A final farewell

It has been an honor to serve as the 2023 Board Chair for the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals. It is important to me now—at the end of my term—to provide a scorecard to our membership, covering what we’ve accomplished and what we need to focus on going forward.

Right out of the gate, we set a goal to continue our emphasis on roundtables, sustainability, certification, and young professionals. Roundtables have always been the backbone of CSCMP, so I am happy to report an increase in roundtable events of 21% versus the prior year—as well as a 39% increase in registrations for those events. And, we brought back the Roundtable Summit, attended by a host of new and experienced roundtable leaders.

We published the fourth Annual State of Supply Chain Sustainability Report in partnership with the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, and we recognized shipping company Pasha Hawaii as the fourth recipient of the Sustainable Supply Chain Excellence Award.

In the area of certification, we had a transformational year. We updated content, grew participation, and became the official content provider for LinkedIn Learning. These types of industry-leading relationships solidify and validate CSCMP’s position as the de facto source for supply chain knowledge and best practices.

Our young professionals welcomed five new members to their operating committee, presented a “Resume Refresh” workshop for over 150 member-attendees, and facilitated 1-on-1 resume reviews with over 50 individuals. Overall, the Young Professionals Committee engaged more than half of their members with valuable knowledge and experience over the past 12 months.

Another key initiative for us was to emphasize our international presence. We successfully restarted the CSCMP European Conference and European Research Seminar in Barcelona, with over 200 top supply chain professionals and academics attending from over 15 countries. In addition, we stabilized the CSCMP European volunteer base with nine committed roundtable presidents and healthy roundtable boards throughout the region. We also invested in a dedicated “on continent” resource external contractor to work with local roundtables and members to ensure our present and future growth in the region.

Next, we aimed to grow our industry-leading membership base through a stronger brand and a richer, more relevant member experience to include centers of excellence such as the Transportation Center of Excellence (TCOE). Over the past year, the TCOE hosted a number of successful webinars focusing on current trends and topics, such as less-than-truckload and truckload forecasting, parcel shipping insights, and “what I wish my CEO knew about transportation.”

We also took the important first steps and conducted primary research to improve our go-to-market strategy by better understanding the fundamental needs and buying behaviors of current and potential members. That research also helped us identify the most effective channels to reach new members and gave us a solid understanding of the competitive market forces.

And finally, we placed even more focus on delivering world class content and research. To achieve this, we launched the Executive Inner Circle, delivered another amazing State of Logistics report, and grew the distribution of the Logistics Manager’s Index. 

I am very proud of the work that your board of directors, their committees, CSCMP’s staff, and countless volunteers have accomplished over the past year. CSCMP has been the defining organization for 60 years—longer than many of us have been alive—but we are not done growing, evolving, and rising to help our members meet the world’s logistics and supply chain challenges.