Impact of technology & rising customer expectations on globalized supply chain

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Intelligent Digital Supply Chain
By
Zubin Poonawalla
Two irresistibleforcesareshaping the supply chain in a
globalized world – oneis technology.Theother is rising customer
expectation – from acrossthe supply chain.These twin forceswill
affect the design of the supply chain & itscomplexity.
It is estimated that by FY20, wewill generate44 zetabytes of data –
generated by billions of users, trillions of devices – around 200
billion estimated to be loT enabled – and millions of apps. Customers
expect instant gratification & complete visibility. Firmshave to
master the art of usingthis mass of data to understand theemerging
needsof customers. And then fulfillit. The problem is not one of
failure– but that of irrelevance – firms which cannot meet the
customer expectations willnot be relevantin such a marketplace.
How does this affect the supply chain? On the ground, the nice simple
linear supply chainswe are used to is giving way to complex,
connected & dynamicvaluechains, where flexibility & agility are the
key words. A complexweb of suppliersfrom acrossthe world feed an
equally distributed manufacturingfootprintto service customers
across the globe. The raw material, finished goods & reverse supply
chains are now interconnected & global.
At one end of the spectrum, wehave customers who are globalized &
googlized – who latch on to trendsfrom across the globe, & on the
other end we have firmswho run traditional supply chains. With
80% of the supply chain activity residing outsidethe enterprise, we
have to find waysto connect& identify usefuldata to drivehigh
impact decisions.
As technology improves& enterpriseslearn to use data from their
supply chains, we will see a shift from metrics driven analytics, which
just reportthe status of the businessto cognitive analytics, where we
will be able to make sense of unstructured & ambiguousdata – the
ability to analysemultipledisparate pieces of data, which in isolation

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may not lead to any significant findings, but in congruenceoffer
valuable insights & findings.
This is where the power of analytics meets the unstructured world of
social media. Enterprisesupply chainswill monitor what customers
& potential customersare talking about, & use it to understand &
analyzeits influenceon demand. Studiesby analytics firmsshow that
incorporatingdata from social mediainto analytics to predict future
shipmentsimprovesforecast accuracy by 16%. AsloT takes off, a
way to integrate pictureof the shortages, their causes, the impact, the
worst offendersacrosssources& plan their production accordingly.
A task that today takes up morethan 50% of the manager’s time.
Digital supply chainswill help the manager spend just5% of the time
on analytics & the rest 95% on action that will help the firm avoid
shortages & wrongdeliveries. Supply chainsin a globalized world
will have to learn this art.