Seize the moment [supply chain integration]

As few as 30% of mergers and acquisitions succeed in increasing shareholder value. The few that have achieved significant increases, such as Cisco and General Electric, have been the ones that have effectively exploited the synergies of supply chain integration. Though the less successful organisations may recognise the supply chain as an important source of efficiencies, they fail to realise those efficiencies because they focus on cost-cutting measures and the aggregation of purchasing power. These measures in themselves are not sufficient to deliver the looked-for benefits. The organisations that do deliver the benefits are those that exploit technical and market synergies between previously disparate supply chain processes. Success requires thorough, systematic integration of both the supply chain processes themselves and the associated customer interfaces; integration that must be accompanied in each case by the adoption of best practice. If all that is achieved, the market can be served with proportionally lower costs, and the promised increases in shareholder value will materialise