Financial Intelligence for Supply Chain Managers Understand the Link between Operations and Corporate Financial Performance

The Complete Finance Guide for All Supply Chain and Operations Professionals

• Gain the financial knowledge you need to supercharge your career!
• Learn how your day-to-day work impacts key financial metrics
• Tightly align your operational work to enterprise performance goals
• Master the key financial principles and reports all supply chain executives need to know

As a supply chain or operations professional, you might clearly understand your operational performance goals. But if you want to get promoted, you need to know how your day-to-day work impacts the financial metrics top executives care about most. Financial Intelligence for Supply Chain Managers gives you this insight. Steven Leon broadens your view of what you do every day, so you can make your entire organization more successful.

Using practical examples, Leon shows how supply chain and operations decision-making affects ROI, return on assets, working capital, cash conversion cycles, and other key financial metrics. You’ll learn how to directly link your work to enterprise financial performance, whether you’re focused on improving fill rates, reducing lead times, or moving toward JIT inventory management.

Leon clearly explains the key financial principles and reports you must understand to move forward in your career. He also offers real-world advice for responding to specific corporate financial goals, aligning supply chain functions to improve financial performance, and addressing many other finance-related issues.

While you’re working in the trenches to improve supply chain and operational performance, senior executives are focused on wider enterprise financial metrics such as ROIC, EPS, and cash flow. To move forward in your career, you must speak their language and anticipate their concerns. Now, leading supply chain expert Steven Leon brings together all the knowledge you need to do just that.

Leon doesn’t just teach you key financial principles: He links them directly to what you do every day, so you can do it far more successfully. You’ll learn how to use operational and financial data to make better decisions that drive shareholder value higher. You’ll become far more effective at setting priorities and making a business case for them—whether you want to invest in facilities, machinery, materials, employee recruitment and development, or anything else.

Finance isn’t just a set of tools and terms. It’s a disciplined, quantitative approach to decision-making that executives rely on constantly. With Leon’s guidance, you’ll become comfortable with both the language and the mindset of finance. If you want to help make the decisions that matter most, you need this knowledge and these skills.

What supply chain professionals need to know about:

• Reading and understanding financial statements
• Using ratios to evaluate the performance of an industry, organization, or manager
• Managing supply chains to increase a company’s valuation
• Helping your organization optimize cash flow and cash conversion cycles
• Driving financial value by improving collaboration internally and with partners
• Choosing the supply chain investments that deliver the greatest returns

Chapter 1: Introduction   1
Chapter 2: Financial Statements Overview   17
Chapter 3: Financial Statement Primer Essentials   37
Chapter 4: Ratio Analysis with Financial Statements   61
Chapter 5: Company Valuation   96
Chapter 6: Decision-Making Tools   112
Chapter 7: Project Management   136
Chapter 8: Supply Chain Network Design and Location Analysis   154
Chapter 9: Inventory Management   174
Chapter 10: Sourcing and Supply Management   193
Chapter 11: Supply and Value Chain Metrics   223
Index   237

Steven Leon is a Clinical Professor of Supply Chain and Operations Management in the Marketing Department of the College of Business Administration, University of Central Florida. Prior to his transition to academia, he spent many years in the air transportation industry, particularly in flight operations. Steve is also an accomplished entrepreneur. His research interests include supply chain strategy and financial performance, service operations, behavioral decision-making, and air transportation. He is the author of Sustainability in Supply Chain Management Casebook: Applications in SCM, Financial Times Press, and other peer-reviewed academic journal articles. Steve earned his Ph.D. in Transportation and Logistics from North Dakota State University, and his MBA in International Business from Loyola University, Maryland.