Welcome to What the Duck?! A podcast with real experts talking about real issues in direct spend supply chain. And now, here’s your host, SourceDay’s very own supply chain maven, Sarah Scudder.

Thanks for joining me for the What The Duck?! Another Supply Chain Podcast brought to you by SourceDay. I’m your host, Sarah Scudder, and this is the podcast for people working in the direct materials part of the supply chain. I’m @SarahScudder on LinkedIn and @Scudder on Twitter. If you are new to the show, make sure to follow this podcast so you don’t miss any of our direct spend supply chain content.

Today, I’m going to be joined by Corey Bobak, and we’re going to discuss innovating and the direct spend of your supply chain. If you work for a manufacturer and are struggling to balance environmental, social, and government legislation and internal customer expectations, then this episode is for you. Corey is new on the leadership team at Inspire 11.

Inspire 11 is a consulting firm that helps people better leverage technology to become more innovative. Corey has spent his career leading supply chain direct spend technology programs for manufacturing companies. Welcome to the show, Corey.

Thanks for having me, Sarah, and looking forward to the conversation today.

So when you and I were prepping for the show, one of the things that you got really excited about was that you are a dad dog. So I am not a dog person at all or a pet person. I’m a neat freak and don’t like hair anywhere in my house. So tell me about your doodles.

Yeah. So I have allergies, took allergy shots for nine years, so I had to have the doodles mostly because of the shedding, but they’re the featured doodles on Instagram. I have a three-year-old Mini Bernedoodle, or a three-year-old mini Goldendoodle named Georgia. Loves fetch. Loves just every person that she ever met and loves fetch.

But Ford is two. He’s a mini Bernedoodle. He’s the chillest dog I think I’ve ever met, but he always has something to say at the mailman that’s coming by or any other dogs walking along. But yeah, he loves being just around people and they’re just such a bright light all the time. Just moved to a house with a yard for them.

So, yeah, it’s always been nice having them around, and couldn’t recommend doodles anymore.

So you also told me that you have a love for cars and wine. Why is that?

Well, let’s start with cars because they obviously kind of started at different ages, so don’t get me in trouble there, Sarah, but we kind of grew up always having either just the classifieds within the newspaper, always out or anything like that. So I would read them from a very young age just looking at the pictures and always had a big interest in them, and then even moved on to grabbing them from the grocery store where local lots would put in what they had and understood, started to understand the difference between all the different makes, the models, the options, and really became enamored with both new and old, and then growing up, I actually had a manager from a car dealership live up the street, and he would go to be auction and purchase things, and I’d be out cutting the grass, and it got to a point where I was able to pretty much tell him how much he should have paid for something at the auction. So I was like a walking Kelley Blue book by 12. See, I always had a great appreciation for them.

And even today, you can still find me in a new car for 2 hours, pushing all the buttons and trying to understand what it was. And then I actually ended up working for him for a while back whenever first cars were able to start connecting to cell phones and pairing them with the cars. And that’s how I ended up working with him throughout college and high school to pay for a lot of that college.

So yeah, I’ve always been interested in cars. And then as for wine, that really developed whenever I met my wife, and she went to probably the most beautiful place to go to school that you ever could in San Luis Obispo, California. And she went to Cal Poly there, you know, 20 minutes to the beach, 45 minutes to some of the best wines in the world.

So really, after meeting her and really getting to know my father-in-law who had such a great appreciation for wine as well, I just kind of got the bug, and now I have way too many wine club subscriptions. So I’m happy if anybody has any recommendations. But also, I have plenty for anybody to drink.

So I lived in the wine country, Sonoma County. I actually went to a very small school and lived in Petaluma about 20 minutes from Sonoma.

A beautiful place. I’m actually having the Napa. I’m heading to Napa at the end of October for my anniversary trip, so and for the first time. But yeah, looking forward to it.

I think you will be obsessed after you go visit Napa and again what I call the real wine country.

Absolutely. The last time, I wanted to go, we actually had to cancel and pivot to Central Coast because of the fires. So I’m hoping that I really get the chance to enjoy all the great wineries this time. We’re staying in Calistoga and also Saint Helena. So trying to split time out this time.

Yeah, Calistoga is beautiful. I kind of describe it as like a mini France where everything looks perfectly pedicured and maintained. And my parents still live in Petaluma, and they have multiple wine memberships. Their favorite is El Seghesio, which a good friend of mine that I went to college with who decided to pursue a career in wine run brand and marketing for them.

