Beyond those areas, Blazer says there is a demand for people who understand finance or supply chain logistics, who can build and supervise complex systems.

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As Oliver points out in the video, most companies associate big data analytics with marketing and finance and maybe supply chain management.

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Your supply chain metrics may also lack formal definitions and standards common in finance and other areas of your business.

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The hard stuff is made up of the classic virtues dear to the hearts of finance and operations people: cost, speed, supply chain, analytics.

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Or to put it another way, he believes there is a vast amount of money locked up in industry's relatively inefficient supply chain - and if this money can be released smaller companies would have much less need for external finance.

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The priority for those framing Europe's new financial regulations should be to encourage rather than impede the emergence of new providers of finance, including insurers, mutual funds, specialist lenders or even larger companies in the supply chain.

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