Future-ready supply chains are customer-centric, agile enough to operate in the rapidly evolving digital environment, and profitable enough to generate revenue for the company. According to KPMG, the supply chain’s future success hinges on its being purpose-built and long-lasting.
Future supply chain leaders will need to develop resilience and agility, reevaluate operational models, speed up digital investment, balance cost and reallocation, and ultimately move toward global visibility and an autonomous supply chain.
Supply chain software has given the executives confidence that the ways of the previous century will not position them as leaders in the current century, regardless of the challenges they face from technology and digital disruptors, changes in worker skill sets, or the transformation of operating models.
The following are some of the most anticipated trends in the supply chain-
- The supply chain that is customer-centric-
Today’s consumers seek individualized services and quick delivery. Do you consider the supply chain the main factor influencing the customer experience? You ought to. Additionally, knowing your customers is vital to a successful supply chain.
Many businesses are unaware of the actual cost of doing business or who their most lucrative clients are. They are unsure of whether they are providing inadequate or excessive care. They still do not have the whole picture because of internally focused analytics and other data that take the last mile and reverse logistics into account.
- Decision-making cognitive supply chains-
A cognitive decision center examines the supply chain cross-functionally, looking at the products, suppliers, distributors, and customers. By utilizing sophisticated simulations and modelling to determine the best trade-off, firms can balance decisions regarding costs, revenues, and profits. Since the center is concentrated on broad organizational objectives, all decisions are made with the enterprise as a whole’s needs in mind, as are the incentives of the decision-makers. With comprehensive supply chain information, leaders can better manage performance, respond quickly to consumer needs, and make educated decisions.
- Effective Platform Utilization-
Platforms are becoming a more critical growth strategy for prosperous businesses. Direct-to-customer (D2C) sales models built on platforms shorten supply chains and increase margins by letting companies keep value previously lost to partners and distributors. D2C has significant effects on inventory control as well. Retailers from the past handled stock over a network of physical stores in a reactive and ineffective manner. Today’s retailers reliably estimate demand patterns using customer data, adjusting supply to reduce surpluses.
- Sustainability –
Customers want to see businesses formally committing to sustainability goals. In the eyes of the consumer, supporting promises by incorporating assurance into procurement and sustainability strategy and revealing facts that align with significant, verifiable, and continuing actions add weight. An engaging independent warranty gives ESG reporting more weight, enables the integration of leading practices into operations, and provides insight into those areas that businesses believe to be distinctive and different from other supply chains.
- Utilizing cross-functional data –
Supply chain automation and digitization provide large and ever-growing amounts of digital information, cost savings, and increased efficiencies. Many organizations already use predictive analytics and machine learning tools to analyze, integrate, and interpret this data in real-time. These tools are overseen by teams of data scientists in so-called “control towers,” allowing them to anticipate rising costs, identify process bottlenecks, and improve decision-making. Control towers are not flawless, though. It is a model that relies on the entirety of the data and incorporates inputs from all points along the supply chain to automate responsive process optimization. Control towers must deal with more and more inputs as supply chains get more digitally sophisticated, which can overwhelm decision-makers and slow down systems.
In a modern organization, supply chain management is more crucial than ever in tying together the front, middle, and back offices. Every organization must prepare for supply chain transformation. However, in the future, supply chains will be driven by client requirements rather than by-products and processes. They will rely on a flexible network of reliable third parties rather than capital-intensive fixed assets.
