SupplyChainDigest recently carried an article summarizing research that shows that Supply Chain Management is not high on the IT priority list. According to the article, "a recent survey of CIOs by CIO Insight highlights this disconnect. Supply chain management ranked only 13th on the list of IT priorities, as ranked by these CIOs, behind such exciting investment areas as IT system load balancing and mobility applications."

I think there are a couple of issues here worth mentioning. First, it's been my experience that manufacturing has dropped a notch in IT priority as more and more manufacturing has been outsourced. At the surface, this makes sense since less investment would appear to be required in an area that the company has outsourced. However, outsourcing brings with it a whole new set of supply chain management issues, mainly the need for multi-enterprise visibility and Response Management capabilities to ensure proper coordination across the supply network and fast and effective response to change.

Second, I also believe supply chain management is becoming a more strategic component and competitive differentiator for many companies. Virtually every industry is more competitive today than it was 5-10 years ago. Competition is now global. With this increasing customer choice there is also greater pricing/margin pressure. This also drives faster innovation to be a market leader. When you add all of this up, it's not only great sales/marketing and product leadership that are keys to winning today, but you also have to have a supply chain that is efficient and responsive to change. Because if you can't get your great new product onto the shelves and have the ability to turn on a dime when the trends change, you're not going to win.

IT clearly has a lot of priorities to sort through and limited resources and funds to work with. But the market dynamics are increasingly making excellence in supply chain management a competitive differentiator that companies like IBM, Dell, Wal-Mart and many others are leveraging to great success.

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