Strategic Tools for Businesses in Competitive Supply Chains

In today's fast-paced and ever-changing business environment, the ability to quickly adapt to new market conditions is essential for a company's survival.

Effective management of supply chain operations can help a company to be more agile and responsive to new technologies, shifting consumer preferences, and increased competition. In addition, strong supply chain operations can help to minimise risks and mitigate potential problems, allowing the organisation to operate more smoothly and respond more quickly to changes in the market or business environment.

Some of the latest trends in supply chain operations include:

• Digitalisation: This includes using data to improve forecasting, optimise logistics, and automate processes
• Supply chain visibility: Companies are implementing real-time tracking and monitoring systems to improve visibility and control over their supply chains. This allows them to quickly identify and address any issues that may arise, such as delays or stockouts
• Sustainability: Companies are increasingly focused on sustainability and implementing eco-friendly practices in their operations. This includes reducing waste and emissions, as well as implementing sustainable sourcing practices
• Agile operations: Companies are moving away from traditional, rigid production methods and adopting more agile and flexible approaches. This allows them to adapt to changes in customer demand and market conditions quickly
• Collaboration: Companies are collaborating more with suppliers, partners, and customers to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations. This includes implementing collaborative planning, forecasting, replenishment (CPFR) systems and utilising platforms such as blockchain.

By adopting these trends, you can improve your supply chain operations and remain competitive in today's business environment.

The managing supply chain operations module will explore and discuss these trends, and create sustainable business strategies to protect organisations from disruptive trends by examining case studies of leading organisations such as L’Oreal and others.

The B2B Marketing module aims to develop your ability to undertake B2B marketing and management roles. It focuses on enhancing knowledge/skills about business customer needs, buying decision-making, selling, launching products and services, sales management and support in B2B context, and managing distribution partners.

The B2B landscape has been increasingly changing and shifting towards digital and self-service. More recently, this trend has been intensified by Covid-19 (Holmgren 2021). In the United Kingdom, the value of B2B e-commerce sales reached £159.3 billion (Statista 2022), the share of B2B companies' revenue that comes from digital channels has augmented by 44 per cent in 2022, and it is anticipated to reach 57 per cent by 2024 (Statista b 2022). Therefore, the course will also emphasise business customer behaviour in the digital era, and address aspects such as buyer journey mapping and how this is used in B2B companies’ strategies.

This module will provide you with a rich and stimulating learning experience, which is relevant to today’s B2B practice and grounded in academic theory and research. After taking this module, you will be able to develop better strategies to take advantage of recent issues in the business environment and better grasp and manage business customer behaviour. You will also learn how to coordinate sales and marketing activities. 

The following key points will be included in the module:

• Understanding the B2B marketing landscape
• Aligning sales and marketing
• Digital B2B marketing

Smart technology is increasingly pervasive, whether in your pocket in the form of a smartphone or in business as “cloud solutions”. For businesses, these technologies can present valuable opportunities for increased efficiency, competitive advantages, or even new business models.

One area where smart technology is increasingly important is in the supply chain (both inbound and outbound) where businesses not only need to deal with technology demands from their partners but also have to deal with turbulence in the supply chain (recent examples with a variety of causes are plenty: Ever Given, Covid-19, Brexit, Ukraine war). In addition, there are the general needs of management (requiring information), efficiency (careful integration and automation) and tracking (addressing regulatory, export, environmental and QA concerns).

In this module we will provide an understanding of the IT concepts and available smart technologies/tools (on the basis of manufacturing and retail case studies) including the ways in which they can be used for improved business outcomes in relation to their supply chains. This module will consist of the following elements:

• Smart technologies for strategic, tactical and operational impact in SCR
• The use of artificial intelligence, robotics, blockchain, the Internet of Things, big data analytics, and cyber physics systems
• Manufacturing and retail service case
• ​Group work on simulations of smart technologies applied to SCR. Guidance and feedback will be provided.

The economics component of this course offers a critical understanding of the way companies and industries work within competitive supply chains.

