As organizations evolve their business models in the coming decade, a new breed of business and technology leaders emerges to meet the challenge.  These leaders will navigate a myriad of converging and disruptive technologies, align new initiatives for both business value and technology feasibility, and identify strategies to leverage existing investments to fund innovation.  Consequently, traditional supply chain operations also need to evolve along with new roles and focuses for the CSCO. Later in 2011, additional research will be conducted into these new roles.

This initial Constellation Research supply chain report focuses on supply chain synergy, summarizing a significant body of work.  The second report in this series will include real world pilot examples and direct improvement results.  Questions about the types of supply chain synergy present in supply chains as well as the Supply Chain Synergy Indicators that identify these synergies will be answered.  

Supply chain standards are a key prerequisite for accessing supply chain synergies once they have been identified, and also act as the foundation for the synchronization process.  Eight dimensions across which supply chains can be synchronized are also defined, as well as a number of cultural issues that pose a challenge to successful synchronization. 

By Jeff Ashcroft, Vice President and Principal Analyst