Do you Speak Finance? All Supply Chain Leaders Should

I recently attended an IBF New England Chapter meeting where a manager discussed the S&OP process at her company which was having difficulty convincing colleagues in finance to assess whether demand-supply plans were aligned with annual financial performance targets. In this article, I discuss my response to her, namely that if supply chain managers want to get buy in from finance and executive leadership, they must speak their language—that is, in dollars and cents. I introduce the Dupont Model of Return-on-Assets (ROA) as a blueprint to use when developing a financially-oriented business case, which can effectively present demand and supply plans in financial terms, and facilitate involvement of finance ...