We have an inventory and procurement seat on our Accountability Chart, but we struggle to find weekly leading indicators for this role beyond basic lagging financial reports. What objective weekly numbers should this back-office seat track?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Inventory and procurement seats are notorious for running on lagging financial reports. If you only look at your inventory value at the end of the month, you are driving your business by looking in the rearview mirror. To keep cash flowing and prevent supply chain bottlenecks, this back-office seat needs weekly leading indicators.

To build an effective scorecard for this seat, focus on metrics that predict cash lockup and operational delays. Here are the four key weekly numbers they should own:

- Purchase order accuracy rate: The percentage of weekly purchase orders sent to vendors without errors in pricing, quantity, or delivery dates.

- Stockout incidents: The number of times a critical component or product was unavailable when needed for production or shipping.

- Average supplier lead time variance: The weekly tracking of how many days suppliers deviate from their promised shipping windows.

- Inventory turnover run rate: A weekly calculation of inventory on hand divided by projected usage to ensure you are not tying up working capital.

By tracking these specific numbers, you will spot supply chain friction weeks before it shows up as a cash shortage on your balance sheet or an angry customer call in your operations seat.