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How to transform your supply chain from cost to growth engine

Anna Ellegaard Buhl
by Anna Ellegaard Buhl
3 min read
17. November 2025

Back to the inspiration page

When the operational supply chain spoils your success

"You can't be everything to everyone."

It's a phrase you've probably heard before.

Yet many companies try to be as much as possible, for as many as possible. This mindset has consequences: High tied-up capital. Inefficient product flow. A lack of overview that affects competitiveness, bottom line, and growth negatively.

In a classic operational structure, the supply chain's purpose is to keep operations running. You're responsible for ensuring that goods move, that inventory matches, and that customers get what they ordered as efficiently as possible.

But supply chain has much more potential!

Unfortunately, it can be incredibly difficult to explain your reality as a supply chain leader to sales or management.

Sales talks about top line, management talks strategy – and you're just trying to keep operations together. Suddenly, the potential disappears in daily operations.

It's a shame, because in reality, supply chain holds up to 80% of costs and a lot of valuable data.

Data that can be used to drive growth.

Read our guide: How to achieve profitable growth

Eng kommerciel supply chain differentieringstabel
 

What is habitual thinking costing you?

To understand the benefits of a commercial approach, we must first look at what happens when you remain in operational habitual thinking:

1. Lack of overview:

Countless SKUs, incalculable product lifecycles, and messy Excel sheets filled with data that quickly becomes outdated. In this reality, it's incredibly difficult to make strategic priorities.

Therefore, decisions are often based on what "usually works" – not on what works best.

2. Unhealthy complexity

Complexity is a natural part of growing larger, but when everything and everyone must be prioritized, complexity quickly becomes unprofitable.

Resources are wasted on customers and products that don't contribute positively to the bottom line, while the most value-creating areas are neglected.

Find out how complexity affects your business.

3. Silos

You are familiar with the scenario: Sales wants high service on everything and management focuses on the top line, while supply chain tries to protect the margin.

But without a common data foundation, no one speaks the same language.

The result is that departments work against each other – and that harms your growth.

It may seem overwhelming to break with your habitual thinking, but it's easier than you think:

You start by asking the right questions.

The question that changes your organization

At Inact, we often see that many companies begin the journey with a simple question:

"Do we actually know which customers and products create the most value?"

The short answer is no.

And to find the answer, you must turn the company's supply chain upside down and depart from the company's customers.

When you do that, it's no longer about processes or systems, but about giving the entire organization a common picture of reality.

With your customers as the guiding light.

This choice doesn't just change your decision-making process – it changes your entire business strategy.

Supply chain becomes a growth engine

The benefits are clear when you elevate supply chain from operations to strategy:

  • From operations to development: When supply chain is commercialized, it becomes a strategic function that drives business development and growth – not just operations. This way, every operational decision supports the company's strategic goals for growth and profitability.

  • From feelings to facts: With a commercial supply chain, the company starts from one unified overview of customers, products, and suppliers, making it possible to make decisions with confidence – and to have a data-based influence on the company's development.

  • From silos to collaboration: When sales, management, and supply chain work from the same data, a common language emerges. Discussions are no longer about individual KPIs, but about what creates most value for the entire company.

By commercializing your supply chain, you don't just get better data and fewer reports - you go from following to shaping the market.

From operations to profit with End-to-End

Turning your supply chain around and making it commercial is not a departmental project, but a new way of thinking that involves the entire organization.

It's not about implementing more reports or dashboards, but about connecting the data you already have and using it actively across departments in one action-oriented solution.

And that's exactly what Inact's End-to-End solution is created for.

One solution that connects customers, products, and suppliers in one unified overview – and converts data into action.

At once supply chain is no longer a support function. It's a growth engine for the entire business.

Take a look at our solution here and experience how you can transform your supply chain into business.

 

 

 

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