Key #2. Embrace the value and vision of a digitalized supply chain.
A digitalized supply chain can be enigmatic unless a holistic view of an interoperable, intelligent supply chain is well articulated. In our highly competitive and rapidly evolving future, all team members must appreciate the urgency of key characteristics of this vision, including agility (helping to navigate shifting consumer behaviors and resulting business strategy pivots), efficiency (intelligently calibrating forecasts and optimizing execution), insight (driving predictive and prescriptive guidance from past history and physical observations), and finally, sustained value (by streamlining IT investments in line with the platform strategies that will feed into this hyper-connected, ubiquitous data landscape of the future).
At its core, a digital supply chain is the manifestation of a sound platform strategy. While the platform provides scale and acceleration within the IT landscape by concentrating effort and leveraging investment wisely, it is with the ability of the tools adopted to span across the supply chain ecosystem to read and react information, develop insights, and autonomously react where appropriate to remediate issues or repeatedly re-optimize the plans, up to the time of execution that will deliver the level of operational responsiveness and efficiency needed to keep pace with the speed of business.
Critically, this ecosystem is not one limited to the host organization’s data set. The ideal solve will come when connectivity to external business partners resources and inventory bring enough intelligence relative to the supply and cost associated so that holistic decisions can consider the comprehensive set of resources available in the market to fixate on the optimal cost and/or environment impact solution.
Communicating a holistic vision will encourage consideration at each step from any or all stakeholders as to the incremental value that a strategic vs tactical step forward can have on the speed, scale, and value realization that would come with a potentially more expensive or disruptive investment that is more in line with a scalable foundation towards a digital future. While investments may incur more introspection, the iterations and resulting advances may bring agility, speed, or insight that will deliver a level of differentiation not otherwise available.
