driving force gets further amplified by the need to “Deliver upon promises made to customers” which requires real time data for managing complexities such as digital solutions to map vendor performance and business intelligence to better understand customer behaviour.

Leverage the resources and capabilities of supply chain partners

Hence for a logistics professional in real time digital environment it’s important to run “what if” scenarios and dig into any areas that gives a pause for thought in terms of advance planning, which will help leverage the resources and capabilities of supply chain partners to create superior value and competitive advantage in the market place.

The evolving trends in global sourcing practices, multichannel routes to market and relationship-based innovation are transforming the business landscape along with performance improvements which has led to a high resolution of brand visibility, enhanced sales and profits and further the cause of innovative processes, setting of higher benchmarks in terms if best practices and relationship building amongst the stakeholders. 

Integrating operations, management of materials and products, information and capitals into a well formatted supply chain is the new paradigm in organising business lines. Hence supply chain the mantel of “Backbone” – a valuable component of all business planning.

The current scenario: The supply chain and logistic sectors are being transformed by several innovative solutions such as IOT (Internet of things), Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, 3D Printing, Robotics and Automation, Digital Logistics Marketplace, Blockchains, On demand technologies, Crowd shipping etc.

Factors guiding the new trends in supply chain design and performance:

• Need for advance planning – Advanced demand planning systems help companies to create an efficient customer focused mindset without sacrificing operational efficiency.
• The globalisation of business landscape – has brought with it an ever complex and changing socio-political barriers to deal with. Hence a well thought of supply chain network which can optimise the positive effects of the socio-political-economic flux and mitigate the its negative effects is the call of the day to smoothen a cost-effective flow of materials through these “complex web of networks”
• Competition and pricing pressures – The focus should be at cost rationalisation and creating an efficient value chain which will aid cost competitiveness and simultaneously provide value added services to meet the demands of a varied set of customers.
• Outsourcing – The valuable idea of outsourcing has become a key to the efficiency of the supply chain. In this aspect supply chain is nothing but a “pooling in of various core competencies” of different partners along the supply chain, thereby bringing in manifold synergies and enhanced focus on one’s own core capability, thereby bringing in enhanced value and reducing the pricing pressures. The challenge though remains here is a “quality driven well synchronised and seamless chain of value partners” who can work briskly in tandem such that the promises made to the end customer can be fulfilled.
• Complex product life cycles – The demands of the markets are to continuously develop innovative product; at the same time the efficiency would aim at minimising the cannibalization of the existing products.
• Collaboration between stake holders – As supply chains continue to evolve there has been a move towards more intense collaboration between customers, suppliers and other peripheral stakeholders. This level of collaboration goes beyond linking information systems to fully integrated business processes and organisational structures.     

The future holds good for businesses which seek to stay sustainable through accountability in terms of delivering to the customers & stakeholders the values promised

“The focus herein is “Continuously monitoring the flux, staying abreast with the evolving machinery so as to align them with the business goals in order to stay ahead in competition” and at the heart of it all is innovation which continuously and consciously improves logistics efficiencies, reduces the level of environmental impact and enhances value generation rather than labour cost thereby creating long term sustainability.”   

About the author: Shantha Martin has 23 Years of working experience in diverse industries. Of these she spent 16 years in the logistics and supply chain arena as CEO handling the largest region of ISC/ MIDDLE EAST/ AFRICA / EMED. Her key strengths are people management of diverse cultures and large workforce, handling a large P & L, creating and implementing new initiatives, communication and business strategy.

Key achievement: Revenue and PAT – grew from Euro 58 mn to Euro 133 mn in a span of 5 years and PAT from euro 8 mn to Euro 12.8 mn in a span of 5 years. Managing a multi culture work force of 1200 people in 71 countries across the region

View Shantha’s short bio