In a Supply Chain Management Review article I penned last year, I talked about some research I had done regarding the integration (or lack thereof) of input cost planning and forecasting to the business plan (including the impact on profit). The figure below shows that 39% of procurement organizations perceive that they do a decent job at mitigating price inflation, but less than a third have an integrated cross-functional process for doing so, and only a fourth of firms use centers of excellence, specialized analytics, and third-party services to help them anticipate future input costs.
