Retail Acumen know that when you know at what point products are in the product development process you will be better able to ensure a successful new product launch.

We also know that when you know where products are in your extended supply chain you can understanding the likelihood of future availability issues. Having these early warning mechanisms allows you to mitigate the risk of supply chain problems, and avoiding those problems impacting on your sales and service levels is a massive benefit to you.

At Retail Acumen we think that critical path and logistics tracking tools are great! Often known as 'Supply Chain Event Management' or 'SCEM' tools, in our experience the benefit they bring compared to the cost is just too good to be true. These tools enable your commercial teams to define and monitor the progress of a process flow. In general the most value is added where a retailer has to manage the new product introduction process, global sourcing and a global supply chain. Each step may have a different owner, the actors in the process may be located around the world and most likely not all work within your organisation. None of that dispersion matters though because process tracking brings them all together and gives each party immediate and real-time visibility of the status of a process and a personalised and prioritised task list to enable them to do what is required in the most timely and efficient manner. Wow!

In addition to the obvious benefits of end to end supply chain visibility and an 'early warning system' for things which could affect the business, critical path and logistics tracking tools can also provide valuable information with regard to process adherence by the actors in a process. This information can inform such things as supplier KPIs and directly improve the supplier performance management process. If you would consider this: If a suppliers lead time is agreed at 30 days and yet regularly that supplier is delivering at 35 days it enables a conversation about improvement, or a realisation that the fact 35 days is an accurate reflective of the true lead time. If an inventory management tool is calculating stock cover on the basis of the next shipment arriving in 30 days and in fact the lead time is 35 there is a risk of 5 days of out of stock, and therefore lost sales.

Of course it can be the other way - if a supplier is regularly delivering early then the lead time as used by the stock management systems could be reduced, thereby reducing the overall stock levels (as cover is required for few days in the order cycle) and therefore reducing the capital investment in stock, with no impact on availability - now that's a benefit we all know you'd like to have!

So basically, having the true picture of lead times enables a more open and honest conversation with the suppliers that will have a direct bearing on inventory and availability.

Retail Acumen also know that like any other tool or system a critical path or tracking tool is only as good as the data within it. It is important to consider such as tool as a live system enabling continuous improvement and not a static monitor for complaining when things don't get done. With this kind of monitoring you can learn what the true state of your critical path is, what the real lead times are, and you can make pragmatic changes to ensure that this new knowledge is built into future plans to avoid problems reoccurring.

If critical path and supply chain event tracking is an area you would like to explore further, please let us know - we'll be only too pleased to share our experience on this with you.