Before setting up a precise and convincing business strategy, the company needs to identify larger market and industry trends, therefore the opportunities and constraints that need to be factored in while identifying objectives and resources required for the competitive positioning within the relevant territory (region or country), industry and market.

In this module, critical frameworks and tools are will be presented, discussed and applied with the participants. In particular, the use of 'subsector maps' and their key elements of vertical (dis)integration, competition, nodes and leverage are studied in relation to relevant industries. Moreover, the identification of different types of industry linkages will be presented and discussed to identify the skills and capabilities' requirements needed to integrate competitively in local and global supply chains.

At the end of the module, you will have learnt what competitive channels operate in your industry and which are more competitive in the supply chain. You will have also identified the leverage points across these channels, and the actions that will help your business to attain a more efficient positioning in the industry.

Dr Sid Ghosh is a Senior Academic in Operations and Supply Chain Management, based in our Business School.

In 2005, he was awarded the best paper prize at the British Academy of Management Conference, held at the Said Business School, Oxford University. Sid was also awarded HEFCE funded Bournemouth University Promising Researcher Fellowship. What's more, he also led and organised the Sustainable Supply Chain Management event at BU in February 2022.

Sid has been awarded research project grants from a variety of organisations. Sid published his research in peer-reviewed international journals such as the International Journal of Project Management, Business Process Management Journal, the International Journal of Quality and Reliability Management, the Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing, the Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management and others.

Dr Kaouther Kooli (SFHEA, UKCGE) is a Principal Academic in Marketing in the Department of Marketing, Strategy and Innovation in our Business School.

She holds a PhD in Marketing and has over 18 years higher education teaching experience, acquired in Tunisia, the UK and France. Her research interests are in digital B2B marketing, digital marketing and consumer behaviour. She is an expert in both quantitative and qualitative research methods. She is a Senior Editor of the marketing section of Cogent Business and Management, a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Business to Business Marketing and the curator board of the Journal of Customer Behaviour. Kaouther is also the Chair of the Academy of Marketing B2B Special Interest Group.

She has published in top journals and has established an annual conference on B2B marketing, where academics, students and practitioners get together to debate current issues and challenges facing B2B marketing. Kaouther has been invited to give talks at various universities, both in the UK and abroad.

Dr Paul de Vrieze is a Principal Academic in our Faculty of Science & Technology. He is the coordinator of EU H2020 FIRST project.

Previously he was a Senior Researcher at SAP research, Switzerland, and worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at CSIRO ICT Centre, Australia. He received his Ph.D. in Information Systems from Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands in 2006.

Dr de Vrieze’s research focuses on the design and implementation of complex enterprise information systems and their contexts, in particular when it involves business processes. He is especially interested in how best to support business in executing processes and how automation of processes, especially cross-organizational processes, can be integrated into the system design process. His most recent work has focused on applying this in an industrial context.

Dr Lai Xu is an Associate Professor in our Faculty of Science &Technology. She is the coordinator of EU H2020 FIRST project and has held a number of research positions including;  senior researcher at SAP research, Switzerland, a research leader of the data management group, a senior research scientist at CSIRO ICT Centre, Australia, a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Information & Computing Science at Utrecht University, The Netherlands, and the Department of Computer Science at Free University Amsterdam.

She received her Ph.D. in Computerized Information Systems from Tilburg University, The Netherlands in 2004. Dr. Xu has published over 120 papers in international journals and conferences. Her research explores new knowledge in the design and improvement of complex infrastructure systems to solve real-world problems. The application domains of her research include; factories of the future, smart retail, logistics, smart city, health care, incident management, smart grid, e-commence and supply chain management.

Professor Davide Parrilli  has 26 years of experience in research and professional practice in regional industrial development processes.

With a PhD in Economics and Industrial Development Policy from the University of Birmingham, and a MPhil at the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University, Davide has developed projects on the competitiveness of industry clusters in global value chains and innovation systems in a large number of regions including Northern, Eastern and Southern Europe, Africa, Latin America, and China.

Over these years, he has advised international organizations such as the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), and the European Commission, among others.