Another Perspective on Supply Chain Risk

WisdomNet, a services and software provider, has published a good introduction to supply chain risk management. You can download the full report here (registration required). The paper analyzes basic risk mitigation approaches to improve supply chain resiliency. There are not any breakthrough findings or thoughts in the work, but I found it to be quite a worthwhile read -- a perfect supply risk management 101 type of study, if you will. Personally, I'm very excited to see consultancies taking up the topic of supply risk management in their thought leadership. Last week, I sat down with Philip O'Keeffe, the practice leader for Protiviti's supply chain risk management practice, to discuss their approach to supply risk management. In the coming week, I'll be sharing some of the findings from our conversation. And it turns out that great supply chain risk management research minds time their outreach at the same time. To wit, at the start of our conversation, Philip told me that AMR's supply risk crusader Mark Hillman was also talking to the firm to get their perspective.

Of all the services providers that I've met with over the years, Protiviti appears the furthest along in their approach to supply risk management, owing to the firm-wide focus on enterprise risk management (in the financial, operational, IT, and customer areas, among others). But ironically, while I was expecting Phillip to be a finance-driven risk management expert given Protiviti's legacy, I was incredibly surprised to find dirt under his fingernails. I quickly learned that his background was almost entirely focused on operations and procurement. As a result, he's someone who understands both the shop-floor and procurement implications of supply risk (in addition to the overall enterprise aspects of risk management). And he can talk to both CFOs and CPOs about the subject -- a critical bridge in many organizations. Stay tuned for my write-up of our discussion!

- Jason Busch