Collaboration between Supply Chain and Commercial Operations to Drive Top Line Revenue

In the past, the commercial and supply chain functions have operated in silos, hindering their ability to work towards a common and unified goal. This thought leadership article explores the power of breaking down these siloes, bridging the gap and fostering collaboration between these teams.

As anticipators of change, there is a pressing need for a strategic function in the sales process through demand forecasting and tweaking inventory management to cope with sudden shocks in the supply chain network.

Chee Yong Ng, Commercial Operations Director, APAC, Leica Biosystems, is responsible for workflow solutions and automation in the supply chain and has more than 4 years of experience overseeing the order to cash (O2C) process all the way from order fulfilment, warehousing for storage, and data management to enhance accuracy in revenue prediction. He shares his insights on the sales funnel strategy, whereby emerging prospects are dependent on customers’ confidence level and their behaviour that guide every decision they make. By drawing insights from significant data points that show customers’ requested date and lifespan deals, companies can gain a bird’s eye view into their journey. This will help them to strike a balance when resolving supply and demand issues alongside aligning those numbers with internal growth targets, avoiding risks tied to compromised run rates.

By integrating supply chain management with commercial operations, this creates a strategic advantage in companies as they embody the core of business growth.

How can a greater collaboration between an organization’s commercial and supply chain functions on product decisions lead to substantial efficiency gains in both areas?

First off, an organization must do away with JD or titles or mindset that pegged supply chain as just box movers or a order fulfillment leader. Supply chain practitioners today need live up to the name of Commercial Operations, custodian of the Funnel to Cash process with a vision on revenue generation. A good supply chain practitioner will be able to influence the levers of the functionalities in the end to end to maximize topline deliverables including margin expansion influencing positively on profitability. Supply chain will be able to influence many critical areas, such as demand planning, inventory management, efficiency gain in standard work (SW)/processes, channel partner management in indirect markets and more importantly ensuring products are delivered on time to customers.

In what specific ways has Leica Biosystems leveraged commercial partnerships within its supply chain to drive top-line revenue, and what results have been achieved?

We always engaged in a thought process of linking our demand planning to our revenue commitment to our shareholders. We look towards a long horizon to plan and link our funnel by basing on the size, confidence level, our intimacy with the funnel and we come up with our topline commitment and we ensure that this is reflected in our build plan to ensure we built the right products needed in the market. We ensure our customers needs are taken care of and our resources are planned towards producing the right products for our customers in the markets. Our customers received products on time and in the event if there is a miss, we will definitely provide a feedback loop to them to ensure a recovery plan is shared with them.

What role does technology play in facilitating collaboration across Leica Biosystems' supply chain, and how has it contributed to revenue enhancement initiatives?

There are many CRM tools today that’s able to mine critical information such as the customer’s requested date, the confidence level of the deals, the duration of the deal, these are just some examples of data points that we use to infer and plan and decide using our analytical capabilities to come out with a decision on what to produce for the short and mid-term range.

What metrics or KPIs does Leica Biosystems utilize to measure the success of its supply chain collaboration efforts in driving top-line revenue, and how have these metrics evolved under your leadership as the Commercial Operations Director?

As a Commercial Operations Director, I’m responsible for driving the accuracy of the revenue targets, including meeting my growth targets and at the same time being responsible for meeting the inventory target and on time delivery to our customers. Only through a combination of commercial and supply chain KPIs, then one is truly a Commercial Operations practitioner, fusing both commercial and operations elements into one.

How can you ensure that data sharing and transparency are maintained throughout the supply chain collaboration process, and what benefits have been realized in terms of improved visibility and revenue generation?

We drive and instill a culture of a data driven process in most things we do. We use collaborative tools and DBS toolkit to govern and manage the collaboration by setting up of Daily Management (DM), a very powerful tool to ensure participants internalized the data using the 3 second rule and also managing the critical few metrics. By doing so, we instill a positive collaborative spirit within the many different functions and at the same time create a culture of transparency where data is shared for the greater good which is to serve our customers better!

In what ways does Leica Biosystems leverage real-time data analytics and forecasting techniques to improve supply chain visibility and enable proactive management decisions that directly impact top-line revenue?

Our systems are on real time. However, a system is only as good as the system itself, if not for the people that inputs the data. We always believe that a good starting point always starts with the people that inputs the data. We emphasize greatly as well on early warning signals, we have analytics that’s able to tell us in color coding whether run rates are slowing down as an example. This are tracked constantly and if the trending is not heading into the right direction, we will take the necessary action and to put countermeasures to solve the issue.

You are speaking at this year's LogiPharma Asia event. Can you share what the audience can expect to hear from you and what excites you about this event?

As a fellow supply chain practitioner, I hope organizations can use us to accelerate and grow the business. As previously mentioned, as a custodian of the operations of executing the day to day tasks, we add a lot of value in the value chain and its vital especially for all supply chain practitioners to come together cross pollinate our best practices for the betterment of all. While we may operate in different industries, but we do stand on a common ground when it comes to commercial operations.