Introduction

The focus of the business world in 2007 is on growth. It seems like a simple concept, but it generates a lot of complexity for our clients. The business community has spent 30 years, billions if not trillions of investment dollars, and untold amounts of human and intellectual effort on perfecting supply chain management. But it is increasingly apparent that far less effort and thought has gone in to managing the demand chain, which is the analogous name we might give to that side of the firm that generates organic growth.

As CEO’s attempt to manage the demand chain to deliver consistent growth in revenues and profits to meet Wall Street expectations, they encounter new obstacles.

Supply chain challenges may be said to fall under the headings of responsiveness (turning the supply flow on and off in response to customer needs), dynamic integration (managing so that all supply streams integrate around the final deliverable), and efficiency (time and cost). They are subject to six sigma and other engineering-based analyses to manage those variables.

Demand chain challenges fall under different headings: effectiveness (the capability to drive growth with existing tools, methods and people), predictability (the likelihood of achieving target rates of growth via future execution of current plans), and sustainability (the ability to maintain target growth rates once they are attained).

Over the 6-month period October 2006 – March 2007, EMM Group conducted original research into how selected companies organize for growth. We focused on a small number of B2C companies (our business-to-business study will follow at a later date), interviewing senior executives responsible for business strategy, innovation, marketing, sales and brand building. We used a standard in-depth interview format to ensure comparability across companies, industries, job functions and individuals.

The following summary of our findings is compressed into five principles for economy of communication.