Oh, wow, that’s amazing. And I have to check them out.

So I want to begin with your personal story. How did you get involved with supply chain technology?

Yeah, so funny enough, I wanted to, growing up, I wanted to be a lawyer, and then my mom was smart enough to tell me how much college was involved in that. And then that was not necessarily something I was too fond of. So I ended up finding kind of this happy medium with business and technology, found the major of management information systems. Found out that Penn State had a really good program for that.

Growing up outside of Pittsburgh, it was a really natural place for me to end up going. But funny enough, it was new enough of a major that it was kind of lumped in with supply chain, which has supply chain is really a phenomenal program at Penn State. And really from there, I was fortunate enough to have a number of different opportunities within the space just because of the closeness and proximity with the programs and being invited to all the supply chain career fairs really helped me a lot.

And then, as I was getting flown out for different final round interviews as I was nearing some of my decisions following my senior year, I really took a look and tried to understand what was the company that would allow me to travel the most because that was what I enjoyed. And that’s how I ended up getting the position with Manhattan Associates. After coming down to Atlanta and being able to experience that technology and understanding all the different business problems they were solving for clients around the world, that was really what intrigued me, and that’s how I got my career started.

Now, why the focus on technology versus going more towards the buyer route?

So I think the fun part about supply chain software and supply chain technology, in general, would be it’s always been around for such a long time, but the advancements that we’re seeing within the market, and especially over the last ten years, the way that it’s transformed our abilities from a business perspective to be able to deliver products faster or be able to innovate faster and being able to create and get things into people’s hands a lot faster is really, I think, one of the more pivotal and most interesting pieces within kind of this supply chain technology space.

So being a part of that community where we’re constantly building, developing, and understanding what’s next in that space and pushing that forward is really the place that I found my home.

Now in supply chains, we’ve got what I call two major buckets: indirect and direct. Why the focus on direct spend for you?

Because I think if you were to ask a lot of people what their normal interpretation is of a supply chain and where that starts, I would categorize that a lot with some of their direct spend. And really, that’s where, if you’re looking from where you’re going to see the greatest impact to the supply chain, you’ve got to start at where you believe your supply chain begins.

And obviously, that’s a lot of general terms there. But really, if you’re following the money in a certain case and being able to understand where a lot of the influence would come within your supply chain, I think it’s a great place to start. Whenever you’re looking at where you can really start to extract greater value out of your supply chain, as well as try to help mitigate some of your problems that might exist with it.

Now, you mentioned you had a job at Manhattan Associates. I think that was your first job out of college.

It was.

And a big part of your job was connecting solutions to ERP systems. Why was this such a big part of your job?

Yeah, so within advanced supply chain technology solutions, it’s really important to have as much data as possible. And really, the way in which I did that for Manhattan Associates was using a product they called Manhattan Integration Framework, which essentially helped translate any of those ERP data points into what the Manhattan system could understand in a way that we could be able to translate that into movements throughout the warehouse. Being able to understand how we were going to update the transportation management system, to know when they could arrive at a certain dock within a warehouse or being able to pick up a shipment.

Everything. All the way to understanding how those warehouse workers were moving throughout the warehouse, picking items, and being able to track all of that activity and being able to understand how we can make improvements towards productivity within the warehouse. So the exchange of information between those advanced supply chain execution tools as well as being able to understand where that inventory would kind of rest within the warehouse or understanding any of the updates to an order and making sure that those get reflected accurately in the ERP system.

And then onto the customer, one of the primary responsibilities that we had is making sure that that data flow is consistent not only between all the supply chain applications but as well as making sure that the ERP was accurate.

So we work with companies, and one of our number one pre-qualifier questions is, “Are you using an ERP?” And if the answer is no, we actually can’t even work with a company. So for us, ERP is a must and really, really important, and I’m still surprised when I see people inbounding or getting on calls or reaching out to us and they say they’re using QuickBooks, yeah.

It’s kind of one of those things where our enterprise resource planning tool doesn’t necessarily always encapsulate what it is today, or it’s kind of expanded into such a pivotal part of running any large enterprise. And it’s really something that if you’re looking at it from how as a business I’m going to be able to operate and where you can source all of your information and have that one version of the truth.

If it doesn’t really exist within your ERP, then there’s kind of a major problem there to be able to have that governance and that structure in place that is consistent. Everybody knows where to go to look for things and being able to have all of those financial and characteristic components in one place is really pivotal, especially if you’re going to optimize and take your supply chain to the next level.

