As supply chain risks increase and businesses become more complex and globalized, inventory management challenges are growing exponentially. Inventory Optimization emerged as a key focus area over the next two years for SAPinsiders in our recent research, Supply Chain Planning in The Cloud. As organizations still struggle with fluctuating demand patterns developed during the pandemic, inventory policies are also growing. Hence, it is unsurprising that inventory management and optimization remain key focus areas. To understand the perspectives of SAPinsiders, we surveyed them on inventory management and optimization topics from September 2022 to November 2022. The top challenge that SAPinsiders highlighted for transforming their inventory management planning and optimization capabilities was a lack of a clear inventory strategy. In this article, we explore a couple of approaches that SAPinsider can leverage to plan an inventory strategy.
As supply chain risks and business complexities rise, organizations realize that visibility in the supply chain is critical and the same translates to inventory management and optimization. Leveraging inventory visibility with actionable insights was a key and consistent theme across responses. Overall, SAPinsiders realize the importance of inventory management and optimization, and 86% of respondents indicated they are either actively transforming their inventory management tools portfolio or are actively planning. The lack of a simple strategy is the top challenge SAPinsiders are experiencing in their transformation journey, as shown in Figure 1.

As clear from Figure 1, the lack of a proper supply chain strategy is the number one challenge that SAPinsiders are facing. It is therefore, imperative that a robust inventory plan is developed before embarking on this journey. And a good framework to leverage is the strategy continuum framework shared in
this article.
The first key framework to leverage is the strategy continuum framework. The strategy continuum framework shown in Figure 2 postulates that a good supply chain strategy helps you bridge the gap between your overall strategy and operational practice. This is a really useful framework to evaluate your existing supply chain strategy but also helps you capture the role of supply chain optimization methods can play in supporting corporate strategy.
Figure 2: Strategy continuum framework

However, for developing an inventory strategy, this framework alone may not be sufficient, considering the granularity requirements of the strategy. The need, therefore, is to combine this framework with a framework like the inventory management expertise, detailed in this article. The components of inventory expertise have been shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Components of inventory management expertise

Carefully combining these can help SAPinsiders develop a robust inventory strategy that will eventually help them attain their desired inventory management capabilities.