@ Supply Chain Management

No, make that yesterday. By “you”, I mean any of us who are in the business of working to sell things – selling something either here or there. It’s an amazing circular world we live in where I’m working hard to sell you something which you either need or don’t need but which  you can only buy by working hard to return the favor.

Some of you have something to do with the supply chain and some of you don’t. So as someone close to the supply chain space, here is the absolute one thing that you should have done yesterday:

Is it better demand forecasting?

Is it investments in a better supply chain for the eventual uptick?

Is it becoming leaner and meaner?

Is it cutting your losses in earlier bright ideas?

Or something else on your long list that you had hidden away in the deep freeze.

In my opinion, the most important thing that you should be doing right now is getting to know your customer again. Again, as in Refresh.

Your customers are probably in a world of hurt right now and taking the effort to understand them and the value of plain ol’ vanilla, tried and true, is a very good idea. Now is the time to reevaluate the concept of value you provide because it is probably the only thing that you can take to the bank for whatever that’s worth.

Sometimes, I wonder if I am not a victim of my own “permabearishness” and that I’m mistaking the signs of improvement for the calm before the next storm. Perhaps it is the numbness to good news because we’ve been here before now haven’t we?

But I took notice of something: they don’t make good news like they used to. Now, that’s the poverty of it all.