So what did you do next after Manhattan Learnings or Manhattan Associates, I should say?

So from there, I ended up getting into my most probably deeply, deeply functional supply chain role with a company called St. Chrome, where they focus primarily on the aftermarket supply chain or service supply chain. So after an asset is manufactured, the parts that are used to be able to service that item and continue its life was the primary focus of the technology that they were operating in.

I worked in their inventory management tool where actually, hopefully, one of the largest global deployments for a heavy equipment manufacturer. And really that was where I learned the key elements around communication as a global supply chain program. We’re not only was I supporting the technology piece of it, but also I had to support the deployment team that really understood the day-to-day operations of the dealer structure, being able to understand how those processes would integrate with the technology.

And then from there, really being able to understand how we can make each of those individual implementations as successful as possible. So from that perspective, always understanding that the reason why we were doing what we were doing was to impact that service experience, making sure that those items were available for the service event at that service location, and always making sure that the customer was kind of front of mind.

So having that experience where you’re constantly communicating on logistics on the back end, we had to make that happen. Always having that customer-centric view as we were kind of working throughout supply chain concerns or technical concerns, that was always really interesting. And one of the times that I had learned that really understanding those customer constraints and those implications as to what they have on the supply chain was really key.

And Synchron was kind of the first place that I bring that.

What was your biggest takeaway from working at Synchron in regards to what had the most negative impact on the customer experience? Because I often think people don’t necessarily equate that back to the supply chain. They think about it as the person that answers the phone or the email message, but supply chain has a big impact on the customer journey.

You’re exactly right. And within that, it’s really being able to put the most information possible into those people’s hands that are the most equipped to be able to solve some of those customer problems. And in particular, a lot of the times we were being able to understand what certain clients were doing within a particular geography. So for example, if it was in South America, being able to have some of the different mining-related equipment, what are some of the nuances and seasonal concerns around where some of the volume might exist?

Because I think one of the more problematic areas within the aftermarket or service supply chain is the volatility in demand, where you’re seeing a lot of heavy, expensive, slow-moving parts. If you’re looking at their demand over a 12-month horizon, but really trying to understand when some of those service events are going to occur and kind of drive some of that demand was kind of the next layer that we always need to go to, to be able to understand how some of those contracts were set up, how are their operations set, what are some of the drivers from a causal perspective?

So, whether that be our hours of running time on that machine that is driving some of that behavior, or other factors, they were all things that we were considering so that we could have as much information to be able to solve as many problems as possible.

So, you spent some time at Synchron, and now you’ve started a new role at Inspire 11. Can you tell me why you made the change and why you decided to join a new team?

I just left Capgemini Invent, and now I’m with the team here at Inspire 11. I realized that when I 

was talking to customers, there was a lot of opportunity where there wasn’t necessarily a product that fit their needs. There were probably some use cases for overlap, but nothing that really targeted their problems and could solve their day-to-day challenges. It could be as simple as where their things were and how they could get a greater level of visibility. There are obviously a lot of great technology companies out there doing similar things today, but being able to bring everything into one place and create proprietary solutions that can be differentiators within the supply chain space for different companies is the main reason why I made the switch.

If everybody’s using a lot of the same technology, there’s oftentimes very little room for you to be innovative and have that as a strategic advantage. That was one of the reasons why when I was looking at coming to Inspire 11, I asked some probing questions around different customer problems that I had. I wanted to know if this was something that we would build and be able to take to the customer and help solve their problem. A lot of it was always met with an enthusiastic “absolutely,” which was really exciting because we can create solutions that can take our clients to the next level in many different areas of supply chain.

So we talked a little bit about it at the beginning – your focus and passion for direct spend and direct materials, which is my world and the world that my company lives in as well. And you said something when we were prepping for our interview today that really stood out to me. You said you believe the direct spend is the next focus area of supply chain transformation for the next five years.

What do you mean by this and why? Sure.

So over the next five years, I think what we’ve seen a lot in not only just from a legislation perspective, but the technology and really the customer motivations are driving this as well. But when you look at areas that are poised for innovation, disruption, I think you’ve been seeing a lot of things around visibility and sustainability and kind of being able to drive a lot of those things is really now coming to a lot of like tactical type things that you can be able to implement to be able to improve your supply chain.

