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‘The speed and scale of the digital revolution have been so great that few of us can remember how life was before we could communicate and trade 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And the benefits — in terms of improved access to information, increased freedom and higher economic growth — have been so great that most people who do remember the past would never want to go back.
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\r\nThe task we now face is twofold: to build trust by preventing abuse and to create consistent, predictable rules that encourage future innovation.’
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Eric Scmidt, chief executive and chairman of Google, speaks for many business leaders when he highlights the need for a new approach to managing our global networked markets. To enable this, the way we define and control trading relationships must change. Traditional approaches to contracting, negotiation and contract management increasingly undermine trust and discourage innovation.
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This introduction to the Supply Chain issue of Contracting Excellence highlights the challenges that confront those responsible for establishing and managing trading relationships, sell-side as well as buy-side — both of which must take action to provide a more holistic approach that ‘builds trust and encourages future innovation’ through the integration and collaboration that is implicit to ‘a networked world’.
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TIM CUMMINS, IACCM
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