@Risk

How much are operational inefficiencies costing your business?

A new survey from Accenture and Clearstream found that the financial services sector could save more than €4 billion (about $5.5 billion) annually in collateral management costs by addressing operational inefficiencies.

Clearly, collateral management has become a critical industry issue because 1) regulators have set more rigorous capital and liquidity standards, and 2) banks are confronting new cost and growth challenges in the wake of the global financial crisis.  Done right, however, efficient collateral management can free up liquidity for banks, enabling them to meet new regulatory requirements while offering more products and services.

According to the Accenture survey, banks’ key collateral management challenges include:

• An incomplete view of all collateral and an inability to manage holdings centrally
• Suboptimal internal governance leading to a misalignment of objectives
• Inadequate internal transfer-pricing mechanisms
• A lack of optimization engines or the ability to deploy them effectively
• Inability to perform inventory projections
• Excessive staff costs as a result of process complexity

The highest potential cost savings, according to survey respondents, can be achieved by: (more…)

Supply chain flexibility requires considerable investment, as well as a top-down commitment from C-level execs.

However, that “extra” effort is proving very worthwhile, as companies that implement operational flexibility are now realizing significant business benefits, according to new survey results released last week by PRTM.

Based on interviews with senior executives from 150 companies across diverse industries, the new research identifies five specific “levers” that increase operational flexibility, drive revenues and cut costs. According to PRTM, companies that have implemented the five supply chain flexibility levers have achieved, on average, a 12 to 15 percent revenue increase while reducing supply chain costs by eight to 10 percent.

Here are a few survey results, grouped around PRTM’s supply chain flexibility levers: (more…)

During the economic turmoil of the past few years, companies have turned to their supply chains in order to maintain profits and respond to consumer demand for lower prices.

As a result, supply chain management (SCM) is now considered a core competency, according to the vast majority of respondents (82 percent) in the 2010 Global Survey of Supply Chain Progress, conducted by Supply Chain Management Review, The Eli Broad Graduate School of Management at Michigan State University and CSC, with assistance from The Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) and Supply Chain Europe magazine.

The survey was completed by 164 supply chain executives from 20 different industries worldwide, split evenly between manufacturing and service organizations. The results also show that: (more…)

While there’s no doubt that new approaches to supply chain management are gaining a foothold at many companies, most businesses today still see cost as their main priority.

In fact, a recent KPMG survey polled nearly 200 senior-level executives from the aerospace, metals, engineering and conglomerates sectors across North America, Western Europe and Asia-Pacific, and it revealed that: (more…)

Businesses learned an important lesson over the past few years of economic turmoil:

Efficient supply chains are increasingly essential to maintaining prices and generating new revenue.

In fact, in a recent survey of supply chain executives from 20 different industries worldwide, more than three-fourths of participants (78 percent) said that in the last 12 to 24 months, the emphasis on supply chain management has increased.

The results also show that leaders took advantage of hard times to build market share. When asked if the downturn had resulted in changes to market share, 37.5 percent said their shares had gone up; another 22.5 percent said they went down. (more…)