And I think if you’re looking at maybe as a use case, the general data protection regulations, the GDPR that happened back in 2016, I think that was probably one of the best use cases that I can see where there’s kind of the same fundamentals that were applied to personal privacy. As you’re scrolling the web and everything like that, being able to have those kind of protections in place now seeing that kind of push towards the environment and how companies are kind of leveraging their supply chains and using all of these different lines of carbon being emitted.

There’s pollution, water management, all of the different ESG type of opportunities that you see in the world. I think as the legislation is pushing towards that, GDPR is a great use case where you see now multi-billion dollar companies handling privacy and cyber type concerns that really didn’t have much of a case before 2016. And some of that legislation that was driving it, but now that we have technology and the will, kind of the consumer and now legislation all kind of correlating together to be able to push towards this sustainable future and especially as you’re seeing a lot of companies try to move towards net zero.

I think all of it’s really starting to align, where, how, as I, if I’m in the direct spend space, how am I aggregating all of the data that I need to be able to understand what the impact is of everything I’m bringing into my organization? And that’s where I think it’s really going to be a struggle for a lot of companies.

If you’re not investing in the data and the technology to be able to have that clear line as to what is the true impact that your supply chain and your organization is having on the environment, and it’s really one of the key things that I think a lot of people have top of mind. If you’re looking at just ESG in general as an opportunity.

What does ESG stand for?

So E being environmental, S being social, and then G is for corporate governance. And did you want me to dive in a little bit more? Did you want to follow up with another?

Yeah, no, let’s dive in a little bit. Not everyone, I think, knows what ESG stands for, but also what let’s explain a little bit about how this impacts direct spend and supply chain in general.

OK, so if you’re thinking from an when we say so for environmental, social and corporate governance, a lot of the times when you’re thinking of how that impacts direct spend, it’s the aggregation of the supplier activity. So your supplier supplier and their supplier and so on is really the combination of a lot of different supply chain activities and a lot of different carbon being emitted.

All of those contributing elements to the impacts on the environment is really how I think you can correlate a lot of those things, because if direct spend is the top of your supply chain, that’s where you’re kind of being able to gather all of those data sources as to how it came to you, how it’s being made, whether it was fair trade making sure that everything that you’re bringing in your door kind of has that impact associated with it.

And along with the kind of your supplier agreements and how those shaped the way that you’re bringing things into your organization is really pivotal as to how you’re going to be able to monitor and accurately depict what the true cost is from either a carbon perspective or even really a financial perspective, as to how you’re able to kind of move those items throughout your supply chain and your organization.

So I would argue that we’re in a recession now, and it’s going to get worse during a recession. Does ESG become less important for companies?

I think that if you’re looking at ESG as a moment in time, I think that a lot of the wrong ways of looking at it. When I think about ESG, you really need to break it up into the environmental impact, obviously, which is pretty apparent, right, with pollution or water management, any of those key elements that drive environmental impact.

The one that I don’t think gets enough focus on is the social aspect, which really that’s all of the people and relationships that you have within your organization. So regardless of what the economic climate is, you’re going to have that social impact within your organization regardless. I know when a lot of people think of the social component of it, there are a lot of gender and diversity, equity, inclusion that are driving a lot of the narrative within that space.

But really, if I’m an organization, I really need to care about my employees and my customers, which are the two places obviously that need to be within an equitable and safe space. But when you’re looking at some of the hiring concerns that people have where you don’t necessarily have the capacity to meet some of your demand, making sure you’re able to retain that top talent as you’ve invested in them, and being able to get them to a place where they’re positively impacting your organization on a day-to-day basis.

That’s what I would encapsulate as the social piece of ESG, right? Is making sure that you’re able to have a place that not only your customers want to continue to buy from, but your employees want to continue to work for. It’s really the way that I would look at that from a strategy perspective. And then the governance is really all of the rules and regulations that kind of help you adhere to both the environmental and the social piece.

So as you’re looking at the ways of running your business, governance can mean a lot of things, whether that being master data management and the governance around how you leverage your data and what are some of the key areas in which you could be able to improve, whether that be, let’s say, financial, for example, making sure that you have the governance in place that not everyone has access to financial accounts, there’s an approval process, there’s a record, and an audit trail associated with it.

So, one of the other things I want to make sure we get to today is talking about customer expectations. So when we were prepping for our interview, you mentioned that customer expectations are driving a lot of innovation. What do you mean by this?

That is a great question because I think the best way that I can articulate this is, I was recently reading about transitional technologies. The best way to think about a transactional technology, for example, was thinking about how we were paying for things over the last 50 years. We first went from cash to then being able to have a debit card that you’re able to balance or a checkbook, and then you went to debit and credit cards. You were sliding, and then you went to the chips, and now you’re moving to contactless payment.

