Supply chain job market: What are the external influencing factors?

Filed in archive Employment on July 24, 2008

Yesterday I asked you about the current growth situation of the salaries in SCM. So, will the market be growing or declining in terms of salaries?

In order to make a better judgement, I decided to think about the elements which are affecting this market and salary levels. Here it comes; hope you enjoy...(I have shown the negative or positive impact of each element in front of it):

1) Increased outsourcing (Positive): Currently we are still witnessing an increase in amount of outsourcing in many industries. This requires companies to get new supply chain talent to design the change process. Even though in industries which are migrating back to the U.S. or Europe, this will requires SCM experts.

2) Educational sources (Negative): These days we see a lot of master programs and degrees in SCM popping up here and there in universities. With increase in number of graduates from such programs, the salary will go dow as there will be less shortage of resources.

3) Crisis and economic situation (Can be both but more negative than positive): As we are facing crisis in countries like U.S., Spain etc. in sectors such as construction, automotive and so on, companies will have less money and thus less willing to pay high salaries to SCM experts. They might also start down-sizing (e.g. the case of Sony Ericsson) so that will have a negative effect.

4) Software industry movements (Negative): Well, at the moment, software industry has very little overlap with supply chain world but software companies are starting to train their IT experts in SCM area and are building their SCM service groups. So in the future, the market won't only belong to companies like Accenture and Deloitte but also software companies.

5) Merger and acquisitions (Positive): Consolidation is now a fact in many sectors and when a company acquires another one, this automatically leads to opportunities for SCM efforts (hopefully, they won't fire their SCM people).

Do you have more point in your mind? So at the end, can you tell me whether the market is growing or not?