Supply chains have never been static. Even before the recent waves of disruption in the marketplace, Supply chain leaders have been in a race to keep up with changing consumer demands, a shifting competitive landscape, and technological advances.
The one constant in Supply chain evolution is the search for the solution that enables businesses to react quickly to real-time conditions.
The latest silver bullet is large-scale digital transformation. For decades, enterprises have embarked on these projects to reshape their supply chains and operations, investing billions of dollars in enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to achieve efficiency and cost reductions.
These systems should have prepared (or provided the foundation for) organizations to handle the cascading disruptions that beset supply chains. However, ERPs may have exacerbated the problems these disruptions cause, because they are designed for static business environments. As empty store shelves and long lines of cargo ships at ports highlighted during the pandemic, enterprises have had little visibility into the supply chain, no ability to predict what’s to come, and no integration or sharing of planning processes and activities with the supply base.
Not all technology is created equal. Even with configuration and customization options, traditional ERPs and their underlying technology take a one-size-fits-all approach that shoehorns an Organization into existing functionality. These systems also come with a steep learning curve, and they require a large team of internal and external production and developmental support to handle updates or any changes.
But new technological platforms, such as those featuring low-code architecture or built on free-form code such as R and Python, allow users to tailor what they need in their supply chains through applications that use tools such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). They also don’t require large teams for support and development: a small group of developers and users can implement changes as needed. These platforms allow enterprises to realize returns on investment (ROI) quickly, execute on strategy, and change approaches as events or the marketplace dictate.
Three Benefits of New Supply Chain Technology
Using new technology enables an Organization to develop and derive value from applications quickly, target specific needs to execute on strategy, and exercise a great deal of flexibility as conditions change—three advantages not found in traditional ERPs.
Implementing a digital supply-chain transformation through a traditional ERP can be disruptive and time-intensive. Organizations don’t have the luxury of multi-year roadmaps to respond to current challenges.
