Adoption and Results from Supply Chain Planning and Analytics is not High

Many companies fail to get the results they expect from adoption of advanced supply chain planning and analytics technologies.

Supply Chain Digest Says... “The role of an analytics coach can be viewed as an exciting career progression opportunity for those individuals who demonstrated their ability to manage by influence and to be effective change agents,” Tohamy says. What do you say? Click here to send us your comments   Click here to see reader feedback

So says long-time Gartner analyst Noha Tohamy in a recent  blog post.

In fact, Tohamy notes that Gartner sees that reflected in the dismal technology adoption data. For example, in a recent study on planning technology adoption, Gartner found that only 38% of supply chain planning staff who have migrated to planning technology use the tool as often as intended.

Only 35% of the tool's potential is consistently used by planners and only 40% of the daily planning activities expected to be typically executed in the tool are in fact done so, Tohamy added.

She adds that often, analytics users get minimum training on the use of the tool itself, but not on how to leverage the insights of the tool in their daily workflows. And once this training is over, they are now expected to fully and successfully adopt the analytics tools.

What’s the answers? It may be as simple as finding a coach, Tohamy says.

“In Gartner research, we see that having a dedicated analytics coach is strongly associated with improved supply chain performance,” Tohamy says.

What is a supply chain analytics coach? Tohamy says they are influential individuals who are the strong link connecting analytics leadership and vision and technical analytics resources with supply chain analytics users’ needs and adoption.

She further notes that supply chain leaders “can recruit an internal analytics coach by identifying individuals who combine both the ability to influence supply chain users and to communicate effectively with technical roles.”

From there, Tohamy says, the analytics coach can define data literacy training curriculum. The curriculum should extend far beyond feature-function training to also focus on how to embed analytics in users’ workflows.

The coach tackles change management challenges, working with users to demonstrate the value add of analytics.

“The coach positions analytics as a way to augment, not replace, human talent,” Tohamy observes.

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Continuing on, analytics coaches ensure continued adoption of the tools. They also track usage compliance, success factors and hurdles behind adoption levels. They put a great focus on measuring analytics value, Tohamy says.

“The role of an analytics coach can be viewed as an exciting career progression opportunity for those individuals who demonstrated their ability to manage by influence and to be effective change agents,” Tohamy says.

She adds that “analytics coach” is not always the exact job title. Rather it is a role with defined responsibilities and competencies. Possible alternate titles include “analytics manager,” “analytics translator,” “analytics specialist” or “analytics trainer.”

The job can be part-time, Tohamy notes.

That summarizes Tohamy’s blog post. It was pretty good, but would have been enhanced by some data on the results seen by those company’s adopting this role.

Any comments on supply chain coaches ?Let us know your thoughts at the Feedback section below.