Three things you need to know around digital transformation within supply chains

Mindset. Skillset. Toolset. To understand digital transformation, we need to understand those three areas. Over the last 10 years we've learnt, how do we think about a business model, what are the new skillsets needed where competitors are disrupting your market when technology advacement is fundamentally changing. We need to understand what are the core tools needed to operate in this world. A lot of conversations start with toolset because that's the easiest but it's important to consider all three factors.

The fundamentals of supply plan, source, make, deliver is evolving. Hence getting into the design mindset of an organisation and evolving it according to that organisations industry needs is critical. Second is the large amount of information that is flowing from the consumer to the supplier. How do we make that information available for us to make informed decisions. The last factor is around toolset and how that changes the supply chain, we call Augmented Intelligence. The supply chain decision makers and how they are enabled with this large amount of information utilise AI and ML to make much better decisions, this allows our clients to pivot on the basis of what they're seeing and sensing from the data to pivot towards customer needs.

It is believed that supply chains in coming years will become even more “networked” than they are today — with significant portions of strategic assets and core capabilities externally sourced and coordinated. This will be powered by two trends. First, as digital advances continue to reduce communication and coordination costs, organisations will find it easier and more efficient to secure external solutions rather than inventing solutions in-house. Second, companies will find it increasingly challenging to sustain best-in-class internal supply chain management competencies across a diverse set of emerging digital technologies that range from IOT to sophisticated artificial intelligence algorithms.

Effectively managing and coordinating tomorrow’s networked supply chains will require organisations to develop and adopt more structured collaboration models creating scalable approaches towards true data transparency enabling frictionless co-creation that are largely absent in today’s collaboration models.

In particular, access to transparent, accurate data that is a prerequisite for effective supply chain collaboration and coordination. Lack of transparency is often born from a lack of trust or confidentiality issues. However we are already seeing progressive companies developing novel solutions to this dilemma — such as data “cleanrooms” and digital marketplaces.

How RITEC Consulting can help

We’re helping companies future-proof their supply chain operations to be more resilient and agile in the face of disruption.

We offer deep experience and expertise that can be embedded into your organization to help you rethink your supply chain for a new era. We’ve worked with multiple global supply chains in various industries to improve supply chain insights and performance. Get in touch with us today to start your supply chain digital transformation journey.