Welcome to the first "all digital" issue of Supply & Demand Chain Executive. The new format offers us the opportunity to provide you with a wider variety of articles while covering all the best practices and strategies that you have come to expect in the magazine.
We hope that you enjoy the convenience of the "e-book" format, but we want to hear from you, our readers, about the pros and cons of the digital issue so that we can improve your experience and make the e-book a more valuable resource for you. Once you've had the chance to read this issue, please go to http://SDCEdigital.questionpro.com to take a five-minute survey. If you fill out the survey by June 30, 2009, we'll put you in a drawing for one of four $25 Amazon.com gift certificates.
Our cover theme this month is the turbulent waters of the current economic downturn, and our focus is on arming you with best practices that you can implement in your own organizations to "weather the storm" and that can help you thrive, not just survive, the slump. Our lead article offers "Six Best Practices for Procure-to-pay in a Recession," while elsewhere in this issue you'll find "Five Tips for Driving a Successful Sourcing Process" and "How to Survive the Economic Crunch – Five Things You Can Do Now."
In times like these, keeping customers happy is all the more important, and in the article "No Excuses – Product Recalls, Warranty Issues and Quality Issues Can Be Avoided," you'll find suggestions for employing product quality management tools to better manage product performance. And speaking of quality, the article "Bad Data – The Problem with Procurement" offers steps you can take to start addressing the product data quality problem so that you can start making sounder procurement decisions.
We continue our regular series of articles on professional development in this issue with the article "Critical Demand Planning Skills for Difficult Times," which provides a checklist of skill sets that demand planners need to keep their companies navigate the downs and ups of the soft economy. "Linking the CFO to Supply Chain Execution" offers tips for ensuring tight alignment between financial and supply chain management – crucial to helping the enterprise wield its supply chain management strategically now and as the economy tips into growth again. And we wrap up this issue with articles covering purchasing cards, enterprise resource planning, demand management and warehouse management.
Again, please go to http://SDCEdigital.questionpro.com to let us know your thoughts on this digital edition. Or write me at [email protected]. I'll look forward to hearing from you.
