Digital Supply Chain: Heart to a Digital Enterprise

The future of supply chains lies in digitization, and it is arriving fast. A transformed supply chain is the key enabler for organizations to employ technology in personalizing products, as well as accelerating delivery, hence maximizing consumer satisfaction. A recent research study conducted by IDC, predicts that by the year 2019, more than 50% of manufacturers shall be benefiting from a digital transformation in their supply chains.

Hence, to say that a digital supply chain is the heart of a digital enterprise is not an overstatement, here’s why:

1. Integrated Planning and Execution: An integrated supply chain ensures that the right product is delivered to the customer as quickly as possible, in the most responsive/reliable, efficient and cost-effective manner; as a central cloud-based command system seamlessly connects, supplier, manufacturers, logistics, warehouses, and customers together.
2. Visibility of Logistics: An efficient exchange of information is the key to success for any supply chain. A supply chain made openly accessible/visible with real-time updates and transparency, results in not only inventory savings and planning improvements but also improved consumer satisfaction.
3. Procurement 4.0: The digitization of procurement will help in adding new categories and transforming the value proposition of procurement by efficient integration and management of suppliers, risk-management and boosting collaboration; also resulting in lower costs and shorter delivery time as systems become more automated.
4. Prescriptive Supply Chain Analytics: The end goal of a digital supply chain is to make visible and fully integrate every aspect, of the movement of goods. The key to this critical component of Industry 4.0 is big data analytics. Hence, the next step in the development of supply chain analytics, would be the ability of prescribing how a supply chain should operate, by optimizing not only factors like distribution facilities, routes, mobile assets, inventory etc. but also the optimization of varied number of factors across the supply chain as per circumstances, and the active modification of the chain accordingly.

In the race to Industry 4.0, the organizations that will be able to digitize their supply chains first, are the ones that will gain a difficult to challenge advantage over others, as that is where the future lies. What are your thoughts on the Digitization of Supply Chain Systems? Let us know in the comments section below.