As we have seen over the past few months, while facing numerous global crises caused by countless factors such as political tensions, environmental disruption, financial instability and biological risks, we also learnt an essential lesson about today’s business landscape, which is that many companies are not entirely well prepared to withstand or even recover from the supply chain disruptions that are occurring nowadays. Many companies currently suffer from a lack of the right level of visibility over their supply chains to effectively prevent, identify and mitigate disruptions. In addition, their IT infrastructures and supply chain management strategies are not sufficiently resilient to allow them to respond quickly to any potential risks and emerge unscathed from unexpected disruptions.
Companies are experiencing a difficult time, but there are a variety of platforms available on the market, such as EDI systems and IT services that can help companies to transform their environment into agile and resilient supply chain ecosystems, and help to remove many of the supply chain bottlenecks.
In this article we will explore how to overcome supply chain disruptions with the use of modern technology, being prepared for, preventing and surviving major supply chain disruptions and achieving a competitive edge in such difficult times while counting on a digital supply chain.
Supply chain disruptions are omnipresent and unexpected at the same time and can arise from a variety of factors (such as shortages, natural disasters, global health pandemics, political uncertainty, economic upheavals, etc.). Supply chain disruptions are growing rapidly, and the last few years have been particularly intense for many companies, including in Asia.
Supply chain operations are also becoming more costly every year, due in part to the expectations of end-customers, who have grown to expect nearly instant order fulfillment, tailor-made offers and products, and complete transparency on product information and delivery status. In order to remain competitive in the marketplace, today’s companies need to ensure that the communication channels established with their suppliers and customers allow them to transfer large volumes of business-relevant data in the shortest possible time. That can be daunting and disturbing, but this is the current business scenario. However, this doesn’t mean that your company can’t do anything to prepare and protect your supply chains, even in the face of extraordinarily difficult circumstances.
The most significant risks of which any company has to be aware are related to manufacturing, workforces and logistics. Therefore, the goal of supply chain management is predominantly to achieve full transparency, resilience and agility in this area.
This is particularly challenging now, as most businesses have expanded their supply chains significantly in terms of size and complexity to meet today’s customer needs and expectations. The companies operating similar chains are more vulnerable to a wider range of risks, including those over which they have no control.
In order to be able to predict disruptions and manage risks, it is necessary to redefine and improve supply chain risk management and strategy to ensure that your company and its employees will operate within an efficient supply chain network, while ensuring cost efficiency and contributing to the achievement of company goals. This includes various improvements to your business. If a company approaches such a process in an appropriate direction, it will certainly discover that changing models can be even faster, easier and more cost-effective than your management think. Some supply chains may adopt more scalable operating models that allow more flexibility in assembling and reorganizing components. Others may focus on developing an integrated, end-to-end digital roadmap. It is therefore crucial that businesses assess their current strategies, identify their weaknesses and act on their priorities in order to close the gaps.
Digital transformation is a trend that continues to evolve in the supply chain. Many companies are already benefiting from it, and have already invested in multiple tools, including EDI supply chain for data exchange.
Digitization itself consists of completely redesigning and improving all business communication channels and exchange processes between trading partners along the entire supply chain, with the aim of making it easier for a company to build and collaborate within a supply chain network system and enable it to protect its assets when disruption occurs. The essential part of this process is the digitization of procurement processes, which starts with eliminating the use of paper and the manual handling of orders, delivery notes, invoices and other documents. This is achieved by introducing digital tools for data exchange and document management. The combination of the right IT tools and the information they contain will help streamline various procedures and introduce a more effective way of controlling activities within the supply chain. Furthermore, reporting and data analysis tools will guide your company in the land of business opportunities, and point you in the most profitable direction for your company. By incorporating these solutions into your IT infrastructure, your internal departments – sales, production and logistics – will use one common data platform to share information.
As mentioned, a holistic approach to supply chain management is extremely important to improve flexibility and protect your company against future disruption, and it is therefore vital that companies build long-term resilience into their existing supply chains to handle future challenges. This approach must be driven by technology that supports analytics, AI and ML to ensure end-to-end transparency across the supply chain.
Here is an overview of some of the benefits of digital supply chain, which offers companies countless advantages:
A digital supply chain can help optimize decision-making processes and reduce operating costs, enabling you to adopt the just-in-time (JIT) methodology, and allowing you to collect, share and analyze your business data efficiently while giving full visibility and real-time monitoring of your operations. Thus, you can create a solid business roadmap and make important decisions based on real data.
Today’s companies are using various digital tools and services to avoid, anticipate, and overcome supply chain disruptions. However, methods that are data-driven and cloud-based are considered the most effective, because such solutions allow businesses to react to all kinds of market changes almost instantaneously, and to scale their supply chain operations up and down whenever they want to meet their needs and goals.
Solutions such as electronic data exchange (EDI) are now instrumental to running a business, and without digital tools it is impossible to predict, prevent, or even survive supply chain disruption. In order to remain competitive, companies need to develop fully dynamic, transparent, and highly efficient supply chains – and this can be done only with data exchange and document management platforms and services. Of course, these cannot be basic solutions. They must be powerful enough to allow businesses to monitor their supply chain flows in real time so that they can react to any disruptions accordingly – letting you focus more on what is the most important in your business.
Author: Vincenzo Cirillo
Vincenzo Cirillo leads global EDI and e-invoicing solutions at Comarch for Asian clients, drawing on his extensive experience in the supply chain and automotive industry in several countries. He has developed a passion for enabling digital business.