So if you’re looking at those transitional periods in which that technology had adapted to be able to enable that functionality, for example, I think it’s kind of crazy now when I think a couple of years ago, when I thought the metal card that I had was kind of a point of luxury. And now I see everyone putting their phones up to go pay for things that I just looked ridiculous with all of its metal in my pocket – with their watches.

Yeah, exactly. With your watches, I’ve even seen some different wristbands and stuff like that where there are different designers doing things. So, it’s really an interesting space now where you have this kind of next level of technology that’s kind of enabling these solutions that we didn’t even know that we needed to our problems. And now when you see kind of growing frustration with, “Why hasn’t anybody fixed that supply chain thing yet? Why hasn’t anyone…? How am I able to put an air tag in my luggage?” But the airline doesn’t know where my bag is, and all of those technologies of those that really aren’t solving a lot of the problems that are at the forefront of a lot of consumers’ minds, I think is driving a lot of the frustration and really driving a lot of their buying decisions. Where if you’re looking at making some of those purchases, how does this help solve some of the problems that you have?

So one of the other things I want to make sure we get to today is talking about customer expectations. So, when we were prepping for our interview, you mentioned that customer expectations are driving a lot of innovation. What do you mean by this?

“That is a great question because I think the best way that I can kind of articulate this is, I was recently reading about transitional technologies. The best way to think about a transactional technology, for example, was thinking about how we were paying for things over the last 50 years. We first went from cash to then being able to kind of have a debit card that you’re able to balance or a checkbook, and then you went to debit and credit cards. You were sliding and then you went to the chips and now you’re moving to contactless payment.

“So, if you’re looking at those transitional periods in which that technology had adapted to be able to enable that functionality, for example, I think it’s kind of crazy now when I think a couple of years ago, when I thought the metal card that I had was kind of a point of luxury. And now I see everyone putting their phones up to go pay for things that I just looked ridiculous with all of its metal in my pocket.

With their watches.

Yeah, exactly. With your watches. I’ve even seen some like different wristbands and stuff like that where there’s like different designers doing things. So, it’s really an interesting space now where you have this kind of next level of technology that’s kind of enabling these solutions that we didn’t even know that we needed to our problems. And now, when you see kind of growing frustration with why hasn’t anybody fixed that supply chain thing yet? Why hasn’t anyone? How am I able to put an air tag in my luggage? But the airline doesn’t know where my bag is. And all of those technologies of those that really aren’t solving a lot of the problems that are at the forefront of a lot of consumers’ minds, I think is driving a lot of the frustration that and really driving a lot of their buying decisions where if you’re looking at kind of making some of those purchases, how does this help solve some of the problems that you have?

How does this make my life easier? And it was kind of like a novelty to think maybe ten years ago to have two-day shipping. But now you have customers now expecting same-day shipping through a lot of the last-mile providers, and there’s three to four-hour shipping from Amazon.

Exactly. So as far as kind of people are providing solutions that aren’t necessarily problems and you see a lot of other problems continue to exist, I think you’re going to see a lot of that buying behavior continue to support any of those ways that I can help mitigate some of the problems that I have because I have enough of them today.

So, what are the ways that you can kind of solve my problem problems and kind of think of that as to how you should really be approaching your customers?”

So, a lot of our listeners work in manufacturing. For someone working in the manufacturing space, wanting to get more creative and innovative with their direct spend, where should somebody start buying?

One of the best things that you can do for yourself is look at your competitors and really try to understand what’s the difference between what you’re doing today and what you could be doing tomorrow as a differentiator not only for your customers but for the way that you’re operating your business today. You be able to hit that next level of efficiency.

And really, that’s one of the things that I enjoy most about my job is digging into those solutions and problems. But really, if you’re looking at things from a technology perspective or your relationship perspective or experience with the way that you’re operating today.I would really take a hard look at the ways in which you’re driving a lot of those activities and thinking about how can I do this differently. What is the next level that I need to get to to be able to be able to hit that next productivity goal or that next milestone?

Within some of those different strategies that we’re setting out, either from an ESG perspective or from a monetary perspective, I think a little bit more of a tactical one is being able to use some of the different data science elements that exist today, either building data engines that can kind of leverage all of the data that you have within your organization to help empower some of those better decisions and really giving more information to people to help inform better decisions. And if you kind of take that approach to the way that you’re thinking about your business, I think you’re going to be able to kind of hit those next levels of growth that you’re expecting.

One of the things that I hear supplier managers complain or talk about a lot is that they feel like they’re on fire every single day and they don’t have time to focus on being creative and innovative. Why is this pretty simple? They’ve never had this number of fires, and I don’t think it’s ever been to this volume either. So in addition to that, really adding capacity all the time isn’t solving your problem, right? Because the technology’s not improving, the data is not improving, the process is improving to be able to help kind of look at things from a perspective of how do I kind of not only just extinguish my current fires, but how do I prevent them from starting in the first place?

And really, if you’re looking at those kind of prevention type efforts, I think one of those things that you really need to focus on is the end, especially that you’ll see a lot of companies be able to do over the next couple of years and start owning more of their supply chain. You’re kind of seeing that with Apple today, being able to make their own chips so they don’t really have their chip shortage because they’re responsible for developing one of their key components. And I think you’re going to see a lot more of that from larger organizations where if you’re a supplier that’s continually disappointing some of your customers because you’re not able to get certain things together, I’d really start investing in looking at how your supply chain up upstream can be able to help impact and be able to deliver for your customers because that customer’s not only going to be disappointed for so long before they’re starting to find solutions to their own problems.

So you did work for a major American airline, and you have your own fire story. So, I’d like to have you share this.

Yeah. So, a lot of the aerospace and defense space today really is continually flat with met with a lot of force because, and there’s really a lot of suppliers today where you’re not necessarily even able to incentivize the right behavior. Through your supplier agreements. And I think that’s one thing that if you were to kind of be able to add in a strategy element to the way that you’re handling supplier management is being able to try to incentivize the behavior you want to see from those suppliers.

Right? So, being able to kind of either provide kind of escalation clauses where you have this certain so great for affirming this is kind of an added bonus that you can be able to achieve and kind of incentivizing some of those productivity gains that you can be able to have and meet some of those expectations that you have to be able to capitalize on your demand.

But unfortunately, within the airline space, that fire is still burning bright. There’s a lot of marrows which are the maintenance repair or I’m sorry, let me overhaul sorry, maintenance repair or overhaul organizations that are the ones that really kind of have to come in, look at it as an asset that goes onto an aircraft and be able to understand whether it can be repaired, whether that be a landing gear or an engine component, and being able to kind of decipher through that and have that really certified and technically advanced talent that can be able to evaluate all of those different elements and pull all of those potential solutions together and being able to execute on either a repair or an overhaul. It’s taking time, and being able to have all of those experienced and key people in those places to be able to fill all of those orders just went away with what has happened over the last couple of years with COVID. So, I think as you’re kind of looking at ways to be able to solve some of those problems, you’ve seen a lot of progress with airlines recently, but especially as we head into the holiday season travel, I would expect to see more because you really have a lot of airlines that have more flights than they did in 2019 or heading into 2020 but their staffing levels aren’t even at 2019 levels but they’re doing more flights. So, you’re seeing a lot of different areas of churn where you have aircraft that are kind of being stretched from a maintenance perspective to be able to make sure that you can kind of service all of that demand but also do it safely. So, that’s where I think a lot of those cancelations and stuff come from. A lot of cases where pilots refuse aircraft and certain things like that. So, it’s one of those things that as you have a dead aircraft that is now sitting there, there’s got to be another aircraft that brings the part to that aircraft. So, it’s kind of a compounding effect that you see in a lot of cases where unless if you kind of start solving that supplier problem where you’re having all of those parts available to be able to do the service, when you can really kind of create a compounding issue, the more and more the suppliers wait to be able to service some of that demand that they have.

If people want to check you out and connect with you or follow what you’re up to, where do you want to send them?

LinkedIn.com/CoreyBobak, and I would be happy to help you with any of your direct spending supply chain related issues.

Thanks for discussing, innovating and the direct spend of your supply chain with us today. Corey, if you missed anything, you can check out the show notes. You can find us by typing in What the Duck?! Another Supply Chain podcast right into Google. Don’t forget the Another Supply Chain Podcast part. It’s important to have that in your search for our recordings and videos to appear.

If you are new to the show, make sure to follow this podcast so you don’t miss any of our direct spent supply chain content. I’m @SarahScudder on LinkedIn @SScudder on Twitter. This brings us to the end of another episode of What The Duck, another Supply Chain Podcast. I’m your host, Sarah Scudder, and we’ll be back next week.