Today, industries face digital disruption at every turn, from operations to human resources to sales and marketing. For companies looking to leverage these technologies to improve efficiencies, reduce costs, and differentiate, the supply chain is a critical area.

As seen in the recent article, Digital Transformation: Is Your Organization Ready?“ the changes companies need to make will greatly impact their business model, processes, and markets. Regardless of where companies end up, they need to understand how evolving tech supports a stronger supply chain.

The Opportunity

Here are some of the key advantages of incorporating digital technologies into supply chain management:

• Data Availability. There is more data available than ever before, generated from objects such as machines, finished products, and customers and consumers alike. This data is there for the taking, ready to be leveraged for optimal results. The sheer volume of data, however, can also be overwhelming for companies that do not have a sound data management strategy and tools to collect and use the information.
• Integration. New technologies like Big Data and enterprise resource planning platforms are made for collaboration. New technologies can collect, analyze, and display data from multiple sources within the enterprise … and suppliers themselves … to provide a more holistic, integrated understanding of supply and demand.
• Cost. Costs are relatively low to collect and store the massive amounts of data about your supply chain, though there are often some initial costs necessary for the systems needed to collect and analyze the information. With cloud-based technologies, companies can scale quickly to adapt to new data sources.
• Non-Linear Supply Chains. Today, companies know that supply chains are no longer linear entities but complex, dynamic networks with different companies, products, prices, availabilities, quality levels, and needs. Optimizing these dynamic structures requires powerful tools that can analyze the networked relationships and variables at play.
• Always On. When conditions change, you need a supply chain that can adapt to the new reality and provide solutions without delay that reflect the latest circumstances. Sensors and location-based tools allow for this vision to be a reality.
• Better Synergies. By sharing data and insights the collective supply chain – suppliers, partners, and customers – can improve communication, decision-making, and outcomes. All players can share and learn from insights from standardized and synchronized data.
• Transparency. The modern supply chain provides end-to-end transparency that creates visibility for supply and demand, resulting in better pricing, problem-solving, and process.

The Future

The future provides new opportunities for the digital supply chain. The Internet of Things will play a key role as supplies and raw materials are outfitted with sensors and communications. The signals and data they generate will be used by machine-learning tools to “self-organize” the supply chain, providing optimized recommendations or make decisions to respond to the situation.

Blockchain also provides more security and transparency, creating a single source of truth about transactions and other information for all players in a supply network. Blockchain will likely continue to reduce latency and provide for better collaboration.

At Denovo, we help companies develop the right tools to drive innovation across the supply chain. Our cloud ERP (enterprise resource planning) platform allows companies to collect and store data, scale, and manage supply chains more efficiently. To learn more about how Denovo can help your business leverage digital technologies, schedule a free consultation.

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