Gartner acquires SCM World: what I think

Ten years ago, AMR Research published a book titled Supply Chain Saves the World. We had launched the Supply Chain Top 25 a year earlier and were hosting former US President Bill Clinton at our annual conference in Scottsdale, Arizona. The audacious mission of the book, the event and the Top 25 grew out of an appreciation of how massively the supply chain profession affects not just business but life on the planet.

This week’s acquisition of SCM World by Gartner, who bought AMR Research in 2009, brings renewed power to the quest. At SCM World we say that “our mission is to shape the future of supply chain for consumers, for business and for the lasting benefit of society.” We have built a community of supply chain leaders committed to sharing their knowledge for the betterment of all.

By combining forces with Gartner, we are accelerating the process, and I believe at just the right moment.

The need

Britain is in political disarray, Europe is melting and wider global stresses are so severe that a suicide bomber in Istanbul barely gets a second glance. We’ve also practically buried the terrifying fact of climate change under so much other miserable news that it’s tempting to think it was all just a bad dream. Truth is that the world is in turmoil and much of what ails us is within scope for supply chain leaders to fix.

We can create opportunity that keeps people from fleeing their homelands – just look at Diageo, Pfizer or Nestlé for examples. We can arrest the degradation of natural resources – take Unilever, IKEA and Coca-Cola as examples. We can promote social justice and respect in work – consider Disney, HP and Nike as examples.

And, we can do it in harmony with our basic responsibility to make money for investors. Growth in emerging markets means local investment and jobs. Sustainability in operations comes with cash savings on energy, water and materials. Ethical sourcing enhances brand value and reduces risk.

The key is learning faster, which is why I’m happy to return to Gartner.

Gartner + SCM World = impact

Three structural facts underlie the logic of this marriage.

Scale – Gartner is a global company with decades of experience conducting, disseminating and applying information technology research in both private and public sectors. This reach and credibility earned through the years will enhance and enable us to grow the SCM World community more quickly.

This means that our ability to learn from and influence global supply chain practices in thousands of organisations will see a step change. Asia, for instance, is served by 21 Gartner offices from Singapore to Shanghai. London and Boston are great hubs for supply chain thought leadership, but let’s face it, we’ll get there faster together.

Digitisation – There is no topic more universally disruptive and important to supply chain strategy today than digitisation. When Gartner bought AMR Research six years ago, IT in supply chain was still basically ERP, planning engines and PDM systems. Now its big data, mobile, cloud, robotics, internet of things, artificial intelligence and much more.

SCM World has done some breakthrough strategic work on the implications of all this, but it is most definitely time to get into the details. Gartner’s library of research and team of long-tenured analysts offers the SCM World community a nearly bottomless pool of new, best-in-the-world information and insight here. I can’t wait.

Community learning – SCM World is about the practitioner community. The vast majority of our content is authored directly by supply chain executives. We assume that supply chain is a field-based discipline with most serious innovation originating in practice.

As such, we’ve established a system in which the practitioners lead the learning process and act both as teacher and student. This is why our Executive Advisory Board is so vital and why we defer to these real-world leaders’ ideas about what matters most. Combining this learning flywheel with Gartner’s analyst-generated research model should yield even faster improvements in supply chain practices around the world.

What next?

While the window is still open, let’s try to save the world.