ThreeSixty has strengthened its service offering with a commercial planning practice led by Senior Consultant - Transformation Warren Swanepoel.
The Australian supply chain consultancy says the move is intended to link day-to-day operational decisions with return on capital employed.
Working with retailers and distributors including lululemon, ASICS and Austin Group, ThreeSixty is targeting the service at businesses with complex supply chains. These organisations often struggle to measure the full financial impact of decisions on sourcing, stock levels, fulfilment and logistics.
At the centre of the offering is total cost-to-serve modelling combined with decision support tools. The approach is designed to show how individual operational choices affect profitability and shareholder value, rather than relying solely on broader measures such as gross margin.
Swanepoel joined the consultancy after senior supply chain roles at New Zealand Safety Blackwoods and The Warehouse Group. He has more than 20 years of experience in supply chain leadership and transformation, including designing total cost of ownership models across international networks.
Return on capital employed, often shortened to ROCE, is commonly used by companies and investors to assess how efficiently a business generates operating profit from invested capital. ThreeSixty argues that while the metric is understood at board level, it is rarely tracked in a way that helps teams making operational decisions each day.
This issue is most acute in large retail and distribution businesses, where decisions are spread across buying, inventory, finance, merchandising and operations. A choice that appears beneficial in one area can create extra costs elsewhere, particularly when storage, working capital and transport are considered together.
The service begins with an assessment of a client's supply chain operations, inventory flows and cost structures. It then builds a model to measure total cost of ownership and compare performance across different parts of the business using ROCE.
Clients can use the tools to test the likely financial impact of operational changes before making them, such as comparing suppliers, changing inventory settings or reviewing different fulfilment models.
Service expansion
The launch also broadens ThreeSixty's existing consulting work in network strategy, warehouse design, automation and operational improvement. Commercial planning decisions often shape supply chain networks and should receive the same level of analysis as physical operations projects, the consultancy says.
Chief Executive Officer Arthur Dardoumbas said the practice addresses a gap in many organisations' decision-making processes.
"Most businesses understand the importance of return on capital employed at a board level, but very few can measure it at the level where decisions are actually made - which supplier to buy from, how much stock to hold, which fulfilment channel to use," he said.
"Warren's experience managing this at scale reinforces our ability to deliver for clients. Our commercial planning capability gives leadership teams the ability to see shareholder value at every level of the business and make decisions based on data rather than assumptions."
ThreeSixty is offering the service as an ongoing advisory arrangement rather than a single project. It says this structure allows for updated reporting, scenario testing and root cause analysis over time as supply chain costs and trading conditions change.
Operational focus
ThreeSixty was founded in Melbourne in 2018 and advises clients across retail, eCommerce, fast-moving consumer goods, healthcare, industrial and third-party logistics. Its work spans inventory planning, network strategy, warehouse design, technology implementation and operational optimisation.
Swanepoel said the challenge for many businesses is fragmented decision-making across functions.
"The challenge for most businesses is that the teams responsible for inventory, operations, finance and merchandising operate in silos. A purchasing decision that looks good in isolation - a volume discount from a supplier, for example - can generate significant hidden costs downstream in storage, working capital and network capacity," he said.
"What we're able to do is connect those pieces and show businesses not just what their true commercial performance looks like, but what it could be. That's often quite confronting, but it gives them something concrete to aim at and a clear understanding of where the biggest opportunities lie."