Strategic Tools for Businesses in Competitive Supply Chains

Program Overview

This CPD course empowers senior business managers with cutting-edge knowledge and tools to optimize supply chains. Through modules covering operations, marketing, smart technologies, and value chains, participants gain insights to improve competitiveness and enhance profitability in local and global supply chains. Delivered by experts from the Business School and Faculty of Science & Technology, this course is currently under development for the 2025 Spring entry.

Program Outline

Degree Overview:

This is a CPD (Continuing Professional Development) course designed for senior business managers. It aims to help participants manage their supply chains more effectively and improve their organization's profitability.

• Implement strategies and tools to make the organization more competitive.
• Improve the organization's position in local and global supply chains.

Outline:

The course consists of four subject-specific modules:

• Managing supply chain operations: This module explores the latest trends in supply chain operations, including digitalization, supply chain visibility, sustainability, agile operations, and collaboration.
It examines case studies of leading organizations like L'Oreal to create sustainable business strategies that protect organizations from disruptive trends.
• B2B Marketing: This module focuses on developing the ability to undertake B2B marketing and management roles.
It covers topics like business customer needs, buying decision-making, selling, launching products and services, sales management, and managing distribution partners. The module emphasizes business customer behavior in the digital era, addressing aspects like buyer journey mapping and its use in B2B companies' strategies. It covers topics like artificial intelligence, robotics, blockchain, the Internet of Things, big data analytics, and cyber physics systems. The module includes case studies from manufacturing and retail sectors and group work on simulations of smart technologies applied to supply chain resilience.
• The economics of value chains: This module offers a critical understanding of how companies and industries operate within competitive supply chains.
It presents frameworks and tools for identifying market and industry trends, opportunities, and constraints. The module focuses on the use of 'subsector maps' and their key elements, including vertical (dis)integration, competition, nodes, and leverage. It also discusses different types of industry linkages and the skills and capabilities required for competitive integration in local and global supply chains.
• The course is delivered by subject experts from both the Business School and the Faculty of Science & Technology.
• The course is not CPD accredited but is delivered by an AACSB accredited Business School, which has also earned the Small Business Charter Award.