The Digital Supply Chain Survey: Findings & Forward Look

The coronavirus pandemic came as a massive blow to the global supply chain, creating disruptions all over the world and leaving companies scrambling to keep the ship afloat. In response, many organizations have turned to digital supply chain solutions to help them streamline their operations and become more agile and resilient when faced with such supply chain disruptions. At the end of the whirlwind of a year that 2020 turned out to be, 110 supply chain and manufacturing executives from companies in a wide range of industries were asked to complete a 2020 digital supply chain survey. The results of this survey highlight a number of interesting findings regarding the current state of the digital supply chain and what its outlook is for the future.

To start, the survey shows that supply chain risk and resiliency planning is on the rise – a result that comes as no shock given how caught off guard many companies were by the pandemic. The survey also shows that supply chain budgets are changing as well, as companies focus on reducing their cost to serve by improving vendor performance monitoring, using real-time inventory management, increasing transparency/visibility, and using automated purchasing. At the same time that supply chain budgets are shrinking as the cost to serve rises, budget priorities are also shifting, with companies putting more and more of their budget into digital supply chain management technologies. These technologies allow companies to improve their real-time visibility as well as make use of predictive analytics to better anticipate disruptive changes to their supply chain.

As companies continue to turn to digital supply chain solutions in light of all the pain points that the coronavirus pandemic has created, the survey concludes on an optimistic note, stating that the organizations who successfully adopt digital technologies to rethink the design of their supply chain will be the ones best positioned to turn any future disruption into opportunity and capitalize on what is becoming an increasingly